Hip-hop veteran Everlast wants to put a little bit of country in your rock ‘n’ roll. Photo from Live-Metal.net.

Former House of Pain MC Everlast (a.k.a. Erik Schrody) first made a name for himself in that platinum-selling hip-hop group, but Everlast as a solo artist didn’t emerge in many peoples’ minds until his 1998 album “Whitey Ford Sings the Blues,” which emphasized the mixture of acoustic guitar and spoken-sung lyrics that has helped define his style over the years.

Everlast, who plays Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom tonight, seems poised to take back some of that notice with the fifth solo album “Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford,” his first since 2004’s “White Trash Beautiful.” We talked with Everlast in advance of the show about his latest disc, his left-field Emmy nomination and why he needed the approval of John Carter Cash to cover “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Thanks for talking with me. I know you’re busy getting ready for your tour.

Yeah, we’re trying to cram some rehearsals into the next couple days here in L.A.

What’s the tour going to be like?

It’s a little club tour just to get it started. But when you don’t work for awhile, you don’t mind working harder.

I heard the album was delayed from June until September so you could get a European distributor. Album delays are fairly common, but did you mind having to wait?

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad… the only thing that was bad was getting all psyched up to go, then realizing you had to change your plans. It’s a little frustrating, but not anything major. I’ve been around awhile, but people’s attention’s spans are short. I gotta go about introducing myself like I’m new again.

You don’t seem like one of those people that’s constantly trying to put themselves in the public eye.

I don’t make music just to do it. I have to really feel it.

You actually started as part of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate back in the day, right?

Yeah, my first single came out with Ice-T. It sold about 150,000, which, back in 1989 in rap music, wasn’t a smash-hit success, but for a white kid from the Valley rapping on Warner Bros., it wasn’t too bad. For a while in the ’90s it seemed like anything went gold, but now gold would be like double-platinum.

Because of generally declining album sales?

It’s the thieving, immoral children out there that have no conscience about stealing people’s hard work, but that’s another topic.

I understand you’ve gone a different way with this album than the major label route…

My management company hooked me up with a partnership with Sony/ATV (music publishing), in which I basically own my own masters. I own the record, and I get to say how the marketing dollars get spent. It’s not as much marketing money as, say, if I’d been signed to a major and they owned everything. But it’s like tiered, success-wise. Creatively I’ve always had leg-room. I’ve never had an A&R guy or an executive come into my studio while I’m making a record and tell me what to do. I don’t want anyone affecting my music. I just try and make a good record. I’m like a painter, you know. I’m just going to paint the paintings I’m going to paint.

You’ve seen massive success and periods of downtime over the years. What has that taught you about the music business — or yourself?

I remember making the second House of Pain album and wanting to move as far away from “Jump Around” as possible, whereas most people would be trying to duplicate that success. I didn’t mind the success, I just didn’t want to duplicate that song. And I actually think we made a far better record than the first one. There’s having a style, and there’s having a formula, and I never want a formula. It’s boring to me. I have a very low tolerance for boredom. Boredom would make me walk away from the game in a heartbeat.

Why the four-year gap between solo albums?

It had a lot to do with the record biz, which really did me dirty in the sense that I signed with Def Jam, with this guy Leo Cohen, and then about three weeks to a month after I got signed, a whole new staff comes in and it’s a big debacle. I was actually on the verge of doing an independent thing back then, but fell in love with idea of being on Def Jam, being a B Boy and all. And the fact that Leo Cohen was so into it at the time was cool, but I got caught up into it, and then he left. I learned a lot from it, though. If I ever did another label deal, I learned a very important term: point man clause. That means if this guy’s not there, I’m not there.

You were nominated for a 2008 Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music for “Saving Grace.” Having already won a Grammy, is that a new creative frontier you’d like to explore?

I’m actually getting more involved in scoring, too, with “Saving Grace.” I mean, I wrote the theme song and wound up scoring the show. So with the nomination, people are like, “Are you into that?” Music is music, and if you can make music, that’s all I care about. But I respect people like Danny Elfman. I’m looking for challenges, and scoring a whole movie would be a challenge. I got the TV thing under the belt.

I see you also covered “Folsom Prison Blues” on the new album and are pushing it as the first single. How did that come about?

It seemed kind of obvious, since it was fun record and I enjoy playing it. John Carter Cash actually gave us the thumb’s up, even though it’s done in the style of a mash-up. I was just concerned because I am a Johnny Cash fan and try to be respectful of artists and their legacy. Not that you could tarnish his in any way. But I wanted to make sure everybody was cool with it, so we took the song down to Nashville, played John the song, and made sure he approved. He was super supportive and loved it. I made it my own and stayed true it at the same time.

Besides your side project La Coka Nostra, what else is on the horizon besides building this tour?

La Coka is those House of Pain guys, Ill Bill, Slaine and a few other cats. It’s a collective… sort of like House of Pain 2008 on steroids a little bit. We just finished an album for it and I think that’s coming out relatively soon, maybe at the beginning of next year. It was just fun making the straight-up, over-the-top, hardcore hip-hop stuff that we miss and don’t’ hear as much as we think we should hear these days. Early next year I’m going to cut a record with my friend Shooter Jennings, something in the vein of Willie Nelson’s “Poncho and Lefty,” just two cats just hanging out. Other than that, I’ve spent the last couple years collecting art and have become an avid art collector. But at the moment, the music’s back in me.

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