Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

Bad Blake, the main character in Crazy Heart, played onscreen by Jeff Bridges, embodies the ugly side of the glorified outlaw-country lifestyle. He's a stone-cold drunk. He's been an absent father to his son, who's now grown and wants nothing to do with him. And he's jealous of the success of his musical partner in crime, Tommy Sweet, who he considers a sellout now that Sweet is playing mainstream country. But all of this changes, and 57-year-old Bad finally grows up, when he falls for small-town journalist Jean Craddock and her adorable little son.

This road-to-redemption story is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb. Cobb wrote the book under the tutelage of postmodernist Donald Barthelme, borrowing from his own experiences covering country for a music magazine in the '80s. Were it not for Barthelme, Cobb says, the book "never would have seen the light of day," and Cobb would have never been prompted to break Bad's ankle halfway through the story.

"I have lived like a king, and I have lived like a bum, and I have lived like a tramp."

Andre Williams, the septuagenarian godfather of r&b porn, spits hard-ass truths. He knows no better, having spent large chunks of his life on the streets, addicted to booze, drugs, and flesh.

The Chicago native began his musical career in mid-'50s Detroit, where he cut tracks including "Bacon Fat," "Greasy Chicken," and "Jail Bait." Whether giving the lowdown on a new dance move or swearing off 15-year-old girls, Williams lyrics were dispatched with candor, humor, and verve.

"I'm a really big fan of Sonic Youth, and I kind of don't make any bones about it."

Jeff Tweedy pulled a rabbit out of his beard when he landed Nels Cline in Wilco following Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Screwing with that album's winning formula by introducing an off-the-wall competing guitarist on its follow-up, A Ghost is Born for the tour in support of Foxtrot's follow-up, A Ghost is Born, was arguably idiotic but no doubt genius. Cline, an L.A. born-and-bred guitarist of infinite variations, proceeded to spew his electric load all over live renditions of Ghost songs, in effect challenging Tweedy to jerk off with his own guitar-playing, which suddenly was possessed by Neil Young circa the album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. By accident or by design, Tweedy had, in Cline, installed a permanent challenge to his already "A" game.

Throughout his five-year run with Wilco, Cline has additionally released more than a dozen albums of his own, in various configurations. His latest, Coward, is an elegant, meditative, "me, me, me"--as in he plays all the guitars and all the effects--project that was 25 years in the making. I caught up with the 53-year-old guitarist in advance of his solo show at the Stone this Sunday, wherein he will mostly forgo the multi-layered songs on Coward in favor of his "usual, semi-premeditated sonic investigations." Our topics of discussion: masturbation; how he and his twin brother, a drummer, were influenced by the '60s; and why an eccentric like him is still attracted to a mainstream band like Wilco.