Young Dubs Earn Their Beers--and Respect

Rockers steeped in the folk and rhythm-and-blues traditions that underlie rock ‘n’ roll must look at the Billboard album chart nowadays and wonder whether they could live with themselves if they thinned out their authentically rootsy colors to a smooth, neat, palatable pastel hue.

After all, Hootie & the Blowfish, with their innocuous, lite-grade soul-rock style, own a bigger pile of platinum chips--11, with each marker tallying a million U.S. sales--than anybody else in the Top 200.

That way temptation, or at least a guilty fantasy, may lie for any roots-rocker with bills to pay. Eric Clapton’s neatly groomed, even bigger-selling “Unplugged” set from 1992 is another example of the mass acceptance for mild-to-medium-strength brews concocted in the musical roots cellar.

Friday night at the Coach House, the Young Dubliners reveled in the joys of splashing around rootsy hues that are vivid and deep. They decked out much of their 90-minute performance with greens and fiery reds--the green for the rollicking Irish folk songs that are the Young Dubs’ chief tie to the roots-music past, and the red for the spark and full-blooded engagement with which the seven-man band performed.

The Young Dubs--an L.A.-based band of three Irish expatriates and four American-born cronies--played a sweaty but expert set that fully earned the post-concert pints that their evidently thirsty front man, Keith Roberts, kept saying they planned to hoist when the evening’s work was done.

Asking these guys to water down their roots would be like asking them to water down their Guinness--a potentially treasonable offense to the national honor.

Roberts and the band’s second singer, Paul O’Toole, met in L.A. and launched the band on St. Patrick’s Day, 1988. Emphasizing their Irish roots won them a quick following in Los Angeles, but stereotyping the Young Dubliners as a traditional Irish act misses the mark and shunts them into an ethnic or folk category that doesn’t fit them.

The band writes terrific rock songs, closer to the pop-rock mainstream than to the Pogues, whom they at times resemble in vigor, but not in sloppy execution.

As they played 10 of the 11 songs from “Breathe,” their excellent 1995 release, plus three of the six numbers on their 1994 debut EP, “Rocky Road” (plus an encore with the Waterboys’ “Fisherman’s Blues”), the Young Dubliners were at times a rocked-up traditional band.

More often, however, they were a straight-ahead rock band, playing emotionally powerful, melodically rich songs that owed as much to the Springsteenian American heartland as to the Irish tradition.

The show offered some delicious overlaps of the two traditions: While the rest of the band pounded out a driving, jumping Irish reel, saxophonist Jeff Dellisanti would honk out rasping blasts, as if Clarence Clemons had dropped in to jam at a ceilidh dance.

During the celebratory “Wash My Hands,” no sooner had mandolinist O’Toole and the band’s animated new fiddler, Mark Epting, executed an Irish folk break than Randy Woolford came screaming in with a wah-wah distortion solo straight out of Clapton’s Cream-era textbook.

Roberts jumped and danced about and sang in a sturdy, rangy voice; O’Toole’s chesty rasp gave the band a capable second-chair singer and made for a rich harmony blend.

The material was involving and emotionally complex. Many songs rose from an embattled, beleaguered, even tragic outlook on life, yet the vigor and spirit of the playing produced an effect that was heartening and encouraging.

The band mainly rollicked and surged, but it was able to vary the pace with such strong numbers as the plaintive ballad “Mary,” the wistful, Del Amitri-style folk-rock tune “Last House on the Street” and “Don’t You Worry,” a brooding intimation of mortality.

While the Young Dubliners mainly stuck to their recorded song arrangements, the band seems to have the capacity to stretch out. Given the chance, it might be a hit with the growing audience for the roots-leaning, jam-oriented music prominently showcased on the annual H.O.R.D.E. tours.

Catchy, enlivening and bold, the Young Dubliners’ undiminished, full-flavor roots-rock puts the pastel version to shame.

Second-billed was Homer, a promising new arrival on the Orange County scene whose five-song demo tape is full of tasty pop-rock tunes with an Anglophile bent. The set-closing “Caroline,” which sounded like Oasis without the off-putting vocal snideness, was a fetching example of what the band, which has been together just nine months, can do.

Homer’s songs about romantic bewilderment come with a light, inviting touch; two newer, unrecorded songs, “Alcoholics Unanimous” and “Strange,” reinforced the impression that this four-man band, whose members are in their early- to mid-20s, has an unusually sure grasp on its pop craft.

The set showed that much work needs to be done toward tightening and polishing Homer’s performing craft. Pure pop goes best when carried off with crisp brio and confident aplomb, and Homer played too loosely to meet the test.

Martin Borsanyi’s delivery as lead singer was out of the familiar Brit-with-a-chest-cold school, and he might work on expanding his range and finding a more distinctive vocal personality. Drummer Jahsper Charles was an animated fellow who sang good high-range backups but needed to hone his bashing. Guitarist Jason Robbins came through with some nice, concise licks. There’s a lot of work for Homer to do, but with songs like these, the band has every reason to do it.

Openers Friendly Indians seemed to be shooting for the flip, eclectic, lightly entertaining approach that makes O.C.’s Ziggens and Toronto’s Barenaked Ladies such endearing live acts.

Fronted by the Mutt-and-Jeff team of towering singer Steve Franks and diminutive guitarist Tim Meltreger, the four-man O.C. band showed an instinct for fun and hints of melodic know-how. Meltreger was too heavy-handed as a soloist, repeating his fuzzed-out noisy blasts when the music demanded something more dexterous.

The band was breaking in a new drummer, and it showed in its rhythmic stiffness. As the Ziggens and Barenaked Ladies have proved, a nimble, playful drummer can help put a wryly rocking band on just the right footing.