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Ahead of Granada show, Doyle Bramhall II talks 14-year gap between albums

Dallas-born singer and guitar wiz Doyle Bramhall II has no shortage of excuses for why he's just now wrapping up his first solo album in 14 years.

"I have ADD," he says for starters. "If I don't stay on task, I just float."

Later, he says it was a conscious decision: "I sort of retired as a solo artist because it didn't feel good to me," the 46-year-old Bramhall says. "I needed to stop worrying about trying to be what others wanted me to be."

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But perhaps the biggest reason for the 14-year-gap is he's so busy with other projects that his solo career has, in effect, turned into a side career. Since 2000, he's become a sought-after guitarist, songwriter and producer for Roger Waters, B.B. King, Erykah Badu, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Meshell Ndegeocello and Eric Clapton, among others.

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Clapton is such a big fan he often yields the spotlight to Bramhall. When the British guitar legend played American Airlines Center in 2013, Bramhall took a dozen guitar solos and stole the show in "Crossroads."

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Last year, Clapton announced plans to retire from touring, and today, Bramhall looks back at his 14-year stint in "Slowhand's" band with a sense of awe.

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"I was brought on in 2001 without really knowing how I got there," he says. "I hadn't had real success in music. I hadn't sold a bunch of records. But Eric really believed in me and my creative ideas. He really validated me."

He wasn't the only one. Great musicians have been championing Bramhall since he was barely big enough to pick up a guitar.

Born at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas in 1968, he hopscotched as a child among Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth and Santa Rosa, Calif., where his mom moved after she split with the late, great Dallas musician Doyle Bramhall.

But he considers Austin his spiritual homeland — the city where his dad formed bands with fellow Dallas émigrés Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

"My family was part of the big musical migration from Dallas to Austin, which was a safer place for hippies to live" he says. "People in Dallas went down there and started a hippie blues commune."

By age 15, he was jamming onstage with Stevie Ray, and at 18 he joined Jimmie Vaughan's band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, as a touring guitarist. His Austin supergroup the Arc Angels made waves in the early '90s, but quickly broke up in large part because of Bramhall's heroin addiction.

After getting clean, he toured the world, playing in arenas alongside Clapton and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters.

"I learned early on that fame is an elusive smoke-and-mirrors kind of thing. It doesn't really exist," he says. "It scared me at first. I had stage fright. But now I don't think too much about it, especially onstage, because I'm busy listening and playing."

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Now that Clapton has pulled off the road, Bramhall has been working hard on his upcoming fourth solo album, which he hopes to release by the end of year. Musically, the album is all over the map, he says, and lyrically, "it's basically me ripping my rib cage open and exposing my heart," he says. "I'm just saying what's going on in my life. I want to live boldly and love boldly."

His love life has been gossip-page fodder since 2012, when he began dating his current girlfriend, actress Renée Zellweger. But don't be surprised if Bramhall becomes a screen personality in his own right someday. He was approached by a production company recently to star in a TV series about his travels through North Africa and India, where he often goes to jam with local musicians.

"I'm sort of like the musical Anthony Bourdain," he says with a laugh, noting that he decided to turn down the offer.

"First things first. I've got to pull the cork and get my music out so I can have a calling card before I do anything else."

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Doyle Bramhall II will perform, with opening act C.C. Adcock, Sept. 19 at 9p.m. at the Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave., Dallas. $25-$40. granadatheater.com.

Thor Christensen is a Dallas writer and critic.