I was thinking this on the L train, intent on bursting my own bubble
How long should an artist struggle before it isn’t worth the hassle
And admit we aren’t fit to be the ones inside the castle
This quest for greatness (or at least hipness) just a scam and too much trouble
But then what makes one human being worthy of an easy ride
Born to be a natural artist you love or hate but can’t deny
While us minions in our millions tumble into history’s chasm
We might have a couple of laughs but we’re still wastes of protoplasm

Jeffrey Lewis is a complicated guy. He is musician, a rock star, you might say, but he is also a comic book artist, and sometimes even a teacher. Putting on these different hats leads to some pretty interesting questions, and luckily for us, we get to see the psychic drama unfold in Lewis’ meticulously told stories.

Emerging in the burgeoning “anti-folk” scene, Lewis credits his growth largely to the fertile musical territory of his college, SUNY-Purchase, which has recently produced him and Regina Spektor, Langhorne Slim and a coterie of other artists.

“At that time it was a very cheap, very dinky art school,” he said. “I was actually a Literature Major myself, not art or music. But it was a cheap art school, and thus you had a lot of broke creative-minded people in a very boring environment, there was no entertainment budget, there was nothing to do, there was no ‘college town’ nearby, we were 2,000 people trapped on a desert island made of bricks. It was either make your own entertainment or die of boredom.”

So he made his own entertainment, which has blossomed into a multimedia stage show extraordinaire, at least insomuch as what is possible when one is booking shows by putting up requests for help on Web sites, and a generous fan’s couch serves as the indie rock hotel.

Although he has played to audiences of all sizes, this particular tour will see him “playing to dozens a night in weird churches and cafes and living rooms” – the D.C. show will take place at Sangha, a self-described “Fair Trade Store, a community enrichment center and a World Service Organization.” Still, within this framework, what happens on stage has a sense of magic.

Lewis and his brother Jack play their songs, often playful and sing-songy, but just as likely to turn sharply into the darkness, but always with clarity. The performance doesn’t stop there, though, as Lewis is, again, a comic book artist. When asked what he would do if he could be doing anything right now, he said “drawing comic books,” and the dedication to the craft shows up in his performances, when he either projects them on screen behind him or turns the page of actual books like a kindergarten teacher. Perhaps this imagery is no mistake – Lewis once told me that he thought about going back to grad school, and he has a multipart song called “The History of Communism,” that is, well, a history of Communism. “The History of Punk On The Lower East Side” is similarly transparently titled. Like outsider artist Daniel Johnston, who he acknowledges as an influence musically, Lewis expertly blends the visual and the aural in his art projects.

If his work is a pastiche of forms, his internal formula is similarly diverse. “Yeah, I have songs that I realize afterwards ‘Hey, I probably got the idea for that melody from a Fall song, but the chord change was probably inspired by a Donovan song, and come to think of it, I was thinking about pigeons when I wrote that song because I had been reading an Anders Nillson comic book that morning’ he says. “It’s funny when I only can pick this apart months later.”

If that’s true, it’s because the songs are wonderfully complex and referential. A good example is the song “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror,” excerpted in the epigraph, from Lewis’ new record “City & Eastern Songs.” Rambling and poetic, it’s unlike pretty much anything else out there right now, a practically beat-poetry narrative about seeing musician Will Oldham on the L train and contemplating what exactly it means to be an artist. My first thought when I heard it? This is amazing. The second thought I had was that it would never reach America. Luckily, I was wrong.

When I first heard this song, in fact, I wasn’t in America – I was in a friend’s cramped radio studio in England, and Jeffrey Lewis was playing a borrowed acoustic guitar about three feet from me, for an audience of six. It all seemed to be the result of some trance, as the words poured out like grains of sand from the hole in the bottom of a bag:

Where us noble starving artists are striving to feed our ego
Our mothers like our music and our friends come to our shows
And if our friends become successful, we’ll consider them our foes
Go home to our four roommates after paying big bucks for rock stars’ shows
What a nightmare! What a horror! I don’t want no part of this
Get me off this crazy ride, I’m gonna puke, I’m gonna piss!
I’d rather kill myself, I’d rather just relax or not exist
But you say you wanna do an e-mail interview?
Oh what the heck, I can’t resist!

So what’s the deal, Jeff? Just how much doubt is involved in being an artist?

“Probably as much doubt as I’d have about anything, really,” Lewis said. “Always full of anxiety and doubt and questioning. As any atheist existentialist teenager on acid will tell you, one has no Bible or rule book of how to operate other than one’s own internal compass, like with any compass one must constantly check and correct one’s route.”

Asked about the importance of music, he adds, “If everything was only functional it would be pretty boring. But art must be functional also – it has to blow minds and expand brains. In that sense it is important, but the subjectivity of it makes things confusing sometimes.”

True to his word, in style and substance.

Jeffrey Lewis will perform at Sangha on Thursday night. Sangha is located two blocks from the Takoma Park Metro stop, at 7014 Westmoreland Ave, N.W.