Five albums into a busy career as a workingman’s musician with a thorough grasp of his craft, Ted Russell Kamp comes into his own as a solo artist and songwriter with Poor Man’s Paradise. It’s a juicy gumbo of country, Southern-fried rock and soul in the style of lifelong inspirations J.J. Cale, Leon Russell, The Band, Little Feat and Kris Kristofferson, packed with some of the toughest and most poignant songs he’s yet written: boogeying roadhouse anthems like “Just a Yesterday Away,” the Jerry Reed-style “Long Distance Man” and “Just Go South”; detail-studded story songs such as the waltzing “Player Piano” and the humorous “Ballad of That Guy”; and a heartbreak hit in the melodic weeper “Let Love Do the Rest” (co-written with Southern California honky-tonker David Serby). “I think this album has more of the richness that I’m looking for in songs,” Kamp says. “I used to have vague ideas — like, you’re driving down the street and you’re feeling lonely and you think a relationship happened but you’re not really sure. Now, I want more detail, more emotion; vagueness is not enough anymore. So I try to include more poetry and realism in my songs.” He’s discovered rich source material in his travels as longtime bassist for Shooter Jennings, with whom he tours regularly. Colorful regional colloquialisms overheard at truck stops and biker festivals pop up in revealing couplets, while fans, musicians, waitresses, desk clerks and others he’s encountered along the road inspire composite characters like the nostalgic bartender in “Player Piano” and the kleptomaniac lover tormenting the “poor man” of the title track (co-written with Chris Tompkins). “We all go through the same things in a lot of ways,” he muses. “That’s one of the reasons I relate to songwriting: telling those stories can be very personal and very universal at the same time. I see people come to shows and fall in love with music to escape from the hard parts of life, and there’s something beautiful about going out on Friday night to forget about stuff and get into it and maybe drink too much. There’s an escape they need. That’s partly why I got into music; it’s this exploration and escape. I’ll write songs to get at what I’m feeling.” He got into music as a shy child in a very vocal and expressive family in New York, which honed the observational gifts that sharpen his songs. He’s since become a confident entertainer onstage, but he feels most connected with the “solitary, slow process” of songwriting. To make Poor Man’s Paradise, he hired a roots-savvy crew of pals to help him record basic tracks in L.A., including guitarists Tony Gilkyson and Kenny Vaughan, drummer Don Heffington, mandolinist Marvin Etzioni, Waylon Jennings/Highwaymen pedal steel player Robbie Turner, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash frontman Mark Stuart, Bruce Springsteen/James Gang backup singer Gia Ciambotti and Tina Schlieske of Tina & the B-Sides. Kamp himself wields guitar, mandolin and bass. (“Music is a language,” he points out, “and each instrument helps you speak it a little differently.”) Between and after gigs on the road, he worked on the tracks in hotel rooms with ProTools on his computer. “It was a very intimate thing of me hanging out with my sonic diary, my diary of music,” he explains. “Music is part of the high points in our lives,” he says. “When you hear an old song that you used to love, it brings you back to a sentimental place — whether it’s something from high school, or from when your sister took you to your first rock concert. You get these moments of beauty, like a little light is shined on you. None of us have the perfect life — or work, or relationship — but you can still have these moments of paradise that you can strive for, little moments that you can love and take pride in.” “I know I need to find a way to make it through all my tomorrows/ So when I need the strength I say you’re just a yesterday away,” he sings on the choogling “Just a Yesterday Away.” That lyric to a lost lover, like most of Kamp’s new songs, reveals more than one meaning; as much as it references his glory days, it also conveys his innate hopefulness and need for connection with the heroes whose music remains a vital creative wellspring. “I’m still very ’70s-influenced,” he acknowledges. “There’s more heart in that music that I relate to. It was allowed to reflect the chaos and all the political coming-of-age stuff that was happening after the ’60s, and people who were looking for music to relate to were more interested in more intensity and heart and soul and honesty. So that’s an era I always come back to when I’m looking for inspiration.” Those influences are richly evident in the funky grooves of songs like the double entendre-laden “Long Distance Man,” the New Orleans-flavored “Old Folks Blues,” and the roadtrip anthem “Just Go South,” which takes a loving page from Russell and Cale’s playbook on how to “tell a story and be honest but still be funky and groovy at the same time.” The late Charlie Rich would likely appreciate the elegant piano, and the taut mix of heartbreak and humor, in “Dixie,” co-written with Kamp’s Nashville buddy Trent Summar. With its tongue-in-cheek lyrics (“The frills are getting cheaper and the hills are getting steeper/ But this high life is my life and I think it’s a keeper”) and instrumentation (banjo, Dobro, horns and a Hammond organ solo “that takes you to church a little bit”), Kamp says “Old Folks Blues” has “as much to do with Little Feat as it does with Rev. Gary Davis, and with early Bob Dylan where he does those talking blues tunes. “The sincerity, the old-schoolness of it, music that’s new and rootsy at the same time — for me, that’s what Americana stands for. I alternate between serious songs and lighthearted songs, so you can follow along like a good conversation or a movie. I wanted each song on this album to go to a different place lyrically and musically so, hopefully, listeners can go to a different place emotionally.”