Back on Home ‘Turf’ : Pop music: Folk artist Luka Bloom’s third album represents an attempt to ‘get reattached to my family and to Ireland.’ His first tour since 1992 brings him to the Coach House this evening.

One man, one guitar, and an album’s worth of good songs.

It works for Johnny Cash on his acclaimed new release, “American Recordings.”

Now comes Luka Bloom with a strong Irish version of music-making at its simplest and most emotionally direct.

Bloom’s album is titled “Turf,” and like Cash’s, it is meant to affirm the singer’s connection to his national roots. Pausing last week as he packed for his return to the road after a long layoff, Bloom said that his third album grew out of a deliberate attempt to get off the career merry-go-round and spend time renewing his ties to his native turf.

“I felt I had detached myself from Ireland to pursue my work,” he said from his house in central Dublin, where he was up late packing for a transatlantic flight the following morning (Bloom’s first tour since 1992 brings him to the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight and the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Thursday).

“I felt I had to get reattached to my family and to Ireland,” Bloom said. “Being on the road, you lose touch after a couple of years with the progress of other people’s lives, and you become so completely self-absorbed you’re transported into this unreality, or maybe a different reality.

“I come from a large, close family (which includes his 10-year-old son), and I didn’t feel good about being away from them for five years,” he said. “I wanted to acquaint myself in the development and progress in their lives, particularly the younger ones. I needed to be quiet and be still.”

Bloom’s roving began in 1986, when he felt his attempts to launch himself as a singer-songwriter in Ireland had stalled. The erstwhile Barry Moore decided to try his luck in a new place, New York City, with a new name that spliced the title of a Suzanne Vega hit set in New York with the surname of the hero of James Joyce’s Dublin epic, “Ulysses.”

The change of venue helped Bloom get out from under the shadow of his older brother, Christy Moore, long a leading figure in Irish folk music. It also eventually led to touring and recordings that showcased his impassioned, sturdy-voiced singing and his aggressive, hard-strumming take on the folkie idiom.

After the death of his mother two years ago, Bloom decided it was time to step back from his work for a time.

“Sometimes something even as major as the death of a parent can’t stop you in your tracks because you’re so driven,” Bloom said. “I’m glad I stopped and allowed this major event in a person’s life to be absorbed. It allowed me an ongoing relationship with my mother despite her passing.”

Bloom, 39, gives an account of his grieving in “Sanctuary,” the closing song on “Turf.” He says it was important to absorb the loss and experience it as a son before he tried to address it as a songwriter.

“I don’t really write songs in order to come to terms with anything,” he said. “I don’t see it as a form of therapy for me. I generally try to come to terms with things before I write the songs. I’m basically sharing something I experienced, and that I think everybody experiences.”

It’s not hard to trace the lines of direct experience in songs like “Cold Comfort,” an account of Bloom’s struggles while attempting to establish himself on the New York City music scene, or in songs of parting and separation--staple themes of Irish traditional music that have been played out in his own life.

Like Cash, Bloom has a couple of memorable prison songs to his credit--”This Is for Life,” from his 1990 debut album, “Riverside,” and “I Did Time,” one of the new album’s highlights.

“I met this guy on the street in Dublin; he’d just come out of prison after five years,” Bloom recalled. “I said, ‘Five years of your life! What did you do, man?’ He just looked at me and said, ‘I did time.’ I realized how precious time is.

“For some reason I identify with people who were in prison, even though I never was in prison myself,” he explained. “Whether it’s a prisoner of habit or of something they can’t work through, I think everybody has that experience of being trapped in something they can’t get out of. I find myself without too great difficulty capturing a feeling of what it’s like to have my freedom taken away.”

While Cash is the Man in Black, Bloom is the man who sees blue--at least in his songwriting imagination. Having broached the hue in “Exploring the Blue,” from his 1992 release, “The Acoustic Motorbike,” Bloom has added the new numbers “True Blue” and “Blue to Begin” to his catalogue. In none of them is “blue” an emblem for sadness.

“Blue is always a very warm color for me,” he said. “Maybe that’s because the first album I really fell in love listening to was ‘Blue’ by Joni Mitchell. I was trying to seduce a French au pair in Ireland, in a house where the only recordings that existed were a bunch of Irish rebel ballads. The only other one in the pile was ‘Blue’ by Joni Mitchell, for which I’m eternally grateful.”

Bloom recalls that first love, along with the blossoming of his artistic imagination, in “Blue to Begin,” which comes with a dedication to Mitchell. He admits it’s a shameless bid to meet one of his musical heroines.

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Bloom’s previous albums were hardly massive production jobs, but he decided to reduce “Turf” to barest basics because he felt he was most powerful playing on stage in solo shows.

“One reason I wanted to make this a solo album is that I’ve gotten to the point where I crave clarity and simplicity,” Bloom said. “People are bludgeoned with information, not only in the news, but in entertainment. The fast-edit videos, the fast-edit everything.

“I find most of the songs I’m listening to are songs (rendered) very directly, whether it’s Chet Baker or Nina Simone or Bob Marley,” he said. “The way these people communicate to me is very direct. If something can be said beautifully and simply, let it be.”

* Luka Bloom plays tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $15. (714) 496-8930.