Groove Journeys : Fans of the Grateful Dead seem to enjoy the Blues Traveler’s kind of sounds.

“Jerry’s sick, man,” mumbled the dazed hippie as he wandered the streets of Ventura three full days after the Grateful Dead concert that never was.

That was seven years ago when Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia nearly became a dead guitarist the day before the show. The Dead only came back to Ventura one more time before the city fathers gonged them forever for attracting the wrong kind of tourists.

Since then, the Dead have been banned from some of their traditional party sites at Berkeley and Stanford up north, not to mention the Forum and Irvine Meadows down here. Pretty soon, they’ll be limited to playing in Jerry’s back yard. The closest the Dead gets to us these days is at UNLV, which is not so close. Since Deadheads have to go somewhere, they’ll probably go to the Blues Traveler show Saturday night at the venerable Ventura Theatre.

“Yeah, (Deadheads) like our kind of music, but so does everybody that likes live music,” said John Popper, the head Traveler, in a recent interview from St. Louis, home to too many Cardinal fans.

So what kind of music is it? Well, it rocks with some blues and jazz influences; there’s harmonica and guitar solos galore, complex melodies, razor-sharp lyrics by Popper, and . . .

“It’s ours,” Popper said. “Sometimes, people call us some sort of fusion band, but they can’t categorize us.”

A sample line by Popper, from “Optimistic Thought”:

“Life I embrace you/I shall honor and disgrace you/Please forgive if I replace you/You see I’m going through some pain/But now I see clearly/And the dawn is coming nearly/And though I’m human it’s early/I swear I’ll never forget again . . .”

Want to learn to write like that? Forget law school, the Whiplash Beauty College or the Songwriter’s School & Bar & Grill. Just buy a legal pad, a pen and get cable. What?

“There’s a trick to writing songs,” admitted Popper. “Stay up all night and watch TV until about 5 a.m., then shut it off. Then right before you fall asleep, write the song. It takes 10 hours and 10 minutes to write a song. I try and write whenever I can. We’ve got about 50 or 60 songs now.”

More Popper, from “All In The Grove”:

“Sometimes when you worry/The tendency to hurry/Can make your vision blurry/And blind you/You might shake your head and stammer/Or dance like MC Hammer/But could that pop and glamour/Remind you/Of who you are and where you’re going/And whose mind you’re blowing/And if your car needs towing/Don’t move/Then calmly call the AAA you’ve got nothing to prove/As in all things, it’s all in the groove . . .”

Popper is convinced that music can change the world.

“Everything should change the world,” he said. “A lot of people go to Live Aid then never vote. Musicians, songwriters and artists like to paint pictures of how it should be, but they don’t provide solutions. That’s the hard part. The world changes the world. Also, the kids do. They see what’s wrong; fight to make changes, then grow up.”

Popper and guitarist Chan Kinchla, bassist Bobby Sheehan and drummer Brendan Hill all met in high school in New Jersey. The band formed in 1986 and moved to New York City.

“New York is very eclectic,” said Popper. “It requires self-generation. People are always looking for something to do. New York is like every single movie you’ve ever seen about New York--all at once. And I’m a Howard Stern fan, I gotta tell you that. I’m a pragmatist, I like surviving. Where do you think I’m from, California?”

Well, the guys in The Blues Traveler may have their roots back East, but they have some lofty travel plans. After their upcoming tour with the Allman Brothers, they want to be the first band in space; they want to play on the shuttle. One large step for the band, business as usual for the Deadheads who are already in space.