An old soul in a young man’s voice

There’s a whole bunch of people knocking around inside Keaton Simons -- an old bayou poet, a back-stoop bluesman, a heart-on-sleeve folkie, a consummate can-do jazz session-man.

But for all of his voice’s textured, lived-in quality, his lyrics’ weary resignation, Simons is all of 25. And face-to-face on a recent morning, moments before he’s due on-air for a live segment on KCRW-FM’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” about the only thing world-weary about him were his hooded, sleep-deprived eyes and a frantic dark nimbus of “bed-head” hair.

“Currently,” a track from Simons’ just-released EP, has been for the last few months whispering into the station listeners’ ears -- brooding and cajoling. An eerily out-time, ambling love song, it’s stitched through with bittersweet resignation. With its stripped-down instrumentation and Simons’ no-frills, sepia-toned delivery, all that’s really missing are the vinyl dust pops.

Consequently, it’s a bit of a happy shock to the system. In this era of shiny, assembly-line pop candy, Simons’ is a frayed-around-the-edges original. So unusual that in its infancy the title cut -- and the genre-hopping EP -- put out by Madonna’s label, Maverick Records, has already created a simmer among industry tastemakers.

With an enigmatic grin, playing his grandfather’s old nylon-string Martin, Simons dips in. He spins out half a dozen elliptical short stories in the form of tunes in that big, old deeply grooved voice: some brood, some sleepwalk, some rejoice, some simply rock.

So how does a kid who grew up in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside end up dredging up something sounding sweetly retro or forlornly old soul? He can’t quite tell you: “I don’t hear in my voice what other people hear,” he explains a little later.

But the comparisons don’t come because Simons is not mimicking or deliberately channeling.

“Everything passes through my filtration system.” It’s the feeling he coaxes from his guitar; his voice’s cadences and enunciations, the textured mood he hangs like a backdrop.

“It’s like reading a Walker Percy novel,” says Anne Litt, who added “Currently” to her “Weekend Becomes Eclectic” playlist just a few months ago. “Ambiguous, but layered with experiences.”

In many ways, Simons is a typical in-the-mix L.A. sort of soul -- absorbing the sounds and rhythms of what was around, then shaping them into something new. For a while, in his mid-teens, says Simons, “I went around everywhere with a guitar strapped to me.” It was also at that point he knew, with unwavering certainty, that there was no other road but music.

“I just got to be known as a player,” says Simons, whose family home was always littered with a grab bag of LPs to puzzle through -- Sarah Vaughan, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan. He’s quick to credit his parents’ support. It helped that they knew a bit about the highs and lows of creative endeavors.

His father is James Simons, producer of “Malcolm in the Middle,” his mother, Eliza Simons, was not only a singer, actress and writer, but, as Simons proudly reports, “She used to work on ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert,’ and on the day I was born she was booking Oingo Boingo.” During his teen years, the Simons’ household became known as “The ‘hangout house,’ ” he says as he drapes himself across a crimson armchair in one of the station’s tucked-away offices. “And I got to be known as a player. I was really a music snob. I was really into hip-hop, Run-DMC. When people around me were listening to Metallica, I was into the Black Eyed Peas and the Pharcyde.”

For Simons, it was only the beginning of mixing it up -- then puzzling out later how it all might fit back together. At Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash., he fell into informal studies with a local jazz saxophonist, Bert Williams. “At first I was scared to play around with what was flowing naturally. About losing my personal sound,” he admits. “But he taught me that a lot of [music] is just asking, ‘What’s the attitude?’ ”

He took classes in Asian performing arts -- and was struck by most gamelan music. “I learned that this communal music was dependent on the strength of the whole. It taught me how to let your ego out of it.”

All the while, Simons kept up his L.A. connections. He began knocking around with Tre Hardson from the Pharcyde and after graduation fell easily into L.A.’s kaleidoscopic music scene, playing with a range of folk, including Kim Hill of the Black Eyed Peas, singer N’Dea Davenport and even playing guitar for Snoop Dogg. “At any given time, I’d be working with 10 different bands. That was largely due to the fact that I was not a flake.”

It paid off. His exposure on the club circuit and those industry connections presented an opportunity to work on a score for a film, “Mercy Streets,” in 2000. It was also around that time he began to realize “that I if I wanted to do this seriously, I needed to focus.” It was out of that burst of productivity that came the bundle of work that would become the ear-catching demo for “Currently.”

“There is a certain timeless quality to it, to him,” says Danny Strick, senior A&R; executive at Maverick, “but at the same time felt new and fresh. And when he came down to play for us at the office, literally before he finished, it was, ‘Let’s make a deal.’ ”

Maverick is carefully setting the pace, says Strick. Even this early, the single has prompted nibbles for commercial and TV use. “But we really want to be careful.” Booking agent Frank Riley, who works with Ryan Adams and Steve Earle, has just signed on, and gigs around the country are beginning to shift into gear. He’ll be at the Derby tonight. “We’re taking a very patient approach,” says Strick. “We want people to get what we got. That slow revelation.”

The finished album is still months away, which gives him lots of time to tinker. All this is really different for Simons, who is used to a sprint not a saunter. “Most times with songs, I rarely return to the scene of the crime. In the past I just really hustled. You know the saying, ‘Being at the right place at the right time’? Well mine is, ‘Be everywhere all of the time and eventually you’ll be in the right place at the right time.’ ”

*

Keaton Simons

Where: The Derby, 4500 Los Feliz Blvd.

When: Today, 10 p.m.

Info: (323) 769-5105,

(323) 663-8979

Cost: Free