All Over the Musical Map

It’s a good thing the members of Secondhand Smoke aren’t much concerned about fame and fortune.

Even if they were, their repertoire of jazz, pop, swing, blues, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, folk and bluegrass songs and instrumental lineup of guitar, Dobro, banjo, spoons, mandolin, accordion, washtub bass and jug give the offbeat Orange County band a virtual insurance policy against hitting the big time.

Which suits them just fine.

“I think we all share a certain disdain for today’s music business,” said banjo-mandolin player George Malek during an interview in the Metro Point shopping center courtyard in Costa Mesa. “We don’t have a makeup artist and costume designer or pyrotechnics and a computerized rig to make you sound good. With this group, we’re definitely not in it for the money. We just love to play.”

“Our image,” added lead guitarist John Mapson, “is that we have no image.”

Secondhand Smoke, which performs tonight along with singer Gail Chasin at the Anaheim Downtown Community Center, formed in 1996 and emulates the jugs bands of the late ‘20s and ‘30s that sprung from hard times. Friends and neighbors would gather on front porches to reproduce the music they heard over their radios, making instruments out of pretty much anything that was lying around.

Secondhand Smoke--which also features guitar-Dobro player Eric Nichols, accordionist-washtub bassist Ellen Swope and Bill McHolm on harmonica, guitars, spoons, jaw harp and jug--puts a unique spin on a plethora of American standards and obscurities.

The group’s songs span the ‘20s to today and range stylistically from Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s “Minor Swing” to Blind Boy Fuller’s “Rag Mama” to Grateful Dead tunes.

“The last thing we’re interested in doing is faithful covers,” said Nichols, who once fronted a group called--honestly--the Bluegrass Jug Band People of Peckinpah Ridge All Combined Into One Little Group Singing Assorted Songs.

“There are some songs where you think, ‘This isn’t gonna work with the ensemble we have,’ ” Nichols said. “But I guess you never know because now we’re playing stuff like [George] Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ and ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So.’ ”

Added Malek: “For the most part, our bluegrass isn’t bluegrassy, our jazz isn’t jazzy and our swing swings, but not all the way to the top. Our versions tend to evolve over time, too.”

Except for Swope, all the members have been through Orange Coast College’s guitar-making class. In fact, Nichols now teaches it. So it should come as no surprise that this hands-on group has built most of its instruments.

“One of the reasons we’re drawn to this music is because a lot of it was originally played on homemade instruments,” Malek said. “Back then, people had to make do with what they had . . . with jugs being the horn section, a washboard serving as a rhythm section, and so on.”

While the group remains decidedly lo-fi sonically (“We’re not interested in the latest production values of Kenny G,” declares Mapson), it also is quite comfortable with its low profile.

Because the primary goal is to have fun, the members are content to keep music as a hobby. By day, Malek is a soil technician, Nichols a building maintenance engineer, Mapson a satellite project engineer for Hughes Aircraft, and Swope works in a high school student store. (McHolm, a former wholesale furniture salesman, is retired.)

*

They might never get around to putting out an album.

“We started to record two separate times,” said Mapson, “but it’s very hard to capture the relaxed atmosphere and interplay of our shows. At least for us, nothing can replace getting out there and playing gigs . . . the camaraderie we share is what it’s all about.”

Mapson does, however, see one parallel between the kind of music Secondhand Smoke prizes and contemporary pop music.

“It kind of goes back to the do-it-yourself ethos of punk--where no one’s a star and anyone can give it a try,” he said.

Tonight’s concert is a performance exception for the band. Usually they play local coffeehouses, where the money they take home is nothing to shout about. But rather than divide up the small earnings, the money goes into a revolving fund for its equipment, mailers, etc.

The egalitarianism has produced a little nest egg of sorts--about $2,000 now.

“It’s gotten to a point,” Nichols said, “where there’s so much money in the kitty that we have to think of something to spend it on.”

* Secondhand Smoke and Gail Chasin play tonight at the Anaheim Downtown Community Center, 250 E. Center St. 7:30 p.m. $9-$10; children younger than 18 free with paid adult. Part of the Living Tradition Folk Music Series. (949) 646-1964.