“To this day, I’ve never had a rehearsal with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band,” Jamie McLean says with a grin. “I’ve played with them all over the world—there was never a rehearsal. You just learn it on the fly, which is an awesome skill to have because you can get thrown into any situation and be able to pick it up and jam.”

The Connecticut-bred, Brooklyn-based guitarist, singer-songwriter and bandleader is sitting at Relix’s offices on a December afternoon. He’s currently on the verge of releasing an excellent solo album packed with big-name guests, One and Only, but, at the moment, he’s reminiscing on his years living in New Orleans and playing with the legendary brass outfit that made him a visible presence on the festival circuit. McLean originally got the gig as a young musician in Colorado. When the Dirty Dozen guys invited him up to play at a show, one sit-in turned into a six-year collaboration and lifelong friendship.

“Touring all over the world, playing Madison Square Garden, hooking up with Elvis Costello, you name it—it was an introduction to the music business that not a lot of people get,” McLean says, also noting his early connections with mentors like The Meters, Widespread Panic and Norah Jones. “I call that time with Dirty Dozen my post-graduate work because it was just a total education on how the music business works—the good and the bad, touring internationally, meeting your musical heroes and playing in front of 100,000 people. It was amazing. I owe a lot to those guys.”

After moving out of New Orleans and parting ways with the Dirty Dozen—though he still plays with them whenever they cross paths (“They’ve got a saying: ‘Once a Dozen, always a Dozen’”)—McLean turned his sights on New York and a solo band, which continues to be his main outlet today.

Though he hadn’t released a new Jamie McLean studio record since 2011, before dropping One and Only in late February, McLean has remained busy. In addition to dates with his own outfit, he’s worked and written with jam-schooled, soulful singer-songwriters Brett Dennen and Taylor Hicks, and spent time touring with Aaron Neville’s group. (He helped the sweet-voiced singer pick some songs for the all-star A Concert for Island Relief at New York’s Radio City Music Hall earlier this year, too.) Throughout, McLean has continued to develop his songwriting chops, and he calls the batch of material that landed on his new album his strongest yet.

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Some of that newfound confidence came from a series of songwriting sojourns to Nashville. “I was taking regular trips, basically monthly, to write with other artists and just dig into the scene there,” McLean says. “There’s so much talent there, and it’s a city that really embraces the art of songwriting—people set up co-writing sessions like a nine-to-five job. When I got there I was like, ‘I’m not the only one sitting on the couch with a guitar trying to wrestle this alligator.’”

McLean still wrote nearly all of One and Only by himself, though the Nashville sessions helped him “keep flexing that songwriting muscle” and develop what he says is a more honest, straightforward lyrical quality to his compositions.

“I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m not afraid to say what’s on my mind,” McLean says. “There was a long time when I was younger where I had a lyric in mind and I said, ‘Well, I’ve gotta disguise this somehow.’ It’d be way too real to just say it. Now, I’m at the point where honesty is the best policy.”

That honesty comes through in the songs, a collection of Americana tunes and feel-good rockers that showcases both McLean’s growing songwriting chops and his continued instrumental prowess, with some assistance from producer and former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, who helped McLean tighten his tunes and hone in on his voice (including offering exercises like rewriting a song in the style of Keith Richards).

He also recruited a few familiar faces to guest on the record, like mandolin player Sam Bush and Dave Matthews Band saxophonist Jeff Coffin.

“I told him [Bush] I was gonna be recording in Nashville and I would love to get some mandolin on it at some point,” McLean explains. “He immediately was like, ‘Well, why don’t I do it? Here’s my cell phone number.’ He picks up everything so fast, and it fits really well with a lot of the songs. One in particular, ‘Virginia,’ we cut live in the studio and nailed it in one take, but it was so much fun tracking with him in the studio, so I was like, ‘Damn, can we do this a couple more times?’ He’s like, ‘Absolutely.’”

McLean hasn’t forgotten about the Crescent City either.

“More than anything, ‘the New Orleans thing’ is that soul element,” McLean says. “Whatever is in that water down there and in all the gumbo—you see it in the Mardi Gras Indians, you hear it in all the styles of music—there’s a real passion and a soul to it. And that’s something I try to bring to the songwriting, to guitar playing and to all my vocal delivery. I’m never trying to hold it back because I want it to sound perfect or pretty. I’d rather just go for it.”

This article originally appears in the April/May 2018 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.