Adam Ant soldiers on with comeback

When Adam Ant, the 1980s British new wave singer of "Antmusic" and "Goody Two Shoes" fame, decided in 2011 that it was time to make a comeback after 18 years, he said, he was unsure how he would be received.

So even though Ant — real name, Stuart Goddard — said his desire to write and record music returned, instead of putting out a new album, he put on his familiar soldier costume with the Napolean hat last year and did a tour of small halls to reintroduce himself.

What Ant found was that the fans who so rabidly followed him and his band, the Ants, apparently still had love for the musician's high-energy, theatrical music. Ant, 58, says that response gave him the green light for his new album, "Adam Ant Is the BlueBlack Hussar Marrying the Gunner's Daughter," a sprawling, 17-song disc that is autobiographical, based on characters in his life. It was released Jan. 21.

Now he's back on a tour of more than 40 cities, including Minneapolis, where he will play at Mill City Nights on Sunday.

"Coming back to the States is a different ballgame," Ant said by phone from his London office. "You have to think completely differently, and I had no idea what the response would be, and I was pleasantly surprised. The response has enabled us to come back, and hopefully I'll be coming back on a regular basis, now that I've put my toe back in the water."

Ant's original run of popularity resulted in three albums in Billboard's Top 100 1980-83. With his band Adam and the Ants, he bridged punk and new wave. The group's debut, "Kings of the Wild Frontier," produced the Top 15 songs "Antmusic" and "Dog Eat Dog."

His 1982 solo album "Friend or Foe" had the hit "Goody Two Shoes," and the 1983 solo album "Strip" produced a Top 40 hit with the title track.

"I'd been wanting to explore acting and explore that side of performance, and I think it started there," he said. "I realized [with acting] it was really you and a script and a director, and a very small cast, as opposed to going out with tour buses and there could be 30 people on a tour.

"And actually you're focused on a piece of work that you haven't written — you're focused on something that you're not necessarily responsible for the creation of it. And that was something that piqued me there."

In the 1990s, Ant moved to Los Angeles, where he studied acting and "did a number of things in television. I had a good experience with that." After that, Ant said, he was ready to start a family and ended up living in Tennessee, where he married and had a daughter.

During those years, Ant released just one disc, 1995's "Wonderful," which went Top 25 in Britain but barely made a blip in the United States. He said he also unwound himself from all of his record company contractual obligations so that, when he was ready to resume his career, he could do it on his terms.

"So all in all, it was something that I thought would last maybe three to five years," he said. "But these things take years rather than months, and 17 years had actually swum by. And I thought, 'Well, now's the time to put out another record.' "

In addition to reintroducing him, the first tour back let him learn "what the audience was, and I knew kind of the changes in the industry." Both things persuaded him to form his own label, meaning "pretty much I had carte blanche on this record," Ant said.

It turned out to be an autobiographical one — albeit told through cinematic characters, incorporating "my interest in the 18th century in naval history. It's certainly the most personal album that I've ever written. And I feel confident enough to do that at this point in my life."

The song "Cool Zombie," for example, tells the story of how he ended up in Tennessee. He said "Marrying the Gunner's Daughter" — an old Navy term that means being punished — is an allegory for his being signed to a major label for most of his career.

"Shrink" addresses his public struggles with bipolar disorder. In the early 2000s, he was arrested for several public disturbances and was committed to inpatient psychiatric care.

Ant said he thought it was important to address his disorder on the record because "it would have been pretty cowardly not to."