Rude Mood Isn’t Afraid to Steal From the Best

Plato’s dead, but he left us the moral basis for Western civilization. Mozart’s gone but his music lives on and his movie got an Oscar. Bogart’s gone but he lives on in soft drink commercials. My girlfriend’s gone and the knife wound in my back is healing nicely, thank you.

Musically, Texan guitar god Stevie Ray Vaughan is gone (by helicopter, 1990), but he lives on (sort of) in the fast fingers of Guy Martin and his power trio, Rude Mood. And you don’t even have to drive to the land of big egos, big excuses, Lone Star Beer and the Dallas Cowboys to hear them. Rude Mood will be at the Bermuda Triangle in Ventura on Saturday night offering a withering set of Texas blues.

“Our music has lotsa energy, lotsa soul, lotsa rhythm, lotsa feeling, and it’s fun to listen to,” Martin said recently at his beachfront pad. What he means is Rude Mood does Stevie Ray Vaughan right. Martin also does a commendable impression of another ghostly guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

“I just heard Stevie Ray’s stuff and it did something to me,” he said. “I just liked his sound and his style. It just flows, and has honesty and feeling. I got to see him five times--four times in Santa Barbara and once in L. A. I do Jimi because Stevie Ray did him too. I do the Stevie Ray version of Jimi, plus I mix it up some. I never do the same song the same way twice. We probably do about 15 Stevie Ray songs. ‘Rude Mood’ is the name of a Stevie Ray song we don’t play.”

Martin didn’t just fall into this scene, either. He worked at it. Now his band is tighter than the stomach muscles of a middle-age man in a college pickup bar. Sometimes Martin even wears The Hat, much like the one Vaughan used to wear.

“I’m just self-taught,” said the guitar player out of Ventura High. “When I was 15 years old, a good buddy of mine played guitar at the time, and he got me into it during freshman year of high school. I practiced five hours a day for a couple of years. I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time a year later, in 1986. Right now, I like just about anything--everything but rap. I hate rap. It’s not music.”

These days Rude Mood plays the usual few places around Ventura, hoping to expand their musical horizons.

“I miss Charlie’s,” which is no longer on the beach in Ventura. “It was the best. In fact Charlie’s was the place that got us started. The Metro Bay Club and the Bermuda Triangle are both trying to be No. 1. They’re both OK, but not great.

“I don’t know about the other guys in the band, but I want to get as much exposure as I can, maybe get someone to produce me. I want to play Santa Barbara. I know we’re perfectly capable of doing that.”

Part of the band’s difficulty in landing a gig in S. B. is that they inevitably fail the club owner’s inevitable question: “Do you guys have a tape?”

“The tape thing is holding us back,” said Martin. “I’ve got to write more originals--that’s my main goal. I need to write as many as I can in that same style. I’d love to lie to you and tell you how many originals I have, but I’ve only got three. But right now, I love stokin’ the crowd and making people happy at what they’re hearing.”