POP MUSIC REVIEW : DIFFERENT FORKS IN WESTERN TRAIL

It wouldn’t take a wagon train to hold the number of people who saw both the Reinsmen in Fullerton Saturday and Tex & the Horseheads in Anaheim Sunday. More like a buckboard, and a small one at that.

It’s not too surprising, though, since, outwardly, the two groups have little in common other than their Western-sounding names.

The Reinsmen, performing in the sedate environs of Fullerton’s Wilshire Auditorium, is a Southern California-based version of the Sons of the Pioneers that honors the traditional Western music born on the American prairie.

Tex & the Horseheads, on the other hand, is a maniacally untraditional quasi-punk quartet that spent most of its time on stage at Anaheim’s Flashdance club exhibiting as much disrespect as possible to all music, especially its own.

Yet it is instructive to compare the two groups, however diverse their finished products, because there are some underlying similarities.

The Reinsmen’s two-hour show celebrated the American cowboy with songs that are part of this country’s musical heritage, from the very old (“Red River Valley”) to the Pioneers’ classic “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” to the Reinsmen’s own “High Country.”

Although none of the Reinsmen has as distinctive a voice or style as some past members of the Sons of the Pioneers--such as Sons founding member Leonard Slye, the yodeling cowboy who later changed his name to Roy Rogers--their three-and four-part harmonies were textbook examples of vocal blending.

The foursome’s unadorned style--just four singers, two guitars, bass and fiddle--was both refreshing and almost deceivingly straightforward.

While some may view the ballads of “doggies” and “round-ups” as little more than first-hand accounts of the cowpoke’s life style, there is a reason such songs continue to be performed some 100 years after the heyday of the great cattle drives in the American West.

The cowboy was a maverick, a loner who often contemplated his solitude and his own mortality in songs like “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” He also embodied the spirit of adventure and communion with nature that remains embedded in the national consciousness.

So when gray-bearded fiddler Doc Denning adopted the persona of a grizzled veteran of the trail for a tear-jerker about a cowboy and his faithful horse, “Droopy Ears,” it was an affectionate, albeit slightly corny, tribute to the cowboy’s place in American folklore.

Give the Reinsmen a shot of adrenalin and a wild night on the town and you just might get Tex & the Horseheads.

Where the Reinsmen are content simply to sing about the mavericks of the old West, Horseheads lead singer Texacala Jones personifies the rock ‘n’ roll outlaw, swaggering and staggering her way through the band’s first local show in several months. It was the group’s first appearance since Wilbur (Robert Williams, one-time member of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band) replaced former Horseheads drummer Rock Vodka.

Like the Reinsmen, the Horseheads employ Western motifs in several songs, such as one individual’s struggle for freedom in “Lock Me Up”: “Lock me up and throw away the key/They tried to catch the very soul of me/So I ran through the mountains like a wild horse/The ground kissed my feet while the stars steered my course.”

The group would even have fit--musically if not cosmetically--into a country bar when bassist Smog Vomit took over lead vocals on “I’ll Never Get Drunk No More,” a song that could be sung just as comfortably by David Allan Coe or Hank Williams Jr.

Unfortunately, between an inadequate sound system and Jones’ characteristically sloppy stage delivery--she seemed to fall down more than she stood up--most of the lyric component of the Horseheads’ music was lost.

Drummer Wilbur, bassist Smog Vomit and guitarist Mike Martt functioned as a powerful unit, but with Jones’ wildly erratic vocals, the group was as handicapped as a team of champion steeds without a driver.

If Tex, whose intensely captivating stage presence surfaced only periodically, showed just a little more respect for her music as the Reinsmen do for theirs, she could be a more consistently riveting performer.

But that would be like asking Calamity Jane to be a little more like the Lone Ranger.