THE QUIET RETURN OF DAN HICKS

Back when the Love Generation was still in love, there was a minor phenomenon from San Francisco called Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks.

Formed by Hicks in 1968, the group cooked up a retro-hip musical recipe incorporating bits of Django Reinhardt, Western swing, ragtime and jazz. Dismissed by some as pseudo-nostalgia, the Hot Licks were, in the manner of Randy Newman or Tom Waits, quite contemporary. Jazz musician Ben Sidran described Hicks’ music as “using the mood of the past to rewire your brain for the future,” and that’s pretty much what it did.

The Hot Licks released four records and for six years sailed along on a winning streak that ended with the group’s demise in 1974. The fly in the ointment proved to be Hicks’ own mercurial personality. Hicks got a reputation for being a savagely funny wiseacre, and his colorful exchanges with audience members became as much a part of the Hot Licks’ shows as their music--which was often upstaged by the verbal sparring matches.

By the time the group broke up, Hicks was feeling quite ambivalent about his career in music. Hicks released a solo LP in 1978 and has performed sporadically over the last 12 years, but basically he’s been hiding out. Now his lengthy sabbatical has ended, and on Wednesday he opens a four-night stint at the Vine St. Bar & Grill. Hicks, 45, returns to the stage with a cache of fine new songs and a noticeably improved attitude.

“The nasty wisecracks I used to make on stage were sort of a defense mechanism,” said Hicks, speaking by phone from his home in Mill Valley. “I got abusive because we were playing a new, quieter kind of music but we weren’t getting a new, quieter kind of audience. They were loud, so I’d just beat ‘em to the punch and tell them off before they had a chance to tell me. It subsequently developed into a thing where people expected that, and some of them came primarily for that. I just wanted to get up there and present the songs, and I hated feeling like I had to be funny, because sometimes I’m just not.

“When I started performing again people from the old Hot Licks crowd would show up and bellow at me from the audience. I ignored them because I wanted that tradition to die. I’m not in for this rowdy stuff--I can’t be! We’re playing through mikes, we got no drummer--this is not rowdy music.”

Indeed it is not. It is, for starters, acoustic music; for his Vine St. engagement Hicks will be backed by an upright bass, a second guitarist and a violinist. Despite the fact that it’s performed at moderate volume, Hicks’ music is the very embodiment of the term “swing.” This stuff really moves; at the same time, it’s cool and seems to shuffle along as though it hasn’t a care in the world.

A gifted composer whose droll sense of humor can be heard in his tuneful melodies, Hicks writes the kind of song you can whistle; his songs have the timeless, wistful charm of standards, and the best ones sound as if they’ve been kicking around Tin Pan Alley for decades. Hicks confesses that he hasn’t been writing much lately, but having not made a record since 1978, he has more than enough material to fill an album.

“I just haven’t felt like writing,” he admits, “and the only thing I’ve written lately was a commercial I recently did for 501 jeans. I have a lot of songs people haven’t heard though, and the new songs have basically the same flavor as the stuff I was doing with the Hot Licks.

“It remains to be seen what the potential appeal of this music is,” he continued. “The new tunes go over when we play them live, but the true test of the songs will be when we record them. I’m not knocking myself out to get a record deal, but eventually I would like to make a record.

“Assuming I eventually get to record them, I haven’t decided what kind of treatment to give the songs. I might like to experiment and do a little more production. I’ve always wanted to record with vibes and jazz harp, you know, like Harpo Marx.”

Though known primarily for his work with the Hot Licks, Hicks made his debut in 1965 as the drummer with San Francisco group the Charlatans, generally regarded as one of the founding fathers of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Hicks continues to reside in the Bay Area, so one assumes he finds it a creative place to work and live.

“I do sort of have the feeling of being part of a musical community here, but I don’t see a lot of people or go out and jam. What would I play? Would I get up there with a rhythm guitar and do ‘Land of a Thousand Dances’? I don’t know the chords!

“Plus, I can’t remember the last time I heard something new that caught my ear. It seems like the quality level of popular music has gone down and that there were better songs in the ‘60s--not to mention the ‘40s, when the popular music was jazz and swing. That was tasteful music, but it was also really hot. I catch MTV now and then, and it strikes me as pathetic that the emphasis is still on these rock hero guys who put out this Pablum stuff.”

Hicks has been away for 12 years, but some things never change: To the pop star go the spoils, and Hicks has never cared much for pop stardom. “I just don’t think that way,” he said. “I enjoy performing, but I never enjoyed being a bandleader or all that it takes to finally get on stage. I sometimes have a problem with shyness, and waiting to go on can be like walking to my own execution because I’m not naturally Mr. Outgoing.

“That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the popularity and attention the Hot Licks got--I did, at least for a while. Towards the end I was having trouble with myself, and the band was getting disillusioned. I don’t think of that period of my life as a great time or a terrible time, I think of it as a stepping stone. I certainly don’t think of it as the thing. If I thought that much of it I’d be doing the same thing now.”