Crash Kills Oxnard Musician : Accident: Kenneth Dale Banta, known as Kenny Wide Load, may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

An Oxnard harmonica player and blues singer known as Kenny Wide Load was killed when his van crashed early Thursday along Pacific Coast Highway near Sycamore Cove, officials said.

Kenneth Dale Banta, a 400-pound musician with a small but loyal following of fans in Ventura and Malibu, was driving back to Oxnard after visiting a friend in Malibu about 3 a.m. when his van apparently careened off the side of the road and traveled about 150 feet down a steep cliff.

Banta’s body was found on the rocks nearby, California Highway Patrol officials said. It was lifted out of the area and onto the beach by a Ventura County sheriff’s helicopter because the body was too large to be easily carried off the rocks, officials said.

The accident is still under investigation and the cause of Banta’s death will not be known until the autopsy is performed today by the Ventura County coroner’s office.

Coroner’s investigators, however, said it appeared that Banta fell asleep at the wheel of his van. He had played a gig in East Los Angeles earlier that evening, coroner’s investigator Mitch Breese said.

“It looks like he was very tired and had worked long hours,” Breese said.

A sheriff’s helicopter flying some routine maneuvers spotted the wreckage of Banta’s van and his body on the rocks by the highway’s edge about 9:45 a.m., CHP spokesman Jim Utter said.

Banta, who is survived by a 17-year-old son, was working as a bartender at a Malibu bar called the Dume Room in addition to performing as a musician in the Ventura and Malibu areas, friends said.

He had played with a number of bands, enjoying rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues and pop rock groups, said Gene Ball, owner of Trancas Beach Restaurant in Malibu. Ball said he met Banta when the musician worked for him as a bartender from 1982 to 1990.

“He did some tremendous music with a number of major recording artists,” Ball said.

Banta recorded songs with bands for Bonnie Raitt and the Everly Brothers for rehearsal purposes so the artists could decide how they wanted to perform them, Ball said. Banta had also made one record, Ball said.

Jim Petrarca, business agent of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 581, said Banta had attracted a loyal following in Malibu and Ventura.

Ball said local fans of Banta’s music would feel a loss.

“They’ll be decimated,” he said.