High-Tech Look at an Old--Fashioned Strummer : WILLIE NELSON: “Willie--The Life and Music of Willie Nelson” Graphix Zone (** 1/2)

For a guy who’s been strumming the same battered, gash-topped guitar for decades, and who has a close encounter with a razor less frequently than we change Presidents, an interactive CD-ROM seems an awfully high-tech thing to do.

But since Willie Nelson also happens to be one of the most prolific and gifted singer-songwriters in all of country music, as well as a part-time actor and full-time character, there’s a lot he can bring to the medium.

Not of all it shows up on this effort for the same Irvine company that created pioneering pop CD-ROMs for Prince and Bob Dylan.

The $39.95 list price makes this one more affordable than some of the most elaborate music CD-ROMs. But it’s a letdown in some respects, especially for anyone who has tasted the in-depth potential realized by some Voyager/Microsoft projects and even earlier Graphix Zone discs.

It fulfills the basics by providing a good overview of the artist’s life and career, starting with his birth in 1933 and bringing us up through his current album, “Spirit,” released last spring.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of photos spanning that career supply a generous visual element along with often-pithy snippets of video and audio interviews with Nelson himself, his sister and longtime bandmate Bobbie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and others.

One of the treats is an anecdote about a young and nervous Willie waiting outside while veteran songwriter Hank Cochran pitched a song to Patsy Cline that Nelson had written recently: “Crazy.” A video clip from Porter Waggoner’s TV show in 1964 shows a shockingly cleanshaven and strikingly handsome young Willie singing “She’s Not For You.”

The disc is organized via main-menu categories of “Music,” “Lyrics,” “Life,” “Trivia” (a game), “Concert” and “World HQ,” each of which has its own sub-menus. The CD-ROM even includes a computerized dominoes game (dominoes evidently are big on Willie’s tour bus). It would take a good eight to 10 hours to get through all the material here.

Still, it comes up short of the comprehensive look at an artist as important as Nelson (who plays tonight and Tuesday with Leon Russell at the Coach House). He has created an astonishingly deep body of work over nearly half a century, though complete recordings of only 12 songs and lyrics to just 32 are included here. It’s also missing a full discography or Billboard numbers for the nearly 80 hit singles he’s charted since 1962.

Graphix Zone’s more expensive Dylan CD-ROM, for instance, included a database of all his song lyrics, plus a rundown of every artist who ever recorded any of them. Such a treatment would be ideal for Nelson, whose music has been covered by performers from Faron Young to L7.

Even the songs that are represented aren’t all key songs from the Nelson songbook. And there’s too little in the way of artistic context provided, although veteran pop-music critic Chet Flippo offers brief insights into the significance of such Nelson cornerstone albums as “Phases and Stages” and “Red-Headed Stranger.” Most of that is woven into the “Life” section of biographical and career highlights.

Nelson’s music could justifiably support an entire section analyzing its impact on country music in particular and pop music in general, how his style has evolved over the years and what makes his songs unique musically.

“Willie--The Life and Music of Willie Nelson” is the equivalent of a nicely packaged two- or maybe even three-CD boxed set in terms of the amount of material it covers. But Nelson’s music is easily worthy of an eight- to 10-CD treatment.

* Willie Nelson and Leon Russell play tonight and Tuesday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $50-$52. (714) 496-8930.