Shea Gets Musical With a Ghost Tale

Expect Covina singer-songwriter Rick Shea to get a little spooky during his performance tonight in Anaheim, but it’s not because he’s trying to cater to the pre-Halloween spirit. Shea would likely do the same around Valentine’s Day.

“I’ve always been intrigued by a good ghost story,” Shea, 48, says, by way of explaining “Magdalena,” one of 13 richly evocative tales from his latest album, “Sawbones,” that he’ll be drawing from tonight.

The ghost in question in “Magdalena” is the spirit of a woman who is said to wander the grounds of Mission San Juan Capistrano. Shea turned the story into a Spanish-flavored ballad of unrequited love that he sings in a yearning yet easygoing voice that can recall Rick Nelson.

“I’d heard [the legend] a couple of times and did a little research,” says Shea, a fixture on the Southland country-rock scene for more than two decades and who once played regularly at the Swallow’s Inn, virtually across the street from the mission.

“The name Magdalena being based on Mary Magdalene and that whole history with the church and fallen women being tied in with the legend makes me think it is more of a legend than a true story,” he says. “With the little bit of information I came across, it all fell into place on its own. I always meant to contact someone at the mission [to check out the tale], but I never knew who to ask.”

Shea is part of a loose-knit community of Southern California musicians that includes Dave Alvin--Shea also plays guitar in Alvin’s band, the Guilty Men--Chris Gaffney, Jann Browne and Patty Booker.

None has hit major commercial success, though all have put out albums that have received enthusiastic reviews. Like his cohorts, Shea struggles against a tightly formatted country music industry that prizes predictable, pop-leaning love songs over meticulously detailed character sketches or mysterious narratives such as “Magdalena,” in which the message isn’t always delineated in black and white.

That leaves Shea to rely on word of mouth and the kindness of strangers at the few radio stations, mostly public radio outlets, that will take a chance on an unknown.

“Station-by-station, some of these programmers make their own decisions, and the album has done well at those across the country,” Shea says.

He’ll be playing tonight with North Carolina-born fiddler Brantley Kearns, with whom Shea has worked for more than a decade, and bassist Dave Hall as part of an ongoing series of folk, country and roots-music concerts put on by the nonprofit Living Tradition at Anaheim’s Downtown Community Center.

The only song on “Sawbones” that Shea didn’t write or co-write is “Saginaw, Michigan,” a love story with an O. Henry twist that was a No. 1 hit in 1964 for Lefty Frizzell, one of the country greats of the past who helped shape Shea’s goal of making music that targets something other than just a listener’s wallet.

“I’ve played that song off and on for about 15 years,” Shea says. “It’s so well written. I’ve always been a big fan of it. Originally we were just trying to do a carbon copy of the Lefty Frizzell version. My intention was to see how close we could get to that. But it just wasn’t working well, and I was getting kind of discouraged with it when my producer said, ‘Why don’t you just sit down and sing it?’ So we did that, and that just seemed to be what works.”

Shea’s aiming to record a duo album early next year with fiddler Kearns, who played in Dwight Yoakam’s band early in Yoakam’s career and before that with such folk and country mavericks as David Bromberg and Billy Joe Shaver.

“Besides being a great instrumentalist and accompanist, he’s always been just one of my favorite singers,” Shea says. “So it seemed the logical next step to do this album together.”

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Rick Shea plays tonight at the Downtown Community Center, 250 E. Center St., Anaheim. With Clare Muldaur. 7:30 p.m. $10, children under 18 free with adult. (949) 646-1964.

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SONGS FOR THE RED, WHITE & BLUE: Musicians around the country are responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon and a couple of high-profile Orange County performers have boarded the bandwagon.

Huntington Beach-based blues-rock singer-guitarist Walter Trout has revamped the title track from his latest album, “Go the Distance,” and has issued it on a four-track mini-CD, from which a portion of the profits will be given to the disaster relief Web site https://www.libertyunites.org.

Trout is wrapping up a three-week tour of Great Britain before continuing another round of shows in Scandinavia. Trout’s Web site, https://www.waltertrout.com, has more information about the “Go the Distance” CD single, which includes two mixes of that song plus two other tracks, “Looking for the Promised Land” and “Bugle Billy.”

Trout will be back in the Southland to perform Nov. 8 during the Los Angeles Music Awards at the Whisky in West Hollywood and is planning to sing “Go the Distance,” his publicist said.

Meanwhile, Christian pop singer Crystal Lewis has recorded a new song, “When God’s People Pray,” that she’s making available free as a download from her Web site, https://www.crystallewis.com. It’s been getting airplay on Christian and some pop stations around the country since she released it just three days after the attacks. The song grew out of her efforts to explain the tragedy to her children.

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FANNING THE FLAME: Anaheim punk group Lit’s latest album, “Atomic,” is out on the group’s Dirty Martini label, and now the company has put out its first recording from another band, pop-punk quartet Handsome Devil’s “Love and Kisses From the Underground.” The group, in Georgia this weekend doing radio promotion, co-produced its album debut with Lit’s Jeremy Popoff and Ramones/Smithereens producer Ed Stasium. Handsome Devil has been playing other shows this month on tour with Lit.

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SOCIAL D. RETURNS: Social Distortion, which played 14 sold-out shows earlier this year at House of Blues clubs in Anaheim and West Hollywood, will return to those venues for another round of shows in December and January. Performances announced this week for the veteran O.C. punk band will be Dec. 23, 26 and 27 at the West Hollywood site, followed Jan. 7-9 at the Anaheim club. It’s a safe bet more shows will be added.