Rodney DeCroo burns through an entire pack of cigarettes during 30 minutes with the Straight. In fairness, he gives about half of them to an intermittent parade of down-on-their-luck guys—all part of the business of drinking coffee on a Commercial Drive patio—but the man is definitely a smoker, and a soft touch.

The Vancouver-based musician shows a similar generosity in his often powerful songwriting. His 2006 album War Torn Man won praise for tough but lyrical country rock that reflected DeCroo’s musical heroes—Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, and the like—but was populated with wounded souls from his own grievous past. To the casual listener, it’s a tasteful if dark collection of Vista ­Vision rockers, Crazy Horse dirges, and sadly romantic country songs, but to the composer—who says with a wicked grin, “This kind of music allows me to be a sensitive, emotional man without being a pussy”—it’s almost unbearably painful stuff. In fact, for a few months earlier this year, there was no almost about it.

“I had to get out of town,” DeCroo says, ruefully. “I went to Montreal. I was gonna lose my fuckin’ mind.” Between his notoriously busy schedule—DeCroo also recorded and toured Trucker’s Memorial with Rae Spoon in 2006—and the equally notorious juju that drives him, DeCroo finally cracked. Not surprising, really, for a man who writes songs because “it’s either that or the psych ward”.

“I toured a lot and I kinda burned out,” he explains. “I don’t wanna sound like a fuckin’ baby or anything [but] that album took a lot out of me. Touring War Torn Man was exhausting, because I tapped something inside myself with those songs.” With a sour laugh, he adds, “I’m not going up there and playing ”˜Oh, Baby Baby’ every night.”

That’s for sure. War Torn Man was dedicated to DeCroo’s father, a brawling Vietnam veteran who hauled the teenager out of his Baptist home in Pennsylvania and into the B.C. Interior for a tour of duty through madness, addiction, and violence. Eventually, he abandoned the 17-year-old in Cranbrook, where DeCroo blossomed into a fully formed crazy motherfucker. Now 40, his past includes journalism and a short stint at the Vancouver Stock Exchange, although he always managed to keep trouble close by. As a mature student at Langara College in the early ’90s, DeCroo received perhaps his greatest honour when he was arrested as a threat to national security, after organizing protests against Jean Chrétien. “It was mayhem,” he howls, slapping his knees, recalling that he persuaded a bunch of teenagers to lie down in front of the former PM’s bus.

All that changed when DeCroo turned to music, around the same time most people finally give up on it. “Ever since I was a little kid, I knew I was going to do this one day,” he says. “Then all of a sudden I was 33, and I was going, ”˜Well, could I have been wrong?’ There was a guitar sitting in the apartment, and my wife had left, and I’d lost my job, and I said, ”˜Okay, it’s time to start playing the guitar.’?”

DeCroo eventually surrounded himself with a dream band composed of drummer Ed Goodine, guitarist Jon Wood, and bassist Linda McRae (although McRae has recently been succeeded by Wood’s partner from the Beige, Mark Haney), and they brought an almighty sizzle to War Torn Man. DeCroo, meanwhile, takes a strictly rational view of his career, which will be augmented by an album of ballads called Mockingbird Songs in the summer. “I don’t think I have any innate ability,” he says, earnestly. “It’s more of a need to get things out.”¦I’ve always been a bit of a fucked-up guy, and I work things out in songs. It’s how I keep my equilibrium.”

Which brings us back to the emergency flight to Montreal, the result of a series of personal blows that cost DeCroo his precarious balance for a spell. After an on-stage meltdown in Wells, B.C., that pissed off his band, his label, and anybody else within hearing distance—“I said a lot of nasty things into the microphone,” DeCroo says sheepishly—he cancelled a two-month tour.

“Everybody was very patient,” he says. “?’Cause I was nuts. If I went on that tour, somebody woulda got hurt. Seriously. I was over the edge.” Arching his eyebrows, he admits, “It was the first time in a long time that I thought about drinking.”

Back in Vancouver and in fighting form again, DeCroo spits out his decaf Americano when asked why his label, Northern Electric, continues to put up with him. “That’s a good question,” he says, between coughs.

“I don’t know. I mean, we all love music, right? And we’re all fuckin’ a little bit sideways, right? That comes with the territory. Ronnie Hayward’s not a little bit sideways? Herald [Nix] is not a little sideways? But they think I’m writing good songs, and we’re all friends, and they wanna support it.”

Mopping up the coffee with his sleeve, he adds with a shrug, “We’re lifers.” -

Rodney DeCroo plays the Railway Club on August 13.