A lifelong traveling man, Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock will pull into the Off Broadway Sunday to promote his swinging new album, Viper of Melody. It’s out this Tuesday on Bloodshot Records.

The record was cut in two days in a rural Texas town instead of his usual Austin studio and he used his touring band on the record – also a first.

Hancock said he would have used his longtime guitarist and collaborator Paul Skelton, but he passed away recently.

“I wanted to make sure and mention him in the liner notes,” Hancock told me by phone from his trademark white van. “God got himself another good guitar player. He gets all the good ones.”

The songs on Viper were written during various times in Hancock’s life. One track, ‘Working at Working,’ was written almost 20 years ago but is relevant in these hard times.

“When I wrote it I was struggling. I was living in a garage with no windows for a year, then homeless for a while,” said Hancock. “The album is by no means political. I wrote the songs for myself.”

Hancock has been writing Hank Williams-inspired songs since he was a kid. His excellent ‘Poor Boy Blues’ was written when he was 12.

The older music “was a blessing from my mom and dad,” he said. “They were both born in the 1920s and had all the big band stuff and the Broadway stuff.”

Hancock spent most of his childhood days in the time machine that was his record player.

“I had a few friends but not many, so I spent a lot of time in my room listening to records,” he said. “The other kids I knew liked rock and roll but I hated them so much I didn’t even want to listen to their music. They would listen to KISS and I didn’t understand these people. So I fell back into that 1940s thing.”

Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock

8 pm Sunday, Off Broadway, 3511 Lemp Ave., $12

http://www.myspace.com/waynehancock

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