MUSIC : VALLEY WEEKEND : Jimmy O Says He Looks for the Bright Side of the Blues : The Burbank-born musician brings his brooding band to the Classroom in Northridge.

Jimmy O doesn’t know why they call it “cry-in-your-beer” music, the blues always makes him feel good.

“It’s a very uplifting kind of music, very healing,” he says. “The blues is not sad, it’s supposed to make you feel better.”

Jimmy O, who’s playing at the Classroom in Northridge this Saturday and at the Santa Clarita Brewing Co. next week, is a born and bred Valley blues man.

“I was born in the same hospital as Willie Dixon died, St. Joseph’s in Burbank,” Jimmy says. “Maybe it’s an omen or something.”

With a little spurt of facial hair on his lower lip and dark shades to match his mood, Jimmy O looks like a guy who’s been around, in front and in back, inside and out of 12 bars for a long time. And he sounds that way too.

He plays the blues and nothing else and that ain’t bad. His guitar and voice both growl with a moral authority that’s common among the better blues artists.

Jimmy works full time these days promoting his album, “Bolt From the Blue,” which was released last spring on Smokestack Records. The album features Jimmy performing six original tunes plus some very respectable covers of several blues classics including Dixon’s “I Don’t Trust Myself,” B.B. King’s “Ask Me No Questions,” and “The Hunter” by Booker T. Jones & the MGs.

Backing him up this weekend will be “Commando” Cody McDonald on harmonica, “Cool Cat” Pat Gillham on drums, Dennis Cottone on bass and Margaret Rainsford on keyboards.

Jimmy O and his band play Saturday at the Classroom, 8333 Tampa Ave., Northridge. Call (818) 885-0250.

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On A Mission: Guitarist Jonathan Wilson sees no problem being a Christian and enjoying rock music. It’s the rock lyrics that are the problem.

Wilson and his band, Soul Harvest, will play this weekend at the Ark, an independent, nondenominational church, in Chatsworth. Like a lot of other rock bands, Soul Harvest is working on a CD and even has a telephone hot line where fans can get info on dates and other stuff.

And like a lot of rock bands, Soul Harvest is a band that thinks it’s on a mission from God. But their mission, if they choose to accept it, is to spread the Gospel.

“Biblically, it doesn’t say anything about standing in a pew and being quiet,” Wilson says. “We are trying to reach a certain audience that wouldn’t normally listen.”

So, what’s Soul Harvest’s music like?

“Other than the lyrics being diametrically opposed to what we believe, we might have been inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin, the Scorpions, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page,” Wilson says.

In addition, Wilson listened to a lot of romantic and baroque music, he says. That’s where he discovered the arpeggione, an instrument that he has incorporated into the band’s music.

Wilson says the instrument was invented in 1823, and although Franz Schubert wrote a sonata for it, it never became popular and faded into oblivion.

Wilson says he redesigned the instrument and had an electrified arpeggione made. It’s tuned like a guitar, but played like a violin or cello.

“The bridge and neck are specially designed to be bowed,” Wilson says. Other members of Soul Harvest are Alan Fitch, Joel Singer and Rob Bailey.

* Soul Harvest will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ark, 9825 Mason Ave., Chatsworth. Free admission. Call the Harvest Hotline at (818) 349-5463.

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Night Rockers: By day, Andy Roth is a financial consultant for Merrill Lynch. By night, he’s a Rattler.

The Rattlers, who are playing this weekend at The Rock in Woodland Hills, are a local bar band. All the members of the group have been full-time, professional musicians at some point in their lives.

But now that the guys are in their late 30s and early 40s, music has become a creative outlet rather than an all-consuming fire in their collective belly. In other words, they all have full-time day jobs.

“It’s something we love,” Roth says. “I love my day job, too, but music is an outlet for my artistic side.”

The Rattlers, consisting of Roth, Mark Whelan, John Oestman and Ray Kobe, have been together for about two years and are looking for a quality record deal for their original material.

* The Rattlers perform Friday night at The Rock, 7230 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park. Call (818) 347-7668.