John Doe and his lonesome guitar look beyond Americana

As “Sunlight” from John Doe’s 2016 album, The Westerner, comes to a heart-rending close, the guitarist, singer, and bass player with first-wave Los Angeles punk band X sings, “He tried to suffocate in a Hollywood bed. He tried to starve in an L.A. barroom. He tried to bury all his words with words.”

Long after the song has ended, it’s never clear whether it’s a tale of redemption or a lament for a character who exists out of time and place. The story could be set in the southwestern U.S. of the 1860s, or it could be unfolding tonight.

Soaring atonement and reflection guide The Westerner as one man struggles to make sense of his life in a sun-baked landscape, surrounded by mountains, deserts and patches of flourishing tall grass. It’s a psychedelic writing style that gives a cinematic touch to Doe’s decades-long drift toward Americana’s outlying territories.

“It’s become a goal to remove modern pop references from my songs so they can have a timeless quality,” Doe says.

Born John Nommensen Duchac, Doe has spent a lifetime playing music with X, Canadian indie rockers the Sadies and various other outfits. He has acted in episodes of “CSI: Miami” and “Law & Order,” and films such as Roadhouse and Boogie Nights. At 63 years old, Doe has already lived a life that most songwriters only dream of. Yet his salt-of-the-earth demeanor and singular sense of punk poetry rhythm, and melody reach new highs with The Westerner.

Much of the album’s characters and journeys were written with Michael Blake in mind. Blake was the author of the novel and screenplay for the Oscar-winning film Dances With Wolves. He was also Doe’s close friend before he died of heart failure in 2015.

“I used him — with some poetic license — as the basis for some of the characters in the songs, like ‘Sunlight,’” Doe says. “He had red hair, and there was some question as to whether his dad was really his dad’s brother. But any songwriter who says they’re not writing about themselves, in some way, isn’t being completely honest.”

He laughs about the audacity of singing about such sordid affairs — now.

“It’s OK to say these kinds of things now. Everyone who’s involved has passed away. But wow!”

Two causes that Blake took up in life were Native American rights and wild horses. Both are iconic images of the American West, and rich fodder for the imagination amid the cacti and scenic landscapes that Doe sings about in songs such as “Sweet Reward,” “Rising Sun,” and “Alone in Arizona,” the latter of which is cover plucked from his X bandmate Exene Cervenka’s 2011 album, The Excitement of Maybe. Cat Power’s Chan Marshall sings backup on the somber “A Little Help,” and Debbie Harry harmonizes on the album’s most rocking number “Go Baby Go.”

For his current round of touring, though, “It’s just me and my lonely guitar,” Doe says. “You can get to a more mysterious version of rock ’n’ roll when playing by yourself. Plus it’s easier to take requests.”

The Westerner arrived in April 2016, the same month Doe released his memoir, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk, and two years after releasing The Best of John Doe: This Far (Yep Roc). Expect him to dig deep while showing off the personality and vulnerability that has guided everything from his introspective songs with X to his homage to a fallen friend.

“People love it when you walk a tightrope on stage, and fall off the tightrope, but nobody gets hurt,” Doe says. “I’ll step out to the point where I don’t really know where I’m going, which is scary, but it’s always rewarding.”