LOCAL DUO’S 1ST ALBUM BLENDS BLUES, HUMOR

It’s hard to pin down what Mojo Nixon is all about, especially if you’ve never seen him appear on stage and are relying on the reports of people who have.

Even seeing him live, playing such poplar cult clubs as the Spirit and Bodie’s, won’t give you a clear impression of the man. Rather, a stream of images will run through your mind, from such venerable bluesmen as John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf to Dust Bowl folkie Woody Guthrie; from Jack Kerouac’s literary madman, Dean Moriarty, to brooding rocker Lou Reed.

To call him an anomaly is an understatement. Nixon and partner Skid Roper have a repertoire of old-style talking blues, country, rockabilly tunes and an instrumental lineup that includes a blues harp, a washboard and a stick drum. But they’re finally experiencing success after two hard years of ceaseless club work.

Indeed, the biggest sign of success a local band can hope for--national recognition of some sort--has just come through in the form of a recording contract with Los Angeles-based Enigma Records, one of the largest independent labels in the country and the same company that issued the first album by heavy metal stars Ratt.

The duo’s first album of 13 songs is slated for release by the end of this month, Nixon said, and will consist mostly of originals styled after the music of blues greats like Hooker and Wolf, but mongrelized with latter-day urban awareness and a healthy dose of humor.

Songs like “Promised Land Tonite,” a bluesy ballad, or the sardonic “Jesus at McDonald’s” may be disparate in sound and style, but Nixon’s unique singing style, twisting his voice around each note and lyric with gut-bucket emotion, is a unifying factor that enables each song to flow into the next.

“We’re making a new synthesis,” said Nixon, who refuses to give his age other than to say he’s in his middle 20s. “It’s honest, emotional music, whether we do our originals or covers of old songs like ‘The Wreck of the Old 97.’

“Gospel music has had a big influence on us and that’s the most purely emotional music around. Gospel singers might as well be screaming; they’re talking directly to your heart, and that’s what we want to do.

“I don’t want to knock the record but we sound best live, when we’re able to connect and get the audience involved in some manner. There’s a lot of shouting and screaming, a lot of story-telling. It’s all very spontaneous and it’s all very emotional.”

Nixon grew up in the Deep South--again, he won’t say specifically where, although the comedic “biography” he’s drawn up lists his birthplace as “Pigfoot, La.”--and received his first exposure to music from his father, who owned a radio station for blacks.

“That was back in the middle 1960s, when black and white music was more integrated than it’s ever been, even today,” Nixon said. “James Brown, Wilson Pickett, acts like that were on top of both charts, and I’ve never forgotten the power, the passion, of their songs.”

He studied those artists’ lives, Nixon recalled, and when he began to develop his own musical talents while in his teens, he made their influences his influences as well. For several years, he said, he lived the life of a drifter. Out of high school, he moved to Denver and joined Vista, “a domestic Peace Corps type of thing in which I spent most of my time organizing winos into worked crews.”

From there, he moved to England, spending several months in Brixton, a suburb of London, frequenting the same clubs that spawned such legends as the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones and jamming with local groups whenever he could.

When his work permit ran out, Nixon said, he moved back to the United States. With some friends, he rode his bicycle from the Weest Coast to Virginia, stopping off in New Orleans where, he said, “on a gin-induced brainstorm, I changed my first name to Mojo for voodoo good luck.”

And his move to San Diego two years ago, he said, was prompted by a torrid romance with a woman with whom he has since broken up and who has inspired much of his music.

“I was on my way to Los Angeles, to get something started there after my cross-country bike ride, but got waylaid,” Nixon said.

So he began hanging out at local clubs like Bodie’s and the Spirit, playing opening slots as a solo act for a few months before hitting the road again to hitchhike across the country Sal Paradise/Dean Moriarty-style-and, in the process, learning a lot about life in general and music in particular.

“I’d go to every dive I came across that had live music, and found that especially in the South, there’s still a lot of feeling, still a lot of pure, American music that most people out here don’t know about because it existed before MTV,” he said.

His sense of purpose renewed, he returned to San Diego determined to make a name for himself on the local music scene, teaming up with Skid Roper, a fellow musician he met one night at Bodie’s and immediately found something in common with “when we had a long conversation about (old-time country pioneer) Doug Clarke,” Nixon said.

The two teamed up and after several weeks of rehearsals hit the nightclub circuit here, buoyed by winning a local singer/songwriter contest that enabled them to record, free of charge, a three-song demonstration tape of their songs.

At a gig last fall with Tex and the Horseheads, a country-rock group from Los Angeles, Nixon’s music so impressed the Horseheads’ manager that within two days he had opened negotiations for them with Enigma Records brass.

Mojo Nixon, understandable delighted but unwilling to compromise in the least, said the only thing he really hopes will come of the record--and the nationwide tour he and partner Roper will embark on in support of its release--is that he’ll be able to quit his “day job” working in an Ocean Beach bicycle shop.

“I don’t really expect to be like Michael Jackson,” he said, “but we do have plenty of room to move. Playing music makes me feel good and I see how it makes people in the audience feel good, after being trapped at work all day, to have a few beers and really lose themselves in our music.

“We sing about life; we’re telling them that you only live once and you better do what you want to do and live life to the edge. I never want to pander to the audience; I just want to get my message across and hope it will connect with somebody out there.”