Well-Rounded in Blues Circles : Joe Louis Walker’s ‘Youth’ Hasn’t Stopped Him From Mixing With the Masters

When you get up past age 30 in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re just about ready for discounted movie tickets and bus passes. Rock always has been a young person’s game; a few gray hairs or extra inches around the waist can spell imminent irrelevance in the grand scheme.

Oddly enough, the reverse holds true in the blues. Such artists as John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush spent their prime years working in the relative obscurity of the so-called chitlin circuit, only to be trotted out as national treasures at an age when they ought to be enjoying a well-earned retirement.

At 43, Joe Louis Walker is considered an upstart, a young gun of the blues. But for all his acclaim in the music press for taking the music into new realms, his name remains familiar only to the hard-core blues aficionado.

“You walk down the street and ask someone what they know about the blues, and who are they gonna say?” Walker--who plays tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano--asked during a recent phone conversation from his home in San Francisco.

“They’re gonna say Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and if you’re in England, they’re gonna say Gary Moore. It’s almost like you gotta be 70 years old like John Lee Hooker to get any real recognition, or if you get real lucky, you might find yourself in a situation like Robert Cray was in. But that was a lot of luck.”

Walker hopes to pick up some luck of his own via the release of “JLW,” his second album for Verve Records after a stint with the Bay Area indie Hightone label, where Cray got his start.

“JLW” is a stellar effort, featuring Walker’s speedy-but-tasteful, jazz-inflected guitar runs, fevered slide workouts, soulful singing and solid songwriting. It also features an all-star cast including Branford Marsalis, James Cotton, Angela Strehli and the Tower of Power horns--artists Walker says he used out of friendship and musical respect, rather than any cynical, label-mandated attempt to cash in on their name value.

“I’m very proud of this album,” Walker said. “I think it’s got some good songs on it and I was fortunate to get a lot of people to play on it whom I’d played with before. It was like a family. It worked out real good.”

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A sense of family is nothing new to Walker, who grew up in the communal environment of the Haight-Ashbury district in the ‘50s and ‘60s. His southern-born parents played down-home blues around the house, and Walker cranked out covers of soul hits in a childhood band with his cousins. He has played blues professionally from the time he was a teen-ager and hooked into the burgeoning Haight rock scene in the late ‘60s, at least on a social level.

“I was never really into the psychedelic thing. I didn’t play the music,” he said. “But in a way I was part of that scene because my bass player was Jerry Garcia’s guitar tech, and I knew all the people in the Airplane.

“I played at Marty Balin’s club (the legendary Matrix), opening for all the blues acts that came through. I knew all those people and jammed with them. Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen I’ve been knowing since I was 19. So in a way, I could say yeah, I was a part of it, but not musically. Not that I didn’t dig psychedelic music, but I just did something different, more or less stuck to the blues.”

Among his influences was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band/Electric Flag guitar virtuoso Mike Bloomfield, with whom he roomed in the late ‘60s.

“Mike was a wonderful person, and he definitely helped me out, steering me in the right direction,” Walker recalled. “Through Mike, I met Buddy Miles, and I met Jimi Hendrix through Buddy when I was about 21. I went to parties with him; Buddy asked me and another guy to take him around. Jimi used our rehearsal space, and one day he had a big jam session over there, but it was one of those days that I just couldn’t get out of bed, and I never ended up playing with him.”

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Walker also opened for a number of jazz acts in his younger days (“I was on a bill with Thelonius Monk when I was like 20 years old”) and spent 1975 through 1985 as a member of a gospel group, the Spiritual Corinthians. He says he has learned from everyone he has played with. In any case, by the time he made his own debut with “Cold Is the Night” in 1986, he was a well-rounded, eclectic performer.

“Everything is bound to rub off on you a little bit,” he said. “I’m like a jack of all trades because of all the hanging out I did. I’ve spent a lot of time playing different things and I try to incorporate a little bit of all of it into what I do. I try to use what works for me and what works for a song. I put it all together and I come up with me.”

* Joe Louis Walker plays tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Show time: 8. Fry Sum Blues and the Jake Richmond Band open. $10. (714) 496-8930.