The new Bruce Springsteen biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” which is already getting Oscar buzz, will be opening in movie theaters around the country on Friday, Oct. 24. One longtime West Mt. Airy resident who will probably be paying particular attention to the film is Wesley Stace, aka John Wesley Harding, a prominent musician in his own right as well as a friend and collaborator of the music legend from Asbury Park, N.J.

Stace, who also has authored four well-received novels and just celebrated his 60th birthday on Oct. 22, has produced 19 albums of music ranging from traditional folk to pop and rock. For 16 years, he also has staged a series of monthly “Cabinet of Wonders” variety shows at City Winery in New York City that have featured poets, writers, comics and musicians from Iggy Pop and Rosanne Cash to Springsteen, with whom he recorded a duet, “Wreck on the Highway,” which was included as an extra track on the reissue of the 1998 John Wesley Harding album, “Awake.”

“I first met Bruce in L.A. in the mid-’90s,” Stace told the Local last week in his home near Wissahickon Valley Park. “A rock band made up of writers was performing there. Springsteen and I happened to be standing next to each other. He turned and said, ‘I’ve heard of you.’ That was a thrill. He said, ‘Are you the one who wrote the song about Hitler?’ (Stace’s song, “Hitler’s Tears” was on his 1992 album, “Why We Fight.”)

“Bruce is a very friendly guy. He has invited me to birthday parties. We have had a lovely relationship. I don’t ring him up every Tuesday and ask for a bag of sugar, but every now and then I bump into him. He is a sensitive, intuitive man with a social conscience. He truly likes to help people. I’ve played a lot with Warren Zanes, who was in the band Del Fuegos and who wrote the book on ‘Nebraska’ that the Springsteen movie is based on.” (The book is “Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.”)

Stace was born in East Sussex, England, the son of teachers Christopher Stace and Molly Townson. His mother was an opera singer and for many years was the director of Hastings Musical Festival. His sister, Melanie Stace, is a well known performing artist in England. His given name, Wesley, is a tribute to John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, who preached one of his last sermons near the town where Stace was born.

As a child, Stace taught himself how to play guitar and eventually started writing his own songs as a teenager, citing John Prine, Loudon Wainwright III and Bob Dylan as primary influences. Stace took the stage name John Wesley Harding from Bob Dylan’s eighth studio album, a folk rock/country rock production in 1967. The album was named after a notorious Texas outlaw, John Wesley Hardin (1853-1895), whose name Dylan misspelled, adding a final “g.” According to Stace, “no one knows why” Dylan misspelled the name.

Stace studied English literature at Jesus College, Cambridge, but left before completing a doctorate in social and political science to pursue a music career. He began attracting attention after opening a concert for John Hiatt, which led to a record deal with Demon Records. His first live album, “It Happened One Night” (1988), was critically acclaimed and led to many more albums. Several critics have compared him to Elvis Costello.

In 1995, Harding was selected by Springsteen to be his first opening act in 20 years for his solo shows at the Berkeley Community Theater in California. In 2005, Stace published his first novel, “Misfortune,” under his birth name, based on lyrics to his song, “Miss Fortune,” from his 1998 album, “Awake.” The book was chosen by Amazon.com as one of the “Ten Best Novels of 2005” and was one of the Washington Post’s “Books of the Year.” It was a bestseller in the United States and France and has been translated into many languages.

The polymath from England moved to the United States in 1991. In 2002, he married Abbey Tyson, a visual artist who grew up in Mt. Airy. Tyson, who said in an earlier interview, “I’m more a Linda [McCartney, Beatle Paul’s wife] than a Yoko [Ono, John Lennon’s spouse], though I wish it was the reverse,” and Stace are the parents of teenagers Tilda, 19, a student at Bennington College, and Wyn, 17, a student at Germantown Friends School.

Stace, who has taught writing courses at Princeton University, Swarthmore College and Fairleigh Dickinson University, also has written an opera, “Dido’s Ghost,” with Errollyn Wallen, a Belize-born composer and musician, which just made its East Coast premiere in Boston on Oct. 18. He is starting a multi-city tour on Oct. 27.

Stace, who has been a guest on several late-night talk shows, previously lived in Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Brooklyn, but he and his family moved to West Mt. Airy 15 years ago “because of this incredible house. Philly has always been a really good city for me with WXPN, the Tin Angel and events at the Free Library, and Abbey has such nice memories of GFS.”

Stace just became a U.S. citizen this year. “The induction ceremony for U.S. citizenship was really moving,” he said. “It’s the end of a very long journey. The immigration officials are so professional. If anything can give you hope, it is that, 130 people from 80 countries becoming U.S. citizens.”

For more information, visit wesleystace.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.