His new record, released by Joe Bonamassa’s J&R Adventures imprint, is entitled We All Go Home, and is credited to Crosby Loggins and the Light. The fact that he’s not putting out records solely under his own name shows Loggins’ selfless nature—an attitude that extends to the arrangements on the current release, which give ample time and space to all his band mates, including violinist Paul Cartwright and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Siebenberg (the son of Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg). Loggins and Cartwright are currently taking the show on the road, opening for Bonamassa.

Your new record features a full band, but you’re touring as a duo. How do you translate the studio tracks to a live setting with fewer players?
The album is very dense, but we tried to come up with good songs that could work with or without a band. In a solo or duo show, I try to recreate some of the layering by doing a little bit of loop sampling, using delays, or incorporating different tunings. For example, the studio version of “March on America” is driven by the drums, so, when gigging without a drummer, I use a stereo delay to create a rhythmic groove. Then, the guitar I play on that song uses a .072 for the sixth string, which is tuned down to B. The A string is tuned up to a B, so there’s a low B and a B an octave higher on the two low strings, and I send those bass frequencies to a subwoofer. I also have a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive that I use to bring some edge to the acoustic tone. With the delay, the edge from the Sparkle Drive, and the subwoofer, the sound is a lot bigger than the typical solo acoustic. There’s another tune that I play in standard tuning when I’m onstage with the band, but I found a way of playing it in DADGAD that sounds a little fuller when I have to perform the song without them. Basically, I’m always looking for a bigger low end and open voicings to fill out the duo sound.

Could you go through the writing process of “Good Enough”?
That arrangement is a good example of how my bandmates and I work together. I wrote that with an acoustic sitting in my truck, and 90 percent of what you hear is that original concept of the song. I had some changes for the bridge, but when I brought it into rehearsal, I sat down with my keyboardist Dennis Hamm, and we reharmonized that section. We added some denser harmonic material, and it really propelled that part forward. Another thing we did was to treat the end section like a theme and variation. We’ll do that a lot—reharmonize the outro or the last chorus to bring in some freshness. It can be as simple as playing the same changes with new bass notes, and, suddenly, it’s like you’re hearing a ghost of what you heard a couple minutes earlier, but it’s still unified under one roof. This is something I picked up when I was really young, watching my dad work with Michael McDonald. I saw him take a simple melody, and change the feel by pushing bass notes around. It was never a cerebral exercise—it was always about deepening the emotional content. It really fascinated me, and now that I’m working with a great keyboard player, I’ve definitely taken advantage of his deep harmonic knowledge.

How come you quit playing?
I really hit a wall with music when I was about 18. There are obviously certain things that are afforded you when your dad has been so successful, but you’re also equally quick to be dismissed. So I went and worked my ass off building houses for two years, and that brought me back to my love of music. I decided that win, lose, or draw I wouldn’t be scared to make music for myself. No matter how crazy the music business is, or how crazy it is to go out as the son of somebody famous, this is who I am, and this is what I have to do.