Inventive Duo of Tuck, Patti Emerging as Major Players of ‘90s : Music: Already sold-out date at Coach House is indicative of their momentum, along with new recordings, video concerts.

Tuck and Patti, the inventive musical duo from San Francisco, are entering the ‘90s with momentum that seems to be gathering speed almost daily. New recordings, a tour to Japan, video concerts and a solo album for Tuck are filling their musical plates to overflowing. Friday night and again a week from Saturday their busy itinerary calls for stops at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. Friday’s show is already sold out.

It’s a nice way to be entering their second decade of work together. Patti (whose last name was Catchcart before she married Tuck in 1981) and Tuck Andress were stellar performers in San Francisco long before Windham Hill released their first album in 1988. In the last two years they have crossed one category after another, with Patti’s soul-stirring singing and Tuck’s ambidextrous guitar playing showing up on rock, jazz and easy listening radio stations.

“We’ve experienced a big change in some ways,” Tuck said on the phone last weekend, “less of a change in others. The biggest, I guess, has been in logistics: There’s no doubt that your life is much more orderly when you’re at home and a lot more complicated when you’re on the road.”

“It all happened so suddenly,” he continued, “that it took a little while for us to realize what was going on--to learn how to get by without sleeping, and still have enough energy to perform.

“But the way we perform hasn’t changed at all. We still work with each other with the same enthusiasm and joy that we had when we were a local San Francisco act.”

Another difference, apart from logistics: The mixed-race couple (Patti is black, Tuck is white) now has to deal with the unpredictable hazards of visibility outside the familiar environs of the Bay Area. Frequently, they encounter listeners who have only heard them on the radio and who are startled when they first see them.

“It’s never been a problem for us,” said Patti. “But since we still live in a racist world, there are other people who do have a problem with us as a duo, and as a couple.”

“We haven’t experienced a lot of the overt stuff,” added Tuck, “like the hotel owner who says he can’t book us because of his clients. But it’s there, just beneath the surface.”

“And you don’t have to go to the South to experience it,” Patti said.

There’s an upside to it, though. “In our relationship,” Tuck said, “we don’t think about race. And that’s true of our music, too. But the fact that we stand up there--a male and female, black and white, married--is a kind of statement in itself. Hopefully it’s the kind of gentle statement that can make a quiet but effective point about acceptance and understanding.”

But back to those problems of life on the road: In the last year, Tuck and Patti have been home an average of only a few days a month. With most touring music groups the social dynamics shift and change as they travel from place to place. In a duo, there is a single social dynamic--one on one.

“Oh, we’ve had to get our communications skills together, you can be sure about that,” said Tuck. “But it can get really crazy, and the only solution is absolute honesty about our feelings.”

“When people get our contracts,” laughed Patti, “they sometimes say, ‘There’s only two of you; why do you have to have two hotel rooms?’ They don’t realize that we sometimes need that space in order to keep ourselves sane.

“We’re committed to each other, and we love each other a great deal, but we also respect each other’s boundaries. Neither of us gets what we want all the time and, hey, sometimes the only solution is just to start yelling. And we do that, too.”

With a Japanese tour looming in the next few months, possible television deals in the works and a new recording to plan, the pair are going to be spending a lot more time in hotel rooms.

“No problem,” said Tuck. “All the time we spend together gives us a chance to work on our relationship. One thing’s for sure: It’s helped us to get real good at being Tuck and Patti.”

Tuck and Patti play Friday and Feb. 3 at 9 p.m. at Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Friday’s show is sold out; tickets for Feb. 3 are $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.