Lucky at Last, Interview with Mobile Register on March 5, 2004.

Say what you want about Johnny Barbato, but don't accuse him of being hasty. The singer, songwriter and guitarist has been active in the area since the 70s. He's particularly well known to habitués of Flora-Bama Lounge and Package, the legendary beachfront roadhouse where he plays up to four gigs a week. But up until recently he had nothing to show for it, in terms of commercial recordings.

"I've been playing and writing my stuff for damn near 30 years," he said of his labors. "Organizing myself to get this done is the hardest thing I've ever done."

"This" is

"Johnny Barbato & The Lucky Doggs," a self-produced CD that makes the wait seem worthwhile. It's as if Barbato spent his Flora-Bama nights distilling the sound of good times on the Gulf Coast down to their essence.

Barbato isn't exaggerating the length of the struggle.

Interviewed by the Register in the summer of 1996, he was working through a plague of setbacks including a stolen truck, a dead van and the theft of a treasured guitar. But he was optimistic that he’d have an album, titled “Puttin’ on the Road," out by Labor Day of that year.

No such luck. With the album partially recorded, various partnerships and plans fell apart. Over the next few years, Barbato said, he searched for a friendly studio where he could finish the project on the same kind of equipment he'd started it on.

As things panned out, he said, he ended up buying the necessary gear from a colleague and setting up his own home studio. By December of last year, Barbato was finally putting the finishing touches on the album.

Though he chose to title the disc after his band, the song "Puttin' You on the Road" is among its dozen tracks. Given the back-story, you'd think the song would be a lament. You'd be mistaken.

It does reflect a strong blues influence, but it's a breezy, carefree ramble custom-made to lift spirits and get bodies out on the dance floor. Much the same can be said for the rest of the album. This is music for people who've spent the day in the sun, and who are ready for a laid-back evening.

People who want music simple enough to dance to, expertly played enough to reward their full attention, yet mellow enough not to demand it.

Throughout” Johnny Barbato & The Lucky Doggs," electric blues lead guitar is balanced by singer-songwriter acoustic accompaniment. The bass lines seem to be imported from Texas, the better for a good two-step. Tight drumming propels everything along, and touches of harmonica and keyboards put the icing on the cake.

Delbert McClinton fans — and Barbato himself is one — will find themselves in familiar territory, particularly with tracks such as "In Time of Need." But there's more to the album, and more to the argument that the album reflects a sensibility that belongs distinctively to the central Gulf Coast.

The album opens with "Baby, Baby," a straightforward mid-tempo boogie. By Track 2, "Angeline," Barbato is showing off his New Orleans roots with second-line rhythms under bluesy lyrics. Other pleasantly familiar surprises follow, such as the intense shuffle of "Just For You” and the "Instrument al" that comes near the end, a tranquil and jazzy piece that might have been inspired by a coastal sunset.

And yes. Barbato is glad to have it off his chest. Times are good, he said.

"I'm where I want to be," he to this point stretches back to the '70s, when he moved from New Orleans to the Mobile area. He was a teenager at the time and still had a lot to learn, but he found plenty of people who were capable of teaching him.

"There was a scene here in the 70s that was unbelievable," he said.

He hooked up with the likes of Topper Price and Luther Wamble, learning how to play and how to work the stage. Wamble, who plays on the album, is someone he cites as a particular influence for "the power of his passion" for the blues.

And even if he wasn't necessarily playing with everybody in town, he was watching. He remembers seeing Wet Willie at some Mississippi juke joint "playing their ass off, back when they were a club band. Pure young raw talent."

As demand for the blues dried up in the late '70s, Barbato was getting into an "extremely outlaw" style of country rock. He was also trying to finance a Nashville album by outlaw fund-raising, and in 1979 he was convicted of drug trafficking.

Two years of federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, and the years of probation that followed, were steps in Barbato's maturation as a person and a musician, bat me job wasn't necessarily

"I spent the entire '90s just playing out my anger," he said. "I was a very angry man. I felt like the world had done me wrong."

