ROBERT CRAY: NEW TWIST ON THE BLUES

“It’s really funny now, because when you’re really down and out, nothing comes to you,” reflected Robert Cray. “But when things start going for you, everything’s coming at you.

“There’s really not too much time you can spend by yourself, but I like playing music,” he continued, sitting in his dressing room at the Pacific Amphitheatre before opening the show for Eric Clapton. “As long as I can get a break here and there, I’ll be all right.”

It may take a string of bad breaks to slow down the Robert Cray Band now. The quartet’s album “Smoking Gun” has gone gold (sales of 500,000) since its release late last year and is still hovering near the Top 10 of the pop charts. The title track was a Top 30 single.

Two earlier albums, “Bad Influence” and “False Accusations,” have re-entered the charts, and the singer-guitarist’s first record, “Who’s Been Talking,” was recently reissued by Atlantic. Cray, 33, was also featured on Tina Turner’s recent cable TV special and was included in the all-star backing band for Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday tribute.

The group--and Cray in particular--was already accustomed to glowing accolades from such rock luminaries as Keith Richards and Clapton. But that kind of big-name endorsement usually translates into a “musician’s musician” tag and a healthy cult audience at best--not the kind of sales figures racked up by “Smoking Gun.”

“It was a big shock,” acknowledged Cray’s keyboardist Peter Boe. “We were talking in the studio while we were recording that we would be very pleased if we sold 100,000 because that would basically recoup our advance money. If we sold 100 to 150,000 records, we’d be able to do another one.”

The mainstream success is even more remarkable because the Cray Band’s smoldering blend of blues, soul and rock relies on deliberate, slow-burn grooves and sophisticated arrangements that feature Cray’s stirring, soulful vocals as prominently as his spiky, staccato guitar leads. It’s mature, moody music with lyrics that tackle some thorny themes.

Cray himself still expressed surprise at the response to the song “Smoking Gun.”

“When (bassist) Richard (Cousins) and I put the music to ‘Smoking Gun,’ we felt it was the most commercially accessible tune on the record,” he said. “But the lyrical content, I don’t think a lot of people have really heard the song because it’s a violent, crime-of-passion tune. It’s really strange that it’s done this well.”

But suddenly being thrust into the popular spotlight hasn’t changed the soft-spoken, modest Cray’s commitment to the special chemistry the band has developed over the years.

“This is a guy who’s been working his ass off for years and is not going to be thrown by what’s happened,” said Dennis Walker, co-producer of the Cray Band’s last three albums. “I was talking to Cousins not too long ago and he said, ‘You know, if we were still making $110 a night, we’d still be out there because this is what we do.’ ”

The Pacific Amphitheatre date, the second of 13 shows with Clapton, had become an impromptu family reunion. The ebullient Cousins was roaming the grounds before the early-evening sound check with the band’s “bad midget” roadie--his 12-year-old son, Christopher. Drummer David Olson checked with security to ensure that his parents, in the midst of a cross-country trip by motor home, would be able to get backstage after the show.

The Cray Band has a loose, familial camaraderie bred by years of working 200 to 250 dates annually. Cray and Cousins have been musical partners for 15 years, Olson is an eight-year veteran, and Boe was briefly in the band in 1979 before re-joining three years ago.

When the band decided to augment its lineup for larger arena shows last year, they selected guitarist Ted Kaihatsu, a Berkeley club booker familiar enough with their music to hop on a flight to Boston, walk on the bandstand and begin playing without any rehearsal. Even the three-man road crew has been with the group for five years.

The son of a career Army man, Cray was born in Georgia but moved frequently before his family settled in Tacoma, Wash., in the mid-’60s. The Beatles inspired him to take up guitar, but Cray also absorbed the sounds of regional rock heroes like the Sonics and Paul Revere & the Raiders, as well as radio staples Jimi Hendrix, Clapton and soul man Wilson Pickett.

He fell in with a group of blues fanatics in high school, and the geographical isolation of living in Washington state gave Cray an opportunity to develop his own style.

An appearance by guitarist Albert Collins at Cray’s high school graduation dance cemented his determination to play blues. An equally strong influence, particularly on his vocals, was the late soul singer O.V. Wright.

Cray hooked up with bassist Cousins in 1972, but the duo didn’t find any other kindred spirits.

“We joined the band of two older guys and they were telling us we couldn’t play R&B; and blues because it wasn’t selling,” Cray remembered. “We quit after two months and went through a succession of basement bands, but nothing really jelled.”

Cray and Cousins moved to Eugene, Ore., in 1974, formed the Cray Band and slowly began building a regional following. The band backed Albert Collins and other blues veterans on their area dates, and made a splash of their own at the 1977 San Francisco Blues Festival.

Cray’s career gained some momentum the following year when co-producer/songwriter Bruce Bromberg, then a promotion man for Tomato Records, saw the band at a San Francisco club. Bromberg produced “Who’s Been Talking” in 1978, but the album wasn’t released for two years and quickly disappeared after Tomato folded.

It wasn’t until Bromberg, Dennis Walker and Larry Sloven formed the Alameda-based Hightone label and released “Bad Influence” in 1983 that the Cray Band’s career took off. The album won numerous awards and, together with 1985’s “False Accusations,” established Cray as a new star on the international blues scene.

Most important, Cray was creating a new, more contemporary lyrical and musical vocabulary for the blues.

Said Walker: “A long time ago, everybody discussed what was the most comfortable thing for Bob to do, which was mainly to use the old blues ideas but to expand it by writing a little story.

“They almost always have something to do with some sort of moral conflict so it can create drama. Willie Mitchell and Al Green were doing the same sort of thing and that’s where we come out of.”

The songs, written by various combinations of Bromberg (under the name D. Amy), Walker, Cray and the other band members, often put new twists to those standard themes.

Cray’s remorse-filled delivery on “Right Next Door” (“She was right next door and I’m such a strong persuader / She was just another notch on my guitar / She’s gonna lose the man who really loves her / In the silence, I can hear their breaking hearts”) stands the image of the love-’em-and-leave-’em bluesman on its head.

“It’s my favorite song on the album because, with a lot of the older blues songs, the guys have that big macho image,” Cray explained. “If you really listen to the songs, it’s telling you that guys aren’t as bad as they used to be. A guy can apologize.

“I love story songs, but they should have endings to help people out because people do look up at people that are on stage. Even though it might feel weird to the performer, people are looking for answers. There’s no answer in that particular song. It just opens up people’s heads to situations like that.”

The Cray Band’s success will have one important side effect: It will allow them the luxury of working up new songs in advance rather than writing in the studio. But the group’s ability to come up with potent fresh material doesn’t mean they won’t occasionally look back to some old past masters for future inspiration.

“We want to do some Howlin’ Wolf because it seems like I have new ears for the Wolf,” said Cray.

“The thing I liked before was Wolf’s voice, and I really wasn’t paying attention to what the band was doing. Now I hear that, and it’s killing me. There’s a lot of great stuff to sing out there.”

One thing Portland resident Cray doesn’t foresee changing in the immediate future is the band’s grueling tour schedule. “If we’re off for more than two weeks,” he said, “all the guys in the band go crazy, because that’s all we’re used to.”