Summertime blues

Claudia Figueroa

More than 17 South Coast Plaza restaurants and one smokin’ blues

band will be on hand at the eighth annual “Hot Blues On A Cool Summer

Night,” a fund-raiser benefiting programs at the Orange County Performing

Arts Center.

“Great blues music is what draws people to this annual fund-raiser,”

said the event’s co-chair David Thompson.

The event will include samplings from Armani Cafe, Antonello

Ristorante, Maggiano’s Little Italy and the Clubhouse, among others. But

Thompson said the event is mostly centered around the entertainment.

This year, the Bernie Pearl Blues Band will perform.

Pearl, a former program host for KLON’s radio show “Nothing But the

Blues,” has created a production company that produces blues shows

annually at Gamrig Park in Long Beach. Pearl also is one of the original

founders of the Long Beach Blues Festival, which began in the early

1980s.

He said he has a definitive taste for the music he grew up

with--Walter “Brownie” McGhee was his first guitar mentor.

But after his brother opened the Ash Grove, a Los Angeles club that

catered to folk artists and poets, Pearl’s musical taste went “haywire.”

“Early in my career I became attached to the traditional musician,”

Pearl said. “But then I discovered there was [another] level where you

had the groups that came out of the traditional music--the folk rock with

the Birds and blues rock with Canned Heat.”

When writing new material, Pearl, who learned to play guitar at 14,

still looks to some of his early influences.

“There was a parallel in the music I listened to growing up,” he said.

“There were mainstream groups like the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and

Mary, and within that, a subtrend of traditional music created

essentially by bluegrass blues, hillbilly music, or old mountain music

and gospel.

“It was a discovery of American music for large groups of people.

That’s what we’re doing with our band is tie in a little bit of a folk

sound to grass roots.”

The band plays a mix of original sounds and those Pearl learned from

blues musicians with whom he has played.

“Each man plays the blues the way he learned it and the way he feels

it. That’s part of the blues tradition, and it’s one of the challenges of

being a blues musician.”

Proceeds from the event will be distributed to children’s arts and

education programs at the center, Thompson said.

Last year’s event, which featured Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers,

drew more than 900 people and raised more than $24,000 for the center.

WHAT: The Bernie Pearl Band performing at “Hot Blues on A Cool Summer

Night”

WHERE: South Coast Plaza Village, at Sunflower and Plaza Drive, Costa

Mesa.

WHEN: 5 p.m. Thursday

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $35 in advance for Center Stage members, $40 for

advance nonmembers and $50 at the door.

PHONE: (714) 284-5464.