Punk rock and family values

Mike Ness is just a little uneasy, slouching at the microphone with a guitar and looking like a working-class tough, his hair short and slicked back against the scalp, both arms a tattooed macrame of girls, flames, cars and rock ‘n’ roll symbols. He is rehearsing Social Distortion through “Ball and Chain,” another hard-luck anthem. The sound is loud and twangy, an edgy blend of punk guitars and American roots. Then Ness stops the band.

“It’s not going country, is it?” asks Ness, turning to the others crowded behind him in this small Fullerton recording studio. “It’s so easy to do that.”

The band is rehearsing for a slew of mostly sold-out shows at the House of Blues clubs in West Hollywood and Anaheim, a tribute to the band’s energy and staying power. And despite’s Ness’ momentary concerns, Social Distortion still sounds like a punk rock Crazy Horse here at Casbah Studios, where the band’s first two albums were recorded back in the ‘80s, doing much to help establish the SoCal punk sound.

A trio of photographs of Hank Williams stands at the microphone. As the band roars through “Wasn’t It a Pretty Picture?” there are starts and stops until Ness finally turns to longtime bassist John Maurer. “How did we used to do it?”

“Probably different every time,” says Maurer, with a shrug and knowing grin.

Ness laughs. This wouldn’t have bothered Ness a decade ago, when he was a sometimes-reckless punk rock frontman, distracted by addictions and bad attitude. But at 40, Ness is no longer content simply to bash out his songs. He’s a professional now, a family man who has put bad habits and dangerous behavior behind him, and a positive outlook that has done little to diminish the fire in his music.

Social D was practically there at the birth of West Coast punk, as a band of high school malcontents led by Ness and guitarist Dennis Danell, both obsessed with the music of the Clash and the Ramones. In the decades since, Ness watched as punk evolved from a revolutionary movement into an acceptable pop culture commodity. His own music retains its edge, but when Danell died suddenly in 2000 from a brain aneurysm, there was a moment when Ness thought of disbanding Social D.

The bandleader recalls his and Danell’s early years together in a new song, “Don’t Take Me for Granted,” a tribute to Danell and a signal of the band’s continued life. “I’m your worn-in leather jacket,” Ness sings. “I’m the volume in your ... teenage band!”

The reconstituted band, featuring guitarist Johnny Wickersham, formerly of the Cadillac Tramps, has recently been at work on a planned new studio album, Social D’s first since 1996’s “White Light White Heat White Trash.”

Social D voluntarily left Epic Records after that album, followed by a 1998 live release for Time Bomb Records. And lately Ness has been looking to the hip-hop community to see the old punk do-it-yourself ethos at work. “I have so much more respect for a band like NWA, who sold 1 million records without one bit of radio airplay or MTV, than I do for one of these boy-band punk bands who have major labels pushing them now because punk is cute,” he says.

To be a punk in the late ‘70s sometimes meant battling with locals moved to violence by the mere presence of spiky hair, leather jackets and smeared eyeliner.

“It was an everyday occurrence,” remembers Maurer. “We couldn’t go into a store without some grown man looking at us and calling us homosexuals and everything else. We were kids.”

Ness says local jocks decided to leave him alone when he came to school one day in 1979 still scarred up from self-inflicted knife wounds. He had just returned from his first and only stay in a psychiatric ward, following a night of drinking and sloppy knife play. “I didn’t want to die,” says Ness now. “I was just acting out.”

The punk scene began to change by the mid-’80s, as the definition of punk became narrower, hewing mainly to a hard-core formula. “By 1985, punk had really stereotyped itself,” says Ness. “Now the jock quarterback of the football team could be the lead singer of a band because all he had to do was scream and act angry.

“Devo got beer bottles thrown at them. They took such a risk. Jane’s Addiction found their own niche. Social Distortion found their own niche. The whole punk thing was about individualism.”

In the music of L.A. punk band X, he first recognized the connection between punk and American roots music, where the likes of Hank Williams and Robert Johnson seemed to have more to offer him. It was a sound he explored most directly with two solo albums in 1999.

The next Social D album will draw from dozens of new songs Ness has had in the works for three years. And if “White Light” explored typically dark themes for the band, Ness says he expects the next album to reflect a more positive state of mind, inspired by his recent years of family life raising two young sons. One of the new album’s working joke titles is “Who’s Your Daddy?”

“I express myself with music now,” Ness says. “The chances of me getting in a fistfight are not near as big as they would have been.”

*

Social Distortion onslaught

House of Blues Anaheim: 1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, Jan. 3-5, 7, 8, 10-12, 8:30 p.m. (714) 778-BLUE.

House of Blues Sunset Strip:

8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, Friday-Sunday, Jan. 14, 15, 17, 18, 7:30 p.m. (323) 848-5100.