New Rock Bands Follow the Buzz Back to Town

B ack by popular demand.

Those words wouldn’t be out of place on the marquee tonight when Hothouse Flowers appear at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, or Saturday when the Irish rock band headlines the Ventura Theatre in Ventura.

Normally, new bands--especially those from as far away as Ireland or England--play one or two shows in Southern California as part of their initial U.S. tour, then head home to work on their next album, hoping the record will be the key to attracting a larger audience.

However, the Flowers--one of the most acclaimed newcomers of 1988--is back just three months after their debut shows here. (The group will also be at the Roxy for three nights starting Monday.)

Similarly, the Cowboy Junkies--equally heralded newcomers who made a splash here at Club Lingerie in December--begin a series of Southern California dates on March 5 at UC San Diego.

The Canadian group (which will guest this weekend on “Saturday Night Live”) also will be at the Bacchanal in San Diego on March 6, the Roxy on March 8-9 and McCabe’s in Santa Monica on March 10.

“I think it’s great that they’re coming back so fast, and it is something we may be seeing more of,” said Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, which is producing the Roxy shows for both bands.

“It’s a trend we have seen in the last three or four years with bigger bands--a Genesis coming into the Forum in October of 1986 when their album came out and then returning for a stadium show the following May. . . . The same with Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson. In that case, it’s a sign of the longer shelf life of an album these days. The same may be true now for younger bands too.”

Ken Phebus, talent booker for the Coach House and the Ventura Theatre, agreed, “I was surprised to see them back so fast, but I’m delighted. When a band has the buzz of a Hothouse Flowers, Cowboy Junkies or Melissa Etheridge, it ought to take advantage of it and do more shows in a market rather than (disappear) for a year.

“There was such a buzz on the Flowers the first time they came through that our phone was ringing off the hook . . . people asking when they were going to play the Coach House. The Coach House show sold out weeks ago and there are only a few tickets left in Ventura.”

Why are they back so fast?

With the Flowers, it is literally a case of popular demand.

“The reaction was so good to the (November) shows that we felt the best thing we could do was get back here,” Robbie Wooton, the Dublin-based band’s manager, said this week. “We aren’t planning to have another record out until September, which means we wouldn’t have normally returned until October or November.

“If the reaction hadn’t been as good, we wouldn’t have been able to come back financially. We did 24 shows in the country last time and we had 17 or 18 sellouts. This time we are doing 44 shows.

“This band is primarily a live act . . . and I think America lends itself more to live bands than anywhere else. Guns N’ Roses proved that you can build a career by playing live without radio or anything behind you. There isn’t much of a real (club) scene . . . in Ireland or England anymore. That’s why bands tend to spend more time in the studio there, hoping the next record will (vault) them into the big hall shows.”

With the Cowboy Junkies, however, the return trip was planned from the beginning.

Manager Peter Leak said the Club Lingerie appearance in December was one of just two U.S. shows the band did in conjunction with the release of the “Trinity Session” album on RCA. The other date: New York City’s CBGB, the club that was influential in the ‘70s in introducing such acts as Patti Smith and Talking Heads. The idea was to build media interest prior to a full tour.

“Actually, the upcoming dates are our tour,” Leak said by phone this week from his office in New York. “We came out the first time because we felt there was a ground of support, a core of people who wanted to see them and to build some word-of-mouth before we came around for the regular tour.”

In fact, Leak said, things are going so well for the Toronto-based Junkies--in terms of critical response and record sales--that they may return to Southern California for additional shows in late April or early May before releasing the follow-up to “The Trinity Session.”

The Hothouse Flowers and Cowboy Junkies were among the most acclaimed debuts of 1988, and early record sales are strong enough (about 200,000 each) to suggest that they have a chance at major commercial breakthroughs.

Musically, however, the bands are worlds apart. Where the Junkies, featuring lead singer Margo Timmins, deal in a melancholy, country-based rock sound that revolves around a dark, slow, yet intoxicating pulse, the Flowers’ music is bolstered by a flavorful folk- and blues-accented rock that reaches out to audiences with an almost evangelical idealism.

Because of those uplifting tendencies, the Flowers have been frequently compared to fellow Irishmen U2. It’s a comparison that Flowers lead singer Liam O’Maonlai understands, but wouldn’t make himself.

“I’m delighted that U2 is doing well, but I don’t see any direct link,” he said. “It’s just human nature for people to make comparisons. It’s the same with people who say I sound like Bruce Springsteen or Van Morrison, and in some ways we all are a reflection of the music we love. I think as singers we all learn from each other anyway. . . . But the Waterboys were probably more of an influence on us.

“We had a tape of (the Waterboys’ album) ‘This Is the Sea’ with us in the van the first time we ever toured and we played it all the time. The Waterboys came across as people who were writing exact reflections of themselves. They weren’t trying to be like anyone else. Mike Scott didn’t try to sing like anybody else. But that was really just one influence. The first blueprint for me was probably soul music, the spirit of it. If you listen to our album, you can probably hear all our influences. . . . Traditional Irish music, soul music. If it’s part of you, it’ll shine through.”