POP MUSIC REVIEW : Some Curbside Service From Peterson

If you happened to be driving on Placentia Avenue Saturday night and saw a man running down the street screaming and playing an electric guitar, don’t be concerned. It was just Lucky Peterson.

In the middle of his first set at the Newport Roadhouse, the 26-year-old bluesman came off the bandstand to sing and solo through a blistering minor-key version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster.” And after working his way through the crowd, Peterson just kept on going, heading out the door and down the block a ways before returning to the club.

It’s a time-honored trick, once practiced by Guitar Slim and Buddy Guy with ridiculously long guitar cords (Guitar Slim is said to have once exited a club and ridden a New Orleans bus for a block, soloing all the while through a cord running back to his amp on the bandstand). Peterson may have the advantage of a wireless transmitter, but it’s still an impressive, showy routine, all the more so when juxtaposed with the typical lack of street life in Costa Mesa.

But that flashy display is the only thing the young bluesman has in common with his forebears. Though he’s not afraid to mix funk and jazz into his blues, Peterson has the emotion and feel to keep it all close to the street.

Peterson’s is one of the unique stories in blues: He started playing organ when he was 3, having been exposed to such performers as Guy and Muddy Waters in the club his parents owned. When he was five, blues composer-producer-bassist Willie Dixon recorded him doing a number called “1-2-3-4” that became a Top 40 hit and got him on Ed Sullivan and the Tonight Show. Perhaps as a result of the training given to child stars, Peterson grins nearly every instant he’s performing.

At 26, he is still a blues baby compared to most folks in the genre, but while the bold enthusiasm of his performance bespoke his age, his 20 years of experience also showed. Peterson displayed a brash, in-your-face guitar style that (also) brings Guy to mind, while his singing voice is a heated blend of Robert Cray’s smooth style and Orleanian Walter Wolfman Washington’s unfettered baritone.

Peterson’s current album is entitled “Triple Threat,” and he is just that, playing keyboards in addition to his vocals and guitar. His keyboard work is a far cry from his wild and rootsy guitar playing, being at once both more original and less engaging. His jazz and funk chops came to the fore when he played keys, and he wove them well into a blues context, but they just didn’t connect as well. One problem may be that, like most touring musicians, he uses a synthesizer onstage, and they simply aren’t as expressive as the more low-tech and far more cumbersome instruments musicians used to lug about.

Backed by an effective trio dubbed the Silent Partners, he charged through a set of originals and often-covered blues standards. The originals included a soulful vocal and keyboard workout called “Dead Cat on the Line,” the title of which goes a long ways toward returning strong imagery to the blues.

Thumb-picking his blond Gibson 335, he led his band into a snarling roadhouse grind, then into B.B. King territory with “Everyday I Have the Blues” before closing out the set with a Chicago trilogy of “Little Red Rooster,” “Wang Dang Doodle” and Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working.” His stroll through the crowd during “Rooster” revealed what a startlingly powerful voice the slight man has: Though his band was cooking, his guitar was howling and the audience was shouting encouragement, his unamplified singing carried over it all.

Though these songs are some of the most overworked in the blues catalogue, Peterson gave them all fresh twists, particularly “Mojo.” He did more than just sing its lyric about going to Louisiana; he took the song there musically, with drummer Tony Coleman laying down a manic street parade rhythm while Peterson skipped around it with an exultant vocal and stinging guitar choruses. He is someone to not miss when he comes around again.

The Newport Roadhouse is managed by Gabriel Tellez, who ran the Sunset Pub, which closed last December to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from local music fans. Though it takes time to create the special feel the Pub had, the Roadhouse shows potential. Only open since mid-February, the place is already comfortably funky, as opposed to the passed-out-under-the-pool-table-funky atmosphere the building had in some of its previous incarnations.

The venue has been redesigned somewhat, with a much larger stage in a different corner of the building than where bands used to play. There still are sight-line problems, the chief one being that a large bar area sits right where the audience would best be located. But there are seats to either side of the bar, and behind it, and the view from that rear area has been improved somewhat by the installation of higher tables and chairs. In front of the stage is a dancing area.

Like the Sunset Pub, the Roadhouse is presenting mostly roots-related music, from blues to reggae. A strong series of “Blue Mondays” will include the Mighty Flyers on June 3 and the Lynwood Slim/Junior Watson Band later next month. Tellez said he hopes to bring in two or more nationally touring acts, such as Peterson, each month. Additionally, London Exchange has been bringing alternative music shows in on Fridays, featuring such acts as Thelonious Monster.