One of the coolest cats you don't know, should know, and now will know called me from the road. British rock keyboardist Ian McLagan was rolling from North Carolina to a tour stop outside Washington, DC. McLagan was jovial in the extreme as he spoke excitedly about his new record, his place in rock 'n' roll history, and being on the road at 63. He clearly loves what he does.

"In the words of Willie Nelson, ‘On The Road Again,'" he sang. "I love playing, that's really what it is. Charlie Watts said it best when he was asked about playing with The Stones for 30 years. He said, ‘You play for two years and sit around for 28 years.' I just love to do what I do. I've got the best band, and we get to play and have a bit of a laugh. I mean, the road itself is very tedious. I mean, how many donuts can you eat? How much asphalt can you drive over? How much diesel can you pump? The reward is every night."

Roger Daltry hoped to die before he grew old, and he hasn't yet. Maybe rock 'n' roll ain't exclusively a young man's game anymore.

"But I'm a young man," McLagan says. "I'm only 18 under this 63-year-old flesh."

When McLagan was chronologically a teenager in England he made his mark along with Steve Marriott (who later went on to Humble Pie), Ronnie Lane, and Kenney Jones (who later went on to replace Keith Moon in The Who) in the pub rocking mod outfit Small Faces. Small Faces charted a number of times with hit songs such as "Itchycoo Park," "Lazy Sunday," "All or Nothing," and "Tin Soldier" in the band's brief four-year history.

Despite the success in England, the band never really made a dent in America. McLagan blames it on the manager at the time. "He controlled our recording. He was our agency and our management, which meant that any money coming in went through him. He didn't want us to go to the States because he couldn't control us and we might have run off on him. And we certainly would have when we realized what money we were earning," he says.

The band persisted, and the manager offered what McLagan believes was a phony tour full of obstacles and hardship.

"It was bogus," he says. "He said, ‘It's a four month tour... you'll be in a bus... bottom of the bill... there's no money, no toilets on the bus, no showers... you wanna do it?' And we said no, and he was happy. He kept us in England." McLagan later got busted for "a little piece" of hash, he says, and that complicated travel further.

McLagan says that it was at this point in the late 60's that McLagan says Small Faces started  experimenting with psychedelic sounds and their source, LSD. But the band never completely lost sight of its r&b roots.

"I think movies and music suffered from acid, McLagan says. "There was really no great acid music, or great acid movies, to my mind. We tried to incorporate it and then after a while we went, ‘Wait a minute, that's not what we do. What we do is this.' And on comes ‘Tin Soldier."'

But McLagan agrees it sounded and felt good at the time. "I mean, the Beatles managed it, we tried it," he says. "I just think acid was a left turn."

Marriott split from the band in 1969, and the band floundered a bit between writing originals and playing covers before landing guitarist Ron Wood, who later went on to the Rolling Stones.

"When we were rehearsing as a four-piece we didn't have much else, but what we did have was a love for Muddy Waters' ‘Live At Newport,' so we'd do ‘Hootchie Cootchie Man,' ‘Mojo Working,' ‘Tiger In Your Tank', ‘Got My Brand On You...'"

Ron Wood started bringing singer Rod Stewart around. According to McLagan, Stewart was reluctant at first.

"Woody had tried before," he says. "And Rod was ‘Nah, nah.' When Rod did come down to the rehearsal place, we started playing that stuff. He could sing all those songs 'cause he knew them. We did ‘Hootchie Cootchie Man' and BOOM! We were a band instantly, with no songs." And Small Faces became simply Faces.

Faces was a harder-rocking band that burst onto the arena scene and toured the world. Among the band's most successful songs were "Had Me a Real Good Time," the breakthrough UK hit "Stay with Me," "Cindy Incidentally," and "Pool Hall Richard."

Ronnie Lane left the group in 1973, and the whole band scattered by 1975, once Stewart's solo success eclipsed the rest of the band. McLagan became the go-to guy for session work, playing with The Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Taj Mahal, John Hiatt, and Paul Westerberg, to name a few.

Today McLagan soldiers on as a bandleader as well, and released the beautiful "Never Say Never" in 2007.

Beautiful, yes, but the man still digs generously into the r&b arsenal that fortified Small Faces. But it's not a formula.

"I never had a formula, really," he says. "I'd just sit myself down at the piano and something would come up. Like "Cindy Incidentally" came out of... I was kind of playing ‘Memphis' backwards, and Rod came over and said, ‘What's that?' And I said I dunno. And he started singing ‘Cindy Incidentally' and a song was born. I don't have a formula. I'll start a new formula today. Anything can get you moving; a pretty girl, a ham sandwich, a little melody...sound checks are great for this."

Ian McLagan and The Bump Band

German House theatre, 315 Gregory St

Wednesday, March 4

8 p.m. | $22-$25 | 271-3354, ianmclagan.com