To put himself in a songwriting mood for his new album Jet Black, Gentleman Reg turned to a couple of novels by Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood.

"I tend to write such autobiographical songs, I just needed a boost to get outside my head," says Reg from his home in Toronto.

"They're so Canadian because they write about somewhere else. Anyway, they're good to quote. I found the first single We're in a Thunder Storm in Michael Ondaatje's novel In the Skin of a Lion."

Ondaatje's 1987 epic, a prequel to The English Patient, is a sweeping story about the immigrants who built new lives in Toronto.

Kind of like Reg himself.

The former member of The Hidden Cameras and regular guest with Broken Social Scene has re-invented himself as a radio-friendly pop singer.

"I'm done with the rootsy singer-songwriter routine for a while," Reg says. "It's good, but I'm stepping away from it for a while. I'm in a more experimental mood."

It's all thanks largely to Ottawa's Dave Draves, who produced Jet Black and took the introspective, romantic singer and encouraged him to rock harder than anything he had ever done solo before, such as 2002's Make Me Pretty and Darby & Joan in 2004.

"Dave encouraged me to lose the guitar and focus on singing. There's so much going on in the songs he thought they needed my full attention. I write songs differently when they're for me to play on the guitar. Simpler.

"I get more creative when I'm writing a song I don't have to play on the guitar. They're usually more fun."

Anyone who saw Reg perform with Hidden Cameras between 2003-07 knows he is a fearless performer.

Which makes his conversion to classic rock, albeit with a twist, all the more surprising. And to make sure everyone noticed the more aggressive sound, Reg gave his disc a classic rock name because "it sounded like the opposite of everything else I've done."

"It's heavier and more upbeat, like a real rock-'n'-roll album. I wanted to keep the energy up. A song has to feel exciting to me," he says.

Besides, Jet Black pokes fun at his blond colouring. People constantly mistake him for an albino, which is kind of irritating except when they're film producers who think he'll look interesting on camera.

Consequently, the openly gay Reg has made a number of recent cameo appearances in highly touted independent films, including Shortbus, Wilby Wonderful, Twist, The End of Silence, and the television series Queer as Folk.