The Wizard of Odd : David Lindley May Be Warped, but His Musical Eclecticism and Talent Are Unwavering

Ask David Lindley his age, and the multi-instrumental wizard breaks into a voice that sounds somewhat like a cold wind rustling through brittle branches: “I’m olllllld , heh-heh-heh, reeeal oooolld .”

Lindley also can do a pretty scary Jimmy Stewart impression, and among other unique inflections creeping into his conversation during a phone interview from his Claremont home Saturday, he sometimes would slip into a whiny, insect-sounding voice.

Shrink him and drop him into an ant hole, and chances are good that Lindley would have their music mastered in a matter of days. However aged he may be (the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll puts him at around 47), the wisteria-haired string player is anything but set in his musical ways.

Though absent from the local concert scene for the past 1 1/2 years, he wasn’t hibernating. Rather, he has:

* Recorded with Bob Dylan, Aaron Neville and a host of others. He plans to go in the studio soon with Mali’s kora-guitarist phenomenon Ali Farka Toure, and do field recordings in Madagascar with avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser.

* Completed two film soundtracks. One, done with Jack Nitzsche, is for the Sean Penn-written and directed “Indian Runner,” which recently drew raves at Cannes Film Festival. The other, “Crooked Hearts,” was done with trumpeter/composer Mark Isham.

* Toured the world with fellow eclectic Ry Cooder, playing acoustic sets spiced with his own worldwide assortment of stringed instruments. The tour’s scheduling caused them to miss a chance to record with Pakistani Sufi dervish musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

* Played an Asian music festival in the Soviet republic of Kazakh (located right next to Uzbek, he offered helpfully), where he drank plenty of fermented mare’s milk and camel’s milk.

* Done benefit shows with his old musical cohort Jackson Browne.

* Started taking trophies in silhouette-range pistol-shooting.

* Plunged head-on into a new musical collaboration with a Middle East hand-drum expert.

It is the last of these passions (and thankfully not the pistol-shooting) that Lindley will be bringing to shows at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Friday and Saturday. When he last played there, it was with a dime-store tiara on his head, playing a New Year’s Eve ’90 show with his El Rayo X, the ultimate world-party band.

His highly varied musical pursuits have placed him in the situation of the elephant with the blind men: “Some people think I’m only a dance band, the ‘Mr. Dave polyester party guy.’ Then other people might see me at (the Los Angeles folk club) McCabes’ and think I’m chiefly a representative of the American banjo fraternity. Who knows what they think when they see me with a saz? Then there’s stuff I do at home that might be too weird to ever play for an audience.”

Though he has a wild musical imagination, Lindley doesn’t waste notes on unnecessary flash. It’s typical of him that his favorite musical contribution to the Neville sessions was to play nothing at one point.

‘We were doing this Stephen Foster song, (‘Hard Times Come Again No More’) and there just came this moment when Aaron was singing that just seemed to say stop, so the bass player and I did, and it continued with just that incredible voice, Ry’s slide guitar and (drummer Jim) Keltner doing exactly the right thing, which was practically nothing in this case. It was one of the scariest, most perfect things you ever heard in your life.”

Lindley owns well more than 100 instruments ranging from budget ‘60s drugstore electric guitars to Turkish cumbashes (don’t ask), as well as some creations of his own, such as a fret-less 12-string guitar used on the Isham soundtrack (he’s still looking for a large Egyptian oud , if you’ve got one lying around).

Sometimes, he said, “producers make the mistake of telling me to bring all my instruments to a session, and I do. ‘Bring that semi up!’ ” He simulated the sound (“ka-phumphlt!”) of heaped instruments pouring out of a truck.

He said some of the instruments likely to see the most use at the Coach House this weekend are his 1920s Hawaiian guitars and the aforementioned saz , which he describes as “kind of the national instrument of Turkey, Kurdistan and Armenia, with a kind of a teardrop body twisted into a very complicated shape. They use a bunch of different tunings, with tied-on frets, and there’s about 700 modes of playing it, so you’ve got a lot of choices there.”

