He trick-or-treated at Liberace’s house, planned a two-day stay in Amsterdam that ended a month later with him escaping the city under the cover of darkness, and was Bob Hope’s favorite altar boy. Alone, these anecdotes go well with a fistful of peanuts at a cocktail party. But on top of all this, he also co-wrote the longest-running song on the Billboard Top 100 (Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me”), had a debut solo album that earned three and a half stars in Rolling Stone, and was awarded the title of “San Diego’s Most Influential Artist of the Decade” at the San Diego Music Awards. What you end up with is one of the most engaging, twisted, and prolific songwriters of our time — Steve Poltz. Poltz has cultivated his reminiscences into a heartbreakingly gorgeous collection of songs for his new album, Traveling.

If you’ve been anywhere near a television in the past two months, odds are excellent that you’ve heard the voice of Poltz, whose song “You Remind Me (Who I Am)” is prominently featured in a Jeep television commercial. (The Internet has been flooded with viewers Googling as much information as they can get on the voice behind this contagiously upbeat tune.) And he has released a series of solo albums that have garnered him worldwide notice, with songs prominently featured in TV shows and movies such as Notting Hill. He’s the only artist to have written songs recorded by Jewel and Mojo Nixon . . . and Squeeze’s Glen Tillbrook too.