Leon Redbone Arrives Here With a New Gripe : Personality: The cantankerous singer, freshly riled by a cross-country trek, brings his maverick brand of music to the Coach House Wednesday.

Leon Redbone, who has a general distaste for airplanes, arrives in Orange County this week at the end of a cross-country journey in a van with just his road manager, his musical equipment and a stack of books. Midway through the excursion, from a motel in Weatherford, Okla., he called to weave a diatribe against modern music, the sordid states of radio and TV, artists who take themselves too seriously, and incompetent drivers.

In the same low, slow near-drawl with which, for the last two decades, he has re-created the lost era of turn-of-the-century American music, Redbone suggested, among other things, that TV be used as a driver-education tool.

“They should run public service announcements for people to get in the right lane,” he explained indignantly. “Some people have no concept that if someone’s behind you, there’s no reason to stay in the left lane.

“But some people just completely ignore you. They haven’t a clue. They think you’re some crazy person wanting to run them over. . . . There are all these people out on the road who don’t know when to move over to the right lane, and something needs to be done about it.”

So there.

For that matter, Redbone, who has always blazed his own artistic trail unapologetically, would prefer that other musicians also stay out of his path.

“All the music I hear today is just rude, loud noises,” he said, “whether it’s country, rock ‘n’ roll, middle-of-the-road or whatever. It all sounds the same. Just this extremely loud, horrible sound. All of it has this huge drum, just beating it out. It’s completely useless to me. You turn on the radio, and all you hear is drums.”

As we close in on the end of the century, Redbone remains immersed in its beginning. But to dismiss this mustachioed crooner in white hat and dark glasses as a man out of time is to miss the point of his art:

In shunning everything deemed hip by the rest of the music world in favor of very unfashionable tunes from minstrel shows, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley--which he performs with humor and unassuming, impeccable authenticity--Redbone has fashioned a body of work that is timeless and universal.

His fascination with the pre-jazz era most recently has led him into exhaustive study of one Emmett Miller, a pioneering minstrel performer of the 1920s and ‘30s. Miller’s renditions of “Ghost of the St. Louis Blues” and “Right or Wrong” inspired Redbone to record versions on his latest album, “Sugar.” He’ll be highlighting material from “Sugar” Wednesday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

Miller has become “almost an obsession with me,” he said. “The story for all these years has been that there’s no information available on Emmett Miller at all. They’d all forgotten about poor Emmett.

“Emmett was a wonderful song stylist. He has contributed to pop music much more than anybody has imagined. He introduced a lot of numbers that became standards during the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. . . . Certainly, the most memorable versions of those songs are his recordings.”

Redbone takes issue with music historians who would maintain that minstrel shows were not a seminal influence on early jazz. On the contrary, Redbone feels that Miller was “more of a jazz musician than any jazz musician today.”

“And he wasn’t even a musician,” he pointed out. “He was a song stylist.”

The minstrel shows, despite their racist overtones, “influenced all the jazz musicians of that period,” Redbone continued. “And it’s interesting that very little is known about (them) today. Today, jazz musicians don’t have a knowledge of where the music really came from. A lot of them believe jazz started in 1935, but that’s not so. They sometimes even gloss over jazz in the ‘20s.”

Redbone said he is thinking about compiling his findings into a book on Miller’s life and music.

“I don’t know if anyone would be interested in it,” he acknowledged. “But it should be of great interest. It’s part of our musical heritage.”

He’s also toying with a few other projects, including a radio show devoted to the music he loves. Redbone would be host, and he would do it his way. “Just to play these things which sound strange to the uninitiated ear (would not get) the point across,” he said. “I’d like to do something that is both entertaining and informative, so people would get some sense of what I like about this music.”

Meanwhile, Redbone’s voice can be heard on several television commercials. He rejects some artists’ contention that commercials compromise a performer’s integrity.

“Some people consider it beneath your artistic endeavor. And it can be. But I don’t compromise myself. I don’t advertise food products I wouldn’t eat or something I wouldn’t use. The main thing is I can’t take myself too seriously. If I did, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Leon Redbone sings Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $18.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.