One Eyed Jacks: Soon to Be Kings of Clubs? : It’s safe to see these rockabillies play their swamp rock, because they’re “not as psycho” as Raging Arb.

These Jacks are a bunch of jokers who would be kings. The One Eyed Jacks are four veterans of a bunch of other bands trying to have a little fun, maybe make some cash and get out of the house once in a while. They’ll be doing their swamp/rockabilly thing tonight about 9-ish at the Midnight Hour in Ventura.

Billy McGraw plays lead guitar; Toby Emery plays rhythm. These two are one-third of Raging Arb & the Redheads. Chris Jensen is the drummer, also with the Co-Texans and Sinister Fisch. Stand-up bass player and singer Damon Kaye, who gravitates from Ventura to L. A. nearly as often as Amtrak, has been in about 14,000 bands during his travels. Last weekend, for example, Kaye was in San Diego with Little Jonny & the Giants.

Kaye is easy to spot. He seems to have established a working relationship with Chris Isaak’s barber. To tattoo artists--who are rapidly running out of blank spots to ink on Kaye--he probably looks like a dollar sign. And his bass, which sports blues god Willie Dixon’s autograph, is bigger than he is.

The One Eyed Jacks are about as easy to figure out as an inside straight. Forget art for art’s sake.

“I just want to make some money from this band because I hate work,” McGraw said in an interview. “Not long ago, I was working for minimum wage doing oil changes, and I wanted to make some money off rock ‘n’ roll. I asked Damon if he was gonna be here for a while because I wanted to quit my job. Now I’m single; Toby’s sitting home raising his kid; Chris lived near Damon, so we just decided to play some rock ‘n’ roll.”

This is not McGraw’s and Emery’s first escapade outside of Raging Arb. They were in the thrashy punk band Evil Puppets, which lasted a few months a few years back.

“Toby and I have wanted to do something since the Evil Puppets--we’ve just got a lot of music inside us,” said McGraw. “First of all, Toby and I really like Damon because he’s one of the best musician-singers we’ve ever been around.”

But do not mistake this band for Raging Arb, he said.

“I mean, Raging Arb is in my heart, but I’m learning a lot of new stuff with this band because Toby and I are doing a lot of weird guitar stuff.

“Raging Arb is pure liquor-in-your-face rock. This band is not as liquored and not as psycho.”

The One Eyed Jacks are more of a rockabilly band than anything, basically because that is front man Kaye’s background. He was formerly in Highway 33 and the Mighty Hornets, a couple of rockabilly outfits that almost made it.

“Damon’s up there doing his rockabilly thing, but everything else behind him is pure rock ‘n’ roll, not all muddy and distorted like with Raging Arb,” said McGraw. “I switched from a Fender to a Gibson to get that real clean sound like Chris Isaak has.”

One thing about the Jacks, no one’s going to accuse them of overstaying their welcome. They’re over before you can get tired of them. The band only knows about a dozen songs with not a soulful ballad on the playlist.

The recognizable ones include Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Dead Flowers” by the Rolling Stones. There’s no Raging Arb songs, but a couple of obscure covers by a wild Australian bar band, the Beasts of Bourbon.

“The night before our first gig at practice, we were terrible,” said McGraw. “It took us something like six hours to do three songs. But after our first gig, I thought this was totally gonna work because it just clicked.”