The Hidden Talents of a Honk Alumnus Have Emerged From ‘Cave’ : *** WILL BRADY, “Caveman Brain”

Greetings from Laguna, where the outside world has yet to discover a wealth of aging baby-boom musical talent nestled between the waves and the overlooking heights.

Will Brady, 52, is part of the alumni association of Honk, the Laguna Beach folk-rock-soul band that had a brief national shot during the mid-’70s. Keyboard player Steve Wood has gone to the movies (he makes his living largely by writing and producing film soundtracks), and guitarist Richard Stekol, who at his best is one of the finest songwriters Orange County ever sprouted, has gone golfing (he’s traded in his ax for a putter and gives golf lessons). But Brady, Honk’s bassist, is still knocking it out in local clubs and coffeehouses, where he has made a living one way or another since 1964.

“Caveman Brain” is Brady’s first solo studio album, following “Next Door to the Blues,” a 1994 cassette release that captured his live solo-bluesman act. “Brain” is a heady effort that puts the studio to excellent use; Brady plays all the guitars, basses and percussion (some real, some programmed without sounding canned), but most of the arrangements work because of the lively, inventive and well-integrated contributions of the trumpet-and-sax tandem of Brian Atkinson and Jim Gordon.

Brady’s guitar work, almost all acoustic, features fine rhythmic motion and sharp, concise solos that take clean, classic lines, yet usually drop in an offbeat note or unexpected twisty lick.

The horns often lend a tart, off-kilter tinge to the music, a la Was (Not Was) or Steely Dan. That fits Brady’s wry, but not jaundiced, outlook. Much of his best stuff takes a crustily humorous slant, whether the subject is love’s confoundedness or such ingrained nasty habits as misogyny and racial prejudice.

When Brady is cooking, he comes up with witty observations or lets his lyrical imagination run wild.

“Back to Broke” manages to pump life into that blues warhorse, the empty-wallet lament (“Our bills come flyin’ like an uppercut/Our mailbox door won’t even shut”). “It’s Not Gonna Be With Me” is a catchy, rhythmic chugger in which Brady imagines all sorts of dryly funny scenarios for his ex’s new life without him: “Maybe she’ll get a headband and join the Grateful Dead/Or a leopard skin pillbox hat and put it on her head/Maybe she’ll sculpt Elvis out of pizza dough/And get a shot on Letterman or the Oprah Winfrey Show/ . . . But it’s not gonna be with me.”

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Brady rambles far away from basic blues. He pulls off a beatbox and acoustic guitar funk-rap number, “I’m Not White,” with a lightly rendered but pointed anti-bigotry message; he hitches “Everybody’s Gonna Know Your Name,” an obliquely philosophical ditty about how we’re ultimately accountable for everything we do, to the famous, gurgling bass pulse of Sly Stone’s “If You Want Me to Stay.”

He also drops some good, roots-based pop tunes into the mix. “The Real New Ground” (with Stekol off the links and singing harmony) essays the elusive search for true love with a chorus catchy and bright enough to be an adult-alternative radio format hit; the smoother “Unlucky in Love” sounds like a more openhearted Steely Dan, circa “Deacon Blues”; and “A Bigger Heart” follows the tradition of some of NRBQ’s more innocent, plaintively idealistic stuff.

Brady is an effective, if not richly talented, singer who switches between a blues voice that’s like a less-gruff Dr. John and a pop voice that’s akin to a scratchier Jackson Browne. A solid majority of his songs have real personality, and it’s not hard to imagine Bonnie Raitt, Wynonna Judd or some other roots-based hit-maker giving some of them a nice ride out of Lagunan seclusion and into the mainstream.

* Available from Will Brady, P.O. Box 9065, South Laguna, CA 92677-9065, or on the Internet: https://www.iuma.com/IUMA/bands/Brady,--Will.

Albums are rated on a scale of * (poor) to **** (excellent), with *** denoting a solid recommendation.