Musician Orville Peck Photo: Carlos Santolalla Photo: Carlos Santolalla

We should just get the mask out of the way so we can get to the music. Country music singer Orville Peck obscures his face with a hand-crafted leather mask that obscures all but his blue eyes and covers his mouth with several inches of swaying fringe.

“I bring a very specific aesthetic to what I do,” he says — an understatement.

As a pseudonymous, gay — and masked — country singer who recalls Western performers from decades ago, Peck would stand out even without covering his face. But his affinity for classic country runs deep, and he sees it as simply part of the act.

“I have a lot of philosophical ideas about masks,” he says. “To be an artist who doesn’t show his face but shows other parts of his soul, I have thoughts about that. And on the other hand, Dolly Parton would wear wigs 2-feet high. Johnny Cash was always dressed in black. Merle Haggard always made sure to wink for his mom on camera. These sorts of aesthetic decisions have been in country music since the beginning. And that’s part of what I like about it; everybody brings something different. Who you are at the core is emphasized through that aesthetic. I don’t know why all artists in every genre don’t do it.

“I’d rather be David Bowie than Ed Sheeran.”

More Information Orville Peck When: 7 p.m. March 18 Where: White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N. Main Details: $25; 713-237-0370, whiteoakmusichall.com

Aesthetic established, Peck created a sound with the same deliberate diligence. Last year he released “Pony,” his debut recording with an evocative title that stands as a fitting point of entry into the rest of the album. Peck’s reverence for classic country music is clear, but the way he upends old Western tropes speaks to the artificiality of those tropes. Cowboys are cowboys, and actors play approximations of cowboys. John Wayne and John Ford artificially developed a vision of the Old West that became codified and revered, but it was a vision incubated and hatched in Hollywood. Peck, likewise, has created his own Western vibe. If the surface-level rudiments are theatrical — the sound of cracking whips and such — the care poured into the language and storytelling spills with sincerity.

The song titles on “Pony” read as much like old film-noir titles as Westerns: “Dead of Night,” “Hope to Die,” “Nothing Fades Like the Light.”

“Every single song on ‘Pony,’ except maybe one, is autobiographical,” he states. “A screenwriter or a playwright or author would tell you there are seven or eight stories in the world if we get down to it. It’s how you tell them, that’s what I’m interested in.”

“Dead of Night” is an opaque road story in which the narrator recalls traveling through Nevada with another hustler. Peck, later in the song, takes a wider view, suggesting six years have passed and the men have gone separate ways, as the storyteller looks back fondly on their time together. “Cinematic” is often over-used in describing songs, but, by design, the tune moves like a movie.

Peck calls it, “my most relatable song in a way. Essentially it’s about unrequited love. And that can span a long period of time, at least in my experience. Unrequited love stays with you.”

The sound of “Pony” is also evocative. Peck’s voice can swing upward into a falsetto that recalls Roy Orbison, and he digs the desert-ready sound of guitar tones soaked in reverb. Something about the fusion of the sounds and the stories, though, feels modern.

“The references I make are specific to things that inspire me,” Peck says. “Things from Western culture, cowboy culture, country music, and then extend into the world of theatricality and fashion and cinema and literature. It’s not different from the golden era of country music. One thing about that music is it had to be sincere. So I try to bring a modern perspective to it without it being cosplay as a throwback performer.

“I grew up in a country on a continent that had nothing to do with cowboys.”

Peck, whom Vice magazine says is “presumably older than 20 and younger than 40,” offers few clues about his real identity, which he maintains is unimportant. He says he was born “in the Southern hemisphere,” and says he grew up there. He spent time in Europe. Peck these days is based out of Toronto, where he launched the new persona after years of playing in other punk bands under a different name.

“As a songwriter, I made a lot of different types of music, most of which you can’t play in a punk band,” he says. “So it’s been an interesting journey for me. Not to toot my own horn or whatever, but I think it takes a lot of courage to write a ballad and trust it will keep people captivated.”

Peck has enjoyed watching how audiences react to a show with a more deliberate pace than a rock gig. He’ll string together four or five ballads in a row.

“Whether the energy is fast or slow, you’re still looking to make and maintain a connection,” he says.

In addition to writing in a different style, being Peck allows him to meld varied interests.

“My connection to the figure of a cowboy is pastiche. And I have a sincere connection to country music. I have a broad understanding of its history. Combining those two doesn’t seem strange to me. I love the sincerity of rancher culture and real Appalachian culture. And I love the flamboyancy and drama of homoerotic spaghetti Westerns made by Italian directors.”

Even the title of his album, “Pony,” pulls everything together: not just the stories and the sound, but the aesthetic and the layered approach to motifs.

“Obviously there’s the Western connotation, the pony as the cowboy’s friend,” he says. “And there’s a connotation of something that is seemingly a bit useless in a way, that doesn’t have a specific place, even within its own world. You can doll up a show pony and give it to a 16-year-old girl for her birthday. It’s the lonely creature at the back of the ranch. To me, the lingo has a bit of gay slang connotation. There are gambling connotations. To me, ‘Pony’ captured all of that.”

andrew.dansby@chron.com