Craftsmanship Over Showmanship : In Latest Efforts, Two Local Bluesmen Deliver Substance Without Straining for It

On popular music’s farm, the blues is the most furrowed field of all. For a contemporary blues band to make a worthwhile record, it has to find a way to use the tools tradition has handed down to cultivate a fresh, distinctive crop of songs. Two of Orange County’s leading blues talents, James Harman and Robert Lucas, take their shots with new albums. Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars a solid recommendation.

***

James Harman Band

“Do Not Disturb”

Black Top

Harman, well-traveled and well-schooled in the ways of promotion, has always referred to his band as “Those Dangerous Gentlemens.” With “Do Not Disturb,” Harman’s fans get a somewhat belated recorded introduction to a whole different bunch of “gentlemens” than the ones who helped him break onto the national touring circuit in the mid-’80s. The question, of course, is whether the new guys can live up to that “Dangerous” tag, as the old ones certainly did.

Harman has revamped his band completely since 1988, parting first with guitarist David (Kid) Ramos and bassist Willie J. Campbell, then with drummer Stephen Hodges. Instead of making a clean break, Harman kept that old lineup around on record. Both “Extra Napkins,” from 1988, and last year’s “Strictly Live . . . in ‘85!” were documents of the vintage Harman band (also featured on those Rivera Records releases is the superb guitarist Michael (Hollywood Fats) Mann, who died in 1986 after leaving Harman’s band for the Blasters). It was an explosive band, capable of fiery rock surges as well as straight blues and R&B.;

The new Harman band has a different personality. The new record confirms what has been evident in post-Ramos/Campbell live shows: This group’s hallmark is subtlety and control. While it can burn, it is less apt to erupt. But if “Dangerous” isn’t the first tag that comes to mind for the new crew--guitarist Joel Foy, bassist Jeff Turmes and drummer Stephen Mugalian--its work on “Do Not Disturb” certainly rates some sort of honorific.

Foy’s playing achieves a striking balance between careful craftsmanship and a sense of adventure and spontaneity. He has the self-control to play only what’s necessary, but also the timing and spatial awareness to drop those notes in the least predictable spots. Versatility is a must with Harman, who covers a lot of stylistic ground. Foy masters every challenge, whether it’s the slinky, New Orleans funk of the opening title track, the Fabulous Thunderbirds-style crank of the closing “I’m Gone,” or the slow Chicago blues and spooky, Creedence-style swamp music heard in between. The new rhythm section takes a nothing-fancy approach and is crisp and reliable throughout.

Harman hasn’t lost any of his own knack for infusing a song with a winning personality. In fact, his folksy humor and amiability here achieve their most natural flow.

One of Harman’s favorite devices is the high whoop he uses to punctuate a lyric (it’s a tuneful whoop; Harman is very much a singer, never a screamer). While that whoop underscores the disgruntlement he feels at life’s petty impositions, it also reveals a fund of energy and good spirits that allow him to keep pushing. His second voice--his harmonica--blasts with insouciance and darts playfully in and out of a song. Harman often will take a thick, rasping blow to offset one of Foy’s neatly stinging guitar solos; on the zydeco-style tune, “Icepick’s Advice,” his harp toys at its leisure around guest David Hidalgo’s sprightly accordion line.

The songs on “Do Not Disturb” (10 of the 12 are originals) have the homey appeal of an extremely likable storyteller taking a wry look at his own life and times as a wandering blues man.

The unifying thread is Harman’s bemused take on motel living. The album opens with some funny play-acting as maid and desk clerk conspire to deprive our worn-out singer of much-needed rest the morning after a late gig. “Do No Disturb” unfolds as a look at daily life on the road, as seen from a succession of cheap beds. It isn’t so much the insights in Harman’s lyrics, which offer fairly stock situations and observations, as the knowing tone of his performances, that make this tour through his touring routine enjoyable.

