Nobody Is Really Limited to 1 Jude

Any struggling singer-songwriter spiraling toward hopelessness might look to Jude as, if not quite a patron saint, then at least a reminder that good things can happen to talented people.

Five years ago, having transplanted himself from Boston to Los Angeles with a vague idea of writing and shopping some songs, Jude was just another hopeful amateur with dreams about to give way to disillusionment.

Well, not just another amateur. His supple, wide-ranging voice, capable of soaring to a clear, firm, effortless falsetto, would stand out in any crowd of aspiring popsters. Back then, it quickly won him fans on the L.A. club circuit. Now it stands out even in the company he’s been keeping since getting his big break.

Jude first surfaced a year ago on the “City of Angels” film soundtrack CD, a lone obscurity sandwiched between Peter Gabriel and Eric Clapton on a star-stuffed collection also featuring tracks from U2, Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, Jimi Hendrix, John Lee Hooker, Paula Cole and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Riding those coattails on an album that has sold 4.7 million copies, according to SoundScan, probably has netted Jude a nice six-figure sum in songwriting royalties. Now he is on tour, trying to draw attention to his debut album, “No One Is Really Beautiful,” as he opens for the Cranberries, looks forward to a coming tour with Ben Folds Five and plays a few headlining dates in clubs, including one tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana.

Speaking this week over a pay phone somewhere along the road from San Francisco to L.A., the erstwhile Michael Jude Christodal talked in a no-nonsense, clipped delivery about some of the experiences that contributed to the acerbic side of an album that oscillates between aching balladry, folk-pop tunes with the cheeky energy of a young Dylan or Donovan and sour reflections on the phoniness and superficial values rife in the entertainment industry and popular culture.

Jude, 29, said he had gulped a deep, sour draught of what it’s like to be a nobody in Hollywood. Among the series of low-paying jobs he held were gofer positions in a casting agency and on film or TV sets. Jude said he thought they might set him up for some sort of break in the entertainment business. All that broke was a long-held illusion about Los Angeles as a magical place to be.

“It was just [a matter of] people not being what they seemed to be, people using each other and being cruel,” Jude said. “Growing up watching movies, then seeing what’s behind it--it’s ugly, just the way the different tiers of people [are treated].” Jude said there were times he quit on the spot when his underling status put him in the line of abuse.

“Music seemed like an oasis to me from that,” he said. But even there, as he made his way playing solo-acoustic sets, he had some experiences that leave him sounding more than a little jaundiced.

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Playing clubs such as Highland Grounds, Largo and the Mint, Jude grabbed attention with his voice, with melodies that made good use of it and with lyrics that at their best show a nice way with narrative and with pithy, thematically apt pop-cultural references.

“Many people in the record industry told me, ‘If you were someplace else, you would be signed and on your way,’ ” he said. “If I’d known before I left [Boston] what it was like, I probably wouldn’t have come to Los Angeles.”

But his luck turned when Madonna’s (and Alanis’) label, Maverick, signed him. Then his melancholy pledge of loyalty, “I Know,” with its soaring falsetto climax, landed on the “City of Angels” soundtrack.

The first blush of success has been “a lot different than I thought,” Jude said. “You have dreams, and by the time they [are realized], you’ve moved on to other dreams.”

Jude grew up in a family that sang together; he says some of his earliest memories were of being sung to sleep by his father, and playing “name that tune” on car rides, where everyone would sing the intended stumpers. By high school, people were calling him by his middle name. He played in an acoustic duo in college but didn’t start writing his own songs until around the time of his move to L.A.

“The first few songs I wrote were like country songs, a James Taylor vibe. I tried to write songs that were truthful. I also was listening to KROQ, hearing Nirvana, and I was writing on this old nylon guitar, thinking it was going to have that kind of fullness to it.”

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Jude won’t discuss his more personal songs, the best of which is “I Do,” a poignant, bittersweet tune that’s cast as an R.S.V.P. to a wedding invitation from an old flame for whom he still carries a torch. Like other strong cuts on his album, it places Jude in a bracket with such successful and diversified smart-pop purveyors as Ben Folds Five and Barenaked Ladies.

“I wrote the personal songs, and people start asking personal questions. I’ve got to leave some things [private],” he said.

Well, writers can always have fun filling space with plays on his name. Jude says he thinks the single-name performing moniker is “a little pretentious,” that he had intended to use his last name as well, but that the “City of Angels” track went out under the name Jude (no Christodal) and that was that.

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Which leaves him open to would-be witticisms playing on his namesakes: the patron saint of hopeless causes (see above), the titular character of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel “Jude the Obscure” (see above) and, of course, the famous Beatles song.

Do people come up to him and start singing the refrain to “Hey Jude” in lieu of “hello”?

“All the time,” Jude said wearily. “I’m oblivious to it.”

But what if someday a whole club, theater or arena full of people, instead of hooting and hollering and stamping their feet when he leaves the stage, should instead break into a loving chorus of “Na-na-na-nananana, nananana, Hey Jude”?

“Ha, ha, ha,” Jude chuckled. “That would be cool. ‘Hey, Me.’ ”

* Jude, Michael Miller, Tim Moyer and Brooke Ramel play tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $8-$10. (714) 957-0600.