There are stories, certainly, urban legends maybe, about that all-too-rare “one-woman man” and “one-man woman,” but in the 50 years give or take a few since Bill Kirchen first picked up a Fender Telecaster guitar, he has been literally a “one-guitar man.” When Kirchen plays a show, he does it with one Telecaster guitar.

“I don’t own a bunch of guitars. I pretty much take a Telly and use it till it wears out,” Kirchen said, calling from his home in Austin.

“I don’t intend to travel with more than one because, for one thing, it’s a Telecaster — I tell people that the only reason I’ll put a Telecaster in a case is to protect other God-fearing guitars from it! It’s a robust guitar, it’s kind of designed that way.”

For years, Kirchen had one Telecaster, bought in 1968. He still has it — and long was loyal to it alone. “I play a different one now (and) I’m sorta thinking about letting someone else have it, but I don’t know,” he said.

In contrast, he recalled, “We did some shows with the Eagles back in the mid-’70s in San Francisco: The stage was set up in center field, and the whole runway back into the bowels of the stadium was lined with guitars. … They must have had 50 or 60!

Kirchen and his current sturdy Telecaster are making the rounds of the 50th State this week, with a one-nighter at Anna O’Brien’s on Oahu tomorrow.

Kirchen appears on Maui today, and will do two shows on the Big Island, Saturday and Sunday.

“I haven’t played ever in Hawaii, of all things,” Kirchen revealed — it’s the last of the 50 states he hasn’t played in, though he visited Maui in the early 1980s — but his current tour is about to change that. He’s targeting Hawaii after playing “all of Europe, and parts of the Middle East and Japan,” he said. “I’m very excited to be coming, I’ve got good friends there.”

FANS AND friends alike can expect a “fun show,” Kirchen said.

Along with his two compatriots on stage, Steve Barbuto on drums and Tim Eschliman on bass, he’ll bring with him the experience gleaned from a long career in music, and a proficency as a guitarist that has earned him the nickname Titan of the Telecaster.

“My history in music really was the ground floor of what became called as Americana,” he said, unraveling his oft-told story, “with Commander Cody (and His Lost Planet Airmen), and since then I’ve just maintained a career in the business.

“I’ve recorded and toured with Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Hoyt Axton — at the very beginning of my career I worked with Gene Vincent and Link Wray — and I’ve made about four CDs in the last 10 years under my own name. I’m going to be doing some of that.”

”And it’s not a show where you have to be quiet,” he added.

“It’s a fun show. If you can’t have fun at this show, we have a problem.”

The genre of “Americana” has been described as a bringing together of country, rock ‘n roll, blues and folk music, and Kirchen plays across a wide swatch of it.

An excellent introduction to what he’s been doing in recent years is captured in “Transatlanticana,” a 2016 album he recorded with English keyboardist Austin De Lone, aka “the Godfather of Pub Rock.”

A sense of where the duo and their band are going with the project can be grasped with a look at the songs that open and close the album. “Hounds of the Bakersfield” opens the album with a beautiful country rocker that references Merle Haggard — one of the originators of a style of country music known as the “Bakersfield sound.”

The final song on the album is Bob Dylan’s classic protest song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” amped up to a speed and intensity that Dylan probably never imagined.

“Austin’s a guy I’ve been knowing since the ’60s when I moved out to California (from Ann Arbor, Michigan),” Kirchen elaborated. “He was also in the band with the musicians you’ll see me working with next week (in Hawaii). The album is the fourth a series of four albums I made for an English record label. I was just over there — touring with the president of the label and the producer of those album, touring Scandinavia and Europe as a trio — a few weeks ago. It’s an interesting album.”

KIRCHEN ACCEPTS the label “Americana,” but uses a more specific name for his own music. He calls it “Dieselbilly.”

“The back story is that in the early ’60s there was legitimate genre or sub-set of country music called ‘Truck-driving Songs,’ and to me it had a sound too — there’s a lot of low end guitar, a lot of twang, and a lot of rock and hard-driving things you might associate with truck driving.

“I loved it, I kind of gravitated to it as I started getting into country music, and then I started — as a joke — calling what I did ‘Dieselbilly.’”

“I figured if I invented my own name and genre I could put in anything I want,” he said. “If I want to play ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues,’ trust me, that’s a Dieselbilly classic.

“It just stuck — and I am the self-crowned ‘King of Dieselbilly music’ with no pretenders to the throne.”

Guitar Player Magazine gave Kirchen his title as Titan of the Telecaster. It’s an accolade he prefers over anyone calling him the “king” of the instrument.

“I know so many players that I just respect tremendously. I would be extremely embarrassed to call myself the ‘king of the Telecaster,’” he said. “My song ‘Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods” name-checks 20 of my favorite ‘Telly players — so I am the ‘King of Dieselbilly,’ but I wouldn’t dream of being the ‘King of the Telecaster.’”

NO ENCOUNTER with Kirchen would be complete without getting into “Hot Rod Lincoln,” the song that became the biggest hit for Kirchen’s breakthrough group, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

Kirchen founded the group in Ann Arbor with some like-minded friends while he was attending the University of Michigan. One of the other founders took the stage name “Commander Cody. Then Kirchen dropped out of college, moved to San Francisco, worked briefly as a motorcycle messenger (his last non-musical “day job”) and persuaded the other members of the group to join him.

After relocating to San Francisco, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen recorded their first album, “Lost In the Ozone” in 1971.

Their remake of “Hot Rod Lincoln,” a song that had originally been a hit for rockabilly singer-songwriter Charlie Ryan in 1955, peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart early in 1972. It was the group’s only Top 40 hit.

Critics and fans agree that the guitar line Kirchen played through the Commander Cody remake was a major element in the song’s success.

He describes it as “originality born of incompetence.”

Kirchen had discovered “Hot Rod Lincoln” in a version that had been recorded by another country artist, Johnny Bond, in 1960, and said his lick was an attempt to do what Bond had been doing.

“I go back now and listen, and I thought I copped it directly — my little signature guitar lick in there — but no, and now, I like my lick better,” Kirchen said.

”You have to take it wherever you get it.”

Here’s a shout-out to Hawaii’s hot rod community: Although Kirchen has been playing “Hot Rod Lincoln” for almost 48 years, he has never ridden — let alone raced — in a Ford Model A with a Lincoln engine, overdrive, a four-barrel carb, dual exhaust, 4:11 gears and safety tubes.

“It’s just like trucks,” Kirchen said with a hearty laugh. “I’ve been in the cab of a couple of (big) trucks but I’ve never driven one.

“I’ve never ridden in a Model A — I’ve never really been part of the hot rod culture.”

Maybe someone in Hawaii who owns a Model A can take him for a spin while he’s here.

No “fenders clickin’ the guardrail posts,” please!