Conviction outranks convention

As you’d expect from a band named And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead -- which has a reputation for some edgy, chaotic concerts -- things might get a bit wild back at the hotel after the group’s show tonight at the Wiltern LG. Well, that is, if you consider sitting around listening to old gypsy jazz recordings “wild.”

“The last thing I want to do after I’ve been playing rock music is go back to my room and listen to rock music,” says guitarist Conrad Keely, who co-founded the Texas-based group 10 years ago. “Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Django Reinhardt. I’ve been collecting transcriptions of his solos, trying to analyze what he was doing over the chord progressions.”

That should not come as any surprise, considering that Keely authored an informed manifesto on music and culture that was sent out by the band in lieu of the more conventional biography accompanying press copies of the new album, “Worlds Apart.” In it he decries the musical tunnel vision he sees in the rock world.

Nor should any seeming indifference to the world of rock come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard or read the lyrics to the title song, also decrying narrowness of focus:

Random lost souls have asked

me

“What’s the future of rock ‘n’

roll?”

I say, “I don’t know, does it

matter?”

This and that scene

They sound the same to me

Nothing much worse nor much

better

But it’s not indifference, Keely says. It’s perspective. The song is not a question of the value of rock, but an impassioned, troubled plea about misplaced priorities in a world marked by “the ashes of the twin towers.”

“It’s silly when you think about other things going on in the world,” he says. “People are dying and we’re worrying about the future of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Trail of Dead, as the name is generally abbreviated, has itself been talked up at times as a potential key force in the future of rock. Its two independently released albums and manic performances earned critical praise and a loyal underground following in the late ‘90s. And the support of Interscope Records Chairman Jimmy Iovine, who flew to Austin to see a hometown show and signed the band to a deal in 2001, gave it the opportunity for mainstream spotlight.

So far, though, it hasn’t panned out. Despite continued press acclaim, 2002’s “Source Tags and Codes” has sold just 114,000 copies in the U.S., and the new album merely 41,000 since its January release. Is the music just too challenging and complex for mainstream success? No, says Keely. Again, it’s a matter of perspective.

“I don’t know how much that has to do with the music and how much that really has to do with our not really having made that kind of success a big priority,” says Keely. “For me, balancing my life and my own personal goals with my career is something I’ve taken really seriously. In a lot of ways I’ve allowed myself to put my life first and not always been so career-driven that we’re out on the road all the time. Between the last record and this one I took months off to go traveling or sitting around doing nothing. I knew we were slipping out of the limelight, we weren’t being written about. People wondered if we’d broken up. And honestly I didn’t care.”

Keely does care about his own art. Deeply. The band is known for both pure passion and high artistic standards. The music on the album tends toward the unconventional, with some choral and string touches that draw on everything from Bach to Pink Floyd. And then there’s the thematic material, sort of a bigger-vision answer to Green Day’s acclaimed “American Idiot” -- “Global Idiot,” perhaps. Keely says it comes naturally to him.

“I think Green Day comes from the perspective of being American,” he says. “I come from not being American. My father is from Bangkok, my mother from Dublin. I was born in England, have Irish citizenship through my mother, raised originally in Thailand, moved to Hawaii when I was 4. I’m a resident alien here in America.”

That sense has fueled the band since Keely and fellow guitarist Jason Reece started playing together as students in Olympia, Wash., in the early ‘90s. Since the group relocated to Texas, its path has been marked by musical and thematic expansion, each record having something of a different character. Already Keely is looking toward the next one, intrigued by the possibility of incorporating horn arrangements, citing such examples as the Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life” and the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” among his inspirations. As that indicates, while he so firmly rejects any notion that the world revolves around rock, he is just as firm in his belief that rock can play a significant role in the world.

“What a great medium!” he says. “There is so much potential for communication now. And to think about some of the things rock musicians have accomplished. It’s very popular to rag on Bono these days, but I cannot believe what he has accomplished as ambassador to the world. That potential is vast, and in many ways untapped. I want my peers, other musicians, to have a bigger perspective and not get caught up in the day-to-day matters of being a celebrity.”

*

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead

Where: The Wiltern LG, 3760 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 7 p.m. today

Price: $20

Info: (213) 380-5005

Steve Hochman can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.