The late novelist Pearl S. Buck once said that to find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

That idea seems to apply to singer/songwriter/musician Nick Lowe, who is riding high with Indoor Safari, his first full-length album in 11 years. On the touring front, Lowe has taken up with Los Straitjackets, an American instrumental rock band whose members don personalized Mexican wrestling masks whenever they take the stage.

And while the collaboration between Lowe and Los Straitjackets dates back about a decade to when they were paired together to play Christmas shows, they cut a trio of four-track EPs from 2018 through 2020. What started out as items for the merch table at shows evolved into the suggestion of combining these releases into one recording, a proposal the London native accepted with some caveats.

“The thing about these simple but very direct songs that I was writing was that they only really get a personality and come together after you play them five or six times in front of a live audience,” Lowe said in a recent interview.

“When we came to record these songs, that process hadn’t happened,” he added. “I said we had to either re-record these songs or revisit the original recordings and do things like redo the vocals or put bits and pieces on backing vocals.”

He continued: “The last piece of the puzzle really was that we worked with the great Alex Hall, who is a fantastic engineer/producer/musician and has got a studio in Chicago. We went to see him and recorded two or three new songs. All the rest of it is Alex sort of putting his fantastic touch onto it. The whole record sounds like it was recorded in the same week instead of over three or four years. We’re very pleased with the results, and it has been received very well.”

What Lowe ended up with on these dozen songs is indeed pure pop for now people. Los Straitjackets provide the right mix of twang and sass that snaps, crackles and rocks. The songs range from the surf tango of “Love Starvation” and mid-tempo heartbreak of “Jet Pac Boomerang”—complete with layered Jordanaires-flavored harmonies—to the ruminative melancholy of “Different Kind of Blue” and the rave-up opener, “Went to a Party.”

And what Lowe collection would be complete without at least a couple of covers? In this case, it’s Sammy Turner’s yearning R&B nugget, “Raincoat in the River,” and Garnet Mimms’ “A Quiet Place,” a wistful gem perfectly suited for Lowe’s rich, crooning style. With the new material fitting in perfectly with the British power-pop icon’s already-deep canon, concertgoers can expect a wide-ranging set list anchored by some popular staples.

“We’ve gotten to the stage now where there are certain tunes we have to play,” Lowe said. “I can’t really do a show without playing ‘Cruel To Be Kind,’ ‘Peace, Love and Understanding’ or ‘So It Goes.’ There is a sort of structure there, and it’s never a chore to play any of my well-known songs. But we’ve got a pretty big repertoire now. What can I tell you? No more than that really the well-known songs will be there in some way, shape or form.”

What’s fascinating about Lowe’s career evolution is how he emerged from pub-rockers Brinsley Schwarz—where he penned the aforementioned “Cruel To Be Kind” and “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”—to become an in-house producer and solo act on indie label Stiff Records, whose stable also included Elvis Costello, Graham Parker and the Damned.

And while Lowe found his own success co-fronting Rockpile with Dave Edmonds and became a darling of the emerging new wave movement, the early ’90s saw him transition from guitar-driven power-pop into more of a country crooning kind of elder statesman. He’ll be the first to say he was reading the tea leaves of trends.

“At that time, I realized that as always happens, the public had gotten tired of my schtick and actually, so had I,” Lowe said. “I suppose I started thinking about this back in the late ’80s, when my career as a bonafide pop star was over. I knew that had happened, but I was sort of relieved in a way because I thought that I had to think of something else now.

“What I came up with was that I was going to use the fact that my inevitably getting older was an advantage rather than it be something you cover it up and pretend wasn’t happening. I embraced it and figured out a way of writing and recording for myself while coming off as a groovy old bloke,” he added.

This pivot into becoming an acoustic guitar-strumming balladeer paid off in spades for Lowe, who released a string of critically acclaimed albums including 1998’s Dig My Mood, 2001’s The Convincer and 2007’s At My Age. And along the way, especially after hooking up with Los Straitjackets, Lowe noticed an intriguing demographic shift in his fan base.

“When the band and I started shifting from holiday material to what you might describe as out-of-season songs, our audiences started getting bigger and younger,” Lowe said. “Going back to when I started switching things up, I thought if I got this right, I’d at least either have a younger audience or attract a flow-through of younger people who run into my stuff. I find that the younger people that come to see me are not so keen on my earlier stuff. They prefer my later stuff.”

Now 76, Lowe is pleased to see how things turned out. And along the way, he lived up to a piece of advice his late father-in-law, Johnny Cash, gave him about needing to figure out who he was.

“When he originally said that to me, I thought to myself, ‘Blimey, John, can’t you come up with something better than that?’” Lowe said with a laugh. “The thing is that he’s absolutely right. It is quite difficult to do because when you’re young, you’re always trying to cop an act, and you think, ‘No one wants to come and see me. They want to come and see this magnificent personality that exists in my mind.’

“But his point was that if you can figure out how to be yourself, then you never have to worry about keeping an act up. If you embrace the things you are slightly embarrassed about (with) yourself, then that’s your own personal style,” he added.

Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Oct. 5 at 2:05pm; hardlystrictlybluegrass.com. Lowe joins Patty Griffin Oct. 3 (sold out) at Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St., San Francisco. Los Straitjackets play Oct. 4 at the Ivy Room, 860 San Pablo Ave., Albany.

Very few musicians have a backstory as unique and inspiring as that of Michael and Tanya Trotter, who record and perform together as the War and Treaty. 

Since their 2018 studio debut album Healing Tide, the husband and wife have taken critics and music fans by storm with their powerful mix of gospel blues, country, pop and R&B.

Recent accomplishments range from performing onstage at the 2024 Grammy Awards ceremony and gaining two Grammy nominations for their 2023 album Lover’s Game to recording their latest album, Plus One, at Muscle Shoals’ FAME Studio, which was home to legendary artists including Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James and Otis Redding.  

All of which is a far cry from what they went through before they met after playing solo sets at a charity event called the Love Festival.

Michael’s backstory goes back to his years as an enlisted man in the army during the Iraq War. At one point, he and his fellow soldiers were encamped at, of all places, one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, where he began playing what was believed to be the dictator’s piano. It was there that his commander, Robert Scheetz, encouraged him to keep at it. 

When his captain was killed in combat, Michael wrote his first song, “Dear Martha,” in his honor. He went on to play it at USO shows and soldier’s memorial services. The duo has also played it at War and Treaty concerts. 

“Every time we do it, I feel the winds of the spirits of those I’m singing about, those that have gone on to march in that beautiful army in the sky,” said Michael, who suffered from PTSD well into the couple’s marriage.

Tanya’s musical history, meanwhile, dates back to the age of 8, when her older brother sang the song “Be Grateful” up at the pulpit to an enthusiastic congregation. Not long after that she realized she wanted to be a singer.

“Now that I’m older, I realize it was an out-of-body experience,” said Tanya, who found success during the 1990s as an actress and singer under the name Tanya Blount. “It was super spiritual, and it drove me to want to do what I do today, which is to make people feel good when they walk away from a War and Treaty concert, because it’s healing. And that’s what I had felt. I think that day I became a healer.”

Currently the War and Treaty, who now live in Nashville, are touring behind Plus One. The recording of the album was particularly special, both for the quality of the performances and the history of a studio where so many legends have recorded.

As Michael put it, “We felt the presence and the spiritual guidance of what was, what is and what is to come.”

The album also features “Love Like Whiskey,” a co-write with the country superstar Miranda Lambert, which is a rare thing for the duo to do.

“We’re very careful, because we write so personal,” Michael said. “We tend to do best when we’re by ourselves. But we wanted something very specific that wasn’t technically in our wheelhouse. And Miranda wanted to do something with us, and we wanted to do something with her.”

Lambert even went so far as to send a pair of boots to Tanya upon their arrival. “They’re wonderful, I love them,” Tanya said. “And I also love the note that she sent welcoming us to the city, which was very personal.”

Michael added, “We’re very grateful to Miss Lambert.”

While the group has performed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium multiple times and made their country influences more prominent on this latest album, they’ve still gotten little airplay on country radio. Few Black artists have.

“The narrative has always been pushed that Blacks are just arriving into country music, when the truth of the matter is it started with Blacks,” Michael said. “Country music is a form of folk music, which is a form of spiritual music, which is a form of slave conversation. Those were hidden communication between slaves, whether they were in the field or they were on the bottom of a boat being carried to some place without their permission.”

To illustrate the industry’s history of narrowmindedness, he recalled how it would not allow country artist Barbara Mandrell to record with superstar songwriter/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

“They were lined up to produce a great country album for Barbara Mandrell. She wanted it. They wanted it. The label did not want it,” Michael said. “So Charlie Pride is a fortunate one, Darius Rucker is a fortunate one. Rissi Palmer, Mickey Guyton, Jimmy Allen, Linda Martell—these are fortunate ones whose art form was accepted by whites. I think the more we exist, the more the narrative gets cleaned up.”

The Trotters also broke ground in 2023 by being the first Black duo nominated for the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Duo of the Year awards.

As fans discover “Plus One,” the War and Treaty remain dedicated to bringing all people together, especially at live performances. “They feel loved, they feel cared for, they feel like somebody singing strictly for them,” Michael said. “They feel the hope around the entire room for 90 minutes. Tanya and I are united to unite others, and that’s the Church of the War and Treaty. No judgment. All are welcome.”

As for getting through these troubled times, the couple continues to find strength in each other and in their faith. So what advice would they offer for those who don’t have those things?

“We believe in human connection,” Michael said. “Our good friend Lukas Nelson, in the pandemic, he put out a song called ‘Turn Off the News and Build a Garden.’ If you can’t connect physically with another human being, connect with life, period. Go outside barefoot, stand in the grass or in the dirt or on the asphalt. Look up to the sky and just breathe. Just breathe for a minute. Connect with nature, connect with life, connect with animals. So that’s my advice, to start there and then let it flow over into the rest of the areas of life.”

The War and Treaty performs at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, on Oct. 3 at 4:20pm. hardlystrictlybluegrass.com