Truth Be Told : The Fact Is, Katy Moffatt’s Spirit Is Most Willing When the Material’s Sincere

At times Katy Moffatt sings with an angelic grace. And she chose two religious-themed numbers (“St. Anthony With Broken Hands,” “Nazareth to Bethlehem”) for her latest release. But for this singer-songwriter, spirituality centers around finding not faith but the truth.

“I think the only kinship I feel to the spiritual world is in the depth of soulful music,” Moffatt said by phone recently from her Studio City home. “What I’m attracted to is the truthful edge of witnessing, and I don’t mean in a religious way. I don’t have that kind of background. But there’s a certain depth or intensity of someone’s personal witnessing of some experience or event. Like, what I get from Hank Williams is the voice of truth. In listening to his songs, I know he’s a reliable, credible observer.”

With a musical palette that spills over into folk, rock, blues and country idioms, Moffatt is also convincing on many levels. Vulnerable or sassy, her voice can gently soothe or ache one moment and rock--even bite--the next. Backed by local guitarist Rick Shea and ex-Dwight Yoakam fiddler Brantley Kerns, Moffatt will appear Wednesday night at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

She stretched her skills as a songstress throughout last year’s “Midnight Radio” (Watermelon Records), with songs from bluesy, growling declarations of female independence (“Sojourner Truth [Ain’t I a Woman]” and “If You Can’t Stand the Heat”) to a twangy snapshot of Williams’ tumultuous marriage (“Hank and Audrey”) to an imagery-laden musing (“Wings of a Blackbird”). The collection also includes a reworking of Phil Ochs’ ballad “The Highwayman,” plus “Rosa’s Favorite Son,” described by Moffatt as “an observation of the fallout from Proposition 187.”

The album’s title track is poignant. An autobiographical account of falling in love with music as a child in Fort Worth, Texas, “Midnight Radio” warmly reminisces about Moffatt’s coming of age.

*

“I wanted to write a song about the experiences of my pre-adolescent days, where I came home from school, ate dinner, and, before going to bed, I’d set my clock-radio for midnight,” recalled Moffatt, who left Texas in 1979 to pursue a music career in Los Angeles. “I would listen to Top 40 radio, do my homework and not be interrupted. It was my favorite part of the day because it was the only time that was truly my own.”

The young Moffatt particularly enjoyed hearing Jimmy Webb songs (“By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman”), but it was “El Paso”--Marty Robbins’ famous gunfighter ballad--that inspired her first purchase of a 45 record.

“At that time radio actually reflected the tastes of the community, and I became a great participant in that process,” she said. “The local station would have listeners call in to choose songs we wanted to see added to their playlist. So there I was . . . on the phone at 1 in the morning casting my vote.”

Moffatt bought her first guitar after hearing the Beatles in 1964. She later became a fan of singer-songwriters including Tom Rush, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen and Phil Ochs. Tracy Nelson and Ella Fitzgerald became vocal touchstones.

In the mid-’70s, Moffatt emerged as a singer-songwriter in her own right, playing the nightclub and coffeehouse circuit in Santa Fe, N.M.; Austin, Texas; and Denver. The latter stopover led to a deal with Columbia Records. She started six albums, finished three and watched in disappointment as the label released two. Columbia dropped her, she said, because “its brass couldn’t figure out how to market someone who didn’t fit into narrowly defined categories.”

She knew the same thing had happened to many other artists: “A label will be attracted to an act, sign the person, and then try to change the very thing they were attracted to in the first place.”

In 1986, at the Kerrville Music Festival in Texas, Moffatt met musicians Andrew Hardin and Tom Russell, a respected veteran of the country-roots-rock community. He and Moffatt co-wrote eight of the twelve songs on “Midnight Radio” in a partnership that continues.

“It’s just been a wonderful experience [collaborating] with Tom,” said Moffatt, who is in her 40s. “We’ve probably written 50 songs together. We just seem to exchange ideas whenever we cross paths . . . then later we somehow develop them into full-blown songs.”

Since her disappointment with the corporate-size machinery, Moffatt has released four albums on Philo Records, a subsidiary of the folk-based Rounder Records, and two more on her current label, Austin-based Watermelon. Working on a smaller scale has restored her self-confidence, she says.

“I truly believe it’s possible to prosper working outside of the mainstream and apart from the majors,” Moffatt said. “With the indies, you can carefully forge real, potentially long-lasting relationships. I now have the opportunity to make the kinds of records that I want to make.”

* Katy Moffatt will appear Wednesday at the Long Beach Museum of Art, 2300 E. Ocean Blvd. 7 p.m. $8-$11 (children under 12 free). (562) 439-2119.