I’m chatting with Dan Baird, an interviewer’s dream – he’s funny, polite, passionate, wise, and perhaps rarest of all, honest – he puts over, so hugely, that he’s just a big ole fan of music! But of course he had a hand in shaping a version of rootsy, rockin’ country music when it was entirely out of fashion. He fired up The Georgia Satellites – wrote a couple of pretty big hits too. And now he plays as a solo act and with the group, Homemade Sin. He’ll tour Europe later this year with the Sin after an American jaunt in the middle of the year, but for Baird, for this interview, that’s all just small change. You see Dan Baird is playing in Auckland later this week as the singer and guitar player for Bobby Keys and The Suffering Bastards (due to the postponement of the Rolling Stones show the Suffering Bastards gig has been moved forward a week, it’ll now take place at the Powerstation, this Saturday, March 29).

So Baird knows it’s his job in this interview to put over the band leader – to sell the worth of Bobby Keys and the reasons a person might want to see this guy blow his horn. Fortunately he’s got great material to work with.

“It’s a dream, really, are you kidding! Playing with Bobby! Oh man, the first time I really stepped back and thought about what all this meant was when we were first working through the setlist and looking at ideas and you’ve got The Wanderer by Dion. I mean, we’re going back to when I was five or six years old and first engaging with music – and that all just came flooding back. Bobby was 16 or something when he played on that. I had a physical reaction just hearing those notes come out. Oh man!”

Baird says it’s a setlist that provides plenty of “pinch yourself” moments. “I step back and look at this and it looks like the setlist I drew up when I was 15 and first rocking the garage, you know…”

He’s got a pretty big responsibility in this band too – carrying the weight of the words that have been written by some of rock music’s elite players. Baird, lead singer for Bobby Keys’ side-project, chuckles and shrugs off the intensity of the situation.

“The good thing for me here is that I’m – fortunately – not trying to be Joe Cocker or Mick Jagger or Elvis or whatever you know. Which is a good thing. Because I can’t do it. Could Bobby have got himself a better singer? Yeah! Probably! Rhythm guitar player? I’m pretty good at that, I’ll take that, thanks – and I’ll do my best on the singing, but the aim here is to have a lot of fun with these songs, so we’re doing them close to the originals in so many ways, but we’re doing them like a covers band – because we are. Ain’t no shame in that, ain’t no reason to try to twist it and tell it any other way. We’re playing an amazing range of songs and we’ve got some great players in this band. But it’s Bobby’s show. It’s all about this guy – and why he’s not in the Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame by now…well, it’s a crime. A travesty”.

Baird has enjoyed the challenge of learning some of the songs – relearning them too as the case has been.

“There’s some great songs here, I mean, Brown Sugar, forget about it. Sure. You realise just how many amazing Rolling Stones songs there are and how crucial Bobby has been in that band. But I tell ya, the real challenge for me, the one that’s been its own math problem: Can’t You Hear Me Knocking – where I have to try to play Keith Richards’ guitar part and sing  Mick Jagger’s vocal at the same time. Now that is some real pat-ya-head/rub-ya-tummy stuff going on there, and I realise the reason these two completely different parts – these contrasting ideas that pull away from one another – the reason they work is because Charlie Watts is the guy that knits them back together, he fuses the two. Because he was often the secret weapon in that band”.

The Suffering Bastards has a drummer who is up for and equal to the challenge, according to Baird.

“Yeah, no worries there for us, we’ve got Brad Pemberton – he’s a great player, done a bunch of stuff but is probably best known for being in The Cardinals, he did about nine years I think with Ryan Adams”.  There’s a beat. And then, “…ah, yeah, The Ryans!” Another pause. “He’s met nearly all of ‘em I think”. And one more beat. “Ryan Adams is one of the most interesting groups of people you could meet”. A wee chuckle to conclude, Baird realising he’s derailing slightly. He wants to serve the music, and is clearly the right man for the job – so good at focussing on Keys, on what this means and why it’s a show to take in; to experience.

“Look, Bobby is a legend, a living legend, he’s played with Elvis – that’s him doing the baritone sax on Return to Sender, again when he was really young and then there’s all the Rolling Stones’ stuff and The Beatles, Joe Cocker…Bobby must be the only guy alive, there can’t be many ever – he must be the only guy – to play with all four of The Beatles, on their solo records, Elvis. And The Stones. I mean that’s some rock’n’roll history right there. And then there was the Mad Dogs and Englishmen show. And you got B.B. King and Eric Clapton, The Faces, Warren Zevon. I mean you know the list right? It’s just unbelievable”.

Baird says there’s no agenda behind doing these shows. It’s about music. And of course making a little cash on the side, sure. But it’s the energy and enthusiasm around playing that is the driver, he’s dead sure of that.

“Look, I haven’t really engaged with Bobby too hugely on why he’s doing this – but it’s very clear he lives it, breathes it, blows it – he works hard on the stage and people are blown away by the roll-call of hits he’s played on and how he whips ‘em out with us, and we’re a pretty good band – and of course then he’s got that other gig. You know, with that other band…”

(Throughout the interview we refer to The Stones, for the most part, as “Bobby’s other band”. And Baird has a chuckle every time he either says it or hears it).

It’s at this point that I ask Baird if he – or any of the other members of the band, a band that includes former members of Poco and Lynyrd Skynyrd – was bold enough to put their hand up and suggest one of their own songs.

He clears his throat. Pauses. Chuckles lightly. And then, sounding a little weary, perhaps fake-weary, he says, “oh, man, they’re trying to get me to do Hands [Baird’s Georgia Satellites hit, Keep Your Hands to Yourself] but, I dunno man…”

I ask if he’s sick of the song, tired of playing it.

“Aw, nah man, it ain’t that – I’m really proud of that song, heck that’s my handshake to the world, you know I couldn’t be prouder – but this is Bobby’s thing, it’s his show, but we’ll see. I’m pretty excited to be playing in New Zealand – my first time. It was on the list for me a couple of times. Once with the Satellites, we got real close too but didn’t happen. So you know I’m just gonna be happy to finally be there”.

And then he makes an impassioned plea once again that Bobby Keys be thought of for induction into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, saying, “really it’s crazy – when you think of all the great records he’s played on; some that he’s made – you know really helped to make, you know the stories around Stones songs, his sax solo first take being better than any of the guitar solos they’d tried across several takes, the guy really is a legend. A living legend. And there aren’t many left. And it’s just been a case of rock’n’roll dreams coming true playing with him, playing this music. Y’all should see it. Y’all need to hear it. He’s the man”.

Bobby Keys and The Suffering Bastards, The Powerstation, Auckland, Saturday, March 29.