It's the first time Dave Terry has been inside Cowgirls Inc., but the Aqueduct auteur looks perfectly comfortable sitting here at a U-shaped booth nursing a Bud Light. It's early, the bar is mostly empty, and the lone waitress—modestly attired, it should be noted—crams the digital jukebox full of all your favorite high-school hits. Like Terry's music, the setting is offbeat and funny and sort of meta-referential. (She's put on "Everybody Wants to Rule the World.") Terry and his girlfriend share a loft apartment only two blocks away, but it took a shot-in-the-dark interview invitation to lure him to this watering hole/eye-candy shop in Pioneer Square.
"It's the area of town that gets a bad rap because of one thing or another, but I really appreciate it," Terry says, finding historic charm where others see a place to avoid. "This whole neighborhood—all of Seattle really—was a giant whorehouse. There were 400 prostitutes, people getting robbed in the street, getting shot. So it's cool that this neighborhood hasn't lost its wild side, this totally eclectic mix of hiphoppers and gangbangers and frat dudes and homeless people and residents and office people and tourism. It's this crazy basket of stuff."
Which isn't a bad description for Terry's life at the moment. He arrived back in Seattle a couple of hours ago after shooting a video in L.A. Aqueduct's second full-length, Or Give Me Death, hit shelves last week, and in a few days he and his newly recruited band take off on a 60-day tour.
(The jukebox is juking "Stuck in the Middle with You.")
But Terry admits that things aren't always so upbeat. After the success of Aqueduct's last record, 2005's I Sold Gold—including spots on Conan O'Brien and The O.C.—came a period of relative stasis and self-doubt.
"I spent a long time making this record, and it's like, did I lose all the fans I made, did the momentum go away?" he says. "And then all of a sudden this week it's busy, busy, busy. It's like I'm back up on top of music as a career."
It might have been his childhood that prepped Terry for the dizzying ebb and flow of his life.
"When I was 6, my parents took me and my older brother out of school and bought a sailboat and basically left the Corpus Christi/Galveston area, sailed all the way across the Gulf to the Keys, and then all the way to Grenada and then back in like two and half years," he says. "We lived on the boat and just island-hopped. It was an awesome childhood for sure. I came back a little out of it, like a jungle kid or something."
(Into "Keep on Loving You." Terry air-guitars the solo.)
It's been four years since the grown-up jungle kid arrived in Seattle from his native Oklahoma, and the time spent here made an imprint on Or Give Me Death. Lyrically, the album finds Terry leaving behind the lonely bedroom musings of I Sold Gold and dealing with the world at large.
"That's kind of my songwriting goal, to take a tiny slice of life and color it and spin it a certain way to where people are like, 'Been there, done that.' Really, it's like expanding upon relationships to me. It's like a frustration with humankind. People's morals are going out the window; apathy is really high. So it's give me Aqueduct Or Give Me Death."
(The waitress turns down "Tennessee.")
Though Aqueduct has mostly been Terry's one-man show—he sings and plays a slew of synths and guitars and "mouth trumpet"—he found himself in more of a collaborative mode this time out. Austin drummer Matt Pence plays on virtually every track, local hornman Charlie Smith contributes, and Seattle fixture Jason Holstrom virtually co-produced.
"I think this record has more of a '70s classic-rock feel," Terry says. "I read a funny online review of the record and they were citing references like Paco and Christopher Cross and I was like, awesome. I think it's hilarious: Growing up on a boat, it's come full circle. Now I'm getting into yacht rock. I've got boat shoes on and everything." Which he does.
(He notes a fitting finale: "Bohemian Rhapsody.")
"All I can do is try to write good, catchy songs or just self-promote and do that thing," he says. "It's led me everywhere that I've been on this kinda crazy ride. I can't really foreshadow what are gonna be the highs and lows but I know they're gonna be there. And I take comfort in that. Like, cool, if this is the low I can't wait for the high. I'm sure it's coming." 
