It’s hard to tell if Scott H. Biram is going to heaven or hell. Digging deep into his brilliant 2006 CD Graveyard Shift – a one man romp through gritty blues, lonesome country, fiery punk rock and soul-stirring gospel – it’s a toss up. Songs like “Been Down Too Long,” which is as full of handclaps and “amens” as a Southern church service, seem to suggest the rowdy Texan will enjoy his post-living days in a rocking chair behind the pearly gates. Another track that boosts his heavenly potential is “Have No Fun,” where Biram reveals himself to have an almost saintly amount of patience for a girl who’s running around on him.

But then there’s the country punk of “Plow You Under,” where Biram sings the chorus in a voice that sounds like he’s possessed by something truly evil. Or “Long Fingernails,” which finds him singing: “I’ve been wrong for so damn long/ I get too f*****d up to read the writing on the wall/ I keep pining for love/ But the devil’s hands/ Keep poking at my heart/ With long fingernails.”

By phone from outside an Austin, Texas garage, Biram compares his contradictory nature to that of Johnny Cash, who was sinning one minute and deeply devout the next. (Biram says he doesn’t go to church but “I pray every day to whoever is listening.”) “As far as going back and forth on the record, that’s my way of portraying the human condition,” he says.

We’ll let a higher power decide his fate, but one of Biram’s selling powers on Graveyard Shift is his inclusion of an overlooked genre of country music: the trucker song. “Reefer Load” is about a marijuana-toking truck driver, while “18 Wheeler Fever” includes offhand poetry about the road like: “I’d be so much better if I could keep her off my mind/ But that long black ribbon is getting longer all the time.”

Biram says he used his own experiences as fodder to write the songs. “Being a touring musician and touring constantly is like being a truck driver,” he says.

While Biram has never been behind the wheel of a big rig, he’s been in front of one. In 2003, a semi going 75mph plowed over his truck, which put him in the hospital for a month and caused him to undergo 13 surgeries. Biram recalls being on morphine for the pain and hallucinating while in a military hospital. “I thought I was locked in a feed store behind enemy lines,” he says.

A phone message from a dazed, hospitalized Biram begins his latest CD Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever. “It lays down the whole feel of the album,” he says. “There’s a lot of melancholy, dissonance and awkwardness in there.”

He’s right. “Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue” could be a Hank Williams weeper, while “Judgment Day” is a bile-filled blast of anger directed at corporate greed that includes loads of apocalyptic imagery.

Rather than being a reflection on the nation’s tough economic times, Biram says the CD was more influenced by his tumultuous personal life, which included a rough relationship where both parties drank substantially. “I think it’s a lot of guilt and shame from being such a crazy drunk,” he says.

Biram says that his last spring tour found him drinking half a bottle of Jameson most nights. This tour, his hopes will be a little different. “I called it [last year’s spring tour] the f*****g and fighting tour, ’cause I was f*****g or fighting or both every night,” he says. “Hopefully, this one will be called the Scott Biram Redemption Tour.”

SCOTT H. BIRAM plays 7pm Friday, June 5, at Henry Miller Library, located a quarter mile south of Nepenthe Restaurant on Highway 1, Big Sur. $13/adv.; $15/day of the show. 667-2574. www.henrymiller.org.