Cadillac Tramps Picking Up Speed : Homespun Rock Band, No Stranger to the Gritty Side of Life, Develops Avid Following

If you’re a Cadillac Tramp, you don’t drive on Easy Street.

The Orange County rock band, which plays Thursday at the Coach House, cares little for shiny finishes, sleek lines or a smooth, quiet ride. Its rough-hewn style is founded on a merger of hammering punk aggression, tempered by a swampy rhythmic crunch that comes from the five members’ interest in the blues and R&B.;

Fronted by Mike (Gabby) Gaborno--a bulky, bouncing energy source with a growling vocal delivery and a sardonically playful stage presence--the Tramps have attracted perhaps the most avid following of any new band on the local rock scene.

The band’s name reflects its solidarity with the gritty side of life. The Tramps don’t romanticize street denizens (Gaborno gives a panhandling “homey” a comic brushoff in the song “Life on the Edge”). But as they draw slices of street life in their songs, the Tramps point to such ideals as self-reliance, pride, and a rejection of drugs as an escape.

A Cadillac Tramp “means somebody who’s down and out, but they still have their inner class. It’s a dignity type thing,” guitarist Brian Coakley explained Thursday as he, Gaborno, drummer Jamie Reidling and lead guitarist Jonny (Two Bags) Wickersham gathered for an interview in the Orange offices of Dr. Dream Records. (A fifth member, bassist Warren Renfro, was getting over a case of bronchitis and missed the interview.)

Collectively, with their ‘50s-style slicked hair, assorted goatees, dark shades and flamboyant tattoos, they looked like somewhat seedier heirs to the Sharks and Jets of “West Side Story.” But during the interview, the four Tramps presented themselves thoughtfully, earnestly and without swagger.

Wickersham, who named the band when it began in late 1987, said he meant “Cadillac Tramps” to underscore pride in persistence: “The world might crumble around your feet, but you still keep trudging.”

It’s an idea that the wiry guitarist became acquainted with firsthand.

“At one point, I was like the Cadillac Tramp, pretty much (living) to the curb,” he said. “I didn’t have any place to live, and I had all my stuff in a couple of Safeway bags. They were my teen-age years, and I was kind of messed up. I’d burned all my bridges. I was the local traveling urchin for a while.”

Wickersham got off the streets, but his shopping-bag luggage left him with a nickname that stuck.

The Tramps, whose ages range from 23 to 25, found their entry to the gritty side of life in the punk-rock movement that swept Orange County in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

“For me, it wasn’t just a (style of) music. It should’ve been called ‘punk life’ instead of punk rock,” said Gaborno, whose quiet voice and mild, hands-folded-in-lap interview demeanor are far from his rambunctious stage persona, which is shaped in part by an admiration for John Belushi’s Blues Brothers antics. “I decided, ‘I’m sick of being the quiet little kid in a houseful of loudmouths,’ and (punk) gave me the excuse.”

Coakley saw punk as an outlet for expression as well as self-assertion: “Punk rock made it OK to say anything you wanted to say in a song.”

But punk aggression alone wasn’t enough to hold the Tramps’ interest as they progressed in separate garage bands.

“I got fed up with punk for a while, not wanting to hear so much whining, but concrete ideas and statements,” Coakley said. “It got to be a fashion bazaar.”

About four years ago, Wickersham became infatuated with the blues and began playing in earnest the guitar he’d only dabbled in before. He approached Gaborno about starting a band. When it was launched, Coakley was on hand, too, bringing his love for Motown, Aretha Franklin and James Brown.

It was, Gaborno recalled, as ground-level a beginning as a band could have: “We started writing songs on a beat-up old acoustic guitar with holes in it, and a paper plate (for a lyric sheet).”

But the nascent band’s contacts with better-established groups that had come up through the local punk scene helped it move fairly quickly to substantial gigs. “The whole cast of bands in Orange County helped us out,” Coakley said, mentioning Joe Wood, Big Drill Car, Tender Fury among the Tramps’ early mentors. “They knew us from around. We said, ‘We’ve got this band together,’ and they basically gave us a shot” as opening acts.

At the end of 1989, Jack Grisham and Ron Emory invited the Cadillac Tramps to open a highly publicized reunion show by the original T.S.O.L. at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim. That’s when the Tramps knew they were gaining momentum.

“I didn’t realize we had a draw, but when we walked on stage to play that night, the crowd started going nuts,” Wickersham said. “We looked at each other like, ‘Wow, they know who we are.’ ” In the past 18 months, the band has emerged as an Orange County favorite, and members say they have established a following in Los Angeles as well.

In late March, they released their debut album, “Cadillac Tramps,” on Dr. Dream Records. The album is notable for its clean and forceful rendering of the Tramps’ high-impact sound. Lyrically, it ranges from humorous street vignettes to Coakley’s blunt-instrument topical broadsides against lying politicians and South African racism--a subject he says he addressed partly to vent his anguish over racism closer to home.

“I see this racist thing in (American) society that could flare up to make the Watts riot look like a picnic,” he said. “It tears me up. I had this deep pain in my gut (from a racial incident that happened at his job). If something bugs me, it’ll be a song the next week. I’ll be doing something about it instead of letting it well up inside.”

An anti-drug perspective also runs through several songs--put there, members say, by their own past bouts with abuse.

“We all kind of had our shady past,” Gaborno said. “We decided it was just time to let go of a few things and travel on and grow.”

Unlike many entertainers who have been through rehab, the Tramps don’t think it’s proper to tell war stories.

“If we can subtly attack things that are wrong through our music”--though lines such as “Sobriety, man, it’s all for me,” aren’t all that subtle--”then we don’t need to harp about it in our interviews,” Coakley said. “We can stick more to the musical side of it.”

With their local popularity solidified, the Tramps’ next aim is to take their kinetic act on the road. They have traveled briefly in the Southwest but plan to start steady national touring shortly (they expect to sign soon with a major tour booking agency).

The Tramps’ transition to full-time music-making will be financially risky, members say. Even now, with outside jobs, their finances are tight. But they are willing to take the risk of giving up steady jobs in a recession economy, to see whether they can support themselves on the touring circuit.

“If I could live off the music we do well enough to have a shabby, one bedroom apartment, I would do it, because that’s what I love,” Gaborno said. “As long as the rats scoot over to give me a seat on the couch.”

“Jobs are easy to come by,” Coakley said. “Dreams are something you’ve got to chase.”

Cadillac Tramps, Don’t Mean Maybe and Medicine Rattle play Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $10. Information: (714) 496-8930. ADDENDUM: A recent review of the album, “To Live and Die in Orange County,” by local hard-rock band Force of Souls, omitted the contact address for mail-order CDs: Force of Souls, 420 E. Chapman Ave., Suite B, Fullerton, Calif. 92632. The band plays Tuesday night at the Marquee in Westminster.