O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Tornados Tear Up the Coach House

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  Maybe it was a collective sense of relief following several tension-filled days when Southern Californians watched all the rules fly out the window like so many pairs of Reeboks. Maybe it was the excitement of the night before Cinco de Mayo. Or maybe it was strictly the joyful noise that is the Texas Tornados.

Whatever the contributing factors, the Tornados’ show Monday night at the Coach House felt more like a Saturday night blowout in a great border-town bar.

Through R & B ballads, rockers, Mexican polkas and country weepers, a capacity crowd of nearly 500 hooted and hollered as if it were everyone’s first night out in a month.

The band responded with a 95-minute set that was far looser and more wide-ranging than on previous tours. After the 1990 debut album that brought together former Sir Douglas Quintet members Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers, country star Freddy Fender and conjunto music legend Flaco Jimenez, their live shows hewed closely to that first album, supplemented only by a few signature songs from each member.

This time, the group had two albums’ worth of material to draw upon, although only three songs from last year’s solid “Zone of Their Own” album turned up Monday, contrasted with a hefty eight from that first record. Still, there were more surprise additions to the promote-the-album selections, from Fender’s tear-stained 1975 hit “Secret Love” to Meyers’ “Velma From Selma,” a loopy Tex-Mex rave-up from Sir Douglas’ mid-’80s revival period.

Ironically, it sounded like the kind of ragged-but-right stuff 47 bar bands probably are playing right now in San Antonio dives. The difference is that the Texas Tornados often seem like 47 bands in one. As hard as they rocked on Sir Douglas’ 1965 hit “She’s About a Mover,” they turned around and struck a 100% legit R & B groove on a seemingly impromptu version of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” (launched by Fender while Sahm was fussing with one of a string of recalcitrant electric guitars).

Not unexpectedly, they were equally at home--and authentic--on traditional Mexican folk tunes including “Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio” and “Volver.” The latter was given more appropriately elastic vocal phrasing by Fender (whose hair suggests his father must have been a Brillo pad) and Jimenez than it got on the “Zone” album. Jimenez’s wizardry on the button accordion also livened up even their most-played material, notably a version of “Who Were You Thinking Of” that might otherwise have sounded like the 500th run-through.

Surprisingly, with all the adulation the crowd heaped on Fender during his moments in the spotlight, it was Meyers’ quasi-novelty tunes--”Hey Baby, Que Paso,” “Velma From Selma” and “If You Got the Dinero”--that came closest to bringing the Coach House walls a-tumblin’ down. If Joshua had possessed a Vox organ--and an invasion-force rhythm section like the Tornados’--rather than just those old rams’ horns, odds are he would have leveled Jericho in a night instead of a week.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tom Kell opened and drew a respectful, if not truly enthusiastic, response with a set that sounded at various times like everyone you ever liked in the folk-rock genre. A little Jackson Browne plaintiveness here, some James Taylor gentility there, some Don Henley assertiveness elsewhere and even a Roger McGuinn-like vocal yearning from time to time. He didn’t land any knockout punches with his songs, though he did reel off an evocative lyric now and again (“There’s nothing on Earth like a tear that’s about to fall”). And he proved ingratiating and sufficiently obsequious for one in the unenviable position of being an unknown on stage before a crowd of rabid Tornado-lovers.