Ketchum in the Act : Texan Puts On a Near-Revelatory Exhibition of Emotion, Exceeding His Album’s Made-in-Nashville Style

If the domain of country music were one big metropolis, Nashville would be a moneyed, well-ordered neighborhood founded on commerce and convention, while Austin, Tex., would be a bohemian loft district across the tracks, full of scruffy, art-first eccentrics with holes in their pants.

Hal Ketchum is the latest member of the Texas bohemian school to try life on the other side of the tracks. Originally from Upstate New York, Ketchum honed his craft in Austin, where songs are supposed to be earthy and honest, and musicians are supposed to sing and play with true grit. Jerry Jeff Walker, an ex-New Yorker like Ketchum, is one of the deans of the Austin country scene. Walker usually doesn’t have much nice to say about the way they operate in Nashville.

Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith are some of the worthy, art-first Texas singer-songwriters who gravitated to Nashville because that’s where the money is, but never were really embraced by the main line country Establishment.

Now comes Ketchum, who had an obscure independent release on a small Texas label, then migrated to Nashville to take his first high-profile shot. The result, “Past the Point of Rescue,” is a good album that maintains some of those Austin virtues. It offers a simple, plain-spoken songwriting approach that tries to take a closer, more personal look at emotional situations than you’ll find in most of the cliched, surface-oriented stuff churned out by Nashville song mills.

But the record also comes with a made-in-Nashville precision and restraint, in which a good deal of that Texas gumption gets lost. Far from a rambunctious Earle or Joe Ely, Ketchum sounds like an heir to the ‘70s countrified soft rock of a J.D. Souther.

Wednesday night at Cowboy Boogie Co., that smoother Hal from Nashville was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we got something much better: an intense Ketchum from Texas.

Along with his band (made up by three of his old buddies from Austin), Ketchum put on a near-revelatory exhibition of unceasing, clenched emotion and powerful, committed ensemble playing far beyond any expectations raised by his album.

Ketchum was a reserved figure with chiseled features, graying hair and eyebrows that were dark Dukakis gashes. He said next to nothing, aside from polite expressions of appreciation to a responsive crowd. Going in, one would have thought such a laconic approach would be a formula for a dragging evening. Ketchum’s whole repertoire has a serious, often dark cast, heavy on tales of broken love. Even his lively country-rock hit, “Small Town Saturday Night,” is at heart a story of desperation.

A performer who is going to present 85 minutes made up mostly of musical melancholia usually needs to show a light, raconteur’s touch between songs to keep things from becoming oppressive.

Instead of hamming it up, Ketchum and his band simply turned up the intensity to a level that swept away any need for conventional showmanship. When passion is streaming out of every song, the last thing a singer has to do is stop and tell a joke.

Ketchum sang with a big, fervent voice that swelled with emotion on a grand scale, yet never seemed forced. He was no wordsmith, singing songs almost devoid of clever wordplay and detailed images. But the songs hit home because they recounted episodes that seemed true, and were performed in a way truly felt.

On the surface, sentiments like this one from “Baby I’m Blue,” a gripping anthem that closed the set, seem almost banal: “Oh baby I’m blue, I just don’t understand what happened to me and you.” Ketchum’s delivery fleshed out the anguish underlying those plain words; a similar depth of feeling lent immediacy to the commonplace verities of the wistful “I Know Where Love Lives” and “Old Soldiers.”

Ketchum’s guitarist, Scott Neubert, was at least an equal partner in painting the songs with rich emotional colors. Switching from Telecaster to Strat to lap steel guitar, he often struck a brilliant combination of beauty and thick-toned brawn.

At peak moments, Neubert massaged bending, throaty cries from the Strat that called to mind the plaintive lyricism of David Lindley’s ‘70s work behind Jackson Browne. The set reached an epic peak on “Past the Point of Rescue,” with the lead guitar probing and soaring while the rest of the band galloped forward.

For changes of pace, Ketchum resorted to strong outside material such as the Bo Diddley-beat “Ain’t Leavin’ Your Love,” by Townes Van Zandt, one of the heroes of the Texas country songwriter scene. Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” kicked off with a sprightly oom-pah beat that marked a nice transition after a succession of weighty songs.

Little Feat’s “Willin’ ” opened the encore, embellished with a gospel harmony intro and some sweet, lonesome harmonies between Ketchum and bassist Roland Denney. Ketchum exited with a driving, Allman Brothers-flavored country-blues run through “Freeborn Man,” a Mark Lindsay composition.

The mild-mannered Ketchum asked near the end if maybe the folks in Anaheim would be willing to have him back someday. Any time, pal, any time.