John Doe, Jesse Dayton McGonigel's Mucky Duck January 22, 2015

With his rich baritone quiver and chiseled American looks, John Doe has been an uber-indie songwriter who survived the swells of his bands X and Knitters while honing a singular style all his own. As co-helmsman and titanic presence in X, he became a gutsy, savvy working-class songster effortlessly channeling Bukowski and the Beats in the ragged glory years of L.A. nights at the Masque and Whisky a Go-Go, where plentiful sweat, scrawled manic graffiti, and mangled three-chord wonders held sway in 1978.

As a gripping poet at heart and fluid-fingered bass player, he remains an unparalleled force that made formerly 'unheard music,' lurid punk with doses of rockabilly and country twang, go viral in the days of watered down college-rock. In the middle of hardcore's buzz-cut scorn and Hollywood Boulevard's leotarded cock-rock, X held their ground as ductile anchors as both the bile and glam swirled.

Decades later, as beards and skinny pants reign, Doe's authentic underdog spirit keeps aglow in the digital landscape of fakery and fuss. He is the grain of salt in the knowledge economy.

Doe's solo career has always been an interesting series of choices highlighting restlessness and choices not made. Though mid-late 1980s X delved deep into honky-tonk (listen to driftin' Doe sing "So Long" on the Live at the Whisky... album), Doe did not put on the sawdust-strewn mask of a bedraggled heartland troubadour.

When X re-united in the mid-1990s and attacked the military complex on hey Zeus!, his records became even more fiercely personal. And though he never really penned a -- hit" -- though "The Golden State" came close -- he has produced a riveting catalog rivaling contemporaries like Paul Westerberg, Peter Case and Bob Mould.

In mid-2014, Yep Roc released the "part scrapbook, part road map" known as The Best of John Doe: This Far, which underscores his intelligence, earnestness, and songcraft rather than the razory rancor of his youth. In Doe's eyes, the realpolitik of the Reagan era has been replaced, or perhaps internalized in a metaphoric tangle, with the interpersonal politics of relationships stretching over years, places and points of conflict. Men are not mere naked, hollow shells. They are lovers figuring out the terrain as the ground shifts underneath. Love, desire, and loyalty rub elbows with disarray, aloneness (rather than loneliness), and botched duties.

Live and loud, Doe's themes come boiling to the surface, though he often tempers them; his humor is never far afield. At the Mucky Duck, he was joined by local legend Jesse Dayton, former Road Kings front man, whose own jests and sarcasm were in ample supply during his short solo set that jump-started the night.

Partly a trailer-park "white trash" ambassador, as Rob Zombie might promulgate him, Dayton is a raucous roots-rock impresario, genial and gifted. Backing Doe did not mean being stuck in back-seat limbo. His guitar work helped launch the night into a kind of jukebox luster.

Doe's set offered something for everyone, covering the breadth of his work with solid-hearted ease. On one hand, quiet moments pervaded, like the sober and sweet "Twin Brothers," explained as an observation of neighboring four year-olds yelled at by an overwrought mother who worked in the control tower of a nearby airport. "Little Tiger" worked the same musical vibe too. The room swayed with domestic charm.

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