Maine has quite a few bands that have received national attention, but probably one of the most famous is Rustic Overtones. The group is made up of seven artists: Dave Gutter, Jon Roods, Ryan Zoidis, Tony McNaboe, Jason Ward, Dave Noyes and Nigel Hall. Their albums include “New Way Out,” which is a 13-track CD that takes the listener on a journey of depth and intricacies unlike anything they’ve ever done before.

The band will perform at 9 p.m. Saturday, April 14, at Waterville’s Mainely Brews. To that end, band leader Dave Gutter recently talked about that gig as well as “New Way Out.”

Q: When did that album come out?

Gutter: It came out around November of 2010.

Q: So are you working on something new?

Gutter: Yeah, we are. Right now I’m on the computer trying to organize everybody up and get out to the studio. We did some tracking last week and we’ve basically been recording since the “New Way Out.” We built a studio to make that album and as a result we record and write all kinds of stuff — not working on a clock. We tend to go back and redo stuff, turn buttons a little longer. There’s a lot of trouble-shooting. Its fun but it does take a little longer. We have so many guys in the band and we have so many different ideas, we have a lot of songs to pick from for the next release.

Q: Do you do most of the lyrics yourself?

Gutter: Yup, I do all the lyrics for both Rustic and Paranoid Social Club. I don’t have much of a singing voice, but I can hit the notes if I believe what I’m singing … rock and roll gospel.

Q: With Rustic Overtones, the Paranoid Social Club and other solo and duo work you’ve done in years past, you certainly have your fingers in a lot.

Gutter: Yeah, that’s kind of how I have dodged the day job thing. I do some solo stuff — you know, like acoustic — and I do Paranoid and Rustic, and I score documentaries and films and TV shows and commercials. All kinds of stuff like that. So I kind of have my hands in anything I can do musically.

Q: That must keep you fresh, approaching it from so many different angles. I can’t see you getting bored any time soon.

Gutter: It makes me have to take, you know, a crash course in different genres of music. I love writing songs and the versatility of music and the different parts of music and genres.

Q: Could you talk about “New Way Out”?

Gutter: It was us trying to get into larger arrangements, more lush production and that, in itself, was a huge undertaking and we learned a lot from it.

Q: Is the next album going to be more simplified or similar?

Gutter: Well, with the new one we’re actually going in the exact opposite direction. It is very bare bones, authentic to the sound of the band live. We’re concentrating on the sound the seven of us make in a room. For the “New Way Out” we had 30 musicians — it’s very much going back to our early Rustic recordings, the “Rooms By the Hour” era. It’s a lot of fun. Rustic is a collective of people that just love music and love to explore music. We love to push our own limits. We’ve always really strived for originality.

Q: Will you perform some of this new material at Mainely Brews?

Gutter: Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a couple of songs. You see, we do a lot of writing right on the spot, meaning as soon as an idea comes to us we record it, we don’t kick it around and play it out live for a while, so what happens is, we don’t know how to play the songs — because it’s something you did one time. So what we generally do is make an album and then we say, ‘Okay, how the hell are we going to play this?!’ We play live, we draw off the energy of the audience, the electricity, improvising and not being too calculated — albums are very calculated.

Q: Is there anything you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?

Gutter: That we play our best when we are in a little, tiny sweat box and I know that at Mainely Brews I’ll definitely be watching out for Dave Noyes’ trombone from hitting me when he hits those really low notes! We play better when we’re close and we feed off the audience more. These small club shows are really special so I’m really looking forward to it.

Lucky Clark has spent over four decades writing about music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@megalink.net.

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