Kid Creole’s Coach House Gig Could Be a Swan Song : Music: Bandleader August Darnell says that, barring a miracle or two, the group’s current tour will be its last.

Among the many entertainment archetypes that singer-composer August Darnell cites as sources for his mythical Kid Creole persona--along with the Cab Calloways and Sinatras and Elvises--are the big-band leaders of the ‘40s.

“I sort of liken myself to the modern-day Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey,” he has said. “Those guys went through some changes to keep their bands alive until the prehistoric beast had to die.”

Now, Darnell’s own beast, the musically, conceptually and logistically ambitious Kid Creole & the Coconuts, appears ready to follow its models into extinction after more than a decade of butting heads with the public’s indifference.

Barring a miracle or two, the group’s California dates (including shows on Tuesday at the Coach House, Wednesday at the Strand in Redondo Beach and Thursday at the Glam Slam in Los Angeles) will be the last time Darnell fronts the full 14-piece entity.

“Once again, my manager says it has to change,” Darnell said by phone last week from his part-time home in Westchester, N.Y. “I’ve heard this story before and I’ve always thought: ‘Let me do it just a little longer.’ But it has to change now, because we are losing much too much money. I think our last hurrah is in California, unless there’s a deus ex machina. “

Darnell’s high-style hybrid of rock, tropical, Broadway and R & B and his sophisticated, sassy showmanship have been better accepted in Europe than in America, where he has been unable to enlarge a loyal cult following.

In 1990, he decided to relax his principles and make a blatant bid for U.S. radio airplay with “The Sex of It,” a single that Prince wrote and arranged for him. He also followed the advice of his new record company, Columbia, and recorded a lambada song.

It didn’t work.

Says Darnell, in retrospect: “The great thing about not selling when you’re doing it your way is that you come out of it and you say, ‘Hey, you fool, you didn’t sell.’ And that’s it.

“But the awful thing about compromising and not selling is that who do you turn to then? OK, I did it their way and they still couldn’t move the units on this record. It’s a sick feeling. So it taught me a very important lesson. I realized i have to stick to my guns.

“I’ve got this egotistical streak in me that says the change in music is gonna come from someone who doesn’t listen to contemporary music. . . . I don’t see any great attribute in copying and jumping on the bandwagon and making your record sound like the next guy’s record. I get a great deal of satisfaction from going into the studio and creating. And when the things don’t sell, it’s very frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.”

Relations gradually soured between Darnell and Columbia, and after leaving he established his own label, Creole Records. The Japanese-financed company is focused on releasing his music in Asia and Europe. The new Kid Creole album, “To Travel Sideways,” won’t be distributed in the United States.

“To break America, I truly believe now at this stage of my life it has to be a miracle,” he says. “It’s no longer a question of talent, which I know I have. Now it’s a crapshoot.”

Darnell, 42, reports these developments not with the discouraged tone you might expect, but with the upbeat manner he’s maintained throughout a history of not quite making it.

“At those low moments in your life you have got to have a support system, and my support system is that I have a good life,” says Darnell, who lives primarily in Sheffield, England, with his girlfriend and the two youngest of his five children.

“I’m not one of those manic depressives who will fall into a hole and can’t get out. . . . It is a great feeling to know you are a bandleader against all odds. When you know all the odds are stacked against you but you still manage to keep this band going, there’s a romantic notion to it that keeps it going in and of itself.”

Darnell looks at the impending end with mixed feelings. He’s intrigued by two main options for his post-Kid Creole activities--launching a solo musical career and writing screenplays--but there’s still the nagging hope for that overdue miracle.

“Suffice to say the time is obviously due for the Kid Creole thing to be put aside. But as with every great artist or every great sportsman, I think everyone wants to go out with a last hurrah. Every basketball player wants to play that final great game, and every musician wants to have that final gold or platinum album and then say goodby to it. Otherwise it sounds like the business kicked your butt and you had to get out.”