Making the record, Insley hit upon the recipe for success: “The secret is to find good people and get the hell out of their way. You get amazing results on your songs. When you let everything flow together, there’s a kind of logic behind it. And in the end, you get an ensemble of energies and it all fits like it should.”

With his previous band, a southern rock group called The Trophy Husbands, Insley says he “made homemade records and learned a lot about production.” Before that, in the 1990s, Insley’s “newgrass” band, The Nitpickers, enjoyed what he calls “some local success for a short time, playing nontraditional material with bluegrass instrumentation” but “zipped up a little.”

Other Insley bands included the Flagstaff‑based group Politics or Pontiacs and most notably Chaingang, a band that–in the fecund Phoenix music scene of the 1980s which produced The Gin Blossoms, The Meat Puppets and Jodie Foster’s Army–made a name for itself by playing country music for punk rockers.

“The mid‑80s was a fantastic time for bands in Phoenix,” Insley says. “Even then you couldn’t find a punker who did not love Johnny Cash.”

He first became exposed to punk music when he attended Arizona State University in 1979. Prior to that he was raised country in Kansas, listening to the what he calls “the badass AM radio of the 60s ” and getting schooled by Cash and his compatriots Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Buck Owens, Bob Wills and Jerry Reed.

“It’s still the music I love to this day,” he admits.

He brings those influences into his music these days in the “Call Me Lonesome” CD, which he describes as “conceptually and stylistically consistent. The materials fit together and are accessible.” The voice, he says, is “mixed right up front” to get the lyrics to the audience. For Insley, writing songs is “a spiritual exercise. It’s cathartic. I appreciate writing for its companionship–it helps me feel a little less alone in a crazy world.”

His second solo album, the  forthcoming “Here With You Tonight,” will have many of the same musicians as his first one, including Borick, who will joining him Thursday night. “It’s a bit more melancholy, though,” Insley says. “Darker, but with some upbeat tunes.”

At Cave Creek Coffee Company, where the beans are freshly roasted and the wines are world‑class, a couple of those new darker tunes, along with some of Insley’s brighter numbers, should provide an evenly‑lit acoustic evening to make everyone feel a little less lonesome.

Dave Insley is appearing at 9 p.m., Thursday, April 13 at the Cave Creek Coffee Company, 6033 E. Cave Creek Road, Cave Creek. Admission is $10. The CD “Call Me Lonesome” is available at Valley music stores including Borders, Tower Records, Zia Records and Miles of Music. For more information and to purchase CDs, visit www.daveinsley.com.

Reach the reporter at cmoore@ thedesertadvocate.com.