Cain is able

The danceable Chris Cain

by Mark Edmonds

If you were to divide contemporary blues fans into two groups -- the grizzled vets who own every Muddy Waters record to the left and younger types weaned on Stevie Ray and Robert Cray on the right -- it's doubtful you'd get both to sit and listen to the same artist more than once or twice.

Unless, of course, that artist happens to be someone like Chris Cain. Sporting a sophisticated, jazz-tinged style, he's no household name in either camp. But the San Francisco-area singer/guitarist has snared more than a few converts from both sides since he emerged on the national scene more than a decade ago in support of a string of discs that featured his hybridized approach which marries the soft phrasing of Larry Carlton with the aggressive, bent-string attack of mentor Albert King. The first in this line, 1987's Late Night City Blues (on SF indie Blue Rock'it), prompted critics to drool over their keyboards in praise of Cain's invention. One listen and it's easy to see why. His guitar sang and cried over the project's mid- and up-tempo material -- all of it written by Cain himself -- while keyboards, organs, and a powerful rhythm section laid down groove after powerful groove.

But critics' accolades carried little weight in Bluesville. During his first handful of years on the road, Cain had to tough it out on long drives to play in front of small crowds. He remembers those early days with less-than-fuzzy nostalgia.

"Back then it was more about dollars and cents and survival than music," he says sleepily over the phone from a Kansas City motel. "It was tough, but we wanted to do what we wanted to do. It seemed like it took a long time for people to find out about that."

On successive discs, including 1990's Cuttin' Loose and '92's Can't Buy a Break (Blind Pig), he continued to sidestep an easily definable style.

"Hey, I'm not from Chicago, and I don't play harmonica," he says. "And," he adds, laughing, "I don't have a pompadour. So when people came out, they didn't get those things. They got something else that was different."

What they got was hook-laden arrangements that combined the flavors of gospel, jazz, Chicago blues, and a hint of Southern soul. By 1995, when Cain released his last Pig disc, Somewhere Along the Way, he had the formula down pat with cool, upbeat, and danceable songs.

"What I did was basically try to think of ways to include the five or six people that are playing with me. And as for what we play now on the road, well, it's definitely our own sound. We're really into doing things that are all over the place. There are so many different styles of music and, especially, blues sounds out there that you don't have to stick to just one thing. Why limit yourself, when you can play with all the fuckin' toys, you know?"

Raised in Santa Cruz in a multiracial family (his mother was of Greek ancestry; his father, an Afro-American hailing from Memphis), Cain was surrounded by a variety of sounds that filled the air. Among them were his father's blues and R&B records. Oftentimes, his father would play along to B.B. King and Ray Charles on his own guitar. Today, Cain works snippets into his own music. The organ sound of King's early records, for example, showed up on Late Night on "A Woman Don't Need" while the gospel of Charles's "What I Say" has reappeared in several different variations on Cain's later discs.

More of the same will likely appear on Unscheduled Flight, slated for a fall release. "It's a product of just going into the studio and rolling tape," he says of his fifth disc. "We didn't plan much. Surprisingly, after we listened to the first takes, a lot of it turned out to be some really good playing by live musicians. There was this one organ trio thing that came out great. We've just got to pare it down enough to get it all to fit on one disc."

As with his other projects, mentor Albert King's influence plays a large part on Flight. "He was always so nice to me, and always in my corner. He gave me tons of advice, and most of what he said was dead on the money. He told me to play what I felt. I've never forgotten that."

The Chris Cain Band play Gilrein's on September 11 at 9 p.m. J.B. & the Activators open. Tickets are $7. Call 791-2583.