Punk-rocker growing older and happier

John Doe has a couple of good things going.

The cofounder of the seminal Southern California punk-rock band X has just released his ninth solo album, Keeper (Yep Roc *** ½), a rugged, rocking collection of deeply personal songs that lives up to its title.

And the bass player, songwriter, and sometime actor - he has a role in the coming post-Katrina zombie movie Zombex - is also touring with X, performing the band's classic 1980 album Los Angeles in its entirety.

And that's just what Doe; his ex-wife, Exene Cervenka; guitarist Billy Zoom; and drummer D.J. Bonebrake will be doing Saturday at Riot Fest East, the multi-punk- band show at Festival Pier.

Riot Fest, which also features Philadelphia punks Dead Milkmen, is a highlight of an extraordinarily festival-heavy coming weekend, including the citywide Philadelphia Film & Music Festival (under whose umbrella Riot Fest falls), and the star-studded indie Popped! Festival on Friday and Saturday in FDR Park.

Last week, Doe talked by phone from his home north of San Francisco about balancing turmoil and contentment, and resisting the urge to tell kids to get off his lawn.

Question: You're doing Los Angeles with X, and you've also got Keeper, this very strong solo album of new songs. How has your attitude toward the X songs changed over the years?

Answer: When we first performed Los Angeles, we were performing it to people that it was about, that shared the experiences of the songs that they were listening to. There was a direct and immediate connection between us and the audience.

If punk rock did anything, it brought women into the foreground as players, not just window dressing. And it broke down the barrier between performer and the audience. And that still exists. And I think anybody who was in punk rock or still is now is proud of the fact that we did that.

The audience may be different, but human experience isn't that different. So if you're 17, and you're living in Philadelphia right now, [and you're] up at the front with some underground band at a club, it's the same.

Q: The title of The Unheard Music, the 1986 X documentary, speaks to the changes in the music industry. Were there more barriers to getting your music heard then?

A: That's the biggest change. If you think of it as an hourglass, where the top is all the music and bottom is all the people who want to hear it, the middle part, the constriction, was all the people who had very tight control over the way it was distributed. . . . Nowadays, the middle is as wide as the top. The bandwidth is huge.

Q: Does that make it better, or worse?

A: I don't know. It's harder to gain relevance or traction. But I'm of the opinion that if something's really good - not pretty good, but really, really good - people will hear about it.

Q: On your website, you write, "Dark & sad are typical places for most people to start writing songs. . . . So what happens when most everything you've written has come from that darker place, and you finally find some happiness & satisfaction?" Are you a happy man, John Doe?

A: Happier. Not just a blissful idiot.

Q: An idiot, just not a blissful one?

A: That goes without saying. [Laughs.] Some things changed in my life. Some things are better. And I think it's important to have some satisfaction if you don't want to become an angry old person. "You kids, get off my lawn!" The rewards are great if you stay away from that.

I did a lot of stuff this year with Jill Sobule, who's very underrated. She has this song "Bitter": "I don't want to get bitter, I don't want to turn cruel. I don't want to get old before I have to." And it's true. I heard someone say, "You should figure out who you want to be when you're 60 when you're 40."

Q: At 58, are you the man you want to be at 60?

A: Totally.

Q: So there's no "Oh Lonesome Me" to write anymore. What do you do?

A: I didn't do anything for a couple of years, because I didn't really care to write songs.

Q: On TheeJohnDoe.com, you wrote that "eventually I figured out how to write a love song where the people actually get loved." Which song was that?

A: The first one that I realized doesn't sound dumb and is positive is a song called "Sweetheart" on Keeper.

Q: Was that that tricky to do?

A: Yeah. I still believe if there is great sorrow, there can be great art. I just don't want to seek it out.

Q: "Never Enough," the Rolling Stones-y song you did on David Letterman's show this month - what's that about?

A: I don't watch a lot of TV, but I watched four episodes of this show Hoarders. Which is sad and pathetic. There's just too much commercialism in the world. F- stop it! Throw away the plastic bottle.

That song is also about how religious fanaticism is so rampant. When it says, "You've got a head full of smoke / And a world full of pain / And a truckload of bombs," it's about, you've got this extreme belief system in your head, or maybe you come from a poverty-stricken place you can't get your head out of, and so you blame somebody else and blow up the building. The whole thing is so [messed] up.

Q: The period you and producer Dave Way took cues from on Keeper was 1969 to 1971. Why that time frame?

A: That's when I decided I wanted to be a musician. . . . And it's the point between psychedelic music and the country-rock that came after it. George Harrison was really popular then, and so was Joni Mitchell.

Q: One of the best X songs declares, "We're desperate - get used to it." When you play with X now, do you feel free of the desperation to recapture past glories, because you have the creative outlet of your solo career?

A: Right. It's definitely not a nostalgia trip. It's more celebrating it.

I think we all feel incredibly fortunate and grateful that we're still around. We're one of the last punk-rock bands standing. And, to be honest, if we weren't getting paid well, and there weren't these teenagers coming to see it and saying, ". . . this is good, these guys play hard," we probably wouldn't do it.

I didn't see Chuck Berry in 1955. But I did see him in 1972. And he kicked a-. He was great. He was probably past his prime at that point, but who cares? It was still a lot better than most.