He’ll be performing with his new musical cohort Hani Naser, a Jordanian-American lawyer whose first love is playing the goblet-shaped tombek and other Middle Eastern hand-drums. “He’s really, really good,” Lindley said, “one of the best there is on these instruments.

“I’d heard about him from a bunch of different sources, people saying I had to hear him. So he came over one day--it turns out he lives just down the street from me--and I started playing some reggae stuff on the oud , and he just launched right into it. And, boy, I always know when something locks in, and this was it.

“This guy doesn’t just play one inflexible thing. He listens to what you’re doing and embellishes on that and takes it to different places. We’re always throwing things back and forth and seeing what happens. It’s not only a little more live, it’s a different way of playing: You have to think, see, play, improvise and arrange all at the instant, which is really fun and musically rewarding.”

El Rayo X hasn’t disbanded, but has gone on indefinite leave while Lindley and the other members pursue different musical avenues. Bassist Jorge Calderon has been working with Crosby, Stills and Nash, drummer Walfredo Reyes played with Santana and others, and guitarist Ray Woodbury produces and manages bands.

After the Coach House dates, Lindley and Naser are planning a tour with stops in Japan, Okinawa and Hawaii, and he’s hoping the pair will be able to do the “Voice of Asia” festival he played last year in Kazakh.

“That thing was an incredible experience,” he recalled. “There’s all that music, and you’re drinking fermented mare’s milk, camel milk, yogurt and stuff, the best bread in the world and lots of cognac. I never ate so much in my life.

“And the music was pretty scary. In all these countries now they’re really starting to experiment with their music, mixing in all different things with the traditions. You’d see a band playing something that sounded like it was from Puerto Rico, and my interpreter told me, ‘Yeah, that’s the way they’re all playing in Turkistan now.’ All these incredible flavors.”

Such experiences make it difficult sometimes for him to return to the United States, where originality and variety aren’t made so welcome in the popular music.

“The music here is all run by lawyers and business people now, big bucks. There’s so much money connected in it. So they all base what happens next on a computer that goes on prior data and trends. There’s a place in Atlanta where some trend guy has a computer and all the radio stations, record companies, everyone, subscribe to this guy and he says what’s going to go, what to stay away from, what to keep on doing.”

“Right now I’m experimenting with a lot of things that wouldn’t go on a big-bucks album,” he said. But, he added, “there’s this thing that’s happening now with small record companies that want to put out the good stuff, and people are noticing that. It’s a different market. You don’t have to have a single on it, and you don’t have to have a dance mix. I’m talking with a few of those companies right now.”

Lindley--who has had three major-label albums out in the United States (“Mr. Dave,” his best, never was released in the States)--has a recording studio at home, and he says that nearly his whole day is devoted to either playing or thinking about music.

“I find even the silhouette-shooting ties in to the music. I go to this 200-yard shooting gallery, and I’ve been getting pretty good at it. And I find after I shoot a match, I can come home and play the (devil) out of my saz. It makes my playing better. I think it must have something to do with the area of my brain that’s activated or deactivated when I’m shooting. The internal dialogue gets eliminated; there’s no verbalization when you do this stuff. And it’s like the best kind of concentration you use when you play.”

Lindley noted that most people wouldn’t typically picture him with handguns, and specified that he’s into the Zen-like discipline of it, not the macho angle. He could never shoot a living thing, he says.

His other interests include training in Kung Fu, painting, and observing the world at large. Those observations can range from the whimsical--he was delighted that the first thing James Brown wanted when he got out of prison was eyebrow implants--to deep concerns about the environment and liberty. He is so disillusioned with the state of American democracy that he’s not beyond suspecting that elections are rigged and that TV is pumped full of subliminal messages.

“I hate to sound paranoid or think like that, but I think there is a ‘them.’ And I think they’ve won, for now,” he said. “That old Constitution and all those musty old laws seem to be disappearing. They want some fresh new laws, fast-track laws, they want some fast-track diplomacy. You want to bypass the cumbersome machine of constitutionality. ‘We don’t have all day here, and we have to get some business done.’ And there’s no regard for what it’s going to do to the future.”

David Lindley and Hani Naser play Friday and Saturday at 9 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $19.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.