A & E

It's not that Bill Deasy doesn't have any interests outside of music -- he is a published novelist and has a family. But he can't imagine a day going by without picking up a guitar or jotting down a few song ideas.

"I'm in a groove, in a zone," he says in advance of a show tonight at Moondog's to promote a new CD, "A Different Kind of Wild. "But I've always been like that."

Earlier this year, Deasy collaborated with former Brownie Mary guitarist Rich Jacques on a project called Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane. The resulting CD, "The Invisible Ocean," is one of the more dynamic and intriguing of Deasy's career. "A Different Kind of Wild" follows suit, at least in terms of being different. This release features the Pittsburgh-based musician sans band, Deasy's guitar and keyboards providing the sole music.

And yes, that's not a misprint -- Deasy does play keyboards on this album, a first for him. He says working with Jacques, who he terms "fearless in the studio," gave him courage to experiment.

"On a song like 'To Reach You,' there's this really simple, melodic piano line in the chorus," he says. "I can't even express how happy I was recording that. It's pretty thrilling to try new things."

Deasy, however, isn't subverting his style in favor of becoming a piano man. "A Different Kind of Wild," still comes from the same place, at least spiritually, as his previous work. The songs are heartfelt and earnest. At least one "new" tune, "Mystic Lights," dates back to his band Shiloh in the 1990s and the days when he played open stage nights at Graffiti in Oakland. Some songs were started during vacations with his family to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and others arose from bits and pieces of accumulated songwriting ventures.

Although he's used to working in a band format -- Deasy was particularly pleased with the Thomas Jefferson's Aeroplane venture -- he found it easy to revert to doing the bulk of the work himself on the new recording.

"There's a certain charm or power you get in the initial writing," Deasy says. "Sometimes, that gets lost if you produce it and get other people to play all these parts and overthink it. It was pretty comfortable. It's satisfying, expressing these new songs in their truest form."

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