MINNEAPOLIS — This was pretty fancy as far as garage-rock goes.

With power tools, bicycles and ballcaps neatly fastened to the walls of a two-car garage, Twin Cities barroom mainstay G.B. Leighton carried on at full volume last week with seven musicians, a sound man and a teleprompter. And no objections from any New Brighton neighbors.

Minutes later, bandleader Brian Leighton retired to the idyllic deck at the back of his suburban home. Geese were frolicking in the stormwater runoff that has created a mini-lagoon. Otherwise, the early afternoon seemed still, the two-hour band rehearsal a distant memory.

Leighton seemed a bit nervous, he admitted, as he rubbed his cheeks with their two-day stubble and wondered out loud:

“Is this the beginning or is this the end?”

It’s a curious question to ask after 33 years in which Leighton has released nine studio albums and three live records.

He’s been a fixture on the Minnesota bar circuit — he used to play 200 gigs a year — but he’s never mentioned with Gopher State music standard-bearers like Bob Dylan, Prince, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, Lamont Cranston or the Suburbs.

The question is: Is it time to take G.B. Leighton — band of a 1,000 bars — seriously?

“Brian felt like he had something to prove,” said rocker-turned-producer Kevin Bowe, who helmed G.B. Leighton’s new album, “Tangerine.” “It’s tough when a band has been around a long, long time. You take it for granted.”

The new album is Leighton’s best. It’s filled with deeply personal songs — he’s unhappy, lonely — set to timeless heartland rock with tinges of pop smarts and a sprinkle of country seasoning. There are echoes of Bon Jovi, Bob Seger, Zac Brown Band, Journey and, yes, Bruce Springsteen. But Leighton, who has lived through cancer, divorce and alcohol treatment, has found his own voice if not his own sound.

The key track is the title tune, which is the opener.

“He was nervous and insecure,” said Bowe, recalling Leighton coming to share the song “Tangerine. “And he’s sitting on the floor of the [Kill Room recording] studio and he’s surrounded by an ocean of legal yellow paper. He had so many lyrics for ‘Tangerine.’”

The songwriter played the tune for the producer on three different occasions, each time with the lyrics pared.

Said Bowe: “When he finally peeled it, I said, ‘This is the best song Steve Earle never wrote.’”

How did a proud Minnesotan come up with using a tangerine?

Leighton hemmed and hawed, calling himself a citrus guy. Orange or kumquat didn’t fit, he joked.

“The idea of the song is about a guy who wakes up hungover and wants to be anything but what he is. He looks out the doorway, and he sees tangerines hanging from a tree outside and he goes ‘I would love to be that tangerine, better than I’m feeling right now. But if I could be that tangerine, maybe I could get that girl.’

“I’m a romantic,” said the singer in the well-worn T-shirt, wide-leg jeans and frayed ballcap. “The tangerine is going to do everything to that girl that he couldn’t do. You take off the cover of that tangerine and everything inside is sweet and juicy.”

Several of the new songs, including “Goodbye Valentine” and “Waiting for Never,” address loneliness and unrequited love.

The songwriter explained in an interview that, after divorce, he lived without his two children. Later, he had a live-in girlfriend. Then, after a trip to Duluth for two nights with his band, he came home and “everything was gone.” He now lives in the basement of a house with his widowed mother, a retired nurse.

“Everything I write about is personal,” said Leighton, who is confessional but not effusively so. “The reason I write personal is because I’ve had more people come to me and say: ‘What you wrote hit me.’”

Among the 10 songs on “Tangerine” is “You Better Not Run,” which appears in two versions. It is a riff rocker that Leighton wrote and recorded at age 14. That 1984 original recorded-in-a-basement version is the final track on “Tangerine” as a nod to Leighton’s original drummer Mike Chaput, who recently retired from the rock wars. A new rendition of the tune rocks out like the 1980s revisited.

‘Minstrel Supreme’

Leighton has certainly had his successes over the years. He’s won two Emmys as well as a Telly for a commercial about Lake County. He had a nightclub named after him in Fridley (G.B. Leighton’s Pickle Park, 2004-16). He’s toured Europe opening for Jonny Lang as well as doing stints with Huey Lewis and the News and the BoDeans. He was made an honorary Vulcan at the St. Paul Winter Carnival with the title “Minstrel Supreme from the St. Paul Scene.” He was inducted into the former Hard Rock Hall of Fame in Acapulco in the late ‘90s.

However, his biggest rewards are the one-on-one connection with his fans. Like the woman who came up to him at Wilebski’s Blues Saloon in St. Paul a few weeks ago. She explained how Leighton’s music changed her life, getting her “out of some of my deepest, darkest, most depressive moments in my life,” he recalled her saying.

At 55, Leighton is no longer yearning to chase a major label contract and rock stardom. He’s OK not becoming a star. He’s accepted that he’s loved — if not honored — in his hometown.

“I think this is the start,” he said, answering his earlier question. “If it’s not the start of something huge, it’s the start of something new. New is good. I just want to connect with more people. I’ve found what my deal is in this town. I’m tangible. And that’s OK.”

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