They Always Look on the Blight Side : Folk: Clive Gregson and Christine Collister, who play the Coach House tonight, hit at the heart of bittersweet reality in their songs. But so far, mainstream fame is <i> not </i> a reality.

The first time this writer saw Clive Gregson and Christine Collister perform, they were singing in a bowling alley. It wasn’t a lounge gig at the Lowbrow Lanes but, rather, a folk concert held in a long, narrow bowling room in the back of an ancient pub in an equally ancient village in the hills of the south of England.

Gregson and Collister performed without amplification from the end of the room where the pins usually stood, with ruts from centuries of bowling balls running along the floor to their feet.

The two have had occasion to feel a bit like bowling pins since then, such as when fan Robert Plant had them join his first post-Zeppelin European tour. “He came up with the idea of having us open for him, which on paper was a good idea and he’s a very nice guy,” Gregson, 36, said by phone from Provo, Utah, last week. “But the audience really came expecting to see Led Zeppelin revisited, so the last thing they wanted to see was two Herberts standing there with an acoustic guitar.”

Undaunted, the couple are embarking now on an adventurous nationwide package tour with other Rhino New Artists label acts Exene Cervenka and Steve Wynn, commencing tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

Gregson and Collister--he’s from Manchester, she’s from the Isle of Man--open the shows and provide a very good reason for listeners to not be late. Gregson is one of the great undiscovered songwriting treasures of our time, a talent providentially matched by Collister’s rich, expressive voice. Gregson’s no slouch at singing either.

His melodies can hit the heart on the first listen, but his lyrics tend to be more steeped in a bittersweet reality than mainstream radio is likely to entertain. In concert Gregson has been known to refer jocularly to his songs as “some real wrist-slashers.” His “How Weak I Am,” for example, has the fairly representative line, “As one door closes another door must slam / How cruel this world / How weak I am.”

He’s noticed that it’s usually far lighter themes that produce hits.

“I’ve found that I’ve never really sat down to try to write a hit. I think the best thing to do is to be true to yourself, write what you want to write and make records you can believe in and feel good about. Something I realized a long time ago: If you compromise what you do and it’s successful, then you have to carry on doing it forevermore. If you compromise what you do and it’s unsuccessful, then you’re going to feel worse, because you’ll wish you’d done what you really wanted to in the first place.”

In his songs, he said, he’s found that “it’s generally more interesting to write about the problems people have, the traumas and all. I would find it very difficult to sit down and write songs that say, ‘The sun is shining, everything is wonderful, I’m so lucky.’ That would be a bit unbelievable to me, so I try to write songs that are about real people and the things we go through ourselves, with some depth and emotional meaning to them.”

The Rhino package tour is hardly a new experience for Gregson. His first go at elusive fame came with the British band Any Trouble, which once toured England with a diverse group of compatriots signed to the punk-oriented Stiff label. After several turns in the music-biz wringer with Any Trouble, he intended to quit performing, opting for the relatively painless life of a “back-room boy,” writing and producing music.

Two things changed that. First, he chanced to hear Collister sing in a Manchester nightclub, thought she was “simply amazing” and the two promptly fell in love. Then Richard Thompson tapped the pair to join his touring band (Gregson had previously sung on his records, including the critics’ nirvana, “Shoot Out the Lights” by Richard and Linda Thompson).

Gregson said, “After Any Trouble split up I was very down in the dumps about it and quite jaded about performing. Working with Richard made me realize that it’s possible to be your own man, to do what you wanted to do and feel good about it. It made me enjoy playing again.”

During a lull between tours, Thompson suggested that Gregson and Collister tour as a duo, which worked so well that they eventually left Thompson’s band and struck out on their own. (They still record with him, appearing on Thompson’s new “Rumor and Sigh” album, due for release May 13.)

The two have three albums on Rhino. The most recent, “Love Is a Strange Hotel,” is a collection of other writer’s songs they like, ranging from Aztec Camera to Merle Haggard. Gregson is hoping the Rhino New Artists tour will win them a number of new listeners, though quantity isn’t his only measure of success.

“We only ever played in Texas once, in Austin,” he said, “We flew there from Detroit in one of those crazy re-routings that took hours and hours. We finally got there and played to 12 paying customers. And we had a great time. There may not have been a lot of people there, but they enjoyed it, and it felt like we’d achieved something. I’m not sure we’d want to do that every night, though.”

* Exene Cervenka, the Steve Wynn Band and Clive Gregson & Christine Collister play at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.