Kevin Bronson on November 16th, 2011

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A poor schlub with a heart of gold meets a woman with a body of platinum in Reno, Nev., and after a fling is eventually framed for her murder by her vindictive, estranged husband. He tells his story of woe from death row, the needle only minutes away.

Sound like a feature film? It’s actually the new project of songwriter Ross Golan. Years in the works, “The Wrong Man” was previewed Tuesday night at a small performance space in Marina del Rey, and if they gave awards for keeping me glued to my seat, hanging on every note and couplet, Golan’s song cycle/indie musical/folk tragedy – whatever the hell he is calling it – would have a big, fat trophy.

Golan has fostered a reputation as a razor-edged lyricist and astute cross-pollinator of pop and hip-hop, first with a lamentably overlooked 2004 album as Ross Golan & Molehead and then in his now-dead collaboration with Tommy Walter as Glacier Hiking. Recently he’s worked as a songwriter-for-hire and among his credits is the Cee Lo Green single, “Anyway.”

Comprising 13 songs and spanning 45-plus minutes, “The Wrong Man” is staged with simply Golan, his acoustic guitar and a rudimentary slide show. The one-man musical’s lyrics and their delivery – which the artist describes as a cross between R. Kelly and Tom Waits – are the work’s calling cards. Golan taps, strums and picks at his acoustic, recalling perhaps Ben Harper, and builds the most basic of frameworks for narratives that flow nimbly through his pop songs. Some of “The Wrong Man” suggests the work of spoken-word artists, except that in total the songs would work nicely as a pop album, even in their current raw state.

“The Wrong Man” first emerged via living-room shows as Golan slowly added new songs to the narrative. Now it is almost completely flushed out – and begs for a bigger and more theatrical staging – starting with the title track (“That’s the end of the story – here’s the rest,” he said Tuesday night in his only stage banter) and then taking the audience through the gripping story. Golan paused only for swallows of water between songs.

For a one-man show, it’s a staggeringly ambitious project, and certainly less literate works have grown into big theatrical productions. The current run of “The Wrong Man” offers a chance to see it as a seedling.

||| Live: Ross Golan performs “The Wrong Man” each of the next four Tuesdays at Grainey Pictures, 4220 Glencoe Ave., Ste #100, Marina Del Rey. The Nov. 22 presentation is sold out. Tickets are $12.