NRBQ May at Last Spell Success for Eclectic Group

They’ve been touring and recording for nearly a quarter of a century. Their songs have been covered by a wealth of other artists, including Hank Williams Jr., the Box Tops, Carpenters, Dave Edmunds and Bonnie Raitt.

Columbia Records once hyped them as the “new Beatles,” and their peer-group admirers include Keith Richards and R.E.M., with whom they spent two months on the road last year.

Yet the members of NRBQ have never even come close to having a hit record, and their live appearances as headliners are still confined to nightclubs, including this Friday night at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa.

With the recent Virgin Records release of “Wild Weekend,” however, Terry Adams--the group’s co-founder, lead singer and keyboard player--believes NRBQ’s long-awaited commercial breakthrough is finally at hand.

“I just think our time has come,” he said. “It’s our first studio album in five years, we’ve got a major label behind us, and I have a feeling people are going to pick up on it.”

If NRBQ does make it big, it won’t be because of any shift in musical direction. It’s still playing the same eclectic mix of rock ‘n’ roll, country, jazz and rhythm and blues it’s always played.

“Our sound hasn’t changed; it’s just gotten better,” Adams said. “We’re not going to change to suit somebody else’s idea of what’s in; we believe in playing ourselves, and waiting for people to catch on.

“We’re all natural musicians; it’s the only job we’ve ever had, and none of us has ever held down a regular job. This is what we do--we’re out there together, playing our sound.”

The unique NRBQ sound is based on segregation rather than integration, Adams said.

“When you take something like fusion, you get neither jazz nor rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “And to me, that’s no fun--I’d rather hear someone play a jazz tune right and then a rock ‘n’ roll tune right.

“It’s like, if you’re a painter, and you take all your colors and dump them into one thing, you get dull gray. It’s better to reserve the right color for the right moment.

“We use every color that God gave us, whenever we feel like it, but instead of mixing everything together, we play everything pure--the songs on our albums are mainly rock, but we might throw in a country tune or a jazz tune just to keep it interesting.”

NRBQ stands for New Rhythm and Blues Quintet, though the group today has four members. It was formed in 1967, when Adams and a fellow Kentucky native, guitarist Steve Ferguson, met Bronx-born bassist Joey Spampinato in Miami.

With singer Frank Gadler and drummer Tom Staley, they began playing together in Miami nightclubs and gradually made their way north to New Jersey, where Slim Harpo saw them in 1968.

Harpo got them booked into New York’s prestigious Scene, and within months they were signed by Columbia Records, which in 1969 released their debut album.

NRBQ’s 1970 follow-up, “Boppin’ the Blues,” was a collaboration with rockabilly legend Carl Perkins; like the group’s first album, it was a critical triumph but a commercial bomb.

Columbia subsequently dropped NRBQ, and the group recorded its next two albums for Kama Sutra Records. After a three-year sabbatical, NRBQ resurfaced in 1977 with “All Hopped Up” on its own Red Rooster label; since then, it’s released several more albums--on Mercury, Rounder and Bearsville--and toured incessantly, averaging upward of 180 gigs a year. (Al Anderson joined the group in 1971, and Ferguson and Gadler later quit. Tom Ardolino replaced Staley.)

“We literally live on the road,” Adams said. “None of the band members live in the same state, and when we do go home, it’s to pick up our mail and change socks.

“Touring not only keeps us young and healthy--whenever I come to California, the first thing I do is go to the Beverly Hills Juice Club and grab some wheatgrass juice--but that’s how we get the music out there.”

Occasionally, NRBQ members have called time out to pursue individual projects.

In 1977, Adams toured Europe with Carla Bley. Two years later, he compiled Thelonious Monk’s “Always Know” album. And bassist Spampinato appeared with Keith Richards in the Chuck Berry tribute film, “Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

But since 1987, when a protracted legal battle with Bearsville Records was finally resolved, the emphasis has been on collective activities.

“As soon as we got out (of the Bearsville contract), we did two live albums, and then we began working on our new studio album for Virgin,” Adams said.

“And now that our Virgin album is out, we’re supporting it the best way we know how--through touring, touring and more touring.”