Born to Play

Teresa Russell may be the hardest-working woman in show biz, averaging nearly 25 gigs a month. That’s eight times more than Raging Arb & the Redheads have played all year. And this week is no exception for the busy guitar player, the poster girl for Workaholics Everywhere.

Russell will be at the legendary Deer Lodge in Meiners Oaks, a place where everyone dances except for the deer on the wall, tonight, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, along with her band, Cocobilli.

She also has a Saturday afternoon solo gig at the Beachcomber in Silver Strand Beach. Monday night, she’s at the Golden China in Ventura along with her mom; Thursday, she’s at Boot Scooters in Oxnard.

Russell will be the one with the big hair and an even bigger repertoire of more than 600 songs, carefully recorded in a vast and weighty tome about the size of an L.A. phone book that she lugs along to all her gigs. She plays everything from rock to blues to country, plus all the top hits. If you can name it, she can probably play it. She even knows “Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles, a staple in strip clubs.

“My mom and her sister were really into music and I just grew up playing together with them,” Russell said this week. “When I was 10 or 11, I learned Jimi Hendrix songs, a lot of Eric Clapton’s Cream stuff and just a lot of pop music. I’ve been playing in clubs, restaurants and bars since I was 11 years old.

“These days, people identify me through my hair--it’s all part of my image.”

While growing up in Westlake Village, where most of her contemporaries spent their free time at the mall, the 12-year-old Russell was playing at Gazzari’s on the Sunset Strip, fronting an all-girl band called Spare Change.

Next she spent six months in Mexico (Mom went, too) fronting another all-girl group, Candy. Later, Russell earned a music scholarship to Cal State Northridge and ended up touring with Helen Reddy. To this day, the thirtysomething Russell has successfully avoided the dreaded day job.

The sheer number of Russell’s gigs is nearly matched by their variety. When she plays solo, she totes along the machines that create the technology to make the soloist sound like a quartet. And playing solo does make it easy to split the dough at the end of the night.

A few times a month, Russell performs with Stephen Geyer, the greatest guitarist in all of Agoura, at generally low-key gigs at places like Ventura’s Pierpont Inn, a place she swears they shake up. Then, a couple of times a month, Russell and fiddle whiz Phil Salazar join those rockin’ Realtors in Acadiana.

“We do a lot of festivals in the summer, or about 35 gigs a year,” she said. “I’m a girl in this band with a bunch of guys. It’s a gig that pays me well, and it’s fun. Playing all that Cajun stuff has made me a better player.”

If solo gigs are her job and Acadiana is her hobby, then Cocobilli is Russell’s passion. Cocobilli is a full band that usually plays the weekend gigs. Russell and bass player Bill Breland are the main songwriters, having met 15 years ago while in Helen Reddy’s band. Cocobilli released a CD last year, “Bustin’ Loose,” which in turn has spawned the inevitable rock ‘n’ roll paraphernalia, T-shirts and hats.

“We’ve been working on a new Cocobilli CD which we hope to have finished in about six months,” Russell said. “We’ve been working on some new material and I think we have some really good stuff. It’s going to a live CD, plus we may do another CD of just covers. We have a unique collection of covers that are so improvisational, so spur of the moment.”

Russell, with all that hair, all those songs and all that stuff going on also has a 600-person mailing list, plus her own Web site-- she spends her mornings answering e-mails. She’s having entirely too much fun.

“I’m enjoying every moment of this,” she said. “Things have really begun to accelerate in the last six months. More and more people are coming to the gigs. The music is better. I’ve been playing better--singing better, too. I’m in my prime.

“You’ll never know what will happen unless you give it your whole heart. Right now I want to get more gigs that pay more money so I can make more CDs. I want to get my music played on every station in the country. Maybe go on tour and open for the big guys, or maybe be the big guy.”

Or at least be the girl with the Big Hair.

DETAILS

Teresa Russell & Cocobilli at the Deer Lodge, 2261 Maricopa Highway, Meiners Oaks, tonight and Saturday, 9 p.m., Sunday, 3 p.m.; Teresa Russell at the Beachcomber, 206 Ocean Drive, Oxnard, Saturday, 2:30 p.m.; at Golden China, 760 E. Seaward Ave., Ventura, Monday, 7:30 p.m.; at Boot Scooters, 2800 S. Harbor Blvd., Oxnard, Thursday, 8 p.m. All free.

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Back in the mid-1980s when BritPop was all over the radio, ABC was one of those bands that dressed better than the basic rock fan. Instead of T-shirts, they should have sold tuxedos at their gigs.

Fashion will meet melody Wednesday night when Martin Fry and his ABC pals bring their long list of hits to the Ventura Theatre.

Back in 1981, Sheffield fanzine writer Fry went to interview a local band called Vice Versa. Two of the members ended up asking Fry to join their band and ABC was formed. With hits such as “Poison Arrow” and “Look of Love,” ABC sold millions of albums. First as a funk pop band, then as a band playing house music with the suave presence of Fry, ABC is adept at filling the dance floor.

Times have been lean for the band in the ‘90s, but just like every other band, ABC is making a comeback. Last year ABC, along with the Human League and Culture Club, joined for a Total Rewind Tour of England. ABC also has a new album, “Lexicon of Live.”

DETAILS

ABC and Masterpiece at the Ventura Theatre, 26 Chestnut St., Wednesday, 8 p.m.; $20; 653-0721.

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Another dress-to-impress affair unfolds the next night at the same old place when those “Kings of Swing,” Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, entertain the home folks. Once claiming to be from Santa Barbara, then Los Angeles, BBVD members have finally decided where they’re from--and it’s where they’ve always been from--Ventura.

By far the most successful group to emerge from the Poinsettia City, BBVD was there at the beginning of the swing dance craze, packing the floor with well-dressed dancers at Nicholby’s in Ventura back in 1992. Since then, they’ve toured constantly, created a buzz with their appearance in the film “Swingers” and sold a bunch of albums. They’ve appeared on “Ally McBeal,” performed at halftime at the Super Bowl and been given the key to Ventura by the City Council. Not bad for a local band.

“We’re a psycho swing band,” says chief VooDude Scotty Morris. “Old swing music didn’t have an electric guitar, but ours does. Swing is just the stuff that’s inside me, stuff I heard from my parents. Louis Jordan, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington--I love that stuff. Swing music was the rock ‘n’ roll of its time. It was black music that you had to go to the black juke joints in the ghetto to hear. It was forbidden music, and whites never played it until they realized they could make money off it.”

DETAILS

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Ventura Theatre, Thursday, 8 p.m.; $25; 653-0721.