Piazza’s Harp Is in the Right Place

It’s strange to think that blues harpist Rod Piazza has been playing professionally for more than 30 years, mostly on the road. His youthful face and potent energy level belie his 50 years, and his band, the Mighty Flyers, just gets tighter and hotter with each album. Local fans can check out the group tonight at Lookers in Dana Point

“Tough and Tender,” the Mighty Flyers’ first studio effort in five years, due out this month, offers ample proof that Piazza and company are perhaps the finest exponents of West Coast blues on the club circuit. A tour de force of scorching chops and complex arrangements, “Tough and Tender” is the Riverside-based group’s first release on Rounder Records blues subsidiary Tone-Cool Records.

For all their acclaim in blues circles, the Mighty Flyers have never transcended the mid-size club ghetto, but with Rounder’s sterling reputation and excellent distribution, Piazza has high hopes that the new album will increase their exposure.

“They’re strong, about the strongest of the independent distributors,” he said in a recent phone interview. “The main game is to get it out there where people can buy it, so I’m real happy about this.”

So how did a white boy from Southern California come to be a blues man way back in the ‘60s?

“I listened to my brother’s records,” Piazza said. “He was 10 years older than me. He brought home Jimmy Reed, Big Joe Turner, Earl Bostic and that kind of stuff back in the ‘50s. I’d play his records when he wasn’t around.”

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Piazza’s brother also took him to see Jimmy Reed, and the blues legend gave the eager teenager one of his old harps when they met backstage after the performance. Piazza took the instrument home and played along with his brother’s records.

At 17, Piazza moved to Los Angeles and came under the tutelage of Chicago blues veteran George “Harmonica” Smith. Smith coached Piazza in a number of styles, and the duo backed dozens of national blues artists in the Watts area in the early ‘60s. Promotional posters of the era trumpeted Piazza as being “White But Outta-Sight!”

“Everybody always treated me really good, musician-wise,” Piazza recalled. “There were a few cats that could be really arrogant because you were white, but if you could play, they kind of hid their feelings. Maybe some of them figured, ‘This boy can do me some good because he’s white.’ But most of the cats treated me really good.”

West Coast blues remains something of a regional sound, although inroads have been made nationally in recent years. Among the disciples of the style, which mixes traditional, gut-bucket blues with jumpin’ rhythms, tight arrangements and sax-like harp lines, are Piazza, Little Charlie & the Nightcats, Mark Hummell and, until his death last year, William Clarke.

“West Coast blues has more of a swingin’ style, an R&B; sound,” Piazza explained. “It’s more of a swingin’ blues as opposed to the down-home thing, although we do play in that style too. I think one of the things about being out here is when George Smith came out he had to work with a lot of R&B; bands as opposed to the straight-ahead Chicago blues bands, and so he adopted his harmonica playing to that. I sort of fell in behind him.

“When we first started going out and touring with this sound in 1980, it was pretty foreign to most people. They’d listen, but they really didn’t have a palate for it. They just would not accept anything that sophisticated beyond what they were used to hearing. But now it’s turned around, and people love it. Now there are West Coast blues bands in Minnesota.”

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The Mighty Flyers are Piazza’s wife, Honey, on piano; Bill Stuve on upright bass; Steve Mugalian on drums; and new member Rick Holmstrom on guitar. Playing jazz chords through a thickly distorted, cheesy-sounding amp, Holmstrom mixes raunchy tones with slick phrasing, which recalls the work of longtime Howlin’ Wolf sideman Willie Johnson.

Honey Piazza is the Mighty Flyers’ real secret weapon. She can pound out a boogie like Otis Spann and plays meaty rhythms that form the backbone of the group’s vibe.

Rod and Honey started playing together in 1973, became an item in ’76 and finally tied the knot in 1989. Their musical kinship is palpable, and being on the road together works too.

“It’s not any more difficult than it is being with anyone else in the band,” Rod Piazza said. “The good part is that when I’m on the road, she’s with me. The bad part is in trying to keep things fair and make the fellas feel like I’m not making any special concessions for her as a bandleader. But I usually keep band members for a hell of a long time, so it’s not really a problem.”

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The Mighty Flyers spend much of the year on the road, happily playing before dedicated fans, if not yet making any dent in the mainstream.

“I think I’ve always realized that the kind of music I always loved was really specialized and not meant for the masses because of the way the world is,” Piazza said. “I made a decision early on that fortune really wasn’t the name of the game I was trying to play here.”

* Rod Piazza & the Mighty Flyers perform tonight at Lookers, 24921 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. 9:30 p.m. $8. (714) 488-3106. Also, Thursday at South Coast Plaza Village, 1631 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana. 5-9 p.m. $30-$50. Benefits the Orange County Performing Arts Center. (714) 556-2322, Ext. 532.