For singer/songwriter Paleface, “The Show Is On The Road”  is more than just his new record’s title song. It’s a way of life.

But getting out there and working was hard to do from a home base like Brooklyn, N.Y. He and his drum-banging bandmate and girlfriend, Monica “Mo” Samalot, had the typical New York living expenses and bills to pay. And traveling to small clubs in far-flung places including Roanoke wasn’t bringing in that kind of money.

“I know there’s a lot of musicians out there like that,” Paleface said. “We know a lot [of them], because we lived in Brooklyn and it was so hard to do. And that’s what you want to do when you’re a musician — you want to play.”

Fortunately, the couple had some good friends — The Avett Brothers  and Dolph Ramseur , owner of the Avetts’ former label, Ramseur Records  — to point them in the right direction. Ramseur persuaded  the couple to get out of New York and move  to North Carolina, where the living is cheap enough to allow their act to tour more often.

Paleface’s latest tour brings the duo on Saturday night to The Water Heater , another place on the road where the fan base grows in numbers and enthusiasm. It’s a CD release party for the band’s debut Ramseur Records release. Fans are known to jump up, dance around and generally have a happy time with the group’s raw, energetic folk-rock mix. That happened at FloydFest  last year, and according to Water Heater maven Beth Deel, it happens every time the act hits her room.

“We just try to have fun with the music,” Paleface said in a phone interview last week. “We’re not trying to change the world or anything. We’re just trying to enjoy ourselves, and hopefully we can entertain people, and if they want to get up and dance and be silly with us, then that’s just all the better.”

Good connections

Paleface, who wouldn’t reveal his real name — “you couldn’t pronounce it,” he said — has had an interesting 39 years. He learned how to write songs from cult favorite Daniel Johnston, the brilliant but often troubled writer whose life is chronicled in the movie “The Devil and Daniel Johnston.”

Paleface and Beck were friends and musical colleagues in the early 1990s Lower East Side folk scene. By the middle of the decade, Paleface had been on two major labels, Polydor and Sire . And along the way, alcoholism nearly crushed him.

“Alcohol, it’s rocket fuel to me, in the worst way, I guess,” he said. “I hit the ball really hard, and I had a couple of years where I just couldn’t do anything because I had destroyed my liver and I had a lot of health problems and whatnot.”

He cleaned up, recovered physically and got back into the music scene, befriending such musicians as Kimya Dawson, Langhorne Slim and Regina Spektor . Giving some friends a ride to a Daniel Johnston show in the city in 2000, he met Samalot. The San Juan, Puerto Rico, native had come to New York to be an architect, but the city’s punk-influenced folk scene inspired her to take up drums. By 2004, they were playing music together and becoming a couple.

About the same time, psychedelic folk-rocker Nicole Atkins  booked Paleface on a New York show with the Avett Brothers. A mutual admiration society developed. They traded music, played together and collaborated. The friendships remained strong after uber-producer Rick Rubin signed the Avetts to American/Columbia Records .

Ramseur, the label owner, wanted to record the couple, and he wanted them to move to his neck of the woods, Concord, N.C., Samalot said.

“He understood how, when you’re a musician in New York, it’s very hard to tour and come back with enough money to pay rent,” said Samalot, 31. “So that’s why we were having such a hard time touring. … Now we have a very affordable apartment in North Carolina, and it allows us to tour full time.”

And that means a change in approach, Paleface said. Before, he was “this songwriter guy up in New York.” Now, he has to be “an artist who’s out on the road and entertaining people.”

Judging from audience responses around here, he’s pulling it off nicely.