Sunny California of Bakersfield's Big House plays at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. Photo By Felix Adamo

LIKE A HOUSE AFIRE

If the members of Bakersfield’s hottest country music band look a little haggard these days, there is good reason for it.

By ROBERT PRICE

Californian staff writer

Down on Broadway, the busy strip that runs through Nashville’s Music Row, there’s a huge, prominent billboard that meets motorists head-on as they leave the city’s downtown area.

The billboard, leased to MCA Records, generally features only that record label’s best-known performers - its million sellers and franchise stars.

When Monty Byrom, Chuck Seaton and the other members of Big House first went to Nashville as new MCA recording artists nearly two years ago, they loitered around the six-story sign and permitted themselves to dream big dreams.

“We stood under that billboard and said, ‘Someday ...’ ” Seaton recalled.

Someday arrived a lot faster than they expected. Big House, Bakersfield’s biggest country-music success story of the past decade, owned that sign (complete with its own built-in, 1-watt FM radio station) through the entire month of April. George Strait finally knocked them off their 16,000-square-foot pedestal on May 2.

MCA-Nashville, it seems, is committed to the six-man confederation of well-traveled country/blues/rock musicians.

It’s a bit ironic that the record company was willing to invest so much in the band so quickly, because the members of Big House have been kicking around Bakersfield and Los Angeles, individually at least, for a long time. These aren’t wunderkinds: This is a collection of 40-ish graybeards with plenty of stage and studio savvy, but no white hats and nary a trace of visible abdominal muscles.

And though they’re from Bakersfield - proudly from Bakersfield, to be more specific - their sound and stage persona more closely resemble Memphis.

That’s largely due to the rock/soul influences that drive Byrom, the band’s singer-guitarist, primary songwriter and resident Elvis impersonator. Byrom, who has written for the Stray Cats, Danny Tate, David Lee Roth and Eddie Money (including the 1986 hit “I Wanna Go Back”), squirms on stage like an Al Green in tight shorts.

“I always tried to get those guys I wrote for to sound a little more Memphis,” said Byrom. “But they’d take a song of mine and rock it up.”

Now Byrom and associates are seizing Nashville, by way of Memphis, with a sound industry observers call “left of country.” Big House calls it “Soul Country,” which also happens to be the name of a highly listenable track off their self-titled debut album. If record buyers hear more Otis Redding or Elvis than Buck Owens or Merle Haggard within the band’s music - well, congratulations, you’ve found the hidden message.

That doesn’t mean this isn’t a thoroughly Bakersfield band. On the contrary, band members believe they owe their hometown plenty.

“The band is really proud to be from Bakersfield,” said slide guitarist David Neuhauser, also an accomplished keyboardist and songwriter. “We mention it all the time in interviews and things. Buck’s been a big supporter of this town, and we’d like to be, too, because we’re definitely a product of our influences.”

“There’s a rhythm and blues influence in our music, no doubt,” said Seaton, who gained a measure of nightclub fame playing for a decade in various bands with local singer-guitarist Ronnie Wayne. “That R&B influence was introduced to us right here. We got our chops off the streets of Bakersfield.”

Just as important, Bakersfield preferred these musicians’ original chops to others’ rehashed chops.
“Bakersfield is a good place to grow up and write,” Byrom said. “It nurtures the creativity.

“I always played my own songs. In some towns, you can’t get away with that in the clubs. You’ve got to sing covers. Here, they let you be you.”

To some people’s way of thinking, the city began to dry up, musically speaking, in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Band members hope their success is just one measure of a turning tide. Harmonica player Sonny California believes that’s so: Bakersfield’s burgeoning club scene, once as stale as a month-old loaf of Pyrenees sourdough, is taking off.

“The whole scene at 19th and Eye is so cool now, it’s like Sixth Street in Austin,” he said. “It’s really kind of refreshing. You can hear it all, from blues to country to ska. It’s nice to have been part of that.”

Such statements (ska?) might have once been blasphemy from a country artist, but Big House’s reception in Nashville seems to exemplify the dawning of a new era. The door that leads to and from related genres seems to have been kicked open a little.

“Big House is a good example of that trend,” said Robert Reynolds of the Mavericks. “They’re fantastic, but they’re their own thing. If you’re worried about sameness in this industry you only have to look to them to find a band that can make a difference.”

Of course, Bakersfield artists have been down this genre-bending road before.

“You’ve got remember, Buck had a pretty good hit with (Chuck Berry’s) ‘Memphis,’ ” singer-songwriter Marty Stuart said. “(Owens collaborator) Harlan Howard once said that when Elvis hit the world, Buck understood it and caught it and applied it to his music. We’re talking edge and fire, the things that continue to work. Elvis had it, and Buck had it. So nobody should be shocked to see (Big House) try and go in that direction.”

Big House - whose other members are bassist Ron Mitchell, another alumnus of the Wayne-Seaton band; and drummer Tanner Byrom, Monty’s brother - is in between singles right now, but the band still seems to be generating substantial album sales, according to MCA’s Carie Higdon. The band’s third single, “Love Ain’t Easy,” is slated for release soon, probably in August.