NRBQ Is a Cult Above : Fans Will Fill the Coach House, but Wouldn’t a Commercial Break Be Nice?

By naming NRBQ’s Al Anderson as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of the century, Musician magazine, in its current issue, merely confirms what NRBQ fans have always known.

Asked what this recognition means to him, Anderson made a sound that seemed very much like he was clearing his throat.

Perhaps it was because he’d just returned from a doctor’s office, where he’d been having his throat checked for nodes developed while singing with a cold for two weeks. (He expects to be fine for the band’s show tonight at the Coach House.) Maybe it was because such paper-and-ink honors don’t make much difference in his daily life.

“I don’t know; it’s kind of weird,” the gruff-voiced Anderson said during a phone interview earlier this week. “I’m not used to it. You don’t hear that much about me because we’re in that cult thing.”

Indeed, if ever there was a cult favorite band, it’s NRBQ. For more than two decades the unfettered and unexcelled musicianship of Anderson, keyboardist Terry Adams, bassist Joey Spampinato and drummer Tom Ardolino has been a convergence point for the byways of popular music. R & B, modern jazz, Spike Jones novelty, rockabilly, Liverpool pop and other styles gush and tumble through their songs.

In concert, the group never uses a set list, and each night draws from the hundreds of songs it knows and several it clearly doesn’t, delivering each with raw abandon, roadhouse grooves and a stratospheric musicianship. Several top musicians are members of the small but ever-growing camp of hard-core NRBQ fans, including Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, Elvis Costello, Pat Metheny and the members of R.E.M.

The band’s most recent studio album, 1989’s “Wild Weekend,” was one of that year’s best discs, a spunky masterpiece of melody and rhythm. Fans loved the album. No one else ever heard it.

Is such a cult popularity enough?

“Personally, no,” Anderson said. He’s had his fill of toiling in obscurity and is taking steps outside the band to amend that situation. The first change he made was a personal one.

“I’ve just done the clean-and-sober routine 21 months now, and I’m really moving,” Anderson said. “I just got sick and tired of it all. Alcohol was the big one with me--I couldn’t afford to get in trouble with much else. I’ve been living in bars since I was 13, playing R & B in the north end of Hartford.” He still lives in Connecticut and commutes one week a month to Nashville. “I was pretty far out there when I quit. I was ready.

“I know this sounds weird, but in the end, if you’re lucky enough to make it through, it’s better to have done it and be out the other side, because you really appreciate what you have, more than if you’d never been messed up at all,” he said.

“I’m a different guy since 21 months ago. I’m having a ball now. What I like about it is I’m productive. I’m energetic. I walk a few miles a day. I’m losing weight. I play guitar about five times better than I used to. The old way, it’s just that you think you’re being good, but you listen to those tapes back the next morning and it’s not so hot.”

The most quantifiable result of Anderson’s new attitude is his prolific songwriting. He was “such a mess” when the band recorded “Wild Weekend” that he only penned one song on it. He has since signed on as a staff writer in Nashville and now has a catalogue of more than 75 new songs. He has written songs with such hit writers as Hal Ketchum and Terry Anderson. “Every Little Thing” is slated to be the debut single from Carlene Carter’s next album; others have been recorded or reserved by Dennis Robbins, Pam Tillis, Alabama and Ricky Van Shelton.

He also has been doing a lot of writing with John Hiatt, and there is a possibility of the two going in on a Little Village-like “supergroup” after Hiatt gets his next solo album in the can. Anderson is delighted with the songs they’ve conspired on.

“We’ve just been writing songs without much of a purpose to it, except we like doing it. The last four songs we wrote have been pretty alternative. I mean, alternative compared to what you hear ‘alternative’ being on the radio. It’s simple. It’s dumb.”

On top of all this activity, Anderson also plans to put himself forward as a solo artist. He’s done solo projects before, such as 1988’s tuneful “Party Favors” album, but this time he’s intent on aiming it for a market where it might get heard. They aren’t songs he would necessarily be offering to NRBQ.

“My songs don’t always fit naturally into the band anyway. I write very commercial,” he said. Although Anderson has penned such songs as “I Love Air Conditioning” and “It Was a Accident,” he doesn’t always agree with the cultish slant of the band’s releases.

“I’m not the self-indulgent type. I just wouldn’t release something like ‘Honest Dollar’ (a quirky live album NRBQ issued last year). That’s where I part company. I want to put out stuff that people want to buy. That’s what I do naturally. The band doesn’t always do that. It’s OK, but if I had my way. . . . Well, I’m working on that on my own.”

Anderson’s solo material, he says, is “not necessarily country, at least not mainstream country, but more on the cutting edge, like Carlene does. I listen to country music a lot because it’s the only thing I can stand on the radio. It seems like there’s a lot of city music now, and it doesn’t gas me at all.”

With Anderson pursuing so much outside the band, fans might well worry about the future of NRBQ. The band’s magic is very much a product of its special balance of its unique musical personalities. In a past Times interview, keyboardist Adams rightly said: “I know if you were to try to replace any one guy in the band it would mess everything up. I think each guy is in his own world, but those worlds collide in the right way.”

Fortunately, Anderson has no plans to upset the cart.

“The band is kind of like the Mafia: It’s hard to leave. I know it’s magic. I know it’s special, or I wouldn’t have been there 20 years. I know it’s the best in the world. So I’m going to try to balance these other things with the band.

“One of the good things is that we do every kind of music, and I notice that if I stick with only one kind of thing too long I go nuts now. I like the spontaneity we have. In fact, sometimes you can tell what the next song is going to be before it’s called; you just can feel it coming. I don’t think many bands get that.” NRBQ signed this week with Rhino Records, which previously issued the excellent two-CD NRBQ retrospective, “Peek-A-Boo.” The band plans to cut its next album live in the studio, tackling a new set of songs with the same verve it uses onstage.

The group aims to be on actual stages a bit less now. For most of the past 20 years they practically lived on the road. Now they’re doing shorter tours and weekend gigs, allowing them all to pursue outside projects. Adams recently worked on the soundtrack of a Robert Altman film. There are rumors, discounted by Anderson, that Spampinato might be pegged to replace Bill Wyman in the Stones.

Although he’s sticking with the band, Anderson has dropped one longtime loyalty. For most of his career he’s been associated with the twangy Fender Telecaster guitar, playing battered vintage instruments or top-of-the-line reissues.

Now, he says, “I just changed over to a ‘Wayne’s World’ Stratocaster”--a budget Squier guitar distributed by Fender. “They cost about $199. It’s got to be the best Stratocaster I’ve ever played in my life, old, new or whatever. It plays like God. I bought three of them. You get the stickers: ‘Party On!’ ‘Excellent!’ ‘We’re Not Worthy!’ I had them on it for a while but then I took them off.”

NRBQ and the Ziggens play rock tonight at 9 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $16.50. (714) 496-8930.