Stripped Down and Freewheeling

Veteran bluesman Lonnie Brooks has carved out a name for himself on the Chicago blues circuit with his searing, electric-powered guitar riffs and hearty, frequently growling vocals.

Tonight in Long Beach, however, Brooks will ease back on the accelerator for his solo acoustic performance at Blues Unplugged IV.

The concert--which also features Taj Mahal, Hubert Sumlin and local up-and-comer Eric Sardinas--is “designed to showcase the musicians in a way that audiences rarely, or never, get to experience,” promoter Gary Chiachi said.

The artists not only will play individually, but will also perform in various duets before an all-performer finale jam, said Chiachi, who also produces the annual Long Beach Blues Festival and is KLON-FM’s director of programming.

The 65-year-old Brooks said he’s ready for that stripped-down, freewheeling approach.

“Back in 1990, I flew out with my band to Melbourne [Australia] to play a few dates,” he said by telephone from his home in Chicago. “The first night went really well, and the fans were screaming for us to come back out for an encore. But we were all exhausted. . . . We’d spent, like, 20 hours on a plane the day before.”

The band members told Brooks they were “too tired to play anymore.” Brooks soldiered on.

“My son [Ronnie Baker Brooks] and I went out there with just our acoustic guitars,” he recalled. “We played some John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy Reed stuff, you know, just simple and raw. We turned it down real low, and man, it felt good. The crowd got into it, too.”

Will the unplugged setting require much rearranging of songs?

“To tell you the truth, when I bought my first guitar, I wanted to learn to play like [Texas electric and acoustic bluesman] Lightnin’ Hopkins,” Brooks said. “Acoustic isn’t my main stick, but that’s how I write the songs . . . just bare bones on the guitar.”

For at least one number, Chiachi said, he plans to pair Brooks with Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime sideman who is perhaps best-known for his killer riffs on “Little Red Rooster.” Brooks reacted with mild surprise at hearing the news.

“Really? I wasn’t aware of that. Well, we still haven’t really worked out all of the evening’s details. I’m game, though.”

Born Lee Baker Jr. in Dubuisson, La., Brooks learned to play the blues from his banjo-picking grandfather. He wasn’t interested in a professional career until he moved to Port Arthur, Texas, in the 1950s, where he fell in love with the music of Long John Hunter, T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.

When Brooks was 22, zydeco great Clifton Chenier offered him a job in his band. Before long, Brooks was recording his own songs and released a string of singles (“Family Rules,” “The Crawl”) for the Goldband label under the name Guitar Junior.

He later moved to Chicago, where he worked as a sideman for both Sam Cooke and Jimmy Reed, and also recorded a number of rhythm-and-blues singles during the 1960s.

But there already was a Guitar Junior based in the Windy City, so he changed his name to Lonnie Brooks. (The Guitar Junior moniker was briefly reborn in 1969, though, for the release of his debut LP, “Broke ‘n’ Hungry,” on Capitol Records.)

Brooks performed steadily, although with little fanfare, until Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records signed him in 1978. “Bayou Lightning,” recorded the following year, was his first of eight releases for the label that helped spread his mix of blues, rock, Louisiana R&B; and funk to a wider audience.

“Guys like Hooker and B.B. King, as good as they are, they really play in only one style,” Brooks said. “I like variety in my music. I mean, who wants every album or chord to sound the same? I’ve played with a lot of different guys, and I think I’ve picked up different grooves from each of ‘em. Sometimes you don’t even realize how much you’ve absorbed over the years.”

(For the uninitiated, check out “Deluxe Edition,” his best-of collection released last year on Alligator.)

He has a new collaboration coming out May 25. “Lone Star Shoot-Out” will mark a return to their Texas roots for Brooks, Phillip Walker--a fellow alumnus of Chenier’s band--and one of Brooks’ boyhood idols, Long John Hunter.

“Heck, I was only 19 or 20 at the time, and I remember trying to sneak into these juke joints and roadhouses near Port Arthur to see people like Gatemouth [Brown] and Long John play,” Brooks said. “If I couldn’t slip in, I’d stand on an old wood crate and watch them through one of the windows.”

He’s glad to be recording with some old friends.

“With this new album, I got all of my homeboys from Beaumont and Port Arthur together. . . . We just went after that kind of sound and feeling we all loved back in ’53 or ‘54, you know . . . the sound that defined our own regional style of the blues.”

* Blues Unplugged IV, featuring Taj Mahal, Lonnie Brooks, Hubert Sumlin and Eric Sardinas, is tonight at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Cal State Long Beach. 8 p.m. $22.50-$25.00. (562) 985-7000.