O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Country Singer Puts It in Words : Jimmie Dale Gilmore spreads charm, poetry around the Crazy Horse, and the audience responds enthusiastically.

You’ve got to hand it to the folks who run the Crazy Horse Steak House for booking Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

A singer-songwriter from Texas, Gilmore is as much like your typical country musician as sushi is like a McDonald’s fish sandwich. Of course, each of those culinary creations has its fans, and Gilmore packed the Crazy Horse Monday night as tightly as the mainstream, radio-friendly country acts that dominate the club’s schedule. But what a difference in content.

When was the last time you were in a country bar and heard an anecdote resembling nothing so much as a Zen koan?

“Have you ever thought about the fact that when you watch ‘MTV Unplugged’ . . . it’s on television ?”

True, the crowd did greet that observation of Gilmore’s with the sound of one hand clapping. But it was one of the few times during the 90-minute set that anything passing his lips met with less than boisterous approval.

One would expect this 48-year-old musician, who spent years studying Hindu as well as honky-tonk philosophy, to get the well-considered accolades of pop music critics for his thoughtful, often elliptical lyrics.

But even Gilmore must have been a little surprised by the girlish squeals that erupted during his cover of Elvis Presley’s 1956 hit “I Was the One.” A hunka-hunka burnin’ love Gilmore’s not.

Then again, the wiry singer’s aw-shucks humility on stage is a considerable part of his charm. It comes across as a genuine expression of his personality, not as a guise fabricated for maximum audience appeal.

His widely praised 1993 album (and first major-label release) “Spinning Around the Sun” has bolstered his cache of loyalists. It was a welcome sight to see the Crazy Horse filled to its 275-seat capacity, especially as country radio largely has ignored Gilmore’s records.

It was equally clear Monday that a good portion of those in the house know of Gilmore’s long-time association with fellow Texans Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. They all played together in the early ‘70s as the Flatlanders, and they still exchange songs with each other like neighbors lending garden tools.

Gilmore drew a wave of hearty applause when he mentioned Ely, who has recorded a number of his songs. “This is a song I wrote 100 years ago. Joe Ely sang it, but now I’m taking it back again,” Gilmore said by way of launching into a fiery rendition of “Dallas” (which he further introduced as “a medley of my greatest hit”).

Appealing as such banter was, the best thing about Gilmore was his songs, which allow a listener to think, to feel and even to wonder about their meaning. Gilmore is a refreshing alternative to the Nashville song-factory writers who churn out stereotyped characters instead of real people and put them in stock situations so they may behave predictably.

It’s possible to admire the sheer poetry of Gilmore’s writing in “Where You Going” even without necessarily understanding whether he’s speaking literally or figuratively:

I’ve seen crimson roses

Growing through a chain link fence

I’ve seen crystal visions

Sometimes they don’t make sense

You can see the future

It don’t make no difference

Just don’t talk about it

Babe you know I love the suspense

Such enigmatic lines establish a twangy yin to the yang of the direct professions of emotion Gilmore tapped with his heartbreaking reading of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” In fact, a subtle note of philosophical duality underscored the show. At one point, underscoring his neither-fish-nor-fowl status, Gilmore announced: “I have to apologize if my music isn’t country enough for you. Or if it’s too country.”

Gilmore doesn’t so much sing his lyrics as coerce them to leave his larynx. It’s not a polished voice--which may be one of the reasons country radio steers clear of him--yet it is all the more effective for its plain-folks, direct quality.

And he inflects every line with a vocal quaver that can pierce the shields so many of us use against the pain of real life every day.

Everything in the set--from his own songs to the Presley and Williams classics to such little-known gems as Johnny Cash’s sublime “I Still Miss Someone”--was enhanced immeasurably by Gilmore’s exquisite four-member band. Time after time, guitarist Dan Yates and guitarist-keyboardist-mandolinist Chris Gage supplied just the right licks. At the end of the set, everybody--including opening act Monte Warden and his band--joined in on “Oh Boy,” an inspired rave-up homage to Buddy Holly, another of Texas’ musical sons.

In his own 40-minute set, Warden, the former leader of the country-rock Wagoneers, sang a lot of the greatest songs Buddy Holly never wrote. The set was, like Warden’s 1993 debut solo album, a fun-filled neo-rockabilly romp. But Warden remained a bit too close to his rock and R&B; influences (Holly, the Beatles, Brenton Wood, Wilson Pickett) to leave himself enough room to establish his own identity.

A less-than-ideal sound mix didn’t help; it left Warden struggling to rise above the instrumental foundation (which included a string of exhilarating solos by guitarist David Murray). Still, with his enthusiastic, knee-knocking, shoulder-shrugging physicality and his bagful of eminently hummable if sometimes lightweight material, Warden earned the enthusiastic ovation he got.