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Follow you heart, not trends, says Butch Walker (© David Reich/Retna Ltd./Corbis)

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Butch Walker's production resume boasts names such as Pink, Weezer, Avril Lavigne, Pete Yorn, Katy Perry, Dashboard Confessional, among dozens of others.

You get the picture. He's the man. The new go-to guy. Some are even calling him 'the next Rick Rubin,' a sonic craftsman whose choices are driven more by his eclectic tastes than commercial considerations - although it's safe to say he's making some serious bank these days.

Unlike Rubin, however, the 40-year-old Walker divides his time as an artist in his own right. Back in the '90s, the Georgia native scored a hit, Freak Of The Week, with his short-lived band Marvelous 3, and since then he's put out a string of critically adored releases.

The multitasker and multi-instrumentalist (check him out playing banjolin with Taylor Swift) has now issued his most assured solo album yet. Entitled I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart, it was written and recorded (at Walker's own Ruby Red Studios, in his home base of Santa Monica, CA) in just five days with his band The Black Widows.

With tracks that run the gamut from authentic roots rock (Trash Day) to the epic sweep of Phil Spector (Pretty Melody) to a spot-on ELO homage (Trust Me), it's a first-listen winner that hits as deep lyrically - if the gorgeous Be Good Until Then doesn't have you weeping, nothing will - as it does musically.

While finishing production work on Avril Lavinge's upcoming record, Walker is gearing up to tour extensively throughout 2010 with The Black Widows. Recently, he sat down with MusicRadar to discuss his thoughts on music making, his new album and to dispense some sage advice to all the budding Butch Walkers out there ("Don't try to be me! I'm just learning how to do that"). And on the subject of vocalists who rely on Auto-Tuning, the admitted "old-schooler" let loose with both barrels.

What's more impressive than the fact that you recorded the album in five days is that you wrote it during the same time period.

"I had nuggets of song ideas, and when I decided it was time to make this album, one of the guys in the band, Michael Trent, he and I went into the studio and we got on a roll. Every morning, we'd pull out the guitars in the lounge and the tunes came fast.

"Michael's a great lyricist, and he already had a lot of terrific things in mind. I had been sending him MP3s from my laptop, so by the time we sat down to figure out the songs, he was pretty much all there. We'd write a few songs during the morning and in the afternoon the band would come in and blast through 'em."

Now, when you say 'laptop,' what kind of program were you demoing with?

"I use Logic, which is very easy to work with. My demos were very bare bones though. They were basically me singing and strumming the guitar - no bass and drums or anything like that. They were just me capturing the moment as fast as I could."

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