POP MUSIC / THOMAS K. ARNOLD : Country Dick Wears Out His Welcome on KSON

During the Beat Farmers’ three-month sabbatical--which ends Friday night with a record release party at Iguanas in Tijuana for their fourth album, “Poor and Famous”--the local roots-rock quartet did a little moonlighting.

They added a pedal-steel guitarist to their lineup and, as the Incredible Hayseeds, hit the nightclub circuit with a repertoire of nothing but old country tunes by the likes of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers.

The folks at KSON (1240 AM and 97.3 FM), San Diego’s leading country radio station, were mighty impressed with the transition. So, when KSON’s morning deejay, Jack Diamond, took last week off, Country Dick Montana, the Farmers/Hayseeds irrepressible drummer and occasional lead singer, was asked to be one of the celebrity subs. And on the very first day of Diamond’s absence, at that.

Montana readily accepted the offer, even though hosting the 6-to-10 a.m. show meant “getting up earlier than I ever have in my entire life,” he said in his trademark gruff baritone.

“Actually, I didn’t get up, I stayed up,” Montana added. “My theory was that I would be able to give the public a better-quality Country Dick time by staying up all night, drinking and gambling, and being at my prime, as opposed to getting up early and being groggy and not with it.”

Four hours of Montana at his prime left KSON executives primed for more. The musician-turned-deejay was promptly invited back for the following Wednesday, and it was hinted that he just might be invited back Thursday and Friday as well.

He wasn’t.

“When I went on the air on Wednesday, the first thing Lisa (Dent, producer of the KSON morning show) asked me was if I had anything to say to the listeners out there,” Montana recalled.

He did have something to say, reminding his listeners that it was time to get up and get to work. The problem is he referred to them as “lazy . . . pigs.” In between lazy and pigs were words that some listeners found in questionable taste.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Montana said. “I was just having a good time, taking on a really good ‘bad attitude’--but right away, 12 people called into management and complained. And the next thing I know, I was given the ax.”

Not so, countered KSON promotions director Steve Sapp. “We asked him to come by on Monday, then we asked him to come by again on Wednesday, and, after that, we just didn’t ask him to come by anymore,” Sapp says. “No big deal.”

In any event, Montana said, he now regrets the faux pas that may or may not have put a premature end to his stint as a KSON deejay.

“I’m used to working on rock ‘n’ roll stations, and I was never really aware of just how conservative country stations are---what you can say and what you can’t say,” Montana said. “I was just saying anything off the top of my head, and I had no idea KSON listeners were going to be so sensitive about it.”

LINER NOTES: Less than two months after attracting turn-away crowds to her Del Mar Fair grandstand performance, Sheena Easton is scheduled to return to San Diego for an Aug. 17 show at the Civic Theatre downtown. It is hoped that she will be a little more careful backstage than she was the last time: Just before she was to go on in Del Mar, Easton was seen running out of her dressing room, her hair in curlers, frantically crying, “Fire! Fire!” She had left her stainless steel teapot plugged in too long and the cord had burst into flames, igniting the tablecloth upon which the teapot sat. To the rescue came a couple of stagehands, who promptly doused the inferno. . . .

Jacuzzi-jazz fans, it appears your numbers are dwindling: Pat Metheny’s July 30 local date has been switched from San Diego State University’s Open Air Theatre to the much-smaller California Theatre downtown. . . . Local nightclubs are pulling out all the stops to boost attendance. The Copacabana in Middletown is giving away trips to Rio de Janeiro, Club A in Tijuana is offering free admission to anyone who shows the doorman a concert ticket stub, and Iguanas, also in Tijuana, is providing free “luxury” shuttle-bus transportation from the border to the club and back for upcoming concerts by such acts as Xymox (Saturday), Bad Manners (Sunday) and Julian Lennon (Aug. 13). . . .

Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. for concerts by Carole King and Wayne Toups and the Zydecajuns, Aug. 19 at the Civic Theatre, and Little Feat and Jeff Healey, Sept. 3 at the California Theatre. Friday at 3 p.m., tickets go on sale for Elvis Costello’s Sept. 8 show at the Open Air Theatre. And Saturday at 10 a.m., tickets go on sale for the Sept. 6 appearance by Bob Dylan and the Pogues at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park.