George Thorogood is set to bring his brand of bar-room brawl blues to New Zealand, Shane Gilchrist reports.
Ask him where he's calling from and he answers: ''Let's just say I'm in a very large country that is somewhere between Canada and Mexico.''
Ask him how he is and he answers: ''Bad''.
Which, apparently, means good.
Perhaps he is summoning the tongue-in-cheek attitude of Bad To The Bone, the distorted slide guitar-driven original that, along with covers One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer and Move It On Over, propelled him to a modicum of fame in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a momentum he continues to ride.
Recently turned 60 (though Thorogood doesn't disclose his age, preferring to say he's a few years older than one sibling and several years younger than another), the guitarist and singer is packing his cases once again, preparing to support another rock veteran, Englishman Joe Cocker, on a New Zealand tour that includes a show at the Dunedin Town Hall on January 21.
Thorogood, who has spent much of the year touring, mostly in Canada and the United States, says music keeps him busy enough.
''You got to go [on tour]. I mean, they are not going to come to my house to hear me.
''I don't have time to be sitting around either basking in the joy of what I do or moaning about certain things. There is always something to do.
''Maybe I'll be a grumpy old man at the age of 80, or maybe I'll be some happy-go-lucky older guy with a smile plastered over my face. I don't know - I'm too busy right now talking to you, trying to make sure people come to the show.''
Brimming with bar-room attitude and energy, Thorogood and the Destroyers (a band named in haste after an inquiry from a prospective promoter) formed in the East Coast state of Delaware in the late 1970s.
Previously, Thorogood had been an acoustic blues guitarist ''playing on street corners''.
''I played everywhere, going nowhere,'' he recalls. ''I got into the clubs and thought if I brought the tempo up just half a step and the volume up just a little bit, I'll reach these people.''
In that he is not unlike some of his idols, those who made a name for themselves by making a little bit more noise than others.
''I like the energy of it, the pulse of it,'' Thorogood says. ''John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf ... Elmore James and Muddy Waters ... they became electric and formed bands.
"They used to play country delta blues-type music, but when they got to big cities, the bars were loud, people were dancing, so they got drums and amps. They zipped it up a bit; they brought the volume and tempo up.
''They were the first rock bands; they really were. The blues purists of the time - people like Skip James, Son House and Reverend Gary Davis - didn't like this and used to look down on these young whippersnappers.
''Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry took it up another step, ended up on American Bandstand and the whole world found out about it.''
Thorogood's highly energetic approach to the blues, particularly his wild slide guitar playing, earned him fans and a contract with Rounder Records then EMI, with whom the Destroyers released a series of gold records, including 1982 album Bad to the Bone and 1988's Born to Be Bad (there's that word again).
More recently, a 2004 compilation, Greatest Hits: 30 Years of Rock, held No.1 spot on Billboard's blues chart for 60 weeks, also winning the magazine's ''blues record of the year'' award.
And last year Thorogood released The Dirty Dozen, on which he mixed six new studio recordings with six old favourites, including tracks written by Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, ''Sleepy'' John Estes, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, and Willie Dixon.
Three and a-half decades into his career, Thorogood has played all sorts of gigs, from the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to bars in the back of beyond.
''You name 'em, we've done 'em,'' he says, adding some concerts were so horrible they were not worth recalling.
The secret, if you could call it that, to such longevity is a combination of both desire and honest performance. In other words, you've got to deliver, night after night.
''You have to sustain it ... it's like anything,'' Thorogood says. ''Take a movie: I've watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 50 times and it came on and I watched it again. Why? Because it's great.''
That's not to say Thorogood thinks of himself as great.
Good maybe, but not great.
The man who once quipped, ''Dylan has a Rolls-Royce dealership - I have a used Chevy dealership,'' offers another comparison: ''Eric Clapton is like a vintage wine; he's a Carnegie Hall type of guy. I'm like a shot in a beer, a bar-room brawler.
''It's about being realistic about what it is we do and what we've achieved. I've never been one to think that whatever George Thorogood and The Destroyers have done has changed the world, so to speak. However, you must admit, fun and funny never goes out of style.
''When you stand on a bandstand in front of 5000 people who are cheering your every move, every song you sweated blood over to create or learned to play or put on a record, who are appreciating you with volumes of applause ... it's awfully hard not to have a good time.''
• See them: George Thorogood and the Destroyers perform with Joe Cocker at the Dunedin Town Hall on January 21.
