Blues for the ‘90s

Simi Valley musicians with rock-star dreams generally head over the hill to Hollywood, since their hometown offers few venues for original rock. But Carrie James does things differently, often coming from Reseda to Simi Valley, where she will play at Season Ticket tonight.

“L.A. clubs seem to go good for a while, then they close,” James said. “Sometimes, things will seem to be really happening, but it never seems to last.”

James, who made her career decision while still a single digit in age, has a tight band that plays those rockin’ blues, good for dancing and foot tapping.

The singer herself has a powerful blues voice--part sweat, part smoke and a definite threat to the longevity of speakers.

The band’s debut album, featuring seven originals, is “Midnight Road.”

“Really, I’ve been singing as long as I can remember,” James said.

“My mom used to do radio commercials, and she has a tape of me singing when I was 6 years old. Later, I was always jamming with musicians in and after high school.”

As a Valley girl, James was doing the rock ‘n’ roll thing when “one of my sister’s friends turned me onto the blues. It was mostly Muddy Waters, Etta James and Aretha Franklin, and I just couldn’t believe the passion. I started doing more blues with the band I was in at the time--more than they wanted--so I started my own band. I took all those influences and added my own style, sort of blues for the ‘90s.”

Season Ticket is a good-size club located in a mall between Vons and Rite Aid.

There’s a fair-size dance floor, plenty of pool opportunities and televisions everywhere.

The weekend bands usually play classic rock, but James has been bringing blues to the venue for more than a year, looking for new fans in new places.

“What we’re trying to do is reach people that wouldn’t normally listen to the blues,” she said.

“We play a lot of energetic, uplifting music for people who like to party and dance.”

DETAILS

The Carrie James Band at Season Ticket, 5835 Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley, tonight at 9; free; 520-1166.

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Named for a tree that doesn’t grow here and that big bright thing in the night sky, Dogwood Moon will bring its brand of uplifting folk music to Wine Lovers in Ventura tonight.

Wine Lovers is cozy inside, where the music is transacted, but outside, the patio has been expanded.

Dogwood Moon is Laurie Gunning, the voice of choice, and Jonathan Grossman, who plays acoustic guitar and also sings.

Together for about four years, the duo have a couple of independent albums, including the stunning “The Call to Infinity,” and a growing legion of fans collected from the coffeehouse circuit and rock ‘n’ roll bars.

Dogwood Moon subscribes to the KISS theory of music (and life in general) of Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Grossman writes and Gunning sings, and boy, does she. The two, now husband and wife, met through a voice coach they were working with at the same time.

Grossman had a rock band and needed a backup vocalist, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“Laurie came and auditioned and got the job,” Grossman said.

“At the end of ‘95, the band broke up and we decided we wanted to continue as a duo. And it was evident that Laurie’s voice should be featured.”

With no day jobs but plenty of night work, Dogwood Moon plays about 20 gigs a month and recently toured Europe. But there’s fun, fun, fun to go along with the work, work, work, Gunning said.

“The important thing for us is longevity,” she said.

“We’re going to be playing music whether we get signed or not. Everybody thinks we sleep until 2 every afternoon and play all night. We don’t. We get up every morning, go to our office and start working on booking shows, mailing out press [material] and talking on the phone. But we’re smiling the whole time.”

DETAILS

Dogwood Moon at Wine Lovers, 1067 Thompson Blvd., Ventura, tonight at 8; free; 652-1810.

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With a vast repertoire to match their long history, Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan are purveyors of good-time blues.

And good-time blues it shall be when the gregarious Santa Barbarans celebrate two decades of acoustic blues with a pair of live CD recordings Saturday night at Victoria Hall in their hometown.

Ball is a blues historian, record collector, harmonica player and owner of a great, gruff blues voice. Sultan is a virtuoso guitar player.

The pair have been playing songs frequently funny enough to make a statue of J. Edgar Hoover smile.

Ball is excited about the upcoming gig.

“Hopefully, it’ll be good,” he said. “We’re going to do two shows, and we’ll basically do the same songs each show. That way, we have two chances for each song. . . . There’ll be a few new songs on this one, but mostly old ones plus some songs that were on records that are now out of print.”

During the course of their career (seven or eight albums), the duo have written a number of originals but also unearthed a number of obscure blues songs.

Most are about stuff important to blues men everywhere--bad women, worse liquor and various combinations thereof.

From the “Who Drank My Beer?” cover song, a sample line: “Who drank my beer when I was in the rear? Somebody point me out that moocher. I’m gonna dislocate his future.”

Or from “Perfect Woman,” an original: “I found the perfect woman, boys / Who could ask for more? / She’s smart and pretty, young and witty and owns a liquor store.”

“Most of the stuff we do is so obscure that most people think we wrote them, but we wouldn’t take credit for stuff we didn’t write,” Ball said.

“There’s always more, but we are scraping the bottom of the barrel on those songs. It’s finally time to write our own stuff, I guess, but we’re slow writers.”

Fast or slow, the good times for the low-budget Ball and Sultan, weighed down by just a guitar and a harmonica, keep on rolling.

They play locally when they can, and in the summer, they’re off on the national and international festival circuit.

“It’s pretty amazing, huh?” Ball commented.

“How long did the Beatles last, seven or eight years? How did we do it? I dunno, separate rooms, maybe? We get along. We’re good buddies, and we’re heading in the same direction musically. We don’t have too many bad times. We could be playing bowling alleys in Tulsa--now that would be a bad time.”

DETAILS

Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan at Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara, Saturday, 7 and 9 p.m.; $10; 967-7265.

Bill Locey can be reached by e-mail at blocey@pacbell.net.