Country Gussied Up With a Gallic Bounce

What do you get when you cross-pollinate French pop, old-school country, Leonard Cohen-style musings and Velvet Underground-esque moodiness? Shoofly’s “Dirty White Town,” an album of offbeat, bilingual tunes that reflect the wild contrasts of life in L.A.

It may sound complex, but to Bernadette Colomine and Terry Durbin, who formed Shoofly three years ago, the motivation is simple.

“We relate to many sounds and many musics, and that’s why we do different-sounding songs,” says Colomine, 36, a Bordeaux native who displays vintage Serge Gainsbourg albums in the living room of her boho-comfy Silver Lake apartment. “Which can be a little unusual, but so what?” she adds.

Some might think what’s truly unusual here is that Colomine and Durbin, 41, have managed to maintain their creative partnership after the breakup of their 12-year marriage last year. Stranger still, perhaps, is that Durbin is gay. Both parties say that the union was legitimate in every sense of the word and that his sexuality is not the reason they split.

“It’s never been an issue as far as our relationship [is concerned],” says Colomine, who works as an actress and film/TV dialogue translator. “[The marriage] part of the relationship wasn’t working out anymore.”

But neither wanted to end the musical side of the relationship. “It is something that is still there, and still very important for both of us,” Colomine says.

Although sexual orientation isn’t the subject of any Shoofly songs, Durbin has found himself the object of curiosity since a December article in the gay magazine the Advocate focused on his. He tries to be good-natured about the attention, but he’s clearly a little frustrated.

“It’s not what our band is all about, me being gay,” he says. “People are interested in that, but for one thing, I’m not a sex symbol in the least. If I were Ricky Martin, then it would be news.”

It might not be news, but it all contributes to the duo’s status as a colorful L.A. story. In one form or another, they’ve been a constant if low-profile presence on the city’s music scene for more than a decade, with a history of associating with musicians who have famous connections.

“Dirty White Town,” for instance, features guest vocals by their pals Rufus Wainwright and Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano. The band’s bassist is Lee Butterfield, son of the late bluesman Paul, and drummer David Kendrick was a member of Devo in the late ‘80s.

Durbin characterizes “Dirty White Town,” on the L.A. label Cool Records, as a compilation of the different musical fascinations he and Colomine have entertained since forming Shoofly in the wake of their previous group, Apache Dancers. While such songs as “Buffalo” represent Durbin’s obsessive “classical country phase,” he thinks the Gallic bounce of “Blah Blah Blah” proves he can write ‘60s-style French pop and get away with it.

The song may not be storming the charts, but KROQ deejay Rodney Bingenheimer has played it, along with “Mudflap Sex Women,” the band’s twangy ode to those ever-popular silver naked-lady silhouettes adorning pickups and 18-wheelers up and down the Grapevine, and the equally giddy ditty “La Femme Tornade,” a tribute to Napolitano on which she is a guest vocalist.

Durbin and Colomine became friends with Napolitano when she played bass with Apache Dancers, before Concrete Blonde released its 1987 major-label debut. “We practiced a lot together, then suddenly she disappeared,” Durbin recalls. They puzzled over what had happened, until he heard a radio announcer talking about a hot new band featuring Napolitano.

“All the time she had this other project,” he says with a laugh. “She was killing time with us.” He emphasizes there were no hard feelings, especially since Napolitano quickly signed Apache Dancers to her own Happy Hermit label, which released the group’s “War Stories” CD in 1990. Apache Dancers toured as Concrete Blonde’s opening act, and their experiences hanging out with her in France inspired “La Femme Tornade.”

As for Wainwright, the guest vocalist on Shoofly’s “You Don’t Know,” Colomine met him three years ago at the Silver Lake hangout Akbar. He charmed her by fluently speaking her native tongue, and they became, Durbin jokes, “disgustingly inseparable.” Wainwright even performed a surprise set after a recent Shoofly show at the Silverlake Lounge, where his famous mom, folk-pop singer Kate McGarrigle, dropped in to play piano for him.

To Durbin and Colomine, Wainwright represents the kind of success they aspire to, as an artist who has gained an audience by performing music he enjoys, even if it isn’t particularly commercial (notwithstanding that Gap ad). “The music he plays is not a trend,” Colomine says. “It comes from what he loves the most.”

The same can be said for Shoofly. Yet despite its many elbow-rubs with fame, the stardust hasn’t transferred, even if they have packed ‘em in at such favorite haunts as the Silverlake Lounge. That’s enough to make some people bitter, but as much as Durbin wants to be known as a songwriter, he begrudges no one’s success. He even gets a kick out of meeting the “kids of other famous rock stars that Rufus and Bernadette keep on bringing around.”

Still, that pales next to the satisfaction of chasing his own dreams. “The conventional things in life, like family and other things that so-called normal people want, that’s fine for them,” he says. “But I have to follow my own way.”

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Shoofly performs today at the Joint, 8771 W. Pico Blvd., 8 p.m. Free. (310) 275-2619.

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ABBY’S ROAD: Speaking of going your own way, Abby Travis, who has worked with artists ranging from KMFDM to El Vez to Michael Penn to Beck to Elastica, is seeking a record deal for her second solo album. Judging from a four-song sampler, as well as her recent Viper Room showcase, which she titled “Cutthroat Standards and Black Pop,” fans should prepare for a departure from the rock-oriented work with which she’s usually associated.

“I wanted to make music as pretty as I could make,” says Travis, 30, who worked with producer Kristian Hoffman to craft an attractively edgy, gothic-cabaret style that sounds like equal parts Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim and the lusher aspects of Siouxsie & the Banshees.

The mood ranges from genteel biliousness in “The Hate Song” to airy heartbreak in “Everything’s Wonderful,” whose sepia-toned video, shot by Dave Markey, features Travis vamping like a ‘20s movie star while Possum Dixon frontman Rob Zabrecky performs magic tricks.

“I only have an AM radio in my car, so I was listening to a station that plays show tunes and standards a lot,” she says of the latter song, which was also inspired by Cole Porter. “I was trying to write a modern standard.”

Her foray into pop sophistication may seem unexpected, but Travis is content to follow her muse. Besides, she’s found support in surprising quarters.

“One kid who e-mails me is into death metal and speed metal, but he says my music is his guilty pleasure,” she says. “I like the idea that people who are into Corrosion of Conformity would dig my songs.”

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Abby Travis performs at the Viper Room on May 25. For more information, visit https://www.abbytravis.com.