He's 48 now, and has a different attitude. A big guy. He directs his live band like the high-school quarterback he used to be, with emphatic body language. He's still got a pronounced stutter, but he seems so happy to talk about his music that you wait to hear what he's got to say.

It's like the dam has burst. And in fact, Barbato has big plans for his developing skills as a record producer. First up are a couple more projects by himself, including one based on his prison stay.

To be titled "Maxwell House," it'll be a country-rock effort, and an intensely personal one.

"I didn't want to release it after prison," Barbato said. "I didn't need it. My father was still alive. My family didn't need it."

Now he's ready to set down the lessons learned.

“When you go to prison, I learned. you go to prison, I news for you," he said. The first thing is, you lose your mind, second, you lose your girlfriend, and third, you find religion

"Maxwell House is going to be my consummate songwriting thing," he said. "There's a story to every song."

Barbato said he considers himself a songwriter first. That's one of the things that make him so appreciative of the Flora-Bama, which he calls "the world s finest honky-tonk."

Audiences are more appreciative there than at many venues, he said.

"People don’t come to the Flora-Bama for any reason but music." he said. "Every night there is. or can be. magical." The venue is also a haven for world-class songwriters and players, he said, and he's studied” them all. That doesn't go just for occasional visitors such as Nashville's Alan Rhody. he said, but also for regulars like J. Hawkins, Ken Lambert and Jimmy Louis.

"I learned everything I learned about acoustic guitar from those three men," he said.

If that sounds like high praise, it's typical of Barbato, who seems to have the most respect for artists who are no more than an arm's length away. "My heroes growing up were never people I couldn't touch or get to know," he said.

The cast of players who contributed to the disc is fairly extensive: Brock

Barackman, Robert "Stubber" Griffin, Ricky Chancey (who also handled some production), Donnie Skidmore, Rick Raines'

Live and in person, the Lucky Doggs consist of drummer Barackman, lead guitarist Zack Taylor, bassist Mark LaBorde, and keyboardist Raines, who Barbato describes as "the best B3 player in the freaking world."

Viewed nowadays, in its native habitat at the Flora-Bama, the group seems to be firing on all cylinders, dealing out originals and a range of songs that stretches from John Lee Hooker to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

It's a rewarding venue, but also one that calls for a robust approach. At one recent Saturday night-gig, for example, the band is tearing up Hooker's "Baby Please Don’t Go" when a woman dancing close to the stage takes one too many steps back. Her legs hit the stage, and she's on the verge of winding up flat on her back between Barbato and Taylor.

Taylor, who's about half a second from a major lead-guitar break, gives her a push n the back to keep her upright and goes smoothly into his solo. No big deal, Barbato said he enjoys playing to the snowbirds and other tourists who flock to the Flora-Bama, and he's unabashed about using covers to rope them in. He's also upfront about the fact that, at the rambling venue, he may be competing with as many as three other acts playing simultaneously.

"These snowbirds come south to get warm, and to hear Southern music," he said. "Once you've got a groove going, you can start to branch out a little. First you want to convince them that this is the room where they want to spend the evening."

The other nice thing about snowbirds is that when they buy copies of his disc, they carry them back to their home state and start spreading the word.

In fact, with the album available worldwide through www.cdbaby.com, Barbato finds he's winning listeners even farther away, in France and Belgium.

"Currently 90 percent of my sales are in Europe," he said. "I'm getting checks in the mail. I never dreamed it."

Barbato said he sees himself mainly as a writer, and would naturally like to see Nashville pick up on some of the material on "Johnny Barbato & The Lucky Doggs." But he's not holding his breath. His take on the business, he said, is that "if you want to make money, if you want to sell songs in

Nashville, you better move to Nashville."

He's not moving. He's got a good thing going. And aside from recording his own projects, he said, maybe he's in a position to produce albums for some of the other local artists he's come to admire over the years.