Lyle Lovett has the worst "hat hair" in show business, though he often wears no hat. Maybe it doesn't fit properly.

Then, just as one becomes familiar with his hatlessness, he dons the cowboy chapeau. Is it for ironic effect?

Is it a statement of some sort? Hard to know.

Lyle is an enigmatic fellow of few words. He doesn't talk about his famous "ex," Julia Roberts, nor did this proud Texan weigh in on fellow proud-Texan George W. Bush one way or another (though he did perform at the president's inauguration celebration).

There were no interviews to promote his show on Monday at the Winspear Centre with his "acoustic trio."

It's a change of gears from his "Large Band," and another contrast in a career full of contrasts.

With a personality Bonnie Raitt once described as a "banked fire," Lovett prefers to let his music do the talking.

Here's a recent song that sums up, well, something.

It's called The Truck Song: "I went to high school. I was not popular. Now I'm older and it don't matter."

HE'S NO REDNECK

There's been some debate over whether Lyle Lovett is even a country singer.

He's had cow manure on his cowboy boots on many occasions, but he's no redneck. If anything, he's the anti-redneck.

He's been to Paris, and not just Paris, Texas. He seems as much at home on his family homestead near Houston, Texas, where his extended family has lived since 1848, as he is in Hollywood.

His films include The Opposite of Sex and Robert Altman's Short Cuts. He's in another Altman film with Meryl Streep, due in 2006. He went to Texas A&M University to earn a degree in journalism, not Honkytonk University.

In other words, he won't be sharing a bill with Toby Keith any time soon.

The evidence mounts: He was seriously injured by a bull in 2002, but not while riding it. He was coming to the rescue of his uncle, Calvin Klein (not that Calvin Klein), when the beast charged.

Only three of Lovett's four Grammy awards are specifically for country music.

One of his last major gigs in Canada was at the Ottawa Blues Festival last summer, where he asked the crowd not to smoke marijuana, which itself suggests that they might during a Lyle Lovett show.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would be inspired to spark a doobie at a Toby Keith concert. Lovett's lyrics are free of the corny/clever double-entendres heard in just about every hot country hit ever made.

He uses subtle irony rather than obvious puns.

Even his heartbreak songs tend to be straightforward, like 1992's She's Leaving Me Because She Really Wants To.

SPLITTING WITH JULIA

Then came the album I Love Everybody and lyrics like this: "I need to impress her 'cause I'd like to undress her."

No guesswork here. Anyway, Lyle and Julia split up shortly thereafter. They remain friends.

Roberts told US magazine in 1999, "I have what I call the Lyle barometer.

"If a guy cannot deal with the fact that Lyle and I are such good friends, then OK, we just don't go any further."

She has since remarried. He has a girlfriend.

Lovett's best-known songs include Give Back My Heart with its "Texas talking blues" style and Don't Touch My Hat - odd that the two songs seem to contradict one another - but his music ranges far and wide from the country status quo, into blues, folk, rock, jazz, gospel - whatever strikes his fancy.

His music is impossible to define, and even if you come close, he changes again.

He remains fond of "western swing," which traces its origins to the point in the past where country and what would become rock 'n' roll sounded pretty much the same.

Lovett also rarely gets played on country radio, which is a shame, since some of his music sounds more "country" than what they're calling "country."

He is more likely to get attention in the city than the country. It's all very confusing. The singer was lucky to show up in Nashville in the mid-'80s, considered a fallow period in country music.

In an industry desperate for new sounds, Lovett got signed along with a whole lot of other artists that in more recent times would be branded "alternative country."

COWBOY SINATRA

In a 2003 Associated Press interview to promote his new album, My Baby Don't Tolerate, he recalled, "The stuff that ended up being the next big thing in Nashville ended up being traditional, like Randy Travis and Clint Black, not k.d. lang and Steve Earle or me. But it gave us a chance to get started."

This cowboy Sinatra has taken some strange side roads along the way, but he hasn't stopped since.