Dockside Studio is like no other place on the planet. The dusty front porch of the old barn, still sporting its weathered exterior, belies the state-of-the-art music studio a few feet away, just inside the wooden door with its four window panes staring blankly, hiding their secrets.

Inside, former Muscle Shoals Horns saxophone player Ronnie Eades is playing along with a track of Erath guitarist/singer/songwriter Michael Juan Nunez’ latest offering. The sax dances between the guitar and organ, weaving the tapestry of the track a little tighter.

At the soundboard, Nunez listens, his head bobbing almost imperceptibly. He leans forward and, slowly, smiles.

The initial goal for the two-day jaunt to the studio on the Vermilion was to just lay a few tracks, but the burst of creativity overwhelmed the group. Nunez, along with keyboard player Eric Adcock, bassist Chad Meaux, guitarist Roddie Romero, drummer Clint “Chief” Redwing and a cast of other characters who rolled in and out of the studio cranked out the bones of a full record in the space of 48 hours.

Nunez has had some changes come his way over the last few years. His playing and songwriting have aged, gaining a warmth and a musical patina that only experience can bring. He also felt the loss of a musical collaborator and mentor in Paul “Lil’ Buck” Sinegal, who passed away suddenly last summer.

Underneath it all, there’s a sense of calm, but also a sense of purpose. As the songs come together, there isn’t exactly an urgency. Except that there is.

As the afternoon wore on and the musicians polished their performances, Nunez took a few minutes to step out on the front porch and answer a few questions about the new project, his plans and the future of the blues.

Do you have a title for this thing yet?

MJN: Nope. I have no idea what to call it. I’m playing around with some stuff, but there’s nothing set in stone. I think the album needs to set. I need to see what I am representing. I got an idea in my head of what it should be when we start out a project like this, but what it turns into is never what I thought in the first place. By the end of it, it turns into whatever it is, what it wants to be.

What was the concept going into the studio?

MJN: The idea behind it is making a blues album, and I’m hoping to get a good rock album out of the other side of it. You know what I mean? I think the best stuff the Rolling Stones ever did was when they thought they were a blues band. And when they thought they were a blues band, they made some great rock and roll records. I’m kinda getting into that mindset. That being said, there are some blues numbers on here, and it’s solid blues. Real-deal blues.

You used to say you didn’t play blues, that you were a rock guitar player. What changed?

MJN: I wouldn’t have said that until recently. Li’l Buck messed me up one night. What was said is between us. But I left that conversation with a different mindset. It’s almost like, ‘No, you need to play blues.’ He gave me that, you know what I mean? It’s like he accepted me, he wanted me to play.

How did that affect you?

MJN: Our conversation, it freaked me out because it felt to me like he was on his way out. This was within a few months of his passing. Something was telling me that the man was on his way out and that conversation felt like, ‘Look man, I’m going. Somebody needs to play the blues around here.’ He named a few people, and I left that conversation saying, you know, I played with some real serious cats before. What I hear being played out there being represented as the blues… Come on, man. I’m as real as real gets. I mean, I got nothing else going for me. I can’t sing, I play the way I learned how to play, but it’s real. Whatever you want to call it, it’s real.

Early on, your slide playing got you name checked a lot with Sonny Landreth, but it seems different now. Is that on purpose or just a natural progression?

MJN: I’ve been plagued with that my whole life. I love Sonny. He’s the master, man. He’s got his thing. You know, people used to take pride in having their own thing. If you worked for a record label, you couldn’t sound like somebody else. And it is still like that, you know, in the zydeco community, the creole community. If you don’t have your own thing going, why are you doing this? And if you try to steal from somebody, dude, that’s the worst. That’s an insult, you know? Nowadays, everybody seems to sound like everybody else, you know? Sonny came out, and he was very unique. But there’s a lot of people who have taken his technique and done stuff with it, and they do the Sonny thing.

I take his technique and do something with it, but try not to sound like him because that’s his thing, you know what I mean? That is his thing. It belongs to him.

My biggest fear would have been somebody like (Joe) Bonnamassa, a high-profile player, would take Sonny’s sound and make it popular before Sonny got recognized. But that didn’t happen and Sonny has made his way around the guitar community now and everybody knows his story.

How is recording with an ensemble like this different from a band recording?

MJN: I’ve always, ever since the RiverBabys, I try to have a set band. But let’s face it — you’ve got grown men. They got lives. It’s hard to keep a ‘band’ together. On ‘About to Snap,’ we had various artists. When The American Electric came together, I tried to keep that group together and record with that group of guys and, you know, we parted ways. People got lives, you know, doing their thing.

So I found myself less and less with a band and more I had to get back into that mindset that I had to make music where I call in cats that I know to back me up when I have gigs, essentially. We’re back to that ‘About to Snap’ thing. Like, we redid ‘Water and Steel’ on here, because I never thought that was the ultimate recording of that song. This one’s pretty freakin’ killer. It’s just cats that I played with over the years that I really enjoyed making music with and cats I know can get through this stuff, who know where I’m going and they see that same vision. It’s hard to find, and these cats are very adept at it.

It seems like Chief is one of the constants through all of the changes.

MJN: Chief’s a beast. Chief and I, we’ve been playing so long together, before we go somewhere we already know where it’s gonna’ be, you know? He operates on a different level at that point. And then Roddie (Romero), he was here last night and is coming back this afternoon to finish cutting some tracks. So not a bad crew. It’s a dream team right there.

What do you see coming after this? Do you have an idea?

MJN: Hmm, yeah. I got projects on the horizon, for sure. Ruben Moreino and I are hatching a project. I got some things happening, some gigs, once we get this record out. I’m definitely going on the bluesier side and see how that works out.

I don’t know that it’s ever going to be a quote-unquote ‘blues’ band. I don’t know if I am capable of it. But it will be as close as it’s going to get. I got some killer musicians, some great songs. I guess that’s all it takes.

How much of what you do comes out of the earth, out of the culture in south Louisiana?

MJN: The more I go, the deeper I get into it. It’s about the truth. It’s about finding the truth. Again, I got nothing else going for me but honesty. If I’m playing songs that don’t fit who I am or whatever, then I can’t portray it to the public. It’s dishonest. That’s the way I look at it. A band from Lafayette playing surf music — I have an issue with that. It never comes off authentic. Never. It doesn’t work. Be real with your area, your surroundings. You’ve got to get in touch with all that, get in touch with the culture. That’s what I am trying to do. I’m trying to get closer to what that real thing is. Whatever it is that’s real, what I am.

The blues part, yeah. But then you start drawing in Led Zeppelin. Where does that fit?

MJN: It’s all there though. That’s the thing about it, that it’s all part of me. It’s part of me. And finding that balance, because I grew up playing this music too.

In fact I was playing this music before I was playing that other stuff, frankly because that’s what made me money. But finding that balance between it all, that’s the hard part. That’s the art. It’s part of that art to find the audience for it, too.

Art’s great, but for art to survive, it has to draw interest. I guess they said I’m a blues guitarist all my life, I’m going to give them a blues guitarist. And if I’m going to do a blues guitarist, I’m going to do the best blue guitarist I can because those cats mean a lot to me. They really do.