Rhythm’s Got Los Lobos for Opening

Rhythm Cafe, the new concert club in Santa Ana, has booked Los Lobos as its inaugural act.

“They’re a great band and I think it’s strong in this market,” said Jeff Gaulton, the club’s concert booker. “I wanted to have something strong to open with.”

Gaulton said that opening with Los Lobos, which will play two shows on Oct. 31, Halloween night, helps send a message that the new club’s goal is musical diversity. The band from East Los Angeles mixes a variety of styles, from blues and roots-rock to Springsteenian anthems and traditional Mexican folk. Its current album, the adventurous “Kiko,” has won Los Lobos some of the best reviews of its career.

“My intention was to project an image and mission for Rhythm Cafe,” with the Los Lobos booking, Gaulton said. “It’s a band that crosses all lines of music, and I think that’s important.”

The Los Lobos booking crosses lines of another sort: until now, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano has been the band’s regular club stop in Orange County. Actually, since 1986 the Coach House has been the only regular club stop in Orange County for major touring acts. And before that, the old Golden Bear in Huntington Beach was the only major all-purpose pop nightclub in a county that has been virtually a one-horse town when it comes to outlets for club-level touring acts. (The Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana has featured a steady stream of major acts for more than 10 years, but it sticks almost exclusively to country music and presents only one touring attraction per week.)

Gaulton said he did not go after Los Lobos simply to show that Rhythm Cafe can lure away bands that previously have played the Coach House--although that figures to be a key factor in the new club’s ability to compete effectively.

“We’re not out to fire shots across anybody’s bow,” Gaulton said. “If we can do in the future as (well) as the Coach House has done in the past, it’s a good thing. All we’re trying to do is increase the types of things that are going on here. We’re not here to put any more people out of work.”

The advent of Rhythm Cafe promises to answer once and for all a question that never has been properly put to the test: Is Orange County, for all its size and affluence, really capable of sustaining only one successful concert nightclub?

If the answer turns out to be--as Gaulton implies--that both Rhythm Cafe and the Coach House can survive and turn a profit, the biggest beneficiaries will be music fans, whose payoff will come in the form of greater choice and the more imaginative, wider-ranging booking policies that competition might produce.

Gary Folgner, the Coach House owner, has his doubts, though.

“Two or three years ago, I would say ‘Yes,’ ” Folgner said when asked whether the county can support both the Coach House and Rhythm Cafe. “Because of the depression we’re in, the entertainment dollar is going to be crunched quite a bit. I think the economy is the biggest problem we have, not the Rhythm Cafe.”

Because of the economy, Folgner said, he has been presenting fewer shows each month than he did during the late-’80s, even though he now offers more lower-priced nights with local bands and alternative-rock acts. The question isn’t whether there are enough music fans in Orange County to support two clubs, Folgner said, but whether there will be enough hot-drawing touring attractions to fill out two club schedules.

Folgner said that Los Lobos’ decision to play the Rhythm Cafe appears to be a special opening-night arrangement between the band and the new club, since the Coach House wasn’t invited to bid for the shows. He expects loyalties based on past dealings with the Coach House to work in his favor, but not all the time.

“I think we’re going to get our share (of acts) because they’ve played here before. Some bands will be loyal, and (sometimes) there will be situations when the dollars will prevail. That’s the way it is in the world of competition.”

Folgner said he hasn’t seen any signs of bidding wars for talent yet.

“We’re doing business as normal. We’re not going to get in a bidding war with anybody. It doesn’t make sense. We offer groups what we can afford to pay and still stay in business.”

The Coach House never has had a proper, sustained challenge, as previous upstart concert clubs all proved to have fatal flaws--from insufficient capital and booking expertise at Hamptons (the previous occupant of the former dinner-theater building taken over by Rhythm Cafe), to noise problems that undid Peppers Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.

Rhythm Cafe’s partners say they are well capitalized. The club also has plenty of booking experience and concert-industry connections: Gaulton has booked rock and pop concerts for years in San Diego, and Rich Meaney, one of three partners in Rhythm Cafe, rose from booking local punk shows as a Fullerton teen-ager to a position with the Nederlander Organization, one of the nation’s largest concert promoters.

Rhythm Cafe will inherit two of Hamptons’ great strengths: good acoustics, and an excellent layout in which semicircular tiers of seats rise, amphitheater style, from stage level. The Coach House has long enjoyed a good reputation for its sound and sight-lines, although Rhythm Cafe, if it is restored to Hamptons’ level of glitz, offers more posh surroundings.

The partners in the Santa Ana Rhythm Cafe will open a sister club in San Diego simultaneously with their Orange County location--which will allow them to match Folgner’s ability to offer acts two Southern California dates (at the Coach House and the Ventura Theatre). The Beat Farmers will inaugurate the San Diego Rhythm Cafe on Halloween night.

Tickets for the Los Lobos shows cost $29.50 in advance, $31 the night of the show. They go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster, and at the Rhythm Cafe box office, which is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The club is at 3503 S. Harbor Blvd. (enter from Lake Center Drive). Information: (714) 556-2233.

DOLL HUT LIVES: The Doll Hut in Anaheim is back on track as a regular venue for local rock bands.

The cozy, 50-capacity roadhouse had an especially rocky summer as its co-owners, John and Linda Mello, went through a bitter divorce.

Linda, who is changing her name to Linda Jemison, said Tuesday that the divorce is now settled and that her ex-husband has signed over control of the club to her. The club’s name will change, too--to Linda’s Doll Hut.

The Mellos bought the Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams St., three years ago and turned it into a hangout for the local rock scene. John Mello began running the club alone last June, when he and Linda were no longer able to work with each other because of their strained relationship and disagreements over how to run the business. During the summer, live bookings were severely curtailed.

Jemison said she moved back into the picture about three weeks ago, and took full possession of the Doll Hut last Friday. She said she has made some renovations and changed the Doll Hut logo from a skull and crossbones to a replica of the little shack that appears on the nightspot’s distinctive neon sign. Jemison also is re-establishing a full, six-night-a-week schedule of live bands. The club is closed Sundays.

Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys, a rockabilly band, will play every Monday, and a house blues band is being formed to play on Tuesdays. Other upcoming bookings include: Death Mickeys and Minority tonight, Earth Men on Friday, Apple Kore and the Fakes on Saturday, Quasi Mofo, Oct. 8, the Ballistics, Johnny Best and Piggy Back, Oct. 9, and X-Pistols, Oct. 10. Shows start at 9:30. Information: (714) 533-1286.

TROUT LANDS AT TROUBADOUR: The Walter Trout Band, questing after the U.S. record deal it so richly deserves, will play a showcase concert for record label scouts Oct. 14 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood (the blues-rocking Trout Band has a burgeoning recording and touring career going in Europe, where it has released four albums on a small Danish label). Perq’s, the downtown Huntington Beach bar that is Trout’s regular hometown gig, is organizing a bus trip to the Troubadour show for fans who want to urge the band on. Trout is scheduled to play at 10:30 p.m. Information: (714) 960-9996.

C.C. WRITER: As if rapping jocks weren’t bad enough, now we’ve got to deal with rocking hacks. But if the idea of horror author Stephen King fronting a rock band of other writers sounds more like excitement to you than misery, you might consider giving a peek at “Rock Bottom Remainders.” It’s a 40-minute home video culled from a concert that King and an ad-hoc assemblage of authors gave last May at the Cowboy Boogie Co. in Anaheim during the American Booksellers Assn. convention. Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Matt Groening and Robert Fulghum are among the other Remainders delivering a repertoire of rock ‘n’ roll oldies.