Southern Cross Pours on the Jam

Southern Cross is about as trendy as a Hitler mustache. They don’t dress one-tenth as well as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. They’re no “hair band.” (In fact, their picture could well be in Yul Brynner’s locker up in heaven.) And they definitely don’t sound like Pearl Jam or whoever the cool band is this week.

So much for what they’re not. Southern Cross is, however, a band named for a constellation with five exceptional musicians who will be headlining Nicholby’s in Ventura on Friday night.

Jon Raffetto and Stuart Orlinsky are the clever guitarists. Troy Dixon is the singer. Cooley--a master of brevity like Cher and Godzilla--is the drummer and percussionist. John Bunt plays one of those weird-looking high-tech basses. Together, they fairly pump like the great surf on the days you’re not there.

Southern Cross plays acoustic music, but they’re not a bunch of neurotic and / or wise-guy folkies. It’s like acoustic music on steroids--really rocking--and when their intricate guitar interplay kicks in, well, Southern Cross can take you to that place where only music can.

“We’re exactly that, we’re Southern Cross,” said singer Dixon. “We’re the alternative to the alternative. The alternative really isn’t alternative anymore, and we sound like Southern Cross. It’s rock ‘n’ roll, I guess, but all original in the ways we put our influences together. We used to do a couple of covers, but they were so lame, we gave it up. If it’s going to be lame, we decided to do our own stuff.”

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Southern Cross has been around for a couple of years now, and has played before the usual suspects at all the usual haunts from Ventura to Santa Barbara for all the usual reasons.

“Jon and I met two years ago,” said the singer. “We just started hanging out and I started singing to his playing. Then we met Stuart through a friend and we started the band a month later.

“We went to open mike night at Cafe Voltaire on a Sunday night. We played three songs and Todd, the owner, gave us a gig,” said Raffetto. “We had a month and a half before the gig, so we wrote enough songs so we could play for two hours.”

Actually, any one of their songs could fill those two hours because they never play a song the same way twice, and they have the art of the jam figured out much like Phish, Blues Traveler and the Allman Brothers.

“Some of the jams are fairly half arranged,” said Raffetto, one of the guitarists. “When we’re working on a jam, our musicianship and craft give us windows in and out of it. We connect pretty well when we jam, and we’ll make eye contact or something.”

When the band launches into one of its jams, young women have been known to materialize on the dance floor and begin to spin, looking not unlike Deadheads. There was a lot of that at the band’s recent Sunday morning gig at the California Beach Party. But according to the band’s singer, there’s no tie-dyed future for Southern Cross.

“I have no idea what the source of that is. I cringe at the Grateful Dead comparison,” Dixon said. “We don’t want to be a hippie band. I know we’ve opened for metal bands, and those people liked us. Then we played at the Olivas Adobe not long ago, and everyone there was old, and they liked us too. I remember a couple in their 70s were dancing.”

Southern Cross faces the usual insurmountable difficulties for local bands: too few places to play and too little money. Yet the band maintains a rigorous practice schedule--three a week--and manages a gig every weekend. So far they’ve managed to scrape up more than 200 shows.

“I know we had to campaign for a year to get a gig at Nicholby’s,” Dixon said. “I mean a headlining weekend gig. There’s a lot of great players around here. I hang out with those guys in the Rincon Ramblers--Alan Thornhill, Phil Salazar--and those guys are great. They’re the best local band.”

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With just a four-song tape to their credit so far, band members have more ambitious plans. With a set list approaching 30 originals, there will be a CD in their future, according to Dixon.

“We’re looking for something that captures the live energy of the band. I guess we want to do the indie thing. Nothing against labels, but they’d be great if they didn’t take all your money. We just want to go out and play.

“We’re going to start recording in November, and hopefully, we’ll have something by the first of the year.”

And for once, the drummer gets the last word.

“I think acoustic music has a richer tone,” said Cooley. “It’s beautiful and more perfect than music that’s plugged in.”

* Southern Cross and Calobo at Nicholby’s, 404 E. Main St., Ventura, at 9 p.m. Friday. $6. Call 653-2320.

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Tired of being beset by booze and boozers when seeing a band in a bar? Here are a couple of alternative music gigs. Every Saturday at 8 a.m., Southern Cross guitarist Jon Raffetto plays at the Cafe Coffee Company in Ventura.

“It’s a great gig,” he said. “Yeah, people like Jimmy Adams and J. Peter Boles show up to jam with me.”

The venue is at 798 E. Thompson Blvd. across from Corales Mexican Food. Call them at 641-2233.

Then there’s Brian Wurschum’s gig Saturdays at 5 p.m. Wurschum is the singer-songwriter with those folk-rock gods from Newbury Park, majority DOG. An offshoot project is Zelig, an acoustic duo featuring Wurschum and Laurel Hoffman. But this is a solo gig. Or, to quote their press release: “Under the oak trees just Brian. Take Lynn Road all the way to Potrero Road--park--walk to the trees.”

No phone. Be there or don’t.