He's perfectly happy to call himself a local musician

Now that he has a family, Kevin Connolly stays nearby, performing at bars like the Tir Na Nog. (aram boghosian for the boston globe/file 2007)

Songwriters can take months, even years, to finish a song. Kevin Connolly gives himself 30 days. Tops.

"I call myself at work and leave a voice mail with my song ideas," says the South Shore native. "Our system erases after 30 days, so I develop the song or it's gone. I had my own private song of the month club for a while."

Connolly incubated all 13 tracks on "Still Standing Still," his eighth album, using the message-machine method, finishing the disc by literally phoning it in while on vacation at a Maine B&B. The CD's sturdy roots music - aurally unencumbered with an air of timeless familiarity - draws inspiration from the Texas school of neo-country songwriters such as Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Joe Ely, and his pal Darden Smith, with whom Connolly shares a straightforward style.

"Years ago, I was in a record store and heard what I thought was a Joe Ely song," says sportswriter and former Globe columnist Leigh Montville, author of "The Mysterious Montague," "except he was singing about Irish guys and hockey in Marshfield. I found out it was Kevin Connolly, not Joe, and bought the CD."

Montville and Connolly became quick music-and-beer buddies after meeting at a James McMurtry show. "My musical tastes run toward words guys," Montville says, "Steve Earle, John Hiatt, Josh Ritter. Kevin fits into that mix and has a great voice, songs, and hooks. I go to [big-name] concerts with friends and someone invariably says, 'Kevin's better than this guy.' And he is."

Connolly, who performs with his band at Sally O'Brien's in Somerville tonight, says the recordings of a mutual favorite, Johnny Cash, taught him "to keep things simple." That approach carries through "Still Standing Still" on songs like the Dire Straits-ian "Everything I Wanted," "Holes," and the upbeat spiritual "There's My Lord."

"I love gospel music," says Connolly, who sang in a gospel choir in college. "I'd never been in a group where the members poured themselves into the music so passionately."

Basic tracks for the album were recorded in two days at guitarist Chris Rival's studio and mixed by another longtime band member, drummer Ducky Carlisle. Tinged with the creative textures of Rival's guitar and special guest Tom West's Hammond organ, the songs often paint a picture of life in Connolly's boyhood backyard. The disc's lead-off track recalls a "Bumpy Road," at the end of which lived a Boo Radley-like hermit, the subject of "Walking Out in the Woods." "I tried to imagine what had happened to make him be so isolated," says Connolly.

Connolly picked up his first guitar in the 1960s. During his high school days, he interned for folk DJ Dick Pleasants at Marshfield's WATD. There he discovered records by John Prine and Bill Staines and staged concerts with the South Shore Folk Music Club. He played football at Dartmouth (he quit the team after two weeks), where he DJ'd at frat parties and joined a cover band whose setlist featured his favorite group, the Clash.

After a post-college stint at a Chicago ad agency, Connolly moved back to do "the whole Boston band thing" with college friends in the Great Divide. "I wasn't cut out for playing 45-minute sets of the same 10 songs every night," he says. "I wanted to play the whole night, by myself."

For several years, Connolly did just that on weekends at Cambridge's Plough & Stars. It wasn't until he married and moved to Italy, teaching English outside Rome, that he discovered the need to tour.

"I had always been a 'local' musician," Connolly says, "but traveling to play in Milan showed me you can't just stay in one place." Back in the US, he slept at Motel 6's while building a following on the college and coffeehouse circuit, snagging sets at Newport Folk and other festivals and playing 160 gigs a year.

Then the bloom faded from the touring rose. "When we started having kids, the whole Zen thing about being independent and touring just wasn't fun anymore," he says. In 1999, Connolly slipped "back into the real world" and is now sales manager at WROR, but never considered hanging it up musically.

"Actually, it started being more fun," he asserts. "Instead of doing 15 solo shows a month, I could play three or four with my band. And it took the pressure off; I no longer have to look out the window of a club in Iowa waiting for cars to show up.

"Making the transition to being a local musician again, feeling part of the roots-music community, has been great," says Connolly. "We go to each other's shows and love it. It took me a long time to recognize low lucky we are to be 'local.' "

"I'd love to see Kevin land on that magic carpet which takes him to some concert arena where everybody is singing along," Montville adds. "But it's OK, too, when that same thing happens in a Somerville bar. It's like belonging to some cool, secret club, and there's a beauty in that right there."