POP MUSIC REVIEW : Johnny Paycheck Calms Down and Cashes In : In his career-spanning set at the Coach House, the veteran country singer taps into real-life experiences that honky-tonk wanna-bes only sing about.

To the folks doing the electric slide up at the Denim and Diamonds nightclub in Huntington Beach, the epitome of country music may be a squeaky-clean cowboy with a degree in marketing singing a Billy Joel song through his nose. Down at the Coach House on Tuesday night, however, veteran country singer Johnny Paycheck gave an enthusiastic crowd a look at the other side of country music: the tear-your-heart-out, puke-in-your-beer, blue-collar grit of country’s soulful roots.

During his 70-minute set, Paycheck led his audience through a tour through the seamy underbelly of honky tonks, jails and romance. In a style of music that has suddenly become as fashionable as a Calvin Klein jeans ad, Paycheck is the real thing.

Today’s young honky-tonk hunks may sing about being born to lose, but Paycheck knows what it is like to have the world in your grasp--only to let it slip through your fingers. An enormously talented singer and songwriter, Paycheck has reached the heights of country stardom more than once in the past 25 years and thrown it all away because of his own excesses.

Achieving his greatest success in the country Outlaw movement of the mid-’70s, Paycheck went beyond Outlaw chic and ended up in the slammer for two years on an aggravated-assault charge that resulted from a 1985 barroom shooting.

Released early last year, Paycheck was more toned down and focused on his music Tuesday than he has been in years. Looking almost patrician with gray hair and a pot belly, Paycheck whipped through a 16-song set that included material spanning his career from his first hit in 1965, “A-11,” to Wynn Stewart’s “Waltz of the Angels,” from a new Paycheck album that he said will be released early next year.

While in the past he has often seemed aggravated and defensive on stage, on Tuesday Paycheck was relaxed enough to make fun of his wild reputation. Taking a sip from a glass mug with a dark liquid in it, he remarked with a wink, “In case you were wondering, that’s coffee. They won’t let me have nothing anymore--Heh! Heh! Heh!” Later he said, “A while back I had to go away on a little vacation, all expenses paid. I’m laughing at it now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time.”

Although only his signature tune, “Take This Job and Shove It,” reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard country charts, Paycheck elevated almost every song in his set to No. 1 status.

“Here’s one I wrote for George Jones that went to No. 1,” Paycheck said before singing “Once You’ve Had the Best,” a No. 3 hit for Jones. “We took this song to No. 1 in 1972,” Paycheck said to introduce his 1974 No. 12 hit “For a Minute There.” And, “This is a little blues song we wrote a few years back. We went to No. 1 with it,” Paycheck said of his 1976 No. 34 hit, “11 Months and 29 Days.”

But whatever their actual Billboard chart positions, every song in Paycheck’s set belongs in the all-time Top 10 of country soul, and he sang each with utter conviction. Paycheck is in the same league as his friend George Jones when it comes to his ability to wring every drop of emotion out of a lyric.

Whether it was the pleas of a desperate lover on his 1972 hit “She’s All I Got,” or the frustrated defiance of “Take This Job and Shove It,” Paycheck sang each as though he had lived it, which, in many cases, he probably had.

The show was opened by the Honky Tonk Hellcats, a local group that combined a triple-guitar attack, reminiscent of such Southern rock bands as the Allman Brothers, with the fiddle and high harmonies associated with bluegrass.

The group touched a number of bases in its one-hour set including Southern rock, Western swing, bluegrass and honky tonk. Although the six-man band showed it could handle a variety of sounds, the style-jumping made its set seemed unfocused. The group would do better to stick to its strengths, such as its rip-roaring cover of the 1964 Connie Smith hit “Once a Day.” The Hellcats will be at the Marine Room in Laguna Beach Nov. 27-28.