Mike Mangione talks about the tenets that fueled his new album

As a senior in high school, Mike Mangione didn't just want to write songs; he wanted to write songs for a living.

So the young Mangione - who, I should point out, has only a very, very distant connection to flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione - knocked on his Glen Ellyn High School choir director's door and asked for advice.

"How do I make a career out of this?" he asked.

Though the answer wasn't exactly on par with the budding indie rocker's musical vision, Mangione's teacher told him what any logical professor might tell his college-bound student: to major in music and then teach - rely on the fundamentals of songwriting and express it on a collegiate level.

And when Mangione rebutted, saying "I don't want to teach; I want to be a performer," well, the choir director answered the question how any struggling musician might confide in an inquiring contemporary: He told Mangione he didn't know.

In the years that followed, Mangione did his best to answer the question on his own and has since written a forthcoming album that's already been licensed for use on MTV, the Oxygen Network and Lifetime. "Tenebrae," which is scheduled for national release on Aug. 5, was also recognized by New York Magazine and in publications throughout his new hometown in Milwaukee. Perhaps it isn't a surprise. These days, Mangione treats music as much like a business as a creative endeavor.

Since walking out of the choir director's office that day in high school, Mangione has devised a list of unspoken tenets and personally ingrained, rhetorical rules that have led him through his journey as a full-time, independent musician. When I put him on the spot about how he'd answer his own musical-career question, he gave me three lessons he's learned thus far. The first: "Find your strength. It's very easy to write songs after the people you admire, but don't do that."

Turns out, he took his own advice. After high school, Mangione grabbed his acoustic guitar - which he learned to play upside down when he was 13, but that's another story - and headed to Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he coincidentally did not study music. He played Milwaukee's scene and a couple of years after graduating school, recorded his debut, pop-fueled acoustic EP, "There and Back," with songwriting partner and brother Tom.

The album did well, debuting on the College Music Journal's Top 200 at No. 16 and fueling large-scale indie tours across the country. But Mangione wanted more than a two-person perspective on his music, which he envisioned taking a deeper, more soulful and rock-influenced tone.

"I felt it sounded a little constricted," he says. "It didn't open up."

Which brings us to Mangione's second bit of advice for beginners, a crowd he still considers himself a part of: Don't settle for band mates that don't fit your sound, regardless of friendships.

"It's great to have friendships," he says, "but don't sacrifice your vision."

As such, the Mike Mangione band roster jumped from two people (Mangione and his brother) to six over the course of a couple of years. It includes Samples keyboardist Karl Dietel, drummer Robby Cosenza and two focal string players that play a huge role in Mangione's latest, string-focused repertoire: cellist Patrick Hoctor and violinist Kristina Priceman.

Mangione finds comfort in a large band. It not only adds the kind of perspective and depth that he'd hoped for since recording "There and Back," but it also contradicts people's first impression when they see him on stage with an acoustic guitar.

"I'm not John Mayer," he says. "But sometimes I wish I was."

Together, the six-piece outfit recorded "Tenebrae," an orchestral twist on the oft-pigeonholed singer-songwriter card, blending folksy, art-indie strains with Mangione's easy, hopeful voice and down-to-earth lyrics that shake with endearing soul. The band was still coming together during "Tenebrae" production, so Mangione promises an even more dynamic, full-band sound on their next album, which they likely will begin recording later this year.

After finishing "Tenebrae," Mangione put a year-long writing moratorium on himself and the band, to avoid the pitfall that so many bands find themselves in by denying the current album time to mature and grow legs.

"You've got to let the album have its time," he says.

The moratorium lasted only nine months.

Mangione still lives in Milwaukee when he's not on tour - and he tours a lot. Hence his third rule of thumb: "Play. And play a lot."

So far this year, he and the band have already toured through New York three times, Los Angeles once and the Midwest something like five times. And there's plenty more where that came from. They're headed to Australia for most of July and then have shows planned through the rest of the year and into 2009.

When Mangione thinks of the struggling music industry, he sees a platform of record-label big wigs that once pulled up dedicated and talented musicians to the next level, and he sees that it's shrinking. It's scary for him. He still wants music to be his career, his full-time job that feeds him and his family. But for the foreseeable future, Mangione plans to live by the few lessons he's grappled for so far and maintain the songwriting technique that he might still secretly hope would've come from his choir director when he asked many years ago: "Never force anything and never feel too attached."

Mangione considers these lessons and laughs. "Then again, what do I know," he says.