Music

At Lucky Lounge, it's easy to see a Mod Face in the crowd

It's Thursday night, so Ian McLagan's walking into the Lucky Lounge.

You can't miss him. He must be the only man in Austin with that gray shag haircut, a 'do that only his former bandmates Ron Wood and Rod Stewart can wear. He lived that shag, man. He earned it.

It's a little before 6 p.m. The sun is a few hours from setting, and strong light is still streaming in from the street. McLagan gives the bartender a big smile and hands her a box of CDs. The 59-year-old keyboard player and his R&B-flavored Bump Band are minutes away from taking the stage.

Drummer and Bump Band manager Don Harvey is tuning his drums. Guitarist "Scrappy" Jud Newcomb takes out his axe, strums a few clean, jazzy chords. This is where they belong. In a bar.

Photo by Sung Park/AA-S Ian McLagan, left, keeps the Mod beat going with his Bump Band (Don Harvey on drums, Mark Andes on bass and 'Scrappy' Jud Newcomb on guitar) at Lucky Lounge on Thursdays. The keyboardist has put out a box set for his previous band the Faces, which featured Rod Stewart.

The Lucky Lounge, with its slick, Cocktail Nation design, is a far cry from the pubs that McLagan haunted in his native England. Or the Los Angeles dives that he hung out in as a session player after the Faces split. Or rootsy Austin clubs, like the Saxon Pub, where he plays now and again.

But then again, it's a bar. And a Face belongs in a bar. The band used to have one on stage.

And from the Bump Band's first notes -- a driving, lively R&B sound -- played by consummate pros, you get the impression there isn't anywhere else McLagan would rather be.

'Course, it's nice that the gig is early.

"I love playing early," McLagan says. "Means I get home, have some time with the wife and go to bed."

Right now, however, what McLagan really wants to talk about is "Five Guys Walk into a Bar . . ." (Rhino), the four-CD, 67-song Faces box set, which McLagan midwifed into existence.

After the band split in '75, bassist Ronnie Lane went on to a respected solo career, while guitarist Wood became a Rolling Stone. Stewart was the Faces' lead singer, and even casual rock fans know his post-Faces solo career has contained highs and lows the qualitative distance between which constitute some sort of world record. It's McLagan who became the keeper of the Faces' memory.

"I've been working on it for about four years," McLagan says. "From 1975 on, from right after we broke up, Faces records weren't on sale, they fell out of print." When the CD revolution happened, McLagan contacted Warner Bros. about putting the old albums out. "They did it, but they put 'em out really cheaply," McLagan says, "I wasn't impressed; no details, no information, no extra tracks." McLagan had a hand in putting together the excellent 1999 Faces compilation, "The Best of Faces: Good Boys When They're Asleep." That led to "Five Guys . . .," which mixes album cuts with radio sessions and demos into a bleary-eyed stagger through some tough, tender, blue-eyed British soul.

McLagan is especially pleased that their demos can now be heard by the masses. "Rod would sing live while we cut, so you can hear him hum if we hadn't worked out a chorus or something," he says. "A lot of people want that stuff. It gives the color of the whole band."

Can fans expect similar treatment for the Small Faces anytime soon?

McLagan says it's unlikely. "There's too much Small Faces stuff out there right now, and most of it is illegal," he says.

But he has fond memories of the Small Faces, a band that was so Mod, so archly British, so achingly hip that they had almost no American following.

However, the cult of Mod seems immortal.

"I meet 12- and 13-year-old Mods," he says. "Second and third generation! I see guys dressed Mod, and I see guys dressed like I was in the Faces." He pauses. "And I then see guys dressed very Mod that have the (later) shag cut, it's kind of neither one or the other. That's a (expletive) shame. It looks awful."

Most of the neo-Mods, he admits, are influenced by the Jam, the most popular of the punk-era Mod revivalists. "The first time I heard the Jam, I thought they were around at the same time as the Small Faces," McLagan says. "Then I looked at the date on the recording and it says '76! They weren't (expletive) Mod, they were punks, part of the reason I had to leave England. Nobody wanted Hammond organ on their records after punk."

So McLagan landed in Los Angeles, where he did session work for years, finally leaving after the 1994 earthquake. "I was in L.A. and just got sick of it. Then in '94 was the earthquake and (McLagan's wife) Kim and I said, 'That's it.'

"I'm still working on the accent, but I've adapted. I even wear shorts, something no self-respecting Englishman would ever do. Shorts are for children in England." He even hangs out with a couple of Austin's local British expatriates, including legendary fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, who loved McLagan's 2000 memoir "All The Rage." "We go out and eat at new Indian restaurants," McLagan says.

Between eating out and tending to the Faces, McLagan does most of his recording at home. "Now you can record anywhere," he says. "The last album ('Rise and Shine') was so much easier for me than my other records. We'd be jamming and sometimes I'd just switch the machine on and we'll record a song."

He'd love to do a "chestnuts" album next, lesser-known songs from the Tin Pan Alley days that he likes to play for himself. "The songs I heard as a kid," he says. "Early rockers, blues, jazz, even something like 'How Much is That Doggie in the Window?' "

Well, you can't spend all your time in bars.