Blues flying high

Singer/songwriter Heather Combs has a sweet husky voice, a tone of lovelorn lullabies and summertime blues. When she sings, her voice swerves from badass growl to lusty croon and back again. She’s got fire and soul.

But when the music stops and the admiring crowd swarms the stage, Combs loses her cowboy hat and growl and becomes a hero to the young. Girls in sundresses flock to Combs, as fearless in talking to her as they are in dancing to her music.

And if a young fan should, say, invite Combs and her band to her fifth birthday party, they’ve been known to go.

“Children’s birthday parties,” says trumpet player Jeff Bordes with a laugh. “That’s our next tour.”

Bordes says that Combs also likes to bring kids onstage to sing with her.

“I don’t let them swear, though,” she says.

“She covers their ears,” Bordes adds.

Combs and her band—Bordes, percussionist James Greenfield, bassist Paul Everett and drummer Bob Tatum—live in the Bay Area but play in Reno as much as the average local band, in part because Combs’ mom lives here.

And, in part, because they just dig the vibe. Band members say that San Francisco clubs, once havens for independent musicians, now book mostly DJs and cover bands.

“It’s fabulous,” Everett says of Reno.

“The crowd is so welcoming—as you can see,” Tatum says, pointing to a huge bouquet of flowers an adoring fan has just delivered to the band.

“You know what I find here?” Combs says, after she’s finished thanking the fan. “People aren’t inhibited. Here, people will come up and say, ‘You changed my kid’s life.’ “

Band members say that they’re right where they want to be now—maybe not financially, but artistically. (All five have day jobs and are living the lives of independent musicians who refuse to sell themselves to big labels.)

“We’ve gotten to a place now where we walk up on stage, rip open our chests and let it all hang out,” Combs says. “It’s like someone who wants to be blonde, then brown, and finally realizes her own hair color is best thing for her.”

The band has gone through many changes and several different lineups, but all agree that the current configuration is just right. Their brand of music—folksy, bluesy roots rock with a smidgen of twang—comes out loud, strong and genuine when they play.

“People try to write the best book, the best song,” Combs says. “I just want to write honest stuff.”

Combs, who released her third album this year, says that she writes music for the same reason she always has, as an outlet for her loves and her fears. As “Hold Me Now,” a song from her latest album Feel Like Flying, articulates, “I’m bottled up in front of you/with so many things to say/watching all the words I’ve come to know as mine/slipping through my hands.”

“I was a quiet kid,” Combs says. “[Music] gave me a chance to get out all the things I’d pushed back.”

“Hold Me Now” shows that tension between inner emotion and outer expression. Though its first verses convey a fear of squeezing all those feelings out, its chorus is unabashedly emotive:

“I feel like flying/I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs/I feel like dying in your arms tonight/So hold on."