“I can’t sit still,” says Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, explaining the reason behind his solo album, Have Guitar, Will Travel.

A P / Jeff Roberson

By now we’ve all read the stories about the supposed turmoil in the Boston-based hard-rock legend Aerosmith, with guitarist Joe Perry fuming on the sidelines while singer Steven Tyler recovers from a separated shoulder that led to the cancellation of much of the band’s summer tour.

And in a recent conversation, Perry touched on those frustrations. But he also spoke at length about the writing and recording of his latest solo album, Have Guitar, Will Travel, which comes out on Tuesday.

The solo disc is Perry’s second in four years, coming on the heels of 2005’s Joe Perry, a true solo album on which Perry played everything but drums. That was the first Perry record since 1984, the year he rejoined Aerosmith after a five-year breakup.

Perry says he went 21 years without making his own record because “Aerosmith’s always been a full-time job. … The fact that we were able to come back, and come back as strong as we did, was so stunning that we didn’t want to mess with that.”

Now, however, his attitude has changed: “Why wait until I’m gone and my kids are putting this music out? I might as well finish these songs.”

The spur for recording Have Guitar, Will Travel came when Tyler’s bout with pneumonia left the band unable to complete a new studio album in time to head out on the summer tour.

“I just couldn’t not record at that point,” Perry recalls. I was so ready for this [Aerosmith] record; I was so excited. And I’m always writing; I’m always in the studio.” With one son still in school, he explains, he and his wife are home every day. He spends his days down in his basement studio, and keeps a guitar and a notebook in every room in case inspiration strikes, like the middle-of-the-night revelation that led to the moody “O Lord (21 Grams).” “I called some friends and said, ‘You want to be a part of this? Come on down,’ because I was down there anyway.”

Those who came down include drummers Ben Tileston (from TAB The Band, which includes two of Perry’s sons) and Marty Richards, as well as a singer from Germany who goes only by the name Hagen. He and Perry got together in a thoroughly modern way.

Perry’s wife was looking for Alex Jones videos on YouTube — “we’re both conspiracy freaks” — and stumbled across a video of Hagen singing. She told Perry to give it a listen, and he was impressed enough to call Germany to ask Hagen to come over and give it a try.

There were two snags, of course — Perry had to trust that the guy he was talking to on the phone was really the singer from the video; Hagen had to trust that it really was Joe Perry. But once Hagen got there, Perry says, “he never left.”

Perry sings about half the songs on the disc, and compares his own voice to that of Jim Morrison (aptly). While he does a good job on the sleazy shuffle “Slingshot” and the roots-rock “Somebody’s Gonna Get (Their Head Kicked In Tonight),” he says “There were songs I knew I couldn’t do justice to.” And Hagen has a more classic hard-rock tenor, sometimes comparable to Tyler, especially on “We’ve Got a Long Way to Go,” but finds his own voice on the four-on-the-floor rocker “Scare the Cat.”

Any band member who maintains a solo career faces the question, when a new song comes up, whether to share it with the band or to keep it for a solo disc. Perry says that the band always comes first, but that after a while, the writing’s on the wall for a particular idea. “There are very few circumstances where I’ll hold something back and not offer it to Aerosmith first. But after 10 years of not having some of these songs being used, I think, ‘I’ll play it for them, and if it doesn’t catch, it’s open season.’ ”

Perry says that the band’s usual method of working was for him to play some riffs or chords to singer Steven Tyler, who will write lyrics to the ones that particularly inspire him. They haven’t done that in more than a decade, he says — they’ve been working with outside songwriters, or finishing up old material. “He hasn’t put lyrics to any of my songs in about 10 years.”

Some of the 10 songs sound like Aerosmith — Perry cites the arena-rock sway of “Do You Wonder,” from Have Guitar, Will Travel, as a song the band had been working on, but that Tyler hadn’t come up with lyrics to it yet, so he took it back and recorded it with lyrics by his wife, Billie — and some sound in the vein of Perry’s rough-and-ready solo material, such as the speedy leadoff single “We’ve Got a Long Way To Go.”

Perry says he was inspired by the desert scenes of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — “driving in the desert at night with the top down. Having lived that experience, I just kept recalling that.” The entire disc sounds sun-baked, with a sound that includes a classic, organic roughness with a modern clarity. And Perry says that thanks to recent events, such as flu pandemics, the election and its attendant protests “it’s a darker record” than previous solo efforts and Aerosmith discs, and “a lot more about what’s going on out there as opposed to in here,” he said, pointing to himself.When it’s noted that he recorded Have Guitar, Will Travel from start to finish in a length of time that was deemed too short to finish an already-started Aerosmith record, Perry’s deadpan voice goes even deader: “Funny thing,” he says. “Depends on what drives you, I guess.” Later, he says, “That’s a question that you would have to ask Steven,” adding that Joe Perry was also recorded in the time since Aerosmith’s last studio record.

As for the future of the band, Perry says they’re committed to do four shows in late October and early November in Abu Dhabi and Hawaii. “It remains to be seen whether Steven will be well enough to do those dates; I think he will be … I know he wants to be.”

After that, he says, “I think we’re going to have to take at least six months off, maybe even longer, to get everybody kind of settled down, let a lot of this [expletive] die down, a lot of the bad press wash away, as it does, and then start up again. And make a really great studio record. We know the fans want it; I know it’s what I want, and it’s what the other guys want. And then do a tour. …

“That’s what I hope happens. But in the meantime, I want to be touring with my band.”

He seems to go back and forth between confidence and wariness: “I’d like to see us play for another 10 years. But we’re all getting older, and everybody has different lives. But I know that everyone loves playing together. This tour, we were probably playing better together than we’ve ever played. …

“But either way, I’m up for anything, and that’s why I can’t sit still, and I have a solo album ready to go. And I don’t know what the other guys are gonna do while we’re waiting, but I wasn’t going to waste any time.”

rmassimo@projo.com