Lone Star State of Mind for Artist

When alt-country musician Jack Ingram phoned in more than an hour late for an appointed interview, he matter-of-factly blamed it on the Red-Headed Stranger. The musician (Willie Nelson) and the album.

Ingram said he simply got “carried away” listening to Nelson’s watershed “Red Headed Stranger” album, which has just been reissued with three previously unreleased bonus tracks on Sony Legacy. The 1975 concept album about the Old West yielded his now-classic hit “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

“It’s one of my favorites and is just a real important record for me as an artist,” Ingram said from his home in Dallas. “I just get lost in it. There’s something about the honesty of the lyrics that just rings true every time I listen. . . . The songs touch you at a level that pop music just doesn’t.”

Ingram, who plays at 8 p.m. Saturday with his Beat-Up Ford Band at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Irvine, is perhaps the latest link in the long chain of Texas singer-songwriters who have largely ignored the prevailing commercial winds. He was introduced to the outlaw country movement in 1975, when his father took him down to the local public radio station, where they waited in line for hours to meet Nelson.

Ingram said he was awe-struck upon meeting Willie but developed no serious musical ambitions until many years later. In 1989, Ingram, then 18, taught himself to play a batch of his idol’s tunes while studying psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Before long, he landed a weekly gig at a local, well-known honky-tonk called Adair’s, where his fledgling career took root.

He had absorbed other influences over the years, ranging from the traditional country of Lefty Frizzell, Tom T. Hall and Ernest Tubb to the alt-country of Steve Earle, Jerry Jeff Walker and Lyle Lovett to the contemporary honky-tonk of Dwight Yoakam. This mix of country styles first surfaced in three self-released albums in the early to mid-’90s, including 1995’s “Live at Adair’s,” which sold a respectable 30,000 copies.

The indie records led to a deal with Universal’s now-defunct Rising Tide imprint and the subsequent release of 1997’s “Livin’ or Dyin’.” Co-produced by Steve Earle, it was well-received critically, but in anticipation of its merger with Polygram, MCA/Universal dropped Rising Tide and Ingram and his album were stranded.

Within a year, though, he signed with Lucky Dog Records, a subsidiary of Sony Nashville that also has Texans David Allan Coe and siblings Bruce and Charlie Robison on its roster. (The Robison brothers may keep a low profile, but their wives are hardly anybody’s secret: Bruce is married to country singer-songwriter Kelly Willis, Charlie to Dixie Chicks’ singer and string-player Emily Erwin.)

Ingram returned last year with “Hey You,” produced by ex-Steve Earle guitarist Richard Bennett (think “Copperhead Road” era). It includes hearty helpings of honky-tonk, spiced with traces of Tex-Mex, folk, rock and roots-rock. And even though Ingram collaborated with songwriters Jim Lauderdale, Todd Snider and Tom Littlefield on several tracks, “Hey You” creates a more personal statement than its predecessors.

“Richard [Bennett] brought more of a song sensibility to the sessions,” said Ingram, whose clean-cut good looks belie his gritty musical style. “He had the patience to capture what I wanted to get down, and the awareness that he was producing my record. I wanted to write about some painful stuff that felt honest to me, and he made sure I followed those ideas all the way through.”

Case in point: “Biloxi,” an unnerving ripped-from-life letter from a son to a father who has abandoned his family in Texas for a carefree life in Mississippi.

“It was the first song I wrote for the record, and I believe that it was a turning point for me,” Ingram said. “That kind of rawness . . . was something I had been searching for as a songwriter. To say something difficult and complex--without watering it down--was a very big step.”

And Ingram recognizes the odds he’s up against in a period of lightweight, formula-driven country-pop.

“I firmly believe the time for this kind of music will come,” Ingram said. But even if I never have a commercial breakthrough, I have fans of me, not of a particular song or style. My audience isn’t driven by singles.”

For Ingram, like those who came before him, it’s all about connecting to the Texas songwriting tradition.

“When you listen to someone like Willie, it’s hard to focus on anything else,” he said. “A lot has to do with the freedom of writing songs down here . . . the long line of artists: Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Robert Earl Keen, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and the list goes on and on.

“It’s less about business and billboards, and more about who around your circle is going to like that song. Not to get too brooding about it, but with the exception of maybe a handful of us, we’re all writing songs that are odds-on favorites to not get played on the radio.”

* Jack Ingram & the Beat-Up Ford Band play Saturday at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 71 Fortune Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $6. (949) 585-9000 or www.CrazyHorse2000.com.