Boy Wonder

"Last night we watched six hours of Dune," Lynch says.

He won't be touring for the album ("I don't want to be a rock star"), but has just started work as writer/director of the forthcoming Tenacious D feature. And though he longs to do a White Stripes video — "I have a great concept and everything!" — he's now way too busy. It's natural he'd find kindred spirits in these two bands — and in Beck, another favorite. They've all created original identities by sifting through and reacting to the work of earlier artists. That's what Lynch does on Fake Songs: Between funny gimmick songs like the gospel "Electrician's Day," he sings goofy caricatures of iconic bands he loved growing up. The best by far is the Talking Heads tribute. He fakes it so real, and with such love, he is beyond fake, you know?

"It's completely a Valentine 'cause I love David Byrne. He made me realize [as a 13-year-old] that everything that makes you geeky and not fit in is what makes you weird, and weird is cool, and weird is special, and those sorts of things that make you funny are the things that make you awesome."

Lynch was pretty much marked as "different" from the start. "I was a nerd as a kid and had bullies. I hated them." After high school he moved to Nashville to get into the music biz. "It was a failure. Playing in crappy bars, going on tour, working as a dishwasher for

three years."

Then he developed a sinus infection so severe he almost died.

"I laid there dying, and I tried to feel like everything I'd done up until that point were big accomplishments. They weren't really. Summing yourself up is really

hardcore."

During the weeks of convalescence, four crows sat on his windowsill. Lynch is part Irish and Native American, and he's come to recognize crows as his spirit guides. ("Though I'm really not a hippie or anything!") When he first visited Mark Hudson's studio, he saw four stuffed crows mounted on the ceiling.

Finally, after weeks, he regained enough strength to get up.

"So I go outside with my acoustic guitar — and I just want to sit in the sun and strum my guitar. I'm standing there, and suddenly it slips out of my hands, and smashes in a million pieces on the ground. I just crumpled and started crying. Then, my mom came out and laid over me and started weeping too."

That's what they call rock bottom, the mythical point from which things literally can only get better. "After I dropped my guitar and really cracked, it was like I was reborn. I felt like I dwindled down to a little twig, and I just went snap! But then a little sprout came off one of the ends, and I got to grow into something way bigger and way stronger."

What followed was the beginning of his new life: Liverpool, Sifl and Olly, Fake Songs, a movie, everything. Mostly, the license to be a nerd.

"I'm glad I got a record deal now, because back when I wanted one I wasn't me. I was trying to be cool. I hadn't failed enough — so you really try to impress, 'cause you're afraid you will fail, you know? You have to fail a hundred times to the point where you're just like, 'whatever' — literally."