You may know David Egan as the keyboard player in Li’l Band O’ Gold, or from his decade-plus run with Filé. What you may not know is that he’s Louisiana’s most accomplished contemporary blues songwriter. Egan wrote the anthemic “Sing It,” the title track of the Marcia Ball/Irma Thomas/Tracy Nelson album, plus two other tracks on that album. Etta James just recorded his “Please No More” on her new album, Let’s Roll. Johnny Adams cut “Even Now” on his final album, Man of My Word. John Mayall, Mavis Staples, Percy Sledge, Joe Cocker and a host of others have covered Egan’s songs.

Now, with 20 Years of Trouble, Egan is striking out on his own.

The album is a retrospective of Egan’s songwriting career dating back to 1978 (which actually makes it 25 years of trouble, but that’s another story). “For me going in to make two or three demos was like making my version of ‘The White Album’,” he explains. “I always took it really seriously. In making demos in pursuit of seeking covers I made some performances that would have been hard to top. Luckily I made them on a DAT so I was able to go back and ProTool them, doctor them up a little bit, re-do some vocals, freshen things up. Then I had an idea for the song ‘20 Years of Trouble.’ When I completed that song I knew I had the title cut that could tie all these songs together because they’re all about trouble and betrayal, heartache and all that good stuff. That’s not the only kind of song I write but I used all of these songs because they fit that theme.

“My wife and I have put every resource we have into this album,” Egan notes. “We sold the whole pig. We had already sold an ear and a tail but this time we sold the whole pig. We sold the net. We’re working without a net now.

“There are so many revelations that came together putting out this album. I had been a team player, a sideman, doing everything by vote and by committee throughout my whole career and I finally felt it was time to do something on my own terms, where I didn’t have to suffer through the vote of the dumbest guy in the band. If it’s a mistake it’s my mistake, I’m calling the shots this time. I’m going to have my own band in addition to Li’l Band O’ Gold. Charles Adcock, who put Li’l Band O’ Gold together, he’s got his own band, and Steve Riley has his own band. I made a real positive move by cutting out Filé. I agonized over doing that for so long and that worked out real well.”

When you write as well as Egan does, you might as well be making your own records.

“I would call my original material contemporary blues,” he says. “It’s blues that generally has more than three chords. I rely heavily on folk ideas, folk themes, myth and all that kind of good stuff, I draw on that heavily. I just try to put a few more chords to it rather than just do the same 12-bar blues over and over. I don’t know if I do one original 12-bar blues.”

Egan probably wouldn’t have gotten the idea to go out on his own if it wasn’t for the success of “Sing It.”

“I had a big charge writing three songs for the Sing It! record, which was Marcia Ball, Irma Thomas and Tracy Nelson, three women who I admire very much,” he says. “It was a huge home run and an honor to be their little darling songwriter on that album. They sang my praises from coast to coast. Marcia with her band sang my song ‘Sing It’ at the White House for President Clinton.”

So how do you write a great blues song?

“I don’t have a regular regimen,” he admits. “At one time I was working out of that book The Artist’s Way and I was doing my morning pages pretty regularly for a while and I thought that it really helped. I think I had a good creative period while I was doing that and I know it’s there for me to do that discipline again. Just like I know that meditation and yoga is there for me if I would only do it, but right now I’ve got a two-and-a-half-year-old and I’m 49-years-old and I’m gigging and I’m trying to build a solo career and remember to say sweet things to my wife. It’s a crazy life. I write when the spirit moves me and oftentimes that happens when I’m behind the wheel. I’m thinking mainly words and rhythm, almost like rap. Words and rhythm and melody seem to come all at once. I do lose some lyrics if I don’t get to write ’em down pretty quickly. I’ll kind of keep plotting it out in my head, I might be on the periphery of a band conversation, then when I get to a room I’ll get it down. When I get to a piano I’ll start fleshing it out harmonically, playing the chords and singing the melody the way I was hearing it. Usually I’ll have some happy accidents and I’ll find a new harmonic aspect of it that I can use to the betterment of the song.”

One of the songs Egan wrote while he was on the road was “Slingshots and Boomerangs.”

