By TIMOTHY FINN - Pop Music Writer Date: 11/19/97

Any band that has produced one will tell you that a great debut record isn't necessarily the first step toward fame and fortune.

In fact, many -- like the Rainmakers, the Starkweathers, Tenderloin -- will tell you that great music and popularity have nothing to do with each other.

Nonetheless new bands enter studios every day, hoping the records they produce will become popular, at least regionally, and lead to bigger and better things -- like a steady paycheck.

Three bands from this area released debut albums recently, and each shows plenty of promise, at least in the quality of its music.

"The Rain Kings" (Lizard Breath Records): This local band's first-ever gig took place this summer in a flash of limelight: before about 10,000 fans at Sandstone Amphitheatre. The first of three acts that night, the Rain Kings put on a polished performance that made a big impression.

Five months later they've delivered another sparkling debut, "The Rain Kings." The seven songs on this record showcase two talents: the songwriting of guitarist/vocalist John Michaels and the wizardry of local music legend Joe "Guido" Welch, who produced the record in his Northland studio.

Michaels' songs bear a neo-country/pop-rock flavor -- a sound that lives somewhere between the indie sound of the early BoDeans and the country rock of the Mavericks. His melodic tunes are tailor-made for vocalist Steve Duvall's easy baritone. They are also instantly radio-ready: "Two Fools Wanted (Love for Sale)" is already getting lots of play on KBEQ-FM (104.3).

Lyrically Michaels writes breezy verses -- ballads and poems that avoid overwrought cliches and the incessant repetition of one phrase (which seems to be a requirement in Nashville these days).

The gem of the bunch, lyrically, is "Heads the Jukebox (Tails the Phone)," in which a guy at a bar tries to decide how to spend his last quarter -- on another song or on a phone call to his girl. It's the sort of slick, honky-tonk number you'd expect to hear from an established star like Dwight Yoakam, not a band of twenty-something newcomers.

With the help of a few studio musicians, Welch unleashes upon the Rain Kings his best impersonation of famed producer T-Bone Burnett. In and around Michaels' compositions, Welch has arranged and dropped layers of pop sounds: broad brushstrokes of rhythm guitars and harmonies and filigrees of a B3 Hammond organ, a harmonica, a lead guitar and a pedal steel.

Those who like their music raw and stripped-down may find the sound on "The Rain Kings" a bit glossy and rich (at times there's a real Wallflowers feel). Chances are good, though, that you'll hear it somewhere around here real soon. Several of these songs were born and nurtured to be hits.

Ultimate Fakebook: "Electric Kissing Parties" (Noisome Records): Manhattan, Kan., has produced its share of great regional bands, perhaps none better than the now-defunct Truck Stop Love. That band's drummer, Eric Melin, is a member of the newest incarnation of Ultimate Fakebook, whose latest release bears a slight but welcome similarity to Truck Stop's brand of loud but very accessible roots/guitar rock.

"Kissing Parties" is a nice collection of 10 power-pop anthems that manages to bob, weave and swerve just enough to keep things interesting. Things get a bit monochromatic at times, but this is a record you only need to hear in short bursts (like the first four or five songs, which are the best).

If you're looking for comparisons (beyond the faint Truck Stop resemblance), think of every power pop band that pays naked reverence to Cheap Trick or even Big Star, and you're in the neighborhood. A nice beginning.

The Black Water: "train, man, drunk" (BloPop Records): If this isn't one of the best local records of this year, it's certainly one of the most interesting and unique. The band, which formed in Columbia, plays a mesmerizing brand of desolate, apocalyptic art rock -- lullabies for ghouls and reptiles.

The intent here is to create dark and luxurious textures and moods (the portrait on the cover is a stern clue), and in that vein the band succeeds wonderfully. At times, lead vocalist Shaun Harmontree's lyrics serve better as just more bits of sound in the black, sonic gumbo than as compositions with a salient point. Other times they boost the dreary atmosphere.

The song titles here -- like "blood on the door," "suffocate" and "gutterworm" -- imply a debt to nihilists like Nine Inch Nails or even Marilyn Manson (without some of the heavy equipment). But the real debt is to bands like Joy Division, Bauhaus and early Pink Floyd, who knew what music could do when it creeps under our skin and inside our heads.