Bault is back, and part of weekend Japan relief benefit

Chad Bault disappeared sometime last fall.

Sure, you could still occasionally catch the local singer-songwriter in the crowd at weekend shows or sitting at the bar at happy hour, but he was suddenly missing from local stages. There was a one-off performance in February, but that was it. This after spending the previous year playing at least a couple of gigs a month.

Turns out he's been working on material for a new album. And he's ready to debut some of those songs Saturday at a Yakima Sports Center show with three other singer-songwriters. He's still got work to do on the new album, but the itch to get back on stage needs scratching.

"It doesn't hit you until you go see a show," Bault says over coffee earlier this week. "You're like, 'Oh, man. I remember when I used to do that.'"

It helped, too, that Sports Center owner Chris Malland came to Bault and asked him to put together a show with other singer-songwriters. Bault recruited frequent collaborator Jaycob Van Auken of Portland along with local up-and-comer Navid Eliot and Jared Clifton, frontman for the acclaimed Seattle roots-rock band The Radio Nationals.

The show was already in the works when the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan earlier this month. So, with help from Bault's friend Taku Watanabe, it became a relief benefit. Watanabe and some friends of his will be on hand making origami cranes and painting people's names in Japanese characters in exchange for donations, which will go to earthquake relief via the Red Cross.

"I'll be donating," Bault says.

He'll also be putting on a show. Some of the new songs are real movers, he says. In general, they're less pained than the material on his first album, "Souvenir," which he wrote when he was in his late 20s. He's 35 now and has a bit more perspective, a bit more emotional nuance in his writing.

"The first one was so heart-on-my-sleeve raw," Bault says. "This one I think I kind of remove myself from the picture a little bit."

In hindsight, he sometimes wishes he'd learned to write "story songs instead of personal songs," but Bault still plans to play his older, more personal material at shows. They represent a younger, less-guarded side of him that is closer to who he was at the time.

"I sometimes feel a sense of, 'Man, I probably really should have held back on that,'" he says of some of the more emotionally bare songs. "It's not Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' or anything. But it was just such a personal thing to me."

The new album, most of which will be recorded at home with the help of local producer Dan Hall, has plenty of work left to go before it's ready for release. Bault has to pare down the current 18 tracks to a single album's worth. And he has plenty of parts left to record. But for Saturday night at least, he'll come out of seclusion and return to his rightful place on stage, behind a microphone.

"It should be a great show," he says.

If you go

WHAT: Singer-songwriters Chad Bault, Jared Clifton, Jaycob Van Auken and Navid Eliot.

WHERE: Yakima Sports Center, 214 E. Yakima Ave.

WHEN: 9 p.m. Saturday.

COVER: $5.