Harman copes with uncaring or incompetent hoteliers (“Do Not Disturb” and “Motel King,”), loneliness on the road (“Stranger Blues”) and lean nightclub economics (“Rags to Riches”). In his motel bed, he tosses and turns through a couple of nightmares (“Swampnight” and the crime-and-punishment tale, “Icepick’s Confession”). Then he awakes to ponder the diciest question of all: the strain that long absence places on marital fidelity (“Phonebill Blues” and “Mad ‘Bout Somethin’ ”).

A special sort of jive artist turns up in “Mad ‘Bout Somethin,’ ” in which the just-returned musician, accused of cheating, tries to talk his wife out of taking her bags, already packed, out the door for good. Without actually denying that he has misbehaved, the accused attacks the circumstantial, hearsay evidence on which he stands convicted: “You ain’t mad about something that you know for sure, you’re just mad about something you heard.” It makes you wonder whether Harman might have the makings of a pretty fair trial lawyer. But that would be a blues fan’s loss.

The James Harman Band plays Saturday and Dec. 13 at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, Dec. 29 , at the Heritage Brewery in Dana Point, and Dec. 31 at the Golden Sails Hotel in Long Beach.

** 1/2

Robert Lucas

“Luke and the Locomotives”

Audioquest

What do you do if you’re a promising young local blues man in a hurry to establish yourself on the broader national scene? You keep cranking out records.

After issuing an acoustic blues album earlier this year, Lucas is back with his electric band. Together, the acoustic “Usin’ Man Blues” and this follow-up can be taken as Lucas’ doctoral thesis in the blues, demonstrating a mastery of the basics of his art. First the rural folk-blues spawned in the Mississippi Delta before World War II, and now the electric sound of the postwar Chicago blues. While he is still too bound to his roots to make a fresh statement with the blues, Lucas clearly has the raw ability to forge a distinctive personality.

Like the James Harman Band, Luke & the Locomotives emphasize honed craftsmanship over obvious flash. Drummer Bob (Max) Ebersole and bassist Al (Bedrock) Bedrosian form an unhurried, authoritative rhythm section that can deliver a wallop without seeming to strain for it. A deft sense of dynamics is their particular strength: When they surge, it makes the beat seem more massive than if they had been banging their hardest all along.

Guitarist Paul Bryant is a tasteful player with a lean, kinetic tone; it’s actually too bad he didn’t get to stretch out a bit more. With Lucas joining in on slide guitar, there are some fine moments of complementary playing. On a reading of Muddy Waters’ “Feel Like Going Home,” for example, Lucas takes up Bryant’s tense, trembling thread and intensifies it with a fatter slide tone. Lucas also blows a trenchant harp, although without the playfulness and idiosyncrasy that distinguishes Harman’s harmonica work.

As a singer, Lucas has such an impressive, rich-grained, chesty blues voice that it may, ironically, make it a little more difficult for him to distance himself from seminal blues sources. He just sounds as if he belongs on an old Chess 45.

Good songwriting is the key to establishing a fresh identity in a hoary musical tradition. Of the six Lucas originals (to go with covers of songs by Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James), “Big Man Mambo” alone has something of the unexpected: It celebrates the girth of a hefty entertainer (like Lucas himself) who can shake a room with his sheer mass.

Fine performances ignite some of the other highlights. The band is at its best on “Good Bye Baby,” a pulverizing (but again, unforced) boogie written by Lucas that would make Hooker himself sit up and take notice.

And Lucas does some interesting play-acting on another original, “Shed a Tear,” in which he adopts a wizened, quavering old man’s voice. Self-pity is the subject here, as the singer--who isn’t yet 30--laments the loss of youthful vigor and contemplates a “pine box bed” to come. Lucas’ exaggerated delivery conveys more humor than anguish. Aging isn’t fun, but in this case the protagonist seems to be worrying himself needlessly into an early grave. The song falters with an awkward last couplet: “There’s just so much pain running through my head / So I hope my baby always does the words I said.”

If Lucas can take a respectful step away from his sources and concentrate on bringing new lyrical and melodic invention to the blues, his postdoctoral work should be something to look forward to.

Luke & the Locomotives play tonight at the Golden Sails Hotel in Long Beach. Robert Lucas plays solo Saturday at 8 p.m. at Diedrich’s Coffee in Tustin .