w/Gerald Collier, Marc Olsen

Thurs Jan 30, Graceland, 9:30 pm, $7.

Walking up for a recent lunch date, Mudhoney's Steve Turner still looks like the guy who plays guitar on such sludge punk classics as "In 'n' out of Grace," "Burn It Clean," and more recent mindfucks like "Sonic Infusion." But there's something different about the lanky axman now.

First off, there's the slightly bushy brown facial hair and Guatemalan-style knit cap keeping his curly mop in place in a very laid-back, Northern Californian kinda way. Then there's his exclamation, at the end of our conversation, of, "Oh, I totally forgot to talk about how much I love Joan Baez!" But most importantly, there's the upcoming split single with Jesse Sykes (the achingly beautiful "Nothing but the Blues" on Burn Burn Burn) and the full-length due out in May (on a new label started by local PR powerhouse Barbara Mitchell) called Searching for Melody--a collection of sparse, vocal-heavy folk songs that lay Turner's non-punk leanings more bare than a bra-burner's breasts. All of this can only lead to one conclusion, jokingly summed up by Turner himself after finishing a plateful of mock chicken curry: "Steve Turner is a hippie."

Although it wouldn't be obvious to anyone used to watching him work in front of stacked amps, Turner has always had half a heart in the acoustic world. "To me it's all the same," he says of the transition into this solo acoustic project. "All my life, I've liked punk rock and folk music. And because I was raised with it, I know as much about folk as I do about punk. I'm a total collector and fiend," he laughs.

Although Turner's performed with Mudhoney for over a decade--in front of enough people to populate a small country--it wasn't until a little over a year ago that he felt comfortable beginning a solo project.

"Christmas Day [2001] was the first time I picked up a guitar and taught myself how to sing at the same time," he says. "I just sat down with a guitar and decided I was going to learn how to play guitar and sing, and I did. Then I just got more into it. I was working 10-hour shifts doing landscaping, so I'd get up at 6:00 a.m. and play guitar and sing for an hour before I had to work. What made me want to continue was that I could actually chart the progress really quickly, and there was proof I was getting better, and I'd never felt like I was getting better as a guitar player before. Ever. It was never an issue with the kind of stuff I liked to play. But I could actually see that I was getting better, and that was exciting."

Turner is still new to going out alone, though. "[Compared to playing stadiums with Mudhoney], it's way scarier playing by myself. At [my first] show at the Sunset, I think I was actually in a state of shock before I played," he laughs.

Inspired by Irish folk like the Clancy Brothers as much as by Lightning Hopkins, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, and Phil Ochs, Turner rounded up a couple friends (Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters, Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, and Dear John Letters' Johnny Sangster) to record a debut that is as emotionally bare as it is instrumentally delicate. The key to Searching for Melody's warmth is in its unadorned simplicity--and Turner can really sing, especially on the record's final song, an a cappella cover of Dave Van Ronk's "Last Call." "That's about as solo as you can get there," he says of covering the song. "It's a little too scary for me to do live."

Before you come out expecting Turner to turn all Dylan on you, though, he clarifies his vision of the f-word. "I'd call what I'm doing folk, but it's not a very respectful version of folk. The old-timey music people aren't gonna dig it because I'm not reverently doing Carter Family songs or anything like that. My background is punk rock, but I don't need to justify it by calling it punk anything. It's just music I can play by myself on an acoustic guitar."