Forbert Uses Song Energy to Keep Plugging Away : Pop music: He loves his work, despite being labeled a ‘new Dylan’ and having record company problems. He plays at the Coach House on Saturday.

“The new Dylan.”

It’s an unfortunate tag, and it has been used to exploit dozens of musicians over the years, to peg each as the “voice of a generation.” And it seems to have a curse upon it: The inevitable backlash it triggers seems to have stunted the career growth of such fine singer/songwriters as Phil Ochs, Loudon Wainwright III and John Prine as well as Steve Forbert, who will play solo at the Coach House Saturday night.

Actually, in 1978 when Forbert burst upon the scene in New York City, “new Dylan” already was a cliche. Still, when his “Best of” anthology was released last year, the term popped up again in the liner notes--as it does yet again on his current press bio, all much to his chagrin.

“I really like to think I’ve outlived that reference,” he said a few days ago on the phone from a studio in Nashville. “I just see it as being something from way in the past, and I don’t even want to comment on it.”

It’s not hard to understand his discomfort. After a heavily hyped and successful start, his career came to a crashing halt in 1983, after only three albums. Butting heads with his label, Columbia, over the direction of his future recordings, he sank into a legal labyrinth that prevented him from releasing anything until 1986.

Three years without product can be an eternity in pop music, and he found that the demand for his work had all but evaporated. With neither a label nor a substantial following, he was back to square one.

Although many might have packed it in or at least become embittered, Forbert hammered away at a new beginning, moving to Nashville, starting a new band, buying a van and hitting the bar circuit in backwater towns throughout the country.

“I chopped away at the legal difficulties like it was just a 9-to-5 thing I had to deal with, but the real story was that the songs were still happening,” he said in his still-slow drawl, a product of his rural Mississippi upbringing.

“The whole deal of it is energy, and for me, where that comes from is the songs. And I had a lot of songs come along in that period that I liked, so I felt like, ‘Hey, this is still happening.’ ”

Personal, compelling songs are what Forbert has always been about, whether they’ve been the eye-blinking, “golly gee” output of his early country-boy-in-the-big-city period or the more somber, experience-tempered material from his down years.

Always, through various stylistic changes and backing groups, he sounded like himself, an honest and questioning voice with a journalist’s sense of observation and a folk singer’s gift for melody.

“In 1978 they said I was out of sync,” he said. “But I’m not gonna come to New York and say, ‘The thing now seems to be Graham Parker and Elvis Costello, so how can I fit in?’ It’s never been like that. I’m not a person who is interested in responding to trends. I’m not saying I’m too clever for that or above it or anything; I’m just saying my feeling for music has always been a simple sort of approach. I do what I feel.”

His never-say-die outlook paid off, at least to a degree, in 1988 when he was signed by Geffen Records. A pair of albums brought a renewal of critical acclaim, but sales were less than staggering, and after the release of “The American in Me” in 1992, he found himself again without a label.

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Still undaunted, he is finishing up an album he hopes will be released early next year, with Garry Tallent of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band on bass, Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers on keyboards, longtime associate Clay Barnes on guitar and drummer Roger Clark, who played on Forbert’s “Jackrabbit Slim” album back in ’79.

Forbert said he is close to finalizing a deal with a new label but didn’t want to jinx things by disclosing which one. He was, as usual, notably enthusiastic about the music itself.

“I’m really happy with this thing. The main thing is, the band I put together for this album really happened. They hadn’t worked together before but it came out perfect. After a lot of work, I’m really happy with the way these four players worked with me.

“The new songs are a little more abstract. The last album was really concrete, you know? For this one, I wanted to do songs that are a little more, dare we say, out of the ordinary.”

At 39, with enough experience behind him to write a pretty nasty book about the music biz, he maintains an optimistic, almost childlike naivete. He loves his music, and he still has the goals of a young dreamer.

“I have a problem, which is that I’m still way into doing this. I’d like to get back to touring with a band. I’d like to tour with a certain amount of comfort to it. I’d like to play in theaters. That would be nice.”

* Steve Forbert opens for Al Stewart and Laurence Juber on Saturday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $17.50. (714) 490-8930.