Maintaining Standards

Without much financial reward or fanfare, Barrelhouse has been cranking out sweet soul music--the sweaty, gritty kind that has become all too rare in a pop music scene overrun by trendy one-hit wonders.

While several Orange County pop-rock acts, including Lit and Sugar Ray, have struck gold with major label releases, the Huntington Beach-based quintet still toils on the grass-roots scene, self-releasing its CDs and performing mostly in local bars and clubs. The band plays Thursday night at Lush in Santa Monica and Feb. 4 at Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim.

When lead vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Harlis Sweetwater sings “Sometimes I wonder/How long this thing’s gonna last” in “Does Me No Good”--a hard-driving tune found on the band’s “13 Sonic Splendors” CD--it’s easy to imagine Barrelhouse as a rather frustrated and fragile group.

Yet it was clear during a recent interview at a local tavern with three available band members--Sweetwater, drummer Cleotis Jackson and saxophonist Jack Benson--that the band’s sense of purpose remains strong. (Bassist Leonard Jones and lead guitarist Calhoun B. Tibbs were home nursing the flu.)

“There are no guarantees in this business . . . we know that,” said Jackson, sounding neither bitter nor envious. “Sure, we’d love to take it to the next level, but for us, the love of playing music that touches other people is the driving force. Plus, we have an identity. Whether we play rock, funk or soul, it’s always got that Barrelhouse stamp.”

“We’ve been playing together long enough now that there’s this almost indefinable quality, this chemistry,” added Sweetwater, the group’s deep-voiced, broad-shouldered, sideburn-sporting front man. “That’s what gives us those intangible, magic moments onstage.”

That’s not to imply that Barrelhouse--whose members all use fictitious, tongue-in-cheek pseudonyms associated with the Old South--hasn’t been through periods of uncertainty and self-doubt.

“Sometimes one of us will say, ‘What am I doing this for?’ ” Sweetwater said. “But you can’t leave. Barrelhouse is like a monster or something that just sucks you in. You just keep going. . . . It’s like looking for the light at the end of the tunnel that you know is gonna be there.”

The roots of Barrelhouse stretch back to 1994. After the breakup of Crawdaddy, a Southern rock band that featured Jones and Sweetwater, Barrelhouse formed when the two enlisted original guitarist Mobley Stonefield, Jackson and ex-D.I. band member Tibbs--plus a horn section. Before long, the group released its unpolished but promising debut, the cassette-only “Blues on 10th and Central.”

Subsequent full-length CDs--”Soul Pimps and Blues Pushers” (1994), “Peach” (1996) and “13 Sonic Splendors” (1999)--show significant growth.

Barrelhouse’s arsenal now includes a mixture of traditional blues, classic rock and ‘60s-era soul, at times contemporized with a smidgen of reggae, punk and funk. Of these styles, it’s really soul--the timeless Stax/Memphis music of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, among others--that the band feels closest to.

“You see those old pictures of Otis on his knees or Chuck Berry dripping with sweat--and it’s so real,” Sweetwater said. “It overwhelms me. They abandoned everything else to put every inch of themselves into their playing. Man, that is what soul music is all about.

“What it’s not about,” he added, is ego-stroking. “There’s no shredding on the guitar or vocal theatrics. The thing about the blues and soul music is there’s no formula for it. It’s natural, not an act, so you can’t cheat at it. If you do, people will know and see right through you.”

While Barrelhouse energizes crowds with its groove-and-horn heavy party music, the quintet is also versatile, paying equal attention to crafting songs with emotional depth and imagination, ones that engage the mind as well as the feet.

For instance, “Mazy,” which harks back to the debut cassette, is a tender, if straightforward, love ballad. Newer songs have a welcome complexity: “Step Aside,” where an alcohol-abusing protagonist urges his lover to move on because she deserves better, offers a new twist to the familiar love-gone-bad theme.

In addition, not for the squeamish is the spooky, unsentimental “Albert’s Shovel,” a sobering account of an unrepentant murderer on the loose.

“The challenge now,” said Sweetwater, “is to keep writing good songs, attract more fans and hope for some better luck or timing.

“We’ll continue to shop our songs to both majors and indies,” he said. “I’d like to see in our future something like what the Black Crowes or Lenny Kravitz have been able to do. Kravitz has gotten a little commercial, but both have really held true to what they’re about. . . . They’ve managed to expand their fan base without losing their hard-core following and ideals. But it took them some time to get there, and their patience paid off. Some of these bands riding atop the charts now are like fireworks. . . . They blow their wad and then they’re gone.”

Success stories, suggested Sweetwater, can emerge when least expected.

“Why can’t the industry people learn something from the [posthumous] interest in Sublime?” he asked. “They all initially thought, ‘What the hell do you do with three guys in shorts and tank tops who play reggae one minute and punk the next?’ Look how marketable--and profitable--they turned out to be.”

And if Barrelhouse’s commercial aspirations go unfulfilled?

“You can bet we’ll still be pluggin’ away,” Sweetwater said. “It’s funny: I was thinking about using ‘Perennial Urban Soul’ as the title for our last CD because we bloom all year. We don’t flower and then die. We’re a working band that keeps writing, recording and playing, year after year.

“After drinking and playing together for six years, it’s become like family. . . . Our own little universe.

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Barrelhouse plays Thursday at Lush, 2020 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. 10 p.m. $5. (310) 829-1933. Also appearing Feb. 4 at Linda’s Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams St., Anaheim. 21 and older. 10 p.m. $5. (714) 533-1286. Call the Barrelhouse Soul Hotline, (714) 437-8576 for more information.