The worst moment in John Murry’s life came just a few minutes after he died. The dying — the result of a heroin overdose — wasn’t so bad; it was what came later that shocked him.

“It killed me for seven minutes,” he growls in a stoned Southern drawl. “I was like Lazarus. I needed a shot of adrenaline to start my heart.

“There was nothing horrible about the oblivion, it was the being brought back that was painful.”

It had started to go wrong a long time before then — probably around the time when, as a teenager in Tupelo, Mississippi, he became hooked on speed pills prescribed by his doctor.That itself wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t then been sent to rehab for 18 months to crack his addiction.

John is still a damaged soul. He speaks in streams of consciousness, his thoughts meandering between personal disasters and moments of redemption. He is, by his own admission “a difficult person” but also endearing. And vulnerable. It also makes him a striking musician — probably the best you’ve never heard of.

I caught up with him far from his home in Oakland, California, as he left a snow-bound London studio for a show in Brighton to promote his debut solo album which charts the many downs and final ups of his recent past.

“I’ve been over here a couple of times but this is the first time I’ve done a tour,” he says. “And it’s cold. It is pretty though, like some kind of weird Dickens thing — but without the smog, though I was in Hackney so there was a bit of that too.”

Alternative country lovers may have come across John following the release of the gloomy World Without End, written with the criminally underrated Memphis composer Bob Frank. Six years on, his autobiographical solo The Graceless Age, which tells of his battle against drugs and his fight to save his marriage, has united critics in praise.

So how does it feel to be going out alone with such a heartfelt bag of songs. “I don’t know,” he says honestly.

“I don’t feel the same way about it like I used to. I don’t feel so self-assured, but it’s something I wanted to do. Before we created something and I just went along with it. Now I want to create something that keeps giving, so I am driven to play well and get the sound right — not just for myself, but in a way that allows the audience to feel emotionally involved. And it’s good to be doing it with these guys.

The record offers an insight into John’s troubled soul — particularly on the heart-wrenchingly beautiful 10 minute-long Little Coloured Balloons, which deals front-on with his heroin addiction. “I haven’t made a record to please people. I made a record for myself,” he says. “I was struggling with heroin addiction on and off and nearly lost my life. I thought I’d never be able to play music again; I thought it was over and that there was no way out.”

“Heroin comforts and I took it — but it took what happened to realise it could all be lost. All I was doing was something that allowed me to forget.

“Nearly dying was the point I realised I couldn’t live with the drug or without the drug. I felt it completely controlled me and the only way out was to kill myself or realise I had to get clean.”

Tupelo, it is interesting to remember, is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. But John, who says he is related “in two different ways” to the great Southern writer and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner, admits there is little similarity between himself and the man who would become The King.

“I grew up in a place where the people didn’t understand,” he sighs. “It was different from places outside of Mississippi, but I felt like an outsider even inside Mississippi.

“In the US people don’t know Elvis was born in Tupelo, but he was a bad-ass; Elvis was Elvis. Having grown up in Tupelo, I knew what part of town he grew up in. The guy two doors down from me sold him his first guitar, and there’s something about Elvis’s personality and a lot of the stories I like. He’s the real deal. He grew up in the black part of town and what attracted him is what attracted me. He’s just way better.”

Of course Elvis wasn’t locked up for an addiction to prescription drugs – an episode which still makes John angry. “You can’t send a kid to see a doctor, have him prescribe medicine and the kid get strung out.”

Ultimately he still blames his parents. “I’d smoked pot and got drunk five or six times, but it was more about getting rid of me.

“As soon as I got a guitar I learned enough chords to play a handful of songs and started writing a bit. But nobody makes money playing music, not in Mississippi, so they don’t think about creating it. After all, Elvis left Mississippi for Memphis. Even the Delta blues moved to Chicago to become popular.

“[My parents] wanted me to go to Harvard to teach history and didn’t like the whole rock and roll thing. They still hate it. I’ve been told I’ve disgraced the family name. It’s caused a pretty big rift. They’d be happier if I got a job at a gas station. “But I have been driven to do it; I’ve been told to do it. It’s the one thing I’m good at... though I don’t even known I’m good at it.”

Next Thursday, John arrives in Oxford. For his Bullingdon show, he is supported by Christopher Rees and Oxford’s own alt-country star Robin Bennett, who, along with his brother Joe, founded Truck Festival and the band The Dreaming Spires.

John is looking forward to it, even though he admits the music isn’t for everyone. “If you’re in bed and put on the record, you may not get out of bed. It’s bleak but there’s redemption. I’m not writing about someone else, I’m writing about me. And I’m still here and living with my wife. These aren’t the songs of a songwriter, they’re the songs of a human being.”

“I confuse people and myself,” he says. “But I hope to tell the truth, make it sound right and get rid of emotional stuff, so I don’t end up an angry old man in a grocery queue.”

“I’ll tell people this is the greatest record ever made . . . but every idiot thinks they are good. People connect when they hear something they know in themselves and interpret it in their own way. I’ve been told not to let people know what things mean.”

So is he still trying to forget? “I don’t know,” he says after a painful pause. “Fundamentally I think we’re all trying to forget a bunch of stuff. If this was the Wild West I’d be riding around shooting bows and arrows. But this is a better way of getting it out – that’s what’s so great about writing songs. “I’ve lived through some stuff . . . but I believe we all feel this way.”

  • John Murry plays the Bullingdon, Oxford, next Thursday (January 31).
  • Tickets are £10 from wegottickets.com