Couple Play to Separate Drummers : Pop music: Nick Pyzow leads his own well-known rock band, while new wife, Anny Celsi, is the co-songwriter for the Tearjerkers, a 3-year-old pop quintet.

Having married in March, Nick and Anny are each devoted, wide-eyed and have sights set on a big future.

They share many of the usual things that young married folk do, as well as an obsessive love for music. But for this couple to realize their dreams, they say, two nice record deals would sure help.

Nick Pyzow and Anny Celsi are local songwriter/musicians, still paying the dues endemic of young pop careers, hoping that success lurks just over the horizon. But they are following separate paths in pursuing those goals.

Celsi is the co-songwriter for the Tearjerkers, a 3-year-old quintet whose irresistible pop harmonies and hook-laden guitars are based in the L.A. tradition of the Go-Go’s and the Bangles.

Pyzow, who until recently was based in Anaheim, has been plugging away at his craft since the early 1980s, first as a solo acoustic artist before establishing the Nick Pyzow Band.

Pyzow’s music, like that of the Tearjerkers, is steeped in strong pop sensibilities, but his band favors the country rock/jangly guitar blend of the Byrds and an oft-cited early-Springsteenian vocal quality and swagger.

In between his tireless work performing at clubs throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, Pyzow has independently released a batch of singles and three albums.

His latest LP, “Adobe & Diamonds,” fleshes out the band’s trademark sound while offering glimmers of musical growth.

On the one hand, the record delves into Pyzow’s past, reviving “For Our Youth” from his 1983 six-track debut release, “Right at Night.”

As Pyzow explains it, his original solo acoustic version of the track has come to sound like a demo version to him.

“That was a song I always envisioned as bigger,” Pyzow said during an interview this week. “When ‘Right at Night’ came out, that was indicative of my sound, real lean and sparse. Then, when I put the band together, all these (new) ideas started coming in, and they wouldn’t go away.”

The number has always been a crowd favorite during the band’s performances, “so when it came time to do the album we figured, let’s give it a shot,” he says.

And he says the LP version captures the energy of the live renditions, mainly because “the cut you hear on the record we did on the first take.”

The other nine tracks on “Adobe & Diamonds,” for the most part, introduce a more bluesy tinge to the band’s sound but do little more to broaden it.

A glaring exception, however, is “Word on a Wire,” one of two songs on the album written by bassist Rick Staples. Combining harmonies, keyboards and a range of driving percussion, the Jamaican-flavored “Wire” marks the band’s most radical musical detour to date.

Staples, formerly of a local band called Fan Shen, has never before contributed songs to a Nick Pyzow Band record, and only occasionally writes songs any more, Pyzow said. But since recording the latest album “was very much more a total band effort” than previous efforts, Pyzow agreed to include some of Staples’ songs.

“Wire,” Pyzow says, “was a wild hair. It really stands out when we play it, and we all liked it.”

However, he added, “I wouldn’t say it is an indication of a new direction.”

But the latest songs Pyzow has been writing, he says, are moving into new musical territory: “The stuff I’m writing now is edgier and a little more biting. It moves away from the country rock to more folk-blues rock” in the vein of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.

In the meantime, Pyzow continues working diligently at his other roles in his band, as manager and promoter. So far, he has attracted only nibbles from the record companies.

“But I’m not a guy who put a band together to get a record deal,” says Pyzow, whose band returns to Orange County to play the White House in Laguna Beach on Wednesday and Thursday.

“I don’t look at it as a big goal. I do what I do and many things happen along the way, but I’m not necessarily striving for the ‘big break.’ ”

However, he adds, “it would be wonderful to be at a bigger acceptance level and play before 3,000 or 4,000 people.”

The Tearjerkers’ next move, meanwhile, is shopping for a producer to record their first album, band members said before performing Wednesday at Peppers Golden Bear. (Related story, F3.)

The band has recorded a handful of singles and written a slew more. But, after two years of “just playing whatever we felt like,” the group has since carved out a clear musical direction, guitarist/vocalist Celsi says.

The Tearjerkers’ original glossy pop sound has since developed ragged edges. Band members say that came about a year ago, when Cynthia Jones replaced Allison MacLeod, who had been the group’s primary lead vocalist.

Lead guitarist Bruce Kaplan, half-jokingly, sums up the band’s current sound as “the Everly Sisters meets Van Halen.”

Jones has helped bring more of an R&B; flavor to the Tearjerkers in place of the country hue that was characterized by MacLeod’s Maria McKee-like vocals.

Still, the group’s sound centers around the harmonic intertwining of three female voices: Jones, Celsi and bassist/co-songwriter Danette Christine. Blended with ringing guitars, the result can easily be labeled as L.A.’s latest “girl group” pop sound.

But, although band members acknowledge the influence of bands from the Ronettes to the Bangles, they prefer to play down “the G-word” factor, as they put it.

“We don’t necessarily have girl-group sensibilities, but we may have a girl-group sound,” Celsi says. But she and her band mates disagree with often-cited comparisons to the Bangles.

“The Bangles and the Go-Go’s opened a lot of doors, but I don’t think we sound anything like them,” Celsi says. “We’re as much like the Bangles as the Stones were the Beatles.”

And, as drummer Mark Wagner adds, “we’re not all girls.”

The female majority is “integral to the chemistry of the group,” Christine says, but “we’re more a family than a group of girls.”

The Tearjerkers’ quest to record their first album, they say, is still in the early stages. They have gotten some airplay on KROQ’s Rodney Bingenheimer’s program and KLOS’s late-night show featuring local music, but a record deal still appears well down the road, they say.

“The best we can do is play gigs and sound good,” Kaplan says.

And they hope that Bingenheimer’s affinity for female vocal-based pop bands may lead to a break.

“We first tried to meet Rodney at the station, but they wouldn’t let us in,” Celsi says. “So we followed him to Pennyfeathers, his favorite restaurant, and forced our record on him. And he liked it.”

But, Rodney being Rodney, she says, “all he wanted to talk about was the Bangles.”

The Tearjerkers play Saturday at midnight at the Bohemian Cafe at Bogart’s, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway in the Marina Pacifica Mall, Long Beach. Admission: $5. Information: (213) 594-8976. The Nick Pyzow Band plays at 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the White House, 340 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach. Admission: $2. Information: (714) 494-8088.