"What you find is the songs are telling you new things about themselves that you didn't know were there when you wrote them, or that your world view or your life experience couldn't have told you when you wrote them. We're very fortunate that we have such an amazing songbook to turn to. There's very little chance of ever going stale for us. We love the songs we wrote. We love playing them. There are constantly new things to find in them as your life advances."

Chevron explained that lead singer Shane MacGowan writes songs that are timeless and not age-specific, so there are lots of things about the tunes to discover as they age.

"If you write songs from a point of view which is ageless or timeless or isn't really age-specific, as Shane does and as I do, the songs have a habit of explaining themselves to you as you go on," Chevron said. "I don't really know how to describe any better than that.

"There's elements of them that weren't always apparent to you when you first wrote them. They expose themselves to you as you work the song. I think there's still gold to be found in them there hills. That's why we go back again and again to the same songs. We do vary it a bit. We do have a fairly big song catalog. Songs appear and disappear occasionally to be replaced by other songs we haven't played in a long time."

The Pogues are on tour in the United States through Nov. 1. (See the itinerary below.) On this jaunt, the Irish band is playing a "best of The Pogues" set list.

"This time we're playing some places we have not played before," Chevron said. "So I'm quite looking forward to that, simply on the level that it's always exciting to go to new places. We're going to Tempe, which is near Phoenix; Denver and Kansas City, where we have not been to before. We're going back to Texas where we have not been for 20 years and we're in New Orleans for Halloween. All of that is something to look forward to. The whole tour in general has become something that's very pleasurable to do now."

Even though Chevron stated that it is a "best of The Pogues" tour, there still is a set list to be written, something that is a point of contention among the band members.

"We never decide the set list," said Chevron, an avid record collector. "Eventually, one gets printed out that we abide with. It's a bone of contention; even when the set list is written, people can't read it properly. Long before I was in the band, I used to go and see the band play in small pubs in London. There would always be these arguments between the songs about what they were going to play next. They sometimes would become quite lively arguments. It became almost part of the show. As you get a bit more popular and you have professional standards to maintain, you have to have a show that more or less is the same length each night. So you don't have the time for all that. Every now and again, somebody in the band, usually Shane, will take a notion to uproot the set list--turn it upside down, do it backward or something. It's something that if it ever gets tried out, it gets tried out for one show and then quietly dropped.

"Generally speaking, we kind of know after all these years pretty much what the arc of the show could be. It doesn't vary too much from that. We always do the same opening three numbers and the same final number. There are templates that you try not to f--- around with too much."

TOUR DATES

October 2009
13 - San Francisco, CA - Warfield Theatre
14 - San Francisco, CA - Regency Center at The Grand
17 - Los Angeles, CA - Nokia Live
19 - San Diego, CA - House of Blues
21 - Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre
23 - Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
25 - Kansas City, MO - Midland Theatre
28 - Austin, TX - Stubb's Waller Creek Amphitheatre
29 - Houston, TX - House of Blues
30 - Dallas, TX - House of Blues

November 2009
1 - New Orleans, LA - Voodoo Experience