THE ARTS / Huey Lewis still spreads the news / It's been a long, rockin' ride for Marin musician

NBLEWIS002_fl.jpg Huey Lewis at the "2am Club" in Mill Valley, Huey's old watering hole which the bar was featured on the cover of the Huey Lewis and the News LP "Sports." Huey Lewis and the News will be performing at the Marin County Fair the summer of 2005. 5/31/05 Mill Valley CA Frederic Larson The San Francisco Chronicle less NBLEWIS002_fl.jpg Huey Lewis at the "2am Club" in Mill Valley, Huey's old watering hole which the bar was featured on the cover of the Huey Lewis and the News LP "Sports." Huey Lewis and the News will be ... more Photo: Frederic Larson Photo: Frederic Larson Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close THE ARTS / Huey Lewis still spreads the news / It's been a long, rockin' ride for Marin musician 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

"I wrote songs in my 20s that are actually more relevant now," maintains rock veteran Huey Lewis.

He'll be turning a ruggedly handsome 55 the week after he and his band, the News, play the Marin County Fair on Thursday. It'll be the group's first Marin gig since a flood benefit (also featuring Pablo Cruise) in 1982. And when Lewis looks out from the fairgrounds stage at the faces he grew up with here in the 1950s and '60s and partied with in the '70s, he expects to find them singing along to the prescient creations of his youth.

" 'Doing It All for My Baby,' 'If This Is It' -- these have sort of adult perspectives," Lewis says about a couple of those early hits.

"Live at 25," released last month in CD and DVD format on the Rhino label and recorded in November at the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, is heady evidence of the healthy survival of Lewis and the News, as well as of their material. The songs mentioned above and other contemplative ballads share the set with the sort of power rockers that elevated the band to stardom, including "The Heart of Rock & Roll," "I Want a New Drug" and "Power of Love."

Lewis used to pretest his songs in the clubs and bars of Marin, where he'd lived since age 4. His father, a Boston-bred radiologist and jazz drummer, and his mother, a Polish émigré and commercial artist, moved here from New York to get closer to nature and the bohemian art movement. Their only child, born Hugh Anthony Cregg III, attended Strawberry Point Elementary School, where he skipped second grade, and then Edna Maguire Junior High School.

After his parents divorced, young Hugh was sent to an all-boys prep school in New Jersey. With a perfect 800 on his math SATs, he gained acceptance to engineering school at Cornell, but on the advice of his dad first spent a year hitchhiking through Europe and North Africa. His mother sent along a copy of an early Bob Dylan recording, and her tenant, Billy Roberts (songwriter of "Hey Joe" fame), contributed several harmonicas. "I played them 'til my lips bled," says Lewis, who found inspiration in the blues.

He returned from travel to enroll at Cornell, but dropped out to return to California, where "it was all happening." Sharing a residence with a high school buddy on Manor Drive in Mill Valley, Lewis started a natural foods business and moonlighted with a bluegrass band that mutated into the somewhat successful country rock group Clover.

"I never sang much, just a song or two," Lewis recalls, "and nobody ever, ever commented on my voice," instead showcasing his harmonica skills. Seeking a stage name, Hugh Cregg drew on a couple of Donald Duck's nephews to become Huey Louie, later refined as Huey Lewis.

Clover found itself in demand at such Marin venues as the Lion's Share in San Anselmo and the Scoreboard in San Rafael, and Lewis also jammed at "our bars of choice" -- The Brothers and the 2 A.M. Club, kitty-corner from each other on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley.

Clover's recordings (made before Lewis' arrival) found favor in the so- called Pub Rock scene in England, and the band (with Lewis) was eventually summoned there by rising star Nick Lowe. By accident of music history, Clover arrived just in time for Pub Rock's dethroning by punk rock.

Lewis got to vocalize on a few tracks -- "I remember going, 'Wow, I sound like a black guy,' I actually enjoyed it" -- but Clover's albums for British labels did poorly. "So I vowed, watching the punks, even though musically it wasn't up my alley, what I liked was their stance: they were thumbing their noses at the record industry," Lewis recalls. "And I said to myself, 'If this thing doesn't work out, I'm gonna go back to Marin County, get my favorite musicians, and make my own group, and I'm gonna sing every song myself.' "

That group, culled from Clover and from rival bar band Soundhole, took form as Huey Lewis and the News. They were a tight, energetic team of guitar, keyboards, saxophone and bass backing Lewis' gritty lead vocals, with several members (including Lewis) doubling on other instruments and on backup vocals.

Their first, eponymous album "sounded small and fast," Lewis admits, and failed to attract attention. They managed to survive threats of extinction from their label, Chrysalis Records, when their sophomore album scored a top 10 hit with "Do You Believe in Love."

For the third album, "Sports" (released on CBS in 1983), Lewis decided to apply the then-new technology of drum machines and sequenced bass to impressively smooth and infectious effect. His bandmates were skeptical at first but later found themselves praised by the group Los Lobos in the pages of Rolling Stone as "the first guys to put techno together with the blues."

It was Lewis' idea to have the album's cover photographed at his old Mill Valley watering hole, the 2 a.m. Club, a "sports bar" before the term had been coined.

"I knew the bar looked good," says Lewis, "and this was what 'sports' was for the average American." If you look carefully, you'll see Dwight Clark snagging a ball for the 49ers on the TV above the heads of the band members.

Out again on tour, the group found its bourgeoning fame traveling ahead of it. "Sports" spawned four top 10 hits, and ultimately sold more than 10 million copies.

"I sat the band down one day," Lewis recounts, "and I said, 'You may go down and come back, but this will never happen again. And it's gonna happen to us right now, so enjoy this.' "

During the remainder of the decade, the band racked up more hits, including a couple for the soundtrack of the movie "Back to the Future" (which also gave Lewis a cameo role). Things slowed down in the '90s, but there were ample concert dates, private corporate gigs and more substantial parts for Lewis on TV and in film.

"If you have a character you can get your teeth into, it's really challenging and creative," says the singer about this artistic sideline. "But 'actors' roles' go to Nick Nolte, not me," he adds with a chuckle.

Lewis especially enjoyed his role as the karaoke-hustling father of Gwyneth Paltrow in the 2000 movie "Duets." Lewis discovered that Paltrow's mother, actress Blythe Danner, wanted her to be a singer and that "Gwyneth has a great voice and can sing harmony. She's a musician."

When not making music or movies, Lewis splits his time between his home in Ross and a ranch in Montana. His mother, Magda, is living in Bolinas, and both his teenage kids, Kelly and Austin, aspire to different aspects of the music business.

The original and newer members of the News, all drawn from the Bay Area, help keep their leader young at heart and close to a sense of home.

"We're friends first and colleagues second," says Lewis, who has held on to his ingenuous chattiness. "We didn't answer auditions, we just knew each other, we grew up together. That's the thing I'm proudest of ... and that we've continued to improve as a band."

All's fair

The Marin County Fair is Thursday-July 4. Huey Lewis and the News will appear at the Play Fair Pavilion of the Marin County Fair on Civic Center Drive in San Rafael at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Free to fairgoers. (415) 499-6800, www.marinfair.org.