Back on Track With ‘Oncoming Train’

Four years is a long time for anyone to wait between albums, despite lengthy precedents set by Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. But for a young band still toiling in the underground-club scene, that kind of time away from the fans could be fatal.

The leaders of Downy Mildew, an ethereal pop-rock act, never really saw it that way, though. Yes, the band was largely apart from the national scene all those years since its 1988 independently released album, “Mincing Steps.” And yet, even as the band members waited patiently for some record label to sign them, they continued working on new music.

“You learn to exist in your own little world,” singer-guitarist Charlie Baldonado said. “We’ve got the band; we rehearse; we write songs. So it’s hard to destroy that. Some people would have said ‘Forget it!’ But we didn’t.”

At the time of that 1988 record, Downy Mildew had seemed on the verge of broader success, and was already sharing stages with such popular acts as Concrete Blonde and 10,000 Maniacs. The group was put on The Times’ list of the 10 best unsigned bands, and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe had just directed a video for a Downy Mildew track titled “Offering.”

Except for its club appearances, however, and a couple of little-noticed vinyl discs released by Triple-X Records, the band had dropped out of the spotlight.

“There seems to sometimes be a mentality that you have to put out a record every year and capitalize on your momentum,” Baldonado said with a shrug, sitting in a La Brea Avenue coffeehouse with Jenny Homer, the band’s singer-guitarist. “If we were supposed to do that, we didn’t. Nationally, we sort of disappeared.”

Homer added: “It was never grim. It was disturbing sometimes. You write all this good stuff, and you want to be able put it out.”

Whatever mild frustration the band suffered has been put to rest, temporarily at least, with the new “An Oncoming Train” album. Released on High Street Records, a division of Windham Hill, the record opens with a surprising collection of smooth up-tempo numbers before delving into more experimental rhythms.

“I think there’s always been a tendency in the band to want to do these sorts of pop songs,” said Baldonado, who listed the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach among the influences here. “And that gets boring, too. Then you want to do something that’s a little more strange, and the arrangements are weird. But that gets old too.”

For her part, Homer said: “My favorite songs are on the latter half. I think they’re more interesting.”

Unlike the band’s earlier acoustic-based records, “An Oncoming Train” is powered mostly by electric guitars, but without many of the special effects used before. The band had been attracted to those sound treatments in its early days “because you’d never had that before,” said Baldonado, who produced and engineered the new record. This time, however, he said he was looking for a more “natural sound.”

To that end, Downy Mildew recorded the new songs on an old 16-track machine in its cavernous rehearsal space in industrial Vernon, where the band members were able to take their time. “It wasn’t really methodical,” Baldonado said. “But it was just a different approach from what we’ve done before, and I think everything’s more fleshed out.”

The band’s central trio of Baldonado, Homer and bassist Nancy McCoy first met in the mid-1980s on the New Wave club scene in San Luis Obispo, where they were studying at area colleges. (The present lineup also includes drummer Ron Jacobs and violinist Sal Garza.)

And in the years since, Downy Mildew has been aiming and hoping only for the sort of audience that cult artists such as Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen now enjoy.

“Is it an underground audience? I tend to think not,” Baldonado said. “It’s just an audience that doesn’t need commercial radio and all that to go and buy a record.”

Whatever happens, these last four years have at least demonstrated that Downy Mildew is not about to break apart for business reasons, as long as the music is still flowing.

“We’ve been together for eight years now,” Baldonado said. “And you just think about all that time that’s gone by and, if you stopped now and got another band together, it could be really hard.”

Downy Mildew performs a free concert at 7:30 p.m. July 2 at Rhino Records, 1720 Westwood Blvd., West Los Angeles. Call (310) 474-8685.

BENEFIT CONCERT: A handful of noted local singer-songwriter talents, including country artist Jim Lauderdale, are scheduled to headline a special concert Saturday benefiting Habitat for Humanity, the private national housing program.

Others on the bill include Victoria Williams, the Williams Brothers, the Plowboys and several others, who will perform at the 7 p.m. show at the Church at Ocean Park, 235 Hill St., Santa Monica.

Habitat for Humanity is an organization that helps build low-income housing, show publicist Chris Kamatani said. And much of the concert’s proceeds are slated for such local areas as South-Central Los Angeles and Venice.

Tickets are $12.50. For information, call (310) 471-2072.