“I was with this Cajun band, Filé for 13 years,” he recalls, “and we were on a long drive home one day. It never happens exactly the same way. Every instance has a different aspect to it. We were driving along and we passed this rickety old truck that was filled with these crooked sticks. We were totally fatigued and nuts, driving home from Miami or someplace like that, we were on the last leg, here we are back close to home and there’s a truck full of rickety-ass sticks, we passed it one time and the whole car said ‘What the hell? What the hell is that?’ We made a rest stop and then we passed it again and it was the whole chorus again ‘What the hell is that?’ Then the drummer said ‘Man, they ain’t gonna get anything outta that but a load of slingshots and boomerangs.’ As a songwriter always trying to keep my antenna up, I though ‘Now, if that ain’t a hook!’ So I started kind of mathematically thinking ‘how can I lead up to that?’ and then ‘how can I start with that?’ So I’ll take the phrase ‘Slingshots and Boomerangs’ and work backwards from it so I can intelligently and artfully lead up to it. So the line leading up to it is ‘crooked like wood that wouldn’t make nothin’ but slingshots and boomerangs.’ So I’m talkin’ about a chick who is crooked and evil and wicked, and who tortures me endlessly, not the freshest theme in the world but maybe a fresh spin on it. People do tell me ‘man you know just what I’m talking about.’ So, working backwards some more I came up with a chorus that started and ended with ‘slingshots and boomerangs.’ It’s not a dogmatic approach, it changes from situation to situation. It’s like writing a detective novel. Once you’ve got a hook and a theme and a story you’re just brainstorming and filling in the crossword puzzle. You’ve got a template.”

Egan’s strangest story is about how he wrote his most famous tune, “Sing It.”

“That’s a real funny thing,” he laughs. “I’m being totally honest because I couldn’t make up this story this quick. There’s a character in my hometown of Shreveport, let’s just say his name is Pat. I’ve been in Lafayette for 14 years but Shreveport is my hometown and I love going back there, it’s a soulful place. There’s a character there named Pat. He was always nuts. He’s been in prison, he’ll show up at your house drunk and want to give you boxing lessons, he’ll clobber you and say ‘See you didn’t do it. I’m tryin’ to help ya.’ He’s just one of these maniacs who you try to be nice to but you also try to walk a wide circle around. He’ll do strange things, send you pubic hairs in the mail, just nuts. My friend was tellin’ me that he came out into the kitchen one time and Pat was sitting at the kitchen table with a shotgun pointed into his mouth and he was gently tapping on the trigger and saying ‘Tap, tap tap, Pat goes tap.’ When my friend told me that story the rhythm of what he was saying started a brainstorm and it morphed into the chorus of ‘Sing It.’ I know that’s a little farfetched but it is the truth. It just kind of lit a rhythmic brainstorm, that’s a real rhythmic song, so it was created primarily on rhythm rather than a lyrical theme. This rhythm wouldn’t leave me alone after I heard that story, my mind kept expanding on ‘Tap tap tap, Pat goes tap.’ He never pulled the trigger. He’s still alive as far as I know. I don’t think that you could really find that line anywhere in the song, but the rhythm of that spawned the song.

“Things happen in strange ways. Songs happen every kind of way you can imagine. I don’t have a set writing time. I don’t have a set procedure or method of writing songs, they just come the way they come, sometimes it’s a work that’s spread out over years, like ‘Wake Up Call,’ or other songs happen in a blinding flash. I couldn’t say I ever wrote a song in 15 minutes but I’ve written a song in a few hours.”

Egan also admits to getting ideas in dreams.

“I have a few written down, in the middle of a notebook somewhere there’ll be a strange dream written down. One revelatory thing about dreaming, and kind of going back to that Artist’s Way book, she professes the idea that there is an infinite number of ideas to be had. Infinite great song ideas, movie scripts, novels, whatever, so don’t worry, it’s not like there was a finite number and Keith Richards and Carol King and Lieber and Stoller have found ’em already. There’s plenty of ’em, an infinite number. In a dream one time I felt like I stuck my head through that ceiling and I saw the infinity of ideas floating all around me right there for me to grab. I was so awed by it that of course I wasn’t able to bring anything back with me from there except the fact that I know that place exists and I’m gonna find it again and this time I’m gonna bring me back a bagful.”