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Howe Gelb and his band Giant Sand are playing as part of the Forward Music Festival this weekend in Madison. - Submitted photo

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In the movie "Hamlet 2," the city of Tuscon, Ariz. is referred to as the place "where dreams go to die." Howe Gelb seems to have found it to be the city where dreams go to grow old, somewhat gracefully.

Gelb, leader of the ever-shifting band Giant Sand and one of the leaders of the Americana subgenre, has become one of the elder statesmen of both the Americana genre and the Tuscon music scene. He's a family man, but with a sun-dried rocker twist; in the middle of a phone interview, he has to head out to pick up his daughter from school -- in a vintage '65 Plymouth Barracuda.

Giant Sand is opening for Neko Case at the Orpheum Theatre, 216 State St. at 8 p.m. Friday for the opening night of the two-day Forward Music Festival. Festival wristbands are $40 and available at the High Noon Saloon or Frequency. Visit www.forwardmusicfest.com for more information.

It was actually the birth of his first daughter, now 21, that brought Gelb to settle down to Tuscon after a nomadic early musical career that included stints in New York City, Hollywood, the California desert and Montana. Becoming a father changed all that; when he got divorced, he was looking for a good place to raise his daughter as a single parent.

"All of a sudden you wake up and you don't quite have that careless abandon," Gelb said. "You don't have that wanderlust that became such a permanent atmosphere. You've got this little angel to care for."

But if Gelb's geographical wanderlust has cooled, his musical roamings have gone even farther. In the past few years he's put out a mix of solo albums and Giant Sand albums, tapping into everything from roots rock to gospel to piano instrumentals. And Giant Sand itself seems to shimmer in the haze, as the band has added and shed members with regularity over the years, spawning offspring bands like Calexico and the Friends of Dean Martinez.

"Giant Sand had gone through many, many, many, many, many different lineups," Gelb said. "There was just kind of an open-door policy. Whoever was in the band would simply be seasonal for as long as the music felt like it was spontaneous and inspiring."

The current Giant Sand lineup features Gelb and three Danish musicians, Thoger T. Lund on bass, Peter Dombernowsky on drums, and Anders Pedersen on slide guitar. Although Gelb had first worked with them on one of his solo albums, he knew that when they sat down in a Denmark studio to record the current album, "proVISIONS," it would be as Giant Sand.

"It was intentional," he said. "I ended up making these records two to three years in advance of their release. Giant Sand has become this new lineup. We sat down a couple of years ago to start recording this record, and we finished it up, collecting recordings along the way. Most of the recordings get done at that first stage, and then a couple of gems will pop as you go on that you'll want to include when you get back together."

One of those gems was "Belly Full of Fire, a "lost track" that Gelb discovered just before "proVISIONS" was finally sent to the manufacturer. (In fact, the pre-release copies sent to the media earlier this summer didn't have "Belly" on it.) Gelb said his co-producer sent him the song for use as a possible bonus track, but he liked it so much he decided to do an eleventh-hour substitution.

"That's the thing. You're never done with a record until it's done with you. It's shrinkwrapped, and you're still not done with it."

Sonically cinematic and lyrically bleak, "proVISIONS" has the kind of haunting, wide-open spaces that many have come to associate with Giant Sand and the "desert rock" subgenre that Gelb plays godfather to. The title of the album contains multiple meanings for Gelb, playing off "provisions" as well as "pro visions."

Again and again in conversation, he refers to the things that music provides for him.

"Everything that you ever end up having is because of the music," he said. "You can't really kill the music off because all of the things that you end up having. That's part of the balance. That's what referred to around here as the "chore of enchantment." Dealing with the rigors of what's been provided.

"The music always provides, but the artistry I think is not in ever making the art, but in existing with it."

Gelb said that as he's grown older (he's 51), making music hasn't become easier or harder, but more complex.

"There are things you feel the weight of that you never felt before, other things have no weight at all to them," he said. "The one thing that stays constant is desire. I think you have more control over desire, but desire always has a play in it, your feelings for other people and meeting new people, and the energy they bring. That's kind of funny."