Tripping the Life Idiosyncratic

At first they were pretentious. Later they were painfully naive. And they always had rotten luck with bass players.

But the three musicians who form the core of Fullerton rock band Trip the Spring have stuck with it for seven years while their songs improved, their bruises from business setbacks healed, and their search for compatible sidekicks progressed.

They have emerged, finally, with an idiosyncratic, yet mature, debut CD that confidently juxtaposes styles ranging from sea chanteys to funk and psychedelia, topping them off with poetic lyrics steeped in nature imagery, an idealistic outlook on creativity and fellowship, and a fond regard for the convivial properties of alcoholic spirits.

The key to it all has been enjoying each other’s company along the often-rocky way, Trip’s co-founders, David Dutton, Kevin Dutton and John Kraus, said as they chatted backstage after a recent show at the Galaxy Concert Theatre. With them were two recent additions that they say make for the most relaxed and creatively cohesive Trip lineup yet: Chris Dalu, the band’s first keyboards player, and Steve Parks, fourth in its line of bassists.

The tall, blond Dutton brothers--Kevin was 3 and David was in the womb when their construction-worker dad moved the family to Fullerton from the outskirts of Edinburgh--grew up playing drums. David, 27, stuck with it; Kevin, 30, came under the influence of Bob Dylan and Neil Young and veered into singing and writing lyrics.

Trip emerged with Kraus, now 26, on guitar, another Dutton, cousin Liana, on flute, and bass player No. 1 zooming away jazzily. Kevin Dutton had culled the band name from a phrase in a Gaelic language book he found in the Fullerton College library. “It means ‘Dance to a lively tune,’ ” he said. “I thought, ‘Nobody else is going to take that name.’ ”

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Trip first emerged from the teeming pack of ground-level local bands in 1991, when it won a talent contest and got sent to play at South by Southwest, an annual festival in Austin, Texas, conceived as a grass-roots scouting opportunity for record companies.

The early Trip lineup could play well, but its songwriting wasn’t strong enough to support Kevin Dutton’s reedy, highly theatrical vocal style. The band’s amalgam of hippie folk and British progressive rock influences was refreshing here in punkville, but it came off sounding forced.

By 1995, though, Trip had improved its songwriting and downplayed the folk strains somewhat in favor of a more rhythmic and meaty sound. Kraus was emerging with a subtle, expertly textured guitar style that borrows from such diverse influences as Jerry Garcia, U2’s The Edge, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Daniel Lanois.

Backers of a start-up Southern California record company courted the band with promises of a recording budget and living allowance. Dazzled by meetings with lawyers and producers, the Trip members agreed when the company told them to quit their day jobs and prepare to record immediately. Then the story changed to “maybe in six months.”

As it turned out, David Dutton said, the money never materialized, the label vanished and the Trip members had to explain to their friends and former employers that they weren’t going to be making their living playing rock ‘n’ roll just yet.

“I felt like an idiot, like an absolute fool,” said Kraus, who, unlike the Dutton brothers, at least got his old job back.

“We learned from that experience not to rush the process,” Kevin Dutton said. “Just to believe in what you’re doing and not put your efforts into somebody else’s hands.”

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So Trip scraped together $6,500 to make its own CD. Ian Miller, a friend and fan, donated his services as recording engineer and let the band use the Anaheim studio he runs when it wasn’t otherwise booked, saving Trip about $20,000.

Bassist No. 3 quit two weeks into the project. At least she gave notice, unlike bassist No. 2, who walked away without a word moments before Trip was to play a 1994 club gig, and never spoke to his miffed band mates again.

With their record done, the Trip members cajoled Dalu, 33, an old friend with a mellow disposition and a happy hippie look, into joining and diversifying the band’s live sound with his classical training on piano. The quietly amiable Parks, 24, was ushered in on bass after close scrutiny, given the band’s past experiences in the lower register.

Old members and new bonded in a series of rehearsals last summer on the roof of a parking garage next to the Fullerton railroad station. Commuters grooved to these twice-weekly, highly unauthorized sunset serenades on public property. The cops who came by on patrol would listen, too, and ask when the CD was coming out.

As it opened a Galaxy show last week for a rump version of the Jerry Garcia Band, Trip had just returned from a weeklong road trip to northern and central California, the first night-by-night, out-of-town gigging experience in the band’s history.

“We’re just getting a taste of what it could be like, supporting ourselves as musicians,” Dalu said. “We all need very little to live on. We’re really simple people.”

For now, Kevin Dutton teaches part time at a private fine arts academy in Idyllwild. David Dutton and Parks are teacher’s aides in Orange County schools, and Kraus helps operate a historical tall-ship replica at the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point. Dalu breaks the educational mold with his job at a national polling company, where he spends his workdays asking people what kind of beer they like.

Without any promotional push beyond what David Dutton, the de facto business manager, can muster with mailings and phone calls, Trip has begun to get scattered airplay on adult-album-alternative stations. The band members know how long the odds are against any emerging band breaking through. Their most jaundiced song, “Green Man,” sums up the music business in a simple refrain: “It’s who ya know and nothing more.”

At least they know each other, and they like the company.

“We’ve never discussed not doing it,” Kraus said.

“We all feel the stress and strain of ‘Oh God, what if music doesn’t work out for us [as a career],’ ” David Dutton said. “But I’m not happy if I’m not playing music. I love my job working with kids, but at the end of the day I’m itching to play at rehearsals.”

“It feels like a real family thing,” summed up Kevin Dutton. Giving up on Trip the Spring “would be letting myself down, and letting people who are closest to me down too.”

* Trip the Spring plays tonight at the Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St. 8 p.m. $4. (714) 374-1650. Also Friday opening for Bang at Lookers, 24921 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. 9:30 p.m. $10. (714) 488-3106. Also Nov. 29 with Groove Salad, Honeyslide and Little Children, at Linda’s Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams St., Anaheim. 9 p.m. $6. (714) 533-1286.