Like the latest albums from many singer-songwriters, each new batch of songs by Andrew Duhon is a diary in song.
“Songs written within a year or so, but I still find themes in that year of songs,” said the New Orleans-based Duhon. “If I was traveling the Pacific Northwest, some songs are about the mountains. If I was heartbroken, it’s heartbroken songs. If I’m focused on Louisiana, the songs lean that way. That’s why I’m calling this next album ‘The Parish Record.’ ”
Friday's The Red Dragon Presents show at the Manship Theatre features Andrew Duhon's trio plus Lafayette keyboardist Eric Adcock.
Duhon’s upcoming album’s title refers to Louisiana’s unique designation of political subdivisions as parishes rather than counties. He recorded the follow-up to 2022’s “Blue Emerald” in January at Dockside Studio, the famous recording facility on the banks of the Vermilion Bayou near Lafayette.
“ ‘Emerald Blue’ had shades of the Pacific Northwest,” Duhon said. “This next album comes home to Louisiana. Now it’s a matter of the rollout. It takes patience and time to do it correctly. We can tour incessantly, but a new record is the freshest fuel we can get, the best opportunity for growth.”
Planning to release “The Parish Record” later this year, Duhon is performing songs from the album on tour throughout the nation and at his Louisiana gigs. He plays about 100 shows a year, a commitment that requires six months away from his Irish Channel residence in New Orleans.
Between playing seven shows in California earlier this month and another tour that takes him to Texas and Colorado, Duhon performs Friday at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge. The Red Dragon Presents show features his trio plus Lafayette keyboardist Eric Adcock.
Duhon progressed from being a solo act sleeping in his car or on someone’s couch to touring as a trio with bassist Myles Weeks and drummer Jim Kolacek.
“They can play with just about anybody, and yet they get in a van,” Duhon said of Weeks and Kolacek. “I’m honored by that. I’m thankful for where we are, but my ambition is not halfway fulfilled. It’s personal, about the ego, but I also want to prove that Myles and Jim bet on the right pony. I want them to be validated for believing in my stories and songs.”
Inspired by Bob Dylan, John Prine and Jim Croce, the poignantly expressed songs Duhon writes are far from the funk, rhythm and blues, and jazz acts usually associated with New Orleans.
“Songwriting isn’t the art form that New Orleans claims most readily,” he said. “I am a songwriter who happens to be from New Orleans.”
Duhon first performed at Archbishop Rummel High School in the New Orleans-adjacent Metairie. Simple though the praise-and-worship songs were, they revealed the communicative power of music to him. He subsequently wrote original songs, moving beyond rudimentary praise-and-worship chord progressions.
High school classes covering the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Robert Frost prepared Duhon for crafting lyrics.
“Poetry helped me see what was happening on the country radio of the ’90s,” he said. “Country songs interested me because they were three-and-a-half minute stories. Poetry showed me that, in not so many words, I can paint a picture.”
Because he was a solo singer-songwriter, Duhon didn’t find many places to play during his early years of performing.
“There were few places in New Orleans, but one or two spots felt just right,” he remembered. “On the Gulf Coast, in Mobile and Fairhope, Alabama, I played in the corner of a restaurant or cabana bar. At Jimmy Buffett’s sister’s place, Lulu’s, they always loved having somebody playing guitar there.”
Duhon has long since graduated to selling tickets in nearly every market he plays.
“That revenue pays for the band and hotel rooms,” he said. “It’s been grassroots and incremental. We don’t want to be rich and famous, but we are looking for some sort of exponential growth, when opportunity meets preparation — that lucky break. If someone buys a ticket to a show, they’ve been sold on a song somehow, by a friend or a streaming platform. The thing I can do now, from my artist’s standpoint, is write more songs.”
Andrew Duhon Quartet
7:30 p.m. Friday
Manship Theatre, 100 Lafayette St.
$39.95-$59.95