Pat McLaughlin: Cause for . . . Pause : Pop music: The singer/songwriter, who opens for the Subdudes tonight in San Juan Capistrano, has a technique that makes his fans stop and take note.

”. . . . . . . . . . . . .”

That’s the sound of Pat McLaughlin pausing before he answers a question about one of the songs on his “Unglued” album. There were a few such pauses during a phone interview with the singer/songwriter last week, along with some evasions, some good laughs and, eventually, a bit of insight into how his songs are written--which, all things considered, I probably would rather have done without.

I mean, there’s a song on the album called “Friendly Bird” that I love. Some of it is pure wordplay (“I didn’t know people could still move this slow/Where did all of them Mohicans go?”) but it also strikes me as a song with a haunting sense of longing, as if for a 1962 summer feeling that won’t be here again.

“Ain’t that a pretty bird,” goes the chorus, “Sure ain’t no friendly bird.” Is it about longing for a mood made bittersweet by time? About a relationship that won’t relate? About pre-jaded plans for the future? I hope I’ll continue to hear it those ways, though McLaughlin said its origins were somewhat less rarefied:

“That is one song that has some fairly literal beginnings. I was opening for John Prine and really wanting a new song to do. I was trying to write in the car, and there was this radio station that carries network TV all day long. I was listening to ‘The People’s Court.’ This lady was in court because she’d gone in a pet store and saw this bird cage that said ‘Friendly Bird’ on it, and she stuck her finger in there and it bit her. So she took ‘em to court.

“That’s how I got started, and the rest of the song is just sort of a manual for life for Everyman,” he concluded, with a deflating laugh.

For months I’ve been doing my best to make myself sick of McLaughlin’s “Unglued,” listening to it almost daily, and sometimes twice a day, force-feeding it to friends, calling folks long-distance to tout its virtues. I like a lot of music that’s come out in the past year, but I like this better.

Like John Hiatt’s instant classic “Bring the Family,” “Unglued” is an example of the creative flowering that can occur under limited circumstances. McLaughlin, 43, and producer Ben Keith (best known for his long association on pedal steel guitar with Neil Young) recorded the album in two days on portable equipment in McLaughlin’s Nashville-vicinity log home, and later captured three tracks live at New Orleans’ gritty Howlin’ Wolf club, where McLaughlin is a regular.

The musicianship is eerily empathetic; the singing a beguiling blend of Memphis soul, folk and stone country; the songs unforgettable.

The album is juke joint floor-burners, musical buckwheat pancakes and country plaints, and not in the least the sort of record that insists on its own importance. Even the most melancholy tunes are dusted with a spirit of whimsy, yet there’s no doubting that this is the sort of record that could keep you company through the hardest night.

Unlike Elvis Costello with his lyrical thickets, McLaughlin doesn’t need many words at all to be utterly befuddling. Try the opening verse of his “Nothin’ But Trouble”:

Smiling girl, even with your hands can make Such a night ring true, baby, Only flower underneath my rug can find Such a piece of cake.

I feel a bit better now, having been assured that McLaughlin himself isn’t always sure where his songs come from or what they portend, and that he feels that’s the way it should be.

“It seems to me there’s always that little frustration there, and that makes for good songs,” he said.

He doesn’t think he particularly makes for good songs, though (“I’m not particularly high on my own songwriting right now”). Asked why he writes, he answered: “I think maybe it’s that I’m curious to know if I can really write a decent song, so I keep trying.”

Even though he has written country hits for Trisha Yearwood, Tanya Tucker, Delbert McClinton and Steve Wariner (the No. 1 “Lynda”) and co-written with the likes of Prine and had his own stuff praised by some peers and critics as being in a class with Van Morrison, he remains circumspect about his abilities. “As far as those comparisons go, I try to take it as just flattery. If I let it go to my head, I might become an unmanageable dinner companion.”

Say something kind about his yearning ballad “Try the Love” and he immediately deflects, “Oh, that’s just a song about more white people, losing their address books and falling in love” before he finally owns up: “It’s a real personal song, my sigh.”

Though they rarely are literal, he says all his songs are personal.

“I don’t think I write any fiction. I don’t have any way of writing about things I don’t know about. I don’t see how people write songs that don’t have a direct link to their lives. But then again, maybe that accounts for those songs you hear and don’t remember or like.”

Of his childhood in Waterloo, Iowa, he said he “was the youngest of six, and I still am. I heard a wide variety of music, a lot of Kingston Trio type folk music. I remember liking Julie London. My next older brother was a serious music fan, and he was a big Lou Rawls fan so I was a big Lou Rawls fan too, in high school. To this day I think that guy is my biggest singing influence.”

In high school McLaughlin was in a Motown-influenced band that often played college frat parties. “It was a hell of an opportunity for a high school kid to really get out there and screw off at an early age.” He took the experience to heart and spent a good deal of his adult life as an accomplished drifter, living all over the country and working odd jobs.

In 1977 he moved to Nashville and started to make a small name for himself with his songs. He made two independently released albums in the early ‘80s, and in ’88 Los Lobos saxman Steve Berlin was instrumental in getting him signed to Capitol Records. McLaughlin’s first album for the label, the Mitchell Froom-produced “Pat McLaughlin,” was released with such attendant hype--including a press junket to New Orleans and a McLaughlin jigsaw puzzle--that some critics immediately were turned off. In a typical example of record industry schizophrenia, a second album was shelved and remains unreleased.

“It’s hard to be surprised by anything a major label does,” McLaughlin said. “People make decisions based on numbers and stuff, so I didn’t take it very personally.”

“Unglued” came out this past winter on the small Dos Records label, distributed by the only slightly less minuscule Antones Records. McLaughlin is touring as an opening act for the Subdudes, playing solo instead of with his usual excellent band, and he said he’s enjoying the challenge. “If it goes well, it’s a little more intense. But if it doesn’t go well, if it really is a miserable night, I have no one else to blame, you know?”

For some writers, being on the road is an impediment to writing. McLaughlin finds the reverse to be true. Touring, he spends more time with his guitar, and many of his songs have been sparked by noodling on the strings.

It’s a mite distressing, though, that some of his songwriting literally is done on the road. “I write a lot in the car. I play the mandolin and steer with my knee, if that makes you feel any more at ease on our nation’s roads.”

For “Unglued,” he went to producer Keith with a set of songs that had already gone over well in clubs. “Ben’s been around a lot of great music, being with Neil Young and others, so running songs by him was interesting, to say the least. I really wanted to figure out what my best songs were before I played them for him, songs I wouldn’t be embarrassed by.”

What does he hope listeners get out of his music?

“Well, I just hope they go back to the church and quit their foolish ways. After all, enough is enough.”

Pause.

“I don’t know. I hope they get out of it what I have when I really sit down and listen to something. That’s the most flattering thing that can happen. I know when I’m actually listening to some music, and wanting to, and going out of my way to listen to it, those are some of the better times in my life. So I’m just wanting to be a part of that.”