All Fixed Up, It’s Someplace to Play : Nightclub: Randell Young’s experiences as a blues musician determined his priorities when he designed the Santa Ana venue.

Blues guitarist and singer Randell Young, owner of Randell’s nightclub and restaurant in Santa Ana, says he was optimistic about the kind of club scene he would find in Orange County when he moved here from Washington in 1982. But his optimism soon soured.

“I had the idea that the California clubs would be nicer than the ones back in D.C.,” says Young, whose band, the Actuals, plays Friday at--where else?--Randell’s. “But that was a misconception. When I got here I found that they weren’t even as nice as the ones back East. There were a few jazz venues and a whole bunch of Top 40-type clubs, but they all had tiny stages and lousy sound systems. That’s when I first started building my own club.”

And one of the first things you notice upon walking into Randell’s is the size of the bandstand. Recently, the six-piece fusion band Himalaya was spread out on the spacious stage. Each musician could be seen clearly from anywhere in the room, unlike in some clubs where the drummer disappears behind a rack of keyboards or the bassist. The sound of each musician was equally apparent.

Young’s experience playing the blues in D.C. saloons and West Coast clubs came in handy when he designed the club. “There’s basically two things you have to take care of: acoustics and the visual effect,” he explained earlier this week in a phone conversation from his home in San Clemente.

“The problem with a lot of clubs is that they’re basically restaurants with the stage off in the corner somewhere. Their thinking is to keep the stage small so that they can cram another table in.

“And restaurants are usually cut up into sections, to give them the dining-room effect. But if the place is cut up into sections, the stage is visible from only a few places. We wanted to keep the place open so everyone can see.”

Young likes to talk in detail about setting up the acoustics in the club. “It’s something most owners don’t even think about, other than putting in a few speakers. Ideally, you want a balance of hard and soft surfaces. If there’s too many soft surfaces, the high-end is absorbed and the music has that dead quality and you have to add a lot of reverb to bring it to life. If you have all hard surfaces, then the sound is ringing and too loud. It bounces everywhere.”

So Young sought a balance by laying carpet on the floor, beneath a row of windows and behind the stage. An acoustically absorbent ceiling hangs above the marble floor. Art works are not covered by glass to add to the dampening effect.

The sound the musicians hear is as important as what the audience hears, Young says. To that end, he’s supplied a monitor system that parallels the sound system projected at the audience. “In some places, the cats who are playing sax or piano or who are singing have to struggle to hear themselves over the bass, drums or guitar player. You’re going to get a better performance if they can hear themselves well.”

Young, born in Leesburg, Va., in 1955, got interested in music through his father, Roy Parks, who played guitar with Tex Ritter. He started experimenting on his dad’s guitar around the age of 6 and began playing D.C. clubs right out of high school, he says, “doing covers of the Isley Brothers, Average White Band, Rick James. Washington was a good place to play clubs because there are so many of them.”

He says that Eric Clapton was his major influence on guitar. “You know how you hear a track without a guitar and you can kind of fill it in? Stevie Ray Vaughan would have played it one way, Albert King another way and Albert Collins would play it yet another way. I hear it the way Clapton would play it.”

But, he asserts, he’s not a Clapton clone. “It’s death to sound like anybody else, so I don’t even try. (Bassist) Michael May once told me it’s better to have a style and not be great, than to be technically great and not have a style. He also encouraged me to concentrate on one idiom. Took me about 10 or 12 years to realize he was right.”

*

After moving to Southern California, Young made ends meet by renting out his sound system for parties and clubs and put a demo recording together.

“But it was very frustrating,” he said. “It took money to record and rehearse, and I was always running out. Back East, everyone has a basement (to rehearse in); here you have to rent a space. Then, after I got the tape out and someone did want to hear the band, I couldn’t get the same players together.

From there, Young and his business partner Michael Cramer embarked on a personal quest to better their chances. “We studied all the self-improvement programs from est to ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ ” he said. “We discussed everything we read and developed our own success formula.”

The two founded Everhart Records in 1987; the company released Young’s first CD, “Nefarious Rhythms & Blues” in April ‘92, just in time for the opening of the club. The disc, composed mostly of Young’s contemporary-minded originals, also includes George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Rufus Thomas’ “Walkin’ the Dog” and Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia.” The release of Young’s second album, “Guitar Noire,” will be celebrated at Randell’s on Jan. 29.

Young, who brings a tough edge to such O.C.-inspired original blues as “Newport Beach Women,” keeps a regular band to play once a week at the club. He extends the same offer to others.

“Our basic concept is to have a different house band for each night, and bring in different bands on Saturday. The reason for that is even good musicians like Paul Carman (the saxophonist who plays Randell’s every Tuesday) find it hard to keep a band together unless they have a steady gig. If he’s here every week, he can get good players to make a commitment and work their other dates around it.”

Young says he can see the results. “What happens is that the bands have steady work and a steady paycheck. . . . They get a lot better, a lot tighter, playing together over a period of months. The trade-off is in the variety: You don’t want people to get sick of what going on at the club. That’s why there’s a different band each night.” (This month, Randell’s will host the bands of fluegelhornist Tony Guerrero every Sunday, saxophonist Karl Denson every Monday, Carman every Tuesday, Latin jazz band Latinum every Wednesday, jazz group Timetable every Thursday and Young every Friday).

Young says the steady work, along with the experience he gained producing the first disc, makes his second album that much better. “The engineering is better; the tunes are better; the whole concept has tightened up. The band has really gelled.”

* Randell Young & the Actuals appear at 9 p.m. on Friday at Randell’s, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Santa Ana. Free. (714) 556-7700.