With Friends Like These

It’s great to have friends. Just ask singer-songwriter Jimmy Adams. His friends just happen to be some of the best musicians in the county, and several of them will be on hand at Cafe Voltaire in Ventura on Friday night to aid and abet Adams’ CD release party. Six bucks will get you into the 7:30 p.m. show and double that gets you a copy of “There Comes a Time.”

Adams, an amiable Texan, is ably assisted on the disc by the likes of Dan Wilson (bass, mandolin and more), Bill Flores (Dobro steel guitar), Roy Jones (guitar and harmonica), Phil Salazar (fiddle), Alan Thornhill (guitar) and many others. For live gigs, Adams uses many of the same players and also Tim Mullins (Dobro) and Jonathon McEuen (guitar). Seattle? Santa Barbara? Adams likes the Poinsettia City when it comes to music.

“Ventura has the most happening music scene and I’ve been to Austin and Nashville,” said Adams. “I love performing and I love to sing, and I feel really honored to have all these great local musicians play on my record.”

They’re not even all Texans. It may seem as though much of the population of Texas already lives in California, partly because transplants from the Lone Star State tend to stick together. One of them helped Adams finish his CD.

“It took me about two years, and I didn’t think I’d ever get the money to finally press it,” he said. “Then a guy named Mike Morrow from Houston came into Cafe Voltaire and saw me play. He asked me for a tape so he could give it to his friend, Larry Heller, a CEO of a music publishing company with a lot of industry connections. Then one day, Heller called me up and said, ‘The answer is yes to whatever I can do for you.’ Heller and his partner Harold Childs are sort of like patrons and fans.”

Adams is an acoustic-guitar kind of guy, incorporating country, folk and bluegrass music into his slice-of-life songs.

“One thing about acoustic music is that you can do it anyplace for anybody and you don’t need a PA,” he said. “Dan [Wilson] calls me the Bob Dylan for the ‘90s, but I’m almost too embarrassed to say that. I guess there’s a little Hank Williams in there and a little Arlo Guthrie, too. I probably have about 75 songs, but I only know about 30 of them. I have a lot of songs in development.”

Jon Wilcox of Marley’s Ghost and the Rincon Ramblers is yet another Adams fan: “Jimmy Adams looks like Jimmy Buffett on a bad day and sings like John Prine on a good one.”

In Texas, Adams was just getting around to perfecting his drawl when music changed his life. “A friend of my dad’s gave me a guitar when I was about 13,” he said. “Later, I was in the choir when I was in high school, and I bought the songbook to the Beatles’ ‘White Album.’ ”

Adams started performing out and about, quickly learning what a hassle it can be to land gigs and deal with club owners. Adams figured out a sure-fire way around all that.

“When I was 26, I opened a bar called Yesterday’s Wine in Seabrook, Texas,” he said. “That way, I let all my friends play and I could play during the breaks.”

The bar closed within a couple of years and Adams moved to Florida with his brother. The two got hired to help crew a yacht, which sailed through the Panama Canal, eventually ending up, as fate would have it, in Ventura. Soon, Adams was meeting a lot of local musicians, such as Chris Hillman, Steve Hill and fellow Texans Roy and Daphne Jones.

“Then about four years ago, I met Dan Wilson and we did some recordings in his living room. In 1992, he took me to the Strawberry Music Festival . . . in Yosemite, and I was introduced to the acoustic-music scene, which really motivated me to become a part of it. Then I started playing with Alan Thornhill, Phil Salazar and all those guys, but Dan Wilson has been the main one for me.”

Cafe Voltaire is the main hangout for the other many bands that do not play at Nicholby’s. Once the city bus barn, the site has for several years housed Cafe Voltaire, which offers music six nights a week. They began as a coffee house and now have mass quantities of beer, some that you can’t even spell, plus all sorts of food, not to mention 28 flavors of ice cream floats.

“About three years ago, I came in and I saw this sign that said ‘Acoustic musicians wanted,’ ” said Adams. “So I played them one song, and I’ve been playing here ever since.”

Whether Adams gets a street named after him in Houston or fades away like the Dallas Cowboys is immaterial because the singer’s fame is already assured. How many other people have their own coffee mugs? Adams does, and it’s not one of those “I’m with stupid” cups, but a Cafe Voltaire mug inscribed with the resume-friendly notation: “Home of the legendary Jimmy Adams & Friends.”

Cafe Voltaire owner Todd Winokur “just did it on his own,” said Adams. “I’m very flattered. If I ever get a big break--I got it from there. It can happen if you believe. You might get lucky. If you don’t believe, what’s the point?”

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The Ventura Theatre, after a serious cleaning and renovation--even the chandelier is getting the once-over--will reopen May 10. Clearly a bit less raucous than the last show, which featured Eric Johnson, the reopening show features the Ventura Chamber Music Festival. Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom will officiate at the festivities. Unfortunately, Raging Arb & the Redheads will not open. Word of future events of interest to rock ‘n’ rollers will be forthcoming.

BE THERE

Jimmy Adams & Friends at Cafe Voltaire, 34 N. Palm St., Ventura. Fri., 7:30 p.m. $6. 641-1743.