Temporary Signs of Life

When T.S.O.L. began playing 18 years ago, the initials stood for True Sounds of Liberty. Looking back on the Long Beach /Orange County band’s history, Turmoil Stalked Our Lives would be more like it.

The six core musicians who played under the T.S.O.L. banner went through serious bouts with drugs during or after their time in the band. Today, only the two singers are active musically: Jack Grisham, who fronted T.S.O.L. in its early, hard-core punk phase, and Joe Wood, who took over in 1984 and led it down a bluesy, hard-rock path until its breakup in 1991. Founding members Mike Roche, Ron Emory and Todd Barnes have disappeared from the scene.

Last summer, Wood got an invitation to reform T.S.O.L. and bring it to Brazil, where the band’s darkly dramatic records have remained popular.

“I wanted to do it right, and I felt in order to do it right I had to become an artist again,” recalled the raspy-voiced singer. He had continued to perform part time while settling into a management job for Show Power, a Compton company that rents electrical generators used by touring pop acts.

“I wanted to get back to that place; I wanted to feel that way again.”

He relied on heavy drinking to induce his old T.S.O.L. mind-set--an especially risky bit of behavior for a onetime heroin addict. The band got through its week in Brazil, playing to as many as 7,000 fans, and Wood returned to sobriety.

Now comes another T.S.O.L. reunion gig on Saturday at the Coach House--the band’s first since its trip to Brazil last fall. This time, Wood, 36, says he will inhabit T.S.O.L.’s gritty musical street scenes without self-medicating.

“It’s over,” he said of last year’s vodka bingeing. “It was very taxing on me and [my wife,] D.D. The repercussions have been very bad for the family.” (A talented singer-songwriter, Wood’s wife put her recording career on the back burner to work as a schoolteacher and raise their two children.)

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In retrospect, Wood says his boozing probably had more to do with breaking away from his workaday existence than rekindling his T.S.O.L. wildness.

“I realized [about the job], ‘It’s not me.’ I’m a gypsy; it’s in my blood. I know that without music, I’m no good to nobody.”

Wood says he has since scaled down from a salaried, career-track position to more flexible hourly work that leaves more time for music.

“I’m a [lousy] husband, but I’m a good father,” he said. “Because I’m the way I am, it hurts [D.D.]. I’ve been writing a lot of songs lately about her, how great she is. She’s a very strong woman, the perfect woman for me.”

Since disbanding T.S.O.L., Wood has fronted various groups, including a traditional blues band. His lone post-T.S.O.L. album came out in 1994 under the band name Cisco Poison and featured his strongest recorded work to date.

A sustained T.S.O.L. revival isn’t in the works. The Coach House show “is pretty much a onetime thing,” he said. “I’m not going to rule any [future shows] out, but it’s pretty much done. If people still want to hear it, we’ll play.”

The Saturday lineup also includes Mitch Dean, the drummer throughout T.S.O.L.’s Wood-fronted second phase, and bassist Dave Mello, who joined the band near the end of its run. They both work at Show Power with Wood but aren’t pursuing musical careers. The three T.S.O.L. members have deputized a couple of old friends, Mike Martt and Drac Conley, to play guitar. The same crew did the shows in Brazil.

Wood says he would like to someday give T.S.O.L. a proper Viking’s funeral by staging a show in which he and Grisham would perform together, each singing highlights spanning the two phases of the band’s career.

“I want to do it just to end the whole thing and show everybody that they were wrong about a lot of things”--namely that Grisham and Wood can’t stand each other.

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Grisham, who is D.D. Wood’s brother, is disinclined to revisit his musical past.

“I like Joe, but I’m having a hard enough time figuring out what I am now,” he said with a laugh. Last fall, Grisham talked about quitting music after the commercial flop of an excellent album by his band, the Joykiller. But he has soldiered on, and is about to record a new solo project for Epitaph Records with the help of veteran punk producer Geza X.

Wood says he won’t drop his idea of giving T.S.O.L. a career-spanning send-off.

“I loved [both phases of] T.S.O.L., so I’m going to keep trying.”

Wood’s longer-range plans center on a solo career, with veteran Long Beach musicians Henry DeBaun and Wade Wilkinson backing him on drums and bass. The group will get a weekly Tuesday night residency in April at Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim, testing material that will range from punk rock to blues to country.

* T.S.O.L., Mel and Diablo 44 play Saturday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $8-$10. (714) 496-8930.

* Joe Wood plays every Tuesday in April at Linda’s Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams St., Anaheim. 9 p.m. $3. (714) 533-1286.