Hey, it’s Patrick again. So, in addition to playing the drums, I’ve done some music writing over the years. Not so much these days. But there was a time in the not too distant past where I’d be reviewing three concerts a week, and chasing that with a couple of album reviews and a 500-word preview of the Coheed and Cambria show. I am not even embellishing this a little bit.

Much of it could be joyless (Ozzfest in 100 degree heat, anyone? My Chemical Romance? String Cheese Incident? Snow Patrol?). But every now and again, I’d get to shoot the shit with someone whose work I truly admired. Like Lindsey. Three times. I think he got a little sick of me after a while. Said his next solo album would be called Lose my Number. I got the hint.

Our first chat (always by phone) came in October 2006 as he was driving (I’m pretty sure someone was driving him, ‘cuz that’s probably how Lindsey rolls) from Nashville to Atlanta to kick off the Under the Skin tour. He was about as enthusiastic as you can expect a guy who’s had the same conversation with 20 other people since 9:00 am that morning to be. Oh, and we got disconnected like three times. I think AT & T was his cell provider. Second chat (the following spring) found him a lot less weary and pretty damn funny. He seemed really excited about playing places he’d never been (Burlington, Vt. and Northampton, Mass. in particular) and had a sense of humor about the Fleetwood Mac song “Come.” Take a guess.

The third time we talked was for a Magnet magazine piece when The Gift of Screws came out. You can read it here. It was July 2008 and Lindsey was on vacation with the family, though he said something to the effect of “I’m learning how to play these new songs in different tunings while they’re out in the sun.” Poor guy.

Anyway, we talked for about 90 minutes, so a bunch of stuff never made it into the Magnet piece due to space constraints. I’m rescuing it from the cutting room floor and sharing it with you, below. Enjoy.

PB: Buckingham-Nicks started to hit in some weird markets shortly before you joined Fleetwood Mac. Did that make you think twice about abandoning your own thing to join a marginally successful group?

LB: It sort of gave us a little pause as to whether we were doing the right thing, because there was this inkling that maybe something might’ve taken hold and grown out of a regional situation if we had seen it through. Even though everyone in L.A. was completely oblivious to us. We had started to do some shows based on the regional popularity of the Buckingham-Nicks album and it blew our minds, because we would go to fairly obscure places like Tuscaloosa, Ala., places in the south, and we would be able to headline for like 3,000 or 4,000 people. And yet we couldn’t fill a club in L.A. at the time.

PB: This of course begs the question what in holy Hell is holding up a proper reissue of the Buckingham-Nicks album?

LB: It’s still on hold. I guess at some point a CD will come out. Obviously, the fact that the band is going to get back together and start rehearsing there’s going to be more physical proximity, it will lead to more discussion about that and maybe a plan regarding that. I’d say it will definitely be out at some point.

(NOTE: IT’S OVER A YEAR LATER, STILL NO REISSUE… GET CRACKING, LINDSEY!!!)

PB: In the early ’80s you seemed to really embrace your roots in ’50s rock and roll on Law and Order and with songs like songs “Holiday Road” and “Oh Diane.” Was that like a palate cleansing after the more left field approach of Tusk?

LB: “Holiday Road” was more a case of looking for what the (Vacation director), Harold Ramis, wanted. A lot of that was defined by the need of a very specific situation. “Oh, Diane,” I don’t know what to say about that (laughs). It’s a catchy song, but I wouldn’t put it at the top of any lists. The album that’s from, Mirage, left me as a producer, and even as a writer trying to fit into a collective sensibility from which to some degree I’d already removed myself. It may be difficult for me to be particularly objective about any of those songs, but I feel like the process itself had been compromised. And that may have something to do with falling back on something that’s a little bit camp. It’s hard for me to separate any of those songs on those albums from how they got made. I was little bit disappointed in that time. But again, that’s showbiz (laughs).

PB: Say You Will was another record affected by band politics. You wanted a double album; everyone else wanted a single album. You interrupted work on a solo album to take part in it. How does it sit with you (seven) years after the fact?

LB: I haven’t really listened to it. Certainly politics entered into it on some level. That was one of many occasions where work intended to be for a solo album got folded into a Fleetwood Mac album, that’s been kind of a pattern. For the time, which was in terms of the politics and personal interaction within the band - which were a bit tentative given the amount of time that had gone by - and given the fact that I took on the producer’s role, I’m pretty happy with that album. Could it have been better? Sure. You have to look at any particular work in the context of the circumstances under which it was made. I think there’s a lot of good stuff on there. There were a number of agendas going on at the same time. If and when - I think it’s when - we go back into the studio to make another album, I think the circumstances will be better. If we make an album that is lacking it won’t be for political reasons.

PB: You’ve been working at a pretty steady clip since Say You Will was released: you’ve become a family man, you toured Say You Will for over a year, and you’ve done two solo albums and tours behind those. But from 1982-1992 you weren’t really touring and you only released two Mac albums and two solo albums. What was day-to-day life like then?

LB: I was working by myself a lot, playing with some other musicians from time-to-time. I did some writing with Jules Shear. It was nice stuff, but nothing came from it. Whatever the downside there was to being in Fleetwood Mac that existed, it was at it’s greatest during that time. Like making Tango in the Night, which was largely done in my garage, was almost impossible. Not doing that tour, that was the beginning of me trying to pull back and regain some of my sense of self and sanity, which was not really too present within the microcosm I was living. A lot of that time, I wasn’t so much interested in achieving a goal within a certain amount of time. I was trying to get my clarity back. I did. I mostly worked, that was about it.

PB: If you’re not too aware of new music, are you at least aware that there’s a pretty disparate group of young artists - people from Joanna Newsome to Bloc Party, Stephen Merritt from Magnetic Fields, Colin Meloy from Decembrists - who have praised your work, both solo and with Fleetwood Mac?

LB: Not really, I’m a bit insulated from all of that. I know in a more general sense that there’s an appreciation for Fleetwood Mac by a new generation. They seem to gravitate to the authenticity. I think that becomes harder to find maybe now. Maybe they respond to the musicianship and the realness in the music. It’s nice to know there’s been some influence from me personally. That’s what I was doing it for.

PB: The enormity and influence of Rumours is fairly inescapable. While I’m sure that’s wildly gratifying, seeing your solo gigs - where people are yelling out for the most obscure songs from your solo career and shoving the “Go Insane” 12” dance mix in your face for you to sign mid-show - I imagine that’s just as gratifying.

LB: Well there was a certain detachment from that whole experience with Rumours, for a number of reasons. The breakups within the band, for instance. I can’t necessarily associate the making of the album with a hugely positive experience. It had a lot of positive aspects. At the time it was tempered, for sure. To me, there was a little bit of a disconnect between the music and the success because I think the kind of musical soap opera aspect of it, the fact that it was autobiographical, the fact that people were aware of that, the tabloid-ism of it, the fact that people bought into it as a hook for the album, became as much responsible for the success of that album as the music did. When you stand that up against what you’re talking about, going out many years later and playing a body of work which represents where you are now and a road you choose to take in the wake of Rumours it does have a very satisfying feel to it. As a small a scale as it may be on, relatively speaking, that maybe you’re being vindicated by the choices you’ve made.

PB: Were you surprised that people were this rabid for you, because it had been a while since you’d been out touring solo?

LB: Not really. I’m rabid enough. I can relate to rabid (laughs).