Dark Blues : Big Bad Voodoo Daddy sets the mood by holding secret practice sessions with all the lights turned out.

It’s dark like a bar. There’s plenty of cigarette smoke, but it’s not a bar. There’s no booze and no bartenders that ignore you, no bouncers who hate your face and no grumbling masses wasting their few good years waiting in line at the bathrooms.

It’s no bar, but there’s plenty of live music, because it’s the secret practice site of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, getting those licks licked for their next gig (with Ariel) Friday night at the Insomniac Coffeehouse in Ventura.

So why is it dark? Dark in a bar is not simply ambience, but oftentimes a blessing because that way you can’t see how ugly your date is, or how watered the drinks are. Sure, but dark at practice?

“It sets the mood better,” said Russ Davis, bass player and lead singer of the band, and a man who knows much about creating moods. Davis is a process server by day. He’s got that great gruff blues voice, often re-creating that same howl inspired in the people he serves.

Drummer Kurt Sodergren works at a pharmaceutical company in Thousand Oaks. But the guy with the cool--you-call-this-work?-- job is guitarist Chris Morris. He owns a surf shop in Hueneme with his brother and sits around playing his guitar all day. He doesn’t need much practice--Morris is one of the best players around.

For quite awhile, Morris and Davis were half of those local pop rockers, Durango 95--sort of the descendants of the Bobby Fuller Four and Buddy Holly.

Since the first of the year, when they opened for Durango 95, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy has been playing more and more real gigs (about three per month), and not just the two nights in the dark practice sessions.

Durango 95 went away, but Big Bad is no Durango 47 1/2. They have a much harder edge and certainly aren’t a pop rock band. Big Bad is sort of a rootsy and swampy rock band direct from the garage to you, yet danceable.

“We want to be like Tom Waits, Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington, sitting in a Jacuzzi naked, drinking bourbon,” said Davis soberly. “We just want to do our own thing, and create some humidity, even though some people seem to think we’re a rockabilly band. Hey, I bring a Monkees influence to the band.”

“I bring a punk rock attitude to the band.” said Morris, “We’re definitely not a rockabilly band.”

This statement is not surprising coming, as it does, from Morris, a Hueneme local. Most of the bands from there couldn’t spell mellow if they had to.

Bands from Hueneme include Dr. Know, Agression, False Confession and Ill Repute.

In the bands-they- think-are-cool department, Big Bad members list Waits, Count Basie, Los Lobos, Chris Isaak, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

The band’s set list is equally eclectic. They have about a dozen originals plus they cover songs by Hendrix, Waits, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and a hot version of a song popularized by the Blasters, “I’m Shakin.”

Big Bad has now arrived at the Next Step faced by all local bands: We’ve got a band, we can play, now what? Ventura County is a great place but once you’ve played the local hangouts, then what?

“You can get real comfortable here,” said Morris, “but more people have to see you play. Like the Mudheads and the I-Rails, I thought they had something really unique, good, powerful sounds, great songwriters, but they broke up. I don’t think a band can get signed from here, so we’re going to L.A. as soon as possible, Santa Barbara, too. We want to tour and go on the road, to get to the next level of competence.”

What they aren’t going to do, said Davis, is wait around here to get signed.

“The local scene is really in transition, especially with Charlie’s going away,” he said. “There’s all these great musicians from all the bands that broke up just floating around.”

The band may have one speed bump on the road to rock stardom all ironed out: Davis often wears a baseball cap backward. Hey, it worked for a bunch of those Seattle bands and it worked for Ugly Kid Joe in Santa Barbara.

Also, the band promises to have T-shirts on the way and a stocking stuffer tape of all originals ready for Christmas. But now for the important stuff: How ‘bout those Dodgers in this the year that separates the real Dodger fans from the pretenders?

Said Morris, so True Blue he’d almost make Tommy seem like a doubter: “Just wait’ll October. They’re going to take it. Right now, the Dodgers are just a sleeping giant. Just wait’ll October.”

Maybe the Dodgers should take a hint from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy: When the opponents come to bat, turn off the lights. Couldn’t hurt.