Mixing Love Songs With Social Issues

Chris Cacavas is calling his new album “Good Times,” and there’s a certain accuracy and irony in those two words. The title is a good enough description of the record’s often upbeat rock groove, but there’s seriousness too, sung across these raw guitar chords.

It’s what Cacavas calls “a kind of social politics” in some of his lyrics, focused at times on such issues as the environment, alcoholism and the harsh treatment of women. These tracks alternate with love songs on a new album influenced by his two young children and wife, Sandra Cacavas, who is the associate director of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women.

“I haven’t started writing kids’ songs yet, but it makes certain political and environmental issues more in your face, because you’re thinking about how it’s going to affect your kids,” Cacavas said. “For me, it’s raised my consciousness.”

The singer-guitarist-keyboardist even spent some time, during the three-year wait after his 1989 debut album, working in a program to prevent child abuse--talking to grade-school youngsters about protecting their bodies.

Besides, he said, his goals aren’t the same as they were when he was playing keyboards as a member of Green On Red in the early 1980s, when that local rock act was finding large excited audiences in Europe but only club dates at home. The band, still led by singer-songwriter Dan Stuart, continues to record and tour.

With his own band, Junkyard Love, Cacavas has mined some of Green On Red’s old territory, with some of the same dark American rock and country-rock references. Where Cacavas’ first solo release offered a country twang, however, “Good Times” has earned positive comparisons to classic Neil Young. It’s a link Cacavas himself finds flattering, though he doesn’t quite agree.

Billboard magazine even compared the interplay of Cacavas and band mate John Thoman’s guitars to Young’s band, Crazy Horse. And the Chicago Tribune noted in a recent review of the new album that “if Neil Young had put it out, ‘Good Times’ would immediately be hailed as the second coming of ‘After the Gold Rush,’ “--a comparison to one of Young’s most respected works.

Still, Cacavas added: “We aren’t the kind of band that rehearses five nights a week. We don’t want to be playing every weekend. That isn’t our deal.”

“We want success to fall into our laps, pretty much,” he said, joking. “We all work and have day jobs. Sure, we want to go up the next rung, but we want to have fun doing it. If we get caught up in the grind--I’ve been part of too many bands where it just tore them apart.”

And though he focuses on guitar in his own band, Cacavas still plays his keyboards occasionally for other acts. He did some session work for the most recent albums from Steve Wynn and John Wesley Harding. But old fans of Green On Red, where Cacavas is best-remembered for his energetic piano and organ work, may be surprised at his shifting to guitar for his solo career.

Cacavas says he was playing the guitar all along, “kind of pickin’, trying to figure it out, teaching myself. I found songs came more readily to me on the guitar. I didn’t do a lot of songwriting on the piano, and still don’t. I’m too familiar with the keyboard, and nothing new seems to spring out of me.

“On the other hand, when I pick up the guitar, my naivete of the instrument leads me to stumble upon what I think are cool progressions.”

He’s hoping to get another album out through Hey Day Records within a year, in part as a way of making up for time lost waiting for the release of “Good Times,” which was actually finished a year ago.

In the meantime, Chris Cacavas & Junkyard Love are planning some live appearances in the West, including a coveted gig as part of the Lollapalooza Festival at its Phoenix stop this September.

Now Cacavas is talking about opening his own club locally, offering new bands and music fans a place to commune. Maybe it’s just hard to forget those early days in the ‘80s with Green On Red, when the local club scene was active with such bands as the Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, the Long Ryders and others, before the days when some promoters began charging bands for the privilege of playing certain venues.

“It’s a weird kind of fantasy,” Cacavas said. “Who knows? I don’t really have many job skills. I can play guitar. So maybe by some bizarre stroke of luck I could be a club owner.”

FREE CLASSICS: The Sundays at Four chamber music series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater continues today with a performance by pianist Paulina Drake. The 4 p.m. concert, also to be broadcast live on KUSC (91.5 FM), will include selections by Chopin, Haydn and Gershwin.

On July 19, the series presents the Sul Legno duo of percussionist Deborah Schwartz and clarinetist Marcus Eley, performing music by David Baker and Manuel Garcia. The July 26 concert will present Fellows of the Malibu Strawberry Creek Music Festival.