The Healey Process : He Insists He Hasn’t Changed His Blues Approach--but His Evolving Sound Does Not Lie

Jeff Healey was cranky. Reached by phone recently at a hotel in Vancouver, the nimble-fingered guitarist-vocalist, who performs Monday and Tuesday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, sounded brusque and sarcastic.

The bone of contention was the Jeff Healey Band’s latest album, 1992’s “Feel This,” a heavily produced departure from earlier efforts, particularly the group’s blues-steeped 1988 debut, “See the Light.”

“Feel This” is a solid collection of mostly straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll, at times recalling ZZ Top or Tom Petty and whose “Lost in Your Eyes” is one of the album’s standout cuts. For better or for worse, a blues-based album it ain’t.

Healey performs both AOR-style rock and the blues with conviction, yet he went on the defensive when it was suggested that the radio-friendly “Feel This” has a more commercial sound than its predecessors.

“What is commercial? The idea that this is a more ‘commercial’ album is a media myth,” he said. “All of my albums have styles of music that go all over the board. It’s just a matter of what you choose to pick up on.

“I get called a ‘young guitar phenomenon’ and the band gets labeled a ‘blues band,’ or what have you, so people don’t have to focus and listen to the music,” he said. “(‘Feel This’) has a couple of songs that are very bluesy, a couple things that are out-and-out rock ‘n’ roll and some slow things. . . . We haven’t done anything different here at all.”

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Along with bassist Jeff Rockman and drummer Tom Stephen, Healey had worked comfortably within the power-trio format, with a blues-based sound bolstered by volume, energy and Healey’s formidable chops.

“Feel This” features less restrictive song structures, markedly upscale production values and a virtual army of keyboardists (including Paul Shaffer), background singers, an outside guitarist and even a rapper named Jr. John.

“Once again, that’s nothing new,” Healey said. “We had background singers and keyboardists on the other records as well. I’m trying to set the record straight here. We have heard, in a negative sense, that the album is overproduced--which is silly, because we’re not doing anything different. It’s just with all of us knowing a little more about what we’re doing in the studio, we got some slightly different sounds.”

“Feel This,” which peaked at No. 174 in Billboard last year, nonetheless showcased Healey’s songwriting skills, his ever-improving vocals and a newly developed instinct for a sparer style of guitar playing, which in the past has often come from the “how many notes can we throw into a measure?” school.

It’s a school Healey began attending early. Blind since he was 1, Healey got his first guitar as a toddler and quickly began developing his unique method of playing. To this day, Healey holds his guitar on his lap and frets his fingers vertically atop the neck, looking more like a keyboardist than a guitar picker.

“I probably developed that style because initially I started playing with a slide,” he said. “Eventually, I got bored with it and I ended up putting my hand over the neck. There’s no real logical thought pattern to it. I just do what I do.”

It is perhaps Healey’s unusual attack on the instrument that accounts for the thrumming, sustained vibrato, stinging, angry tones and remarkable speed for which he has become known.

Following the release of “See the Light,” Healey garnered accolades from fellow guitarists--the late Stevie Ray Vaughan declared that Healey would “revolutionize guitar playing”--and won awards from a variety of organizations and publications, including a 1989 Grammy for best rock instrumental and reader’s poll awards from Playboy and Guitar Player magazines. He’s also won a number of awards in his native Canada, where the Healey Band is a huge draw.

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Healey also is an avid collector who owns thousands of vintage jazz, blues and hillbilly 78s. He cites Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong as two of his favorites and doesn’t discount the notion of their influence showing up one day as his sound evolves.

“I don’t give much thought to assimilating it, but I suppose the whole improvisation thought process must have some relation, somewhere, to what I do,” he said. “You never know. At age 27, there’s a whole lot of life left to live. We’ll just wait and see.”

* The Jeff Healey Band performs at 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $23.50. (714) 496-8930.