ROB DICKINSON Nowhere to hide.

ROB DICKINSON 9 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 23 Grog Shop 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd. 216.321.5588 Tickets: $10

“THERE’S NO WAY OF HIDING when you’re on your own,” says Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson about his debut solo album, Fresh Wine for the Horses. “In many ways it was something I really wasn’t looking very forward to doing because I’d come from being in a band.”

The Catherine Wheel’s name is probably familiar to anyone who grew up listening to alternative-rock radio in the mid-’90s. “Waydown,” from the band’s 1995 album Happy Days, earned spins locally on WMMS and WENZ. While the band would never achieve the same mainstream success, 1997’s Adam and Eve garnered a boatload of critical praise, and is roundly regarded as its finest hour, if not one of the best albums to come out in the ’90s. The tour following 2000’s Wishville proved to be the last glimpse to date of an act that’s become synonymous with the phrase “most criminally overlooked band of the ’90s.”

Although the Catherine Wheel has been on hiatus since then, Dickinson — the band’s main songwriting force — has kept his creative gears churning. He’s moved around the world, living in London, New York City and Los Angeles. He’s spent time designing cars and writing and recording songs.

“[Fresh Wine for the Horses] has taken me a few years to get together,” he says. “I feel more protective of it than I did the first Catherine Wheel record, which was obviously a group effort. I’ve made quite a few records, and each time I’ve left the recording studio there’s always been this nagging suspicion that the band didn’t quite capture what its full potential at that moment in time was. But I certainly don’t feel that with this record. And that’s a new experience for me — being totally satisfied with it.”

“My Name Is Love” begins the album in bombastic fashion and is quickly followed by “Oceans,” a song Dickinson penned at his parents’ house — the same place where he wrote much of the Catherine Wheel’s early material.
On songs like “The Night” and “Intelligent People,” Dickinson seems to reveal himself in a way that he never did when he was fronting
a band.

“The best rock ’n’ roll always comes from a real place,” he says. “I spent a lot of time making this record because I wanted to make a really good record. I’m very proud of the songs. I think the songs resonate with anyone that hears them. I want everything for this record. I want the experience as a whole to make me want me to make another record, which I think is where it’s going. But I’d like to sell some records, too. I think it’s time that I should.”

And at the end of the day, the number of records the Catherine Wheel sold is the reason the Catherine Wheel’s name isn’t as revered as those of Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins. But Dickinson doesn’t necessarily see that as a bad thing.

“Fortunately — or unfortunately at the time — we didn’t sell huge amounts of records, which would have pressured us into a set way of making records,” he says. “Each time we went into the studio, it was very much to keep ourselves happy, and to keep ourselves interested. And I think that was reflected in the music that we made. And I think that’s what connected with people — the fact that it wasn’t a manufactured thing, that it was pretty real. And I’ve always believed that’s the reason it’s endured. We did it from the heart. It was music that meant something to us. I think that was the thing we were most proud of.”

Although Fresh Wine for the Horses includes full-band performances, Dickinson decided to embark on this tour armed only with a guitar. “You realize that there’s nowhere else to divert attention — that it’s purely on you,” he says. “That’s a new experience for me. It brings its own challenges, which are very much impacting on the music and the performance. That’s kind of exciting.”