O.C. POP REVIEW : Cadillac Tramps Head for the Dives

With round two of their career as a recording and touring band about to begin, the members of Cadillac Tramps are looking to take a step backward.

“We’ve got to go out and hit the dives,” guitarist Jonny Wickersham said Friday as the five-member band waited on a patio outside Bogart’s for a pre-concert sound check.

“We’re gonna go for the one-step-dirtier clubs” than the Tramps have played on previous tours, agreed the other guitarist, Brian Coakley.

One doesn’t expect to hear a rock band extol the virtues of down-scaling. The object of the game usually is to play in ever-bigger, ever-nicer surroundings. In the case of the Cadillac Tramps, however, looking toward the dives makes some sense.

After the release of its debut album last year on the independent Doctor Dream label, the band from Orange County went on its first extensive tour as opening act for the Beat Farmers. The marriage, arranged by the bands’ mutual booking agent, was a raving success in personal terms: The young Tramps and the veteran, San Diego-based Farmers became good friends and mutual admirers, and the experienced band schooled the newcomers in some of the tricks of on-the-road survival.

Opening for an established band gave the Cadillac Tramps entree to bigger clubs than they would have been able to play on their own as they toured the western half of the United States. But they found themselves playing for an older audience geared to the Beat Farmers’ heartland-rock take on roots music, rather than to the Tramps’ own approach, wherein punk guttersnipes find religion in blues, country and R&B; without forsaking the pagan enthusiasm and street imagery of their hard-and-fast past.

While the Tramps say they were sufficiently well-received by the Beat Farmers’ fans to return to some of the same clubs as headliners during a second round of touring, they feel they have yet to find their true audience outside of their strong local base.

“On the national level, we have yet to be exposed to the kids, the full-on, alternative crowd,” said Mike (Gabby) Gaborno, the Tramps’ singer. So, after the Tramps’ second album, “Tombstone Radio,” is released in September, the band intends to concentrate its touring in grass-roots alternative rock clubs.

For about two years now, the Tramps have been the most popular band on the local alternative-rock club scene, regularly drawing big crowds to Bogart’s and to venues in Orange County. In February, they became the first local band to play two consecutive nights at Bogart’s and easily sold out both shows.

Friday night, they drew another turn-away crowd. Those who got in were immersed in a steam bath of tightly packed bodies, and the Tramps made things all the more sweaty as they laid down what Gaborno calls “the Forbidden Beat.” It’s a swampy, loping, meaty chug-a-chug that carries a palpable physical whomp while at the same time moving with an agility that is beyond most pure punk and punk-metal bands.

The Tramps’ appeal rests on a solid, four-cornered foundation. That persuasive beat is one anchor; the tremendously satisfying grit of the band’s raw but honed twin-guitar attack is another. The Tramps also can draw on the humor in Gaborno’s antic, cut-up stage persona and on a solid array of roots influences that helps attract a diverse crowd.

At Bogart’s the audience had no shortage of male fans who looked a lot like the five guys in the band. Cadillac Tramps sports a ‘50s rocker look, much like the one favored by local rock heroes Social Distortion, with hair worn short, greased and slicked-back, and arms sporting numerous tattoos. The Tramps added a touch of old-line musicianly class by coming on stage in dark suit jackets a la the Blues Brothers, but soon doffed them amid the heat.

But also in the audience were some long-haired guys who would have looked at home in a Nirvana or Slayer crowd, some studious-looking collegiate types, some punk throwbacks with spiky, dyed hair, Mohawks and chains, and quite a few young women decked out in trendy fashions suitable for a concert by the latest buzz band from Britain.

The Tramps’ four-square virtues all came into play during the 70-minute show. In conversation, Gaborno is a soft-spoken man with a low-key sense of humor; on stage, he dubbed himself “Uncle Gabby” and took charge of a Romper Room for slam-dancing, stage-diving reprobates.

(This uncle wasn’t so indulgent that he didn’t know where to draw the line: After a fight broke out in the stage-front pit, Gaborno belittled the combatants with a profanely humorous commentary that called into question the sexual competency of guys who need to prove their macho with their fists.)

Like David Lee Roth in a far different musical context, Gaborno was more a ringleader than a singer. While he negotiated the Tramps’ catchy if limited melodies capably, with a husky, blues-accented drawl, his main function was to serve as an energetic, often clowning focus for the band. He embodied the music’s meaty physicality with the bouncing gyrations of his own boxy frame, and his vocal play-acting and pliant facial expressions emphasized the humor in such tall-tales as “Train to Fame,” “I’m the One” and “Hoodoo Guru.”

Harmonies from Coakley and Wickersham added some helpful melodic padding. As guitarists, the two were a striking match, each able to jolt the band ahead with furiously rhythmic riffing or charged, concise solos. Each made his strings crackle in a way that reminded you of the pure force of electricity that is, after all, one of the key reasons for attaching wires to guitars in the first place. They drew sustenance from country and blues sources, while hitting with an impact that was far from retro.

Like the guitarists, the rhythm team of Warren Renfro, the linebacker-size bassist, and new drummer Steve (Spanky) Barrios, an animated player who sounded as if he’d been with the band for its full five-year run, were able to play it heavy, yet with a turn-on-a-dime mobility that staved off the lumbering sameness that can dog hard-rock bands.

Cadillac Tramps downshifted a few times from their main fun-and-frenzy mode. “Venice,” from the upcoming album, worked well as a change of pace, its slow, languid blues sounding like a cross between Gershwin’s “Summertime” and the Animals’ version of “House of the Rising Sun.”

But Gaborno’s limited resources were strained by the set closing “Don’t Go,” which strove for romanticism with a gliding folk-blues setting akin to Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away.” For now, the Tramps’ stage show is more about fun and physicality than it is about deeper expression.

However, there are darker themes behind the band’s music than its stage show, with its lighthearted explosion of energy, would suggest.

“Tombstone Radio” features several songs about desperate characters dogged by various hellhounds, as well as a concluding elegy, “River (Carry My Soul),” whose yearning might surprise listeners who think of Cadillac Tramps as strictly a rough and tumble bunch.

“Some of these songs were written about dark times,” Wickersham said during the pre-show interview.

“There was a black cloud over us for a while. A lot happened the past year,” Coakley added. “There have been sacrifices in our personal lives, there have been family members who have died,” including Coakley’s grandmother and Renfro’s mother and brother. “It’s been a messy year, but you do what everybody else does--you just keep going on. We’re fortunate because we can vent it” by writing a song, or wailing away on stage.

As strong as a draw as they are locally, the band members say they still have to struggle financially. Jamie Reidling, the drummer on both “Cadillac Tramps” and “Tombstone Radio,” quit the band in May because he had become a father and didn’t feel he could earn enough on the road with the Tramps to support a family.

“We’re scratchin”’ Coakley acknowledged. “We’d be quite happy with a cult following, as long as we could make a living.”

Being hometown heroes--even with an expanding following in Los Angeles as well--isn’t quite enough. Chuckling, Gaborno told how he and Barrios recently tried to earn some extra money by going door-to-door offering their services as carpet cleaners, only to be recognized by members of another rock band who wondered why guys who can pack clubs were scrounging for outside work.

“People think we’ve got it made: ‘Last time you guys sold out two nights at Bogart’s.’ But it’s not like we’ve got $50 bills falling out of our pockets,” Coakley said, noting that most of the band’s take from Friday would go toward a used equipment trailer from T.S.O.L., to be used in the Tramps’ next round of touring. But, he added, “We’re going to do this thing no matter what happens, whether we get airplay or get on a major label.”