After releasing three well-received albums of original material, Northern California-based, multi-OutMusic Award (OMA) and Gay and Lesbian American Music Award (GLAMA)-winning singer/songwriter Mark Weigle has turned his attentions to the work of other songwriters on his fourth CD, Different and the Same. With an emphasis on country-tinged acoustic numbers, including “Hiding In The Stone,” “What I Like About You” and “East Asheville Hardware,” Weigle’s latest is sure to put a spring in the step of his country fans. There is also much to admire in his vintage Motown reading of “AZT,” his bare-bones interpretation of “The Truth About You,” and the rocking renditions of “867-5309/Jimmy” and “And I Moved.” San Diego Pride -goers will have a chance to see Weigle perform this weekend on the festival main stage, Saturday, July 26, at 2:15 a.m. (directly following the Pride parade). Weigle spoke with the Gay and Lesbian Times recently about his music and his new CD.

Mark Weigle: Yes. “What I Like About You,” which was cut by Trisha Yearwood, is just a great song about trying to have a relationship with guys. I’ve done that over the years. Some shows, when I sing in bars, sometimes I’ll sing to tracks from the CDs….. Some of these tracks [on the new CD] have been done for months and I’ve tested them out in front of audiences in clubs.

GLT: What criteria did you use in the song selection process for the album?

MW: It was kind of things that I wish I had written. Subjects that I really wanted to talk about. There’s a lot of artists that I love, like Cheryl Wheeler and Mickey Newbury and people that I love as writers, but I didn’t feel like there were any of their songs I could add anything too. So, it had to be something as me doing it as a gay man [where] I could add something to the original version….

I’m really attracted to very specific stories. My stuff, the song about the woman finding out her husband’s gay, the song about the deaf lover and the song about losing a partner to AIDS. — some are just sort of general love songs. On this record there’s a song about a homeless man, there’s a song about HIV medications, a Joan Baez (song) “Love Song To A Stranger” about a great weekend romance that doesn’t go much farther than that, but it’s still great. What else? “East Asheville Hardware,” about a hardware store closing down. They’re just very specific stories, stories I wanted to tell myself.

GLT: How important was it to you to include material by out artists such as Mary Gauthier, Diana Jones and The Kinsey Sicks, to mention a few?

MW: I have a lot of respect for my fellow out artists, so it feels really good to be able expose their work to my audience and sort of cross pollinate. It really was not a conscious criteria, again, just the same reason I write about gay subjects myself; it’s just stories that haven’t been necessarily told before. So, I’m attracted to the Kinsey Sicks song, “AZT,” about HIV meds — it’s a great song that I think my audience would appreciate.

MW: I mean, who takes numbers off bathroom walls or writes them on bathroom walls mostly — gay men, right? The song is incredibly catchy and everybody loved it. I was in tenth grade and it was the biggest song of the year. But when it’s a woman, for me, it’s actually kind of creepy. It wasn’t her, right? Jenny didn’t write her own number on the wall. Whereas, Jimmy did, right? Guys will write their own numbers down, “please call.” The Rosanne Cash song, a lot of my gay audience doesn’t necessarily know how much great singer/songwriter music is out there. Because a Rosanne Cash album is not going to be on the radio. That’s why I put all of the writer’s websites on the album. It would be great if I could turn some guys onto David Wilcox and Rosanne Cash’s more recent stuff. To me, that Rosanne Cash song is totally about a closeted gay man. From the first time I heard it, that’s the only way I can see it.

MW: Yeah, I was totally not aware of that at all. I had kind of heard he had finally come out as bisexual a few years ago. I’m a gigantic Who fanatic. They were my absolute number one band in high school when I was a total rocker. To me a lot of torque of that band was Roger Daltrey being the beautiful golden boy, so straight, and then here’s Pete, this kind of ugly, awkward, creative genius. He would write these words that Roger would sing and I think a lot of the juice for that whole creative process came out of Pete’s queerness. That solo record (Empty Glass) to me, (the songs) “Rough Boys” and “I Am An Animal” where he screams on the bridge “I will be immersed/queen of the fucking universe.” On the cover of the record he’s got these two women hanging off him and he looks miserable and then on the back cover the women are sort of faded out and he’s smiling and all happy. I’m listening to this and thinking, as this closeted queer kid, my brother’s rocking out to this, and I’m thinking, “How can you not see how faggy this all is?”

MW: (Laughs) Absolutely. “And I Moved” — it’s a bathhouse hook-up with a shamed, closeted guy. It’s so clear (laughs).