Scottsboro dentist Brett Bigelow records album rocker James Irvin    HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - "He waits until I'm on nitrous oxide, puts some earbuds in my ears and starts playing me some rough demos of some songs he had written," James Irvin says. Irvin, a Huntsville musician known for his rock-oriented solo work and drumming for touring blues trio Microwave Dave & The Nukes, is explaining how he ended up recording an album with his dentist. Based in Scottsboro, Brett Bigelow waited until the second or third time Irvin came in for a dental appointment to broach the subject of music. "And like a month after that we were in the studio recording," Irvin says. And despite the album's offbeat origins, Bigelow's self-titled debut is actually a very solid record - mixing country, southern rock, Americana and even indie/alternative sounds, on songs like "Lessons in May," "Jack Ain't Coming Back" and "Ghosts of Lake Michigan." For Irvin's first outside the dental office meeting with Bigelow, he went over to his house. Bigelow played a song on the acoustic guitar and sang a tune. Irvin thought it was OK. Bigelow may have been a little nervous. "But the more songs he went through it was like, 'Wow. These are really hooky songs. This is right down my alley,'" Irvin says. "I could just hear in my head what they would sound like completed, with drums, bass, guitar and everything on top of it. When Brett first approached me he said he wanted to make a really good country album, and after I heard the songs I'm like, 'I wouldn't really call this country.'" Bigelow, age 45, credits his cache of tunes to a vintage guitar he acquired last year, a 1962 Epiphone. "It's just has a lot of soul, a lot of karma," Bigelow says. "I've been playing for decades but was never able to write songs and then all of a sudden they just kept coming out and coming out. They're still coming out. It's crazy."