‘REPO MAN’ ON THE CLUB CIRCUIT

“What’s great about Harry Dean Stanton is that he draws the widest range of people of any act we have here,” noted John Chelew, the talent booker at McCabe’s in Santa Monica.

“Everybody from young punks who know him from ‘Repo Man’ to old cinematographers who used to work with him and are now living out on a ranch somewhere,” Chelew continued. “People in their 60s, wearing bolo ties. Weird people from back when it was harder to be weird, you know?”

Yes, we know. The Friday night street lights weren’t on yet, but already the dusk that bathes the instrument-covered walls of McCabe’s had begun to take on a soft, rosy glow as the room completed its transition from daytime guitar shop to evening concert hall.

While a half-dozen employees bustled around, setting up folding chairs, lights and microphones, taking phone calls and making coffee, character actor and cult hero Harry Dean Stanton, 60, strolled the six-foot space between the ashtray and the cash register, strumming an acoustic guitar, singing something soft and sweet en espanol.

Stanton--who says he played coffeehouses in the ‘60s, but only recently took to performing regularly on the local folk-club circuit--stopped practicing long enough to offhandedly acknowledge his eclectic following. “Well, that’s reflected in the music, too,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to be known as just a country singer or just a folk singer or just an ethnic singer or anything else.

“I got into Spanish, er, Mexican music from seeing a Leo Carrillo movie. God, it must’ve been 30, 40 years ago. My accent is good ‘cause I have a good ear for that sort of thing.”

His eyes narrowed. “But I can’t really speak the language. As far as making a record goes, Ry Cooder says he wants to do one with me, so maybe we will. But I’m not gonna, as you say, give up my day job.”

Over in the corner, triple-scale session man Kenny Edwards checked the strings on the acoustic bass he first used on the Linda-Dolly-Emmylou album and hasn’t been able to put down since. Edwards was doing this one for fun this night.

So was the guitarist sitting across from him, songwriter-sessionaire Steven Soles, who’s backed everyone from Bob Dylan to T Bone Burnett and now serves as Stanton’s unofficial musical director.

Van Dyke Parks showed up. The elfin, eccentric composer-arranger was apparently sitting in on piano and accordion Friday night. Everybody exchanged greetings, ribaldries and jests in the manner of old friends, and the four musicians traipsed off to sound-check.

As the club’s sound and lighting people made the necessary adjustments, Harry Dean Stanton and Friends--as the evening was advertised--ran through the most recent additions to their repertoire, of which “Across the Borderline” from Ry Cooder’s “The Border” score emerged as a haunting, high ‘n’ lonesome highlight. They decided on which songs and on which instrument Parks would contribute.

Someone mumbled something about the need for a set list.

“Yeah, that’d be professional,” drawled Edwards, and the band repaired to an upstairs dressing room.

Outside, it was dark and the line of people waiting to get in stretched down the block.

While opening act Syd Straw began her sound check, Stanton and company continued to rehearse. Parks begged to play piano on yet another number, “Piney Wood Hills.”

“That’s a beautiful song. Buffy St. Marie wrote that? I can do some wonderful things with that.” He sat down to the slightly out-of-tune backstage piano to demonstrate.

Local rocker-turned-solo singer-songwriter Peter Case shuffled in, accompanied by his singer-songwriter wife, Victoria Williams. While Soles disappeared with the guest list, Edwards made a phone call and Parks wandered off. Case joins Stanton on another couple of run-throughs of Bob Dylan’s “To Ramona.”

As the musicians worked their way through the libations, the talk turned to touring. The recently returned Williams told Parks, “You should go to Europe, they love you in the Low Countries.” Parks lifted an eyebrow.

Suddenly, it was showtime. The house lights went down and the trio of Stanton, Soles and Edwards eased into Bob Neuwirth’s dying magnolia blossom of a ballad, “Annabelle Lee.” (After the show, the words Thanks Hairy. Bob N. would be found scrawled mysteriously on a backstage chalkboard.)

Joined a couple of tunes later by Parks, the quartet ambled through a variety of country standards, ethnic numbers and modern folk classics. A little bit shaggy ‘n’ ragged, but the full house laughed along in all the right places, such as when Stanton introduced Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” as “written by a personal friend of ours and we’ve all been up to his house.”

He also intro’d Marty Robbins’ gunfighter ballad “El Paso” as “another smokin’ oldie” and noted that Bernie Taupin (who greeted Stanton backstage after the show) told him that this was the tune that inspired him to begin his own songwriting career.

At one point, Stanton attempted to translate the Spanish lyrics to “Que Volver Volver” when he got sidetracked into a long and serious discourse on the unlikely possibility of reincarnation, which Parks punctures by interrupting, “What you’re doing is not easy!”

Chagrined, Stanton explained his penchant for rambling: “As you can tell, I live alone.”

The band finally did the tune and came back for a trio of encores. Augmented by Case, Williams and Straw, they ended with Doug Sahm’s “She’s About a Mover.”

Backstage. Poker-playing screenwriter buddies and unidentified beautiful women. Local musicians and seen-on-the-scenesters. Laughing, talking, joking, smoking. One by one, a half-dozen young fans show up bearing 8x10 glossy publicity stills of Stanton from films ranging from “Paris, Texas” to “The Black Marble” to “Alien” to “Pretty in Pink.” Stanton autographed ‘em all.

Gradually the heat, the hour and the overcrowding caused the crowd to disperse and the stragglers wound up on the sidewalk out front, exchanging phone numbers and promises to call, trying to decide where to go, what to eat and who’s in town tomorrow night.

Eventually, Stanton came out carrying his guitar and stepped into the Japanese import parked at the curb. He picked up his cellular phone and dialed his answering service.

Steven Soles chuckled. “Harry Dean--he’s so Hollywood.”