Stratocasting Back to Rockabilly Roots

To call Eric Heatherly “retro” is a compliment. Or is it?

The singer-songwriter-guitarist with the green Stratocaster is rooted in traditional country and rockabilly. He sports flowing sideburns, two-tone shoes and drape pants--all circa 1950s.

Female fans at his concerts have given Heatherly their husband’s old bowling shirts and loafers. And he really gets revved-up after you get him started on his 1955 Chevy, a two-door Bel Air whose engine was rebuilt by a then-15-year-old Heatherly and his father.

Some have suggested the Nashville-based musician really belongs in another era.

But if Heatherly--who plays Monday night at the Crazy Horse in Irvine and Tuesday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood--were to turn back the clock, he couldn’t be the crusader he is today.

“I love the essence, simplicity and honesty that whole era brought in,” said Heatherly, 29, by phone from a tour stop outside Baltimore. “What I’m trying to do is expose the kids--and anyone younger than me--to the foundation of the old hillbilly, rockabilly stuff. When my career started out, I was just staying true to my roots and wouldn’t sell out to that manipulated big-hat thing that was, and still is, mainstream country.

“But now, I’m having all these roots artists, like Jack Ingram, Chris Wall and Billy Burnette, call me up to thank me. They say, ‘Man, we can’t believe you’re cracking the charts--and it’s helping us out.’ There’s a hunger for what we’re doing. . . . A groundswell’s going on, and I hope to God I can carry the torch.”

His hit single is “Flowers on the Wall,” the only tune on Heatherly’s debut release, “Swimming in Champagne” (Mercury Records), that he didn’t have a hand in writing. His version of the 1965 Statler Brothers tune has the added kick of a full drum kit, plus an even greater sense of loneliness courtesy of Heatherly’s ache-filled vocal.

While the album’s sound as a whole does lean heavily on the past, Heatherly brings a fresh perspective with his songwriting approach.

“What I try to do most is avoid cliches and obvious rhymes. . . . I can’t stand that ‘Hold me tight, feels so right’-type stuff,” he said. “I try to dig a lot deeper--or at least use less familiar words. Sometimes I’ll contemporize a song, colorize it a bit with things that maybe other writers would think might not work.”

Heatherly, a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., grew up immersed in rural American music. His childhood home was filled with the sounds of country acts such as Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and the Oak Ridge Boys.

An enthusiastic Eric soon broadened his repertoire to include tunes by Conway Twitty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Roy Orbison and the Ventures.

After a near-fatal auto accident in 1994, he went to Nashville to work as a staff songwriter at Barbara Orbison’s Still Working Music publishing company. He simultaneously shopped his demo--described as a mix of Carl Perkins rave-ups and Roy Orbison-type ballads--to Music Row’s producers and record labels.

It fell on deaf ears, and in 1996, Heatherly took his guitar, originals and frustration to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, one of Nashville’s renowned beer joints. An extended residency at the gritty roadhouse proved to be the perfect tonic: A buzz developed around the charismatic, free-spirited guitar slinger and his rockabilly-country combo.

With no hat, no boots and no cookie-cutter pop-country--and in the noisy, sweaty confines of Tootsie’s--Heatherly was “discovered” by a major-label A&R; man less than one year after being turned away. Now Heatherly is reaching an audience far wider than those rowdy, if dedicated, barflies.

Heatherly said the audiences he and his band--also featuring keyboardist Jonathan Hamby, bassist Jim Roller and drummer Richard E. Carpenter--play for these days range from farmers at county and state fairs to college kids at nightclubs to the suit-and-tie crowd at small theaters. The common thread, he believes, is an appreciation for genre-busting music that isn’t mass-produced.

Heatherly is also resurrecting a way of listening to music that has come and gone--for most of us, anyhow.

“People who’ve never listened to vinyl records don’t know what they’re missing,” he said. “There is nothing in the world like putting on one of your favorite bands, lighting a candle, laying back and closing your eyes, and hearing that old analog sound pumping through 12-inch speakers. It’s so doggone liberating.”

Spoken like a true maverick.

* Eric Heatherly plays Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 71 Fortune Drive, Irvine. 8 p.m. $10-$15. (949) 585-9000. Also appearing Tuesday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. $10. (323) 848-5100.