Indie cred and commercial appeal are bestowed in equal doses these days to so many members of Paleface's circle - from his newgrass compadres in the Avett Brothers and former roommates Beck and Langhorne Slim to friend Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches and ditty darling Regina Spektor. It would seem the climate is ideal for the type of high-energy, mellow-minded neo-folk that the 39-year-old's been pumping out for nearly two decades now. Neo-folk is old hat to this guy.

"I guess things take a long time to happen in America," he muses via phone somewhere between Dayton and Athens, Ohio as he rolls through his first tour in over a decade. "Joey Ramone talked about that. How long did it take for people to recognize them? Rock 'n' roll seems to be in the hands of the corporate kids now, all that, "Hey, let's layer nine guitars in and throw some vocals on and sound like a Wal-Mart jam session.' And then the music doesn't touch people. Huh."

That's coming from somebody who's been at this game for a while. His musical journey kicked into gear back in 1989 when he met and befriended quirky songwriter Daniel Johnston, who taught him a thing or two about forging his own path.

"Everything he did was so real," Paleface says. "He recorded those songs right when he wrote them. He'd write a song and immediately turn on his little tape recorder and it's right in the moment. He just wrote the lyric and so he's feeling that feeling still and the recording is all fucked up and has that sound. It was a new way to listen to things."

That's when Paleface started writing his own songs, a collection of gritty strummers and eclectic compositions anchored by the lyrics and growl that made Tom Waits famous. While playing out in 1990, sometimes with his roommate Beck on NYC's Lower East Side, Paleface was discovered by iconic journalist and punk producer Danny Fields (The Stooges, The Ramones), who took him under his wing as his manager. This provided further inspiration to continue his outside-the-box approach on albums that are still referenced by fans. Signed to major label Sire, with praise from Rolling Stone and the like, Paleface thought his trajectory was up and away, but Sire, who also had signed Beck, released and put their force behind Beck's groundbreaking Odelay and left Paleface behind.

Booze became a bigger part of Paleface's life then. In 1997, on tour with the alcohol-as-a-badge-of-honor Breeders, his drinking led to uncontrollable shakes. The tour fizzled, as did the album the Breeders were nursing at the time. A failed liver nearly took his life.

"I had a checkered career in the '90s," he says, "and I hit a wall and had some serious problems. I had to convalesce in Brooklyn, but once I did, I slowly came back onto the scene."

When he did, he found it ready for a resurgence.

"I just jumped right back into this very creative group of songwriters," he says. "Like the Avetts or Langhorne [Slim]. They've got that rock thing going on, but it's so raw, and still acoustic. There's such a need for it. The cheese factor in the mainstream is staggering."

He released The Multibean Bootleg around that time, and it's still got legs at the merch table (along with Volume II). He leaned further toward Americana and his slide guitar at this time, creating the band Just About To Burn and concocting an album that Seth Avett called his "favorite all-time record by a friend."

In 2004, Paleface moved down to Langhorne and the Avetts' territory in North Carolina and has been slowly starting his upward trajectory again. His distinctive pipes can be heard on tracks from the Avetts' Emotionalism and Four Thieves Gone. The brothers feature prominently on "I Can See the Light," the standout final track on Paleface's most recent, A Different Story, an album that meanders between sunny melodies and campfire cavorting.

In October, with Monica "Mo" Samalot on drums, Paleface struck out on a tour as a simple duo, lending his new and old songs alike a stripped-down but high-energy rendering. "We're just slowly branching out," he says. "Some of the other guys are ahead of us but we've been doing it longer."

Samalot, a 29-year-old who was born in Puerto Rico and moved as a college student to NYC, likes to classify what she and Paleface are making as "folkcore," to wit "acoustic music, but with high energy."

While he used to delve deeply, mining for grand themes in his music, he's more content these days just trying to make a good song.

"If I can sing it in my head and it makes me happy or it makes me think of something important, that's it," he says. "This tour, it's been great. I'm going to all these places I've been before, but everywhere we go is like the first time I've been there, the first time I can remember anyway. So that's nice too."

Paleface, Tom Evanchuck: 9 p.m. Saturday, May 10 at Wilbert's, 812 Huron Rd. E., 216.902.4663. Tickets: $8.