The Gospel According to Franky Perez

"Did the Killers win their Grammy?" Franky Perez asks as we sit down to lunch at Ollie's, a shiny new neighborhood bar at Windmill and Decatur, right down the street from where he lives. They didn't, I tell him, but that's not really the point. I last saw Perez almost two years ago, when it wouldn't have been inconceivable that someone would be asking, "Did Franky Perez win his Grammy?" soon afterward. About to release his debut album, Poor Man's Son, on Lava Records, a subsidiary of major label Atlantic, Perez was the great hope for the Las Vegas music scene.

His first single, "Something Crazy," made it into light rotation on VH1 and moe than 30 radio stations nationwide. He toured with bigger-name acts like Jason Mraz. Local radio station KMXB ("Mix") 94.1-FM spun "Something Crazy" nonstop and booked him at every event they could. Other local musicians were excited about Perez bringing attention to the Vegas scene, of which he'd been a part since he was 15. "To see Frank on VH1 was just the shit," Big Bad Zero drummer Rob Whited told me in 2003. "It's not just like, cool, there's hope for us, but there's just something so wonderful about seeing a fellow local musician do so well. You've got to be proud of that."

Nowadays, fewer people have that feeling. You're more likely to hear a similar sentiment about The Killers, who've far surpassed any success Perez ever had. "Something Crazy" never broke beyond light rotation, and the second single from Poor Man's Son, "Cecilia," didn't take off either. Perez spent months on the road building a fan base one person at a time, but in the end he and Lava opted to part ways before recording a second album. It was a single-sentence mention of the end of his six-year relationship with the label in another local paper that prompted me to wonder: What happened to Franky Perez?

To hear him tell it, he didn't get screwed over like legendary local hopes 12 Volt Sex or Clockwise, both of whom were mistreated by RCA Records. "I had the option to make my second album with Lava, and we chose not to," he says. "The offer I got just didn't make sense to us. And we've built enough of a fan base with the first record and touring that there really wasn't a need to do it, at least not under the standards that were offered." The way Perez tells it, the split was amicable. He bears no ill will toward the label, which bought him out of his deal and gave him the rights to many of his masters.

Perez used the buyout money to purchase a new house and build his own home studio. "A lot of bands get just sent on their way with nothing," he points out. "[Lava] took care of me." A representative for Lava declined to comment on the parting.

Things, then, clearly aren't so bad. After building his studio, Perez recruited a local engineer and put together his new album, My 4th of July, nearly by himself, playing drums and guitar and singing. He then brought in bass player Keith Nelson, of Lon Bronson's band, and Black Crowes keyboardist Eddie Harsch to fill out the songs. Tracking was done in two weeks, although Perez notes that it took another week just to sort through all the parts Harsch recorded.

"I wanted to make it like a troubadour's album," Perez says of My 4th of July. While Poor Man's Son was a stylistic smorgasbord, with rock, soul, Latin, blues and pop spread over 17 songs, My 4th of July is a focused 10 tracks of mostly low-key, acoustic singer-songwriter material. Perez plans to release the album himself, unless a deal comes along that allows him the kind of control he wasn't getting at Lava. He'll tour this summer, including some shows opening for the reunited Black Crowes, and he just started a three-month residency at the Suncoast, playing every Thursday through the end of May.

Still, Perez isn't going to get the level of press coverage and attention that The Killers are. While he's playing for free in the Suncoast Showroom, The Killers sold out their April 15th show at the Joint in the Hard Rock before tickets even went on sale to the general public. As a tireless supporter of the Las Vegas music scene, though, Perez has nothing but positive things to say about The Killers. "They should definitely be very proud of what they did, what they accomplished," he says, without a trace of bitterness. Although their style is vastly different from his, he says that Hot Fuss, The Killers' debut, has "some amazing songs." And Killers drummer Ronnie Vannucci, a veteran of the scene like Perez, is a friend from way back. "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," Perez says. Later, though, he pinpoints the key difference between himself and his friend. "When the bands that I was in when I was a kid were out in the desert playing with a generator," he says, "they [Vannucci and friends] were at Café Roma."

It's a day after Perez's 29th birthday, and he's invited me out to his house to watch him rehearse with his band. They're less than a week away from their first Suncoast gig, so it's time to make sure every song is tight. Although Perez toured behind Poor Man's Son with his band, the Highway Saints, they've since gone their separate ways, and backing him up now are local rockers Left Standing, themselves longtime local music stalwarts who've flirted once or twice with mainstream success. "I consider myself, and I would like to think they consider me, a sixth member of the band," Perez says of Left Standing, whose full-length debut he just produced. He's made it his mission to get the band a record deal. "I love that album as much as I love my own," he says.

On this particular day, there are no grandiose ambitions in sight. I make several passes up and down Perez's street; his house, a two-story custom built in the late 1970s, sits on an acre and a half of land and is set back from the road, not exactly the easiest thing to find in the dark. Once I pull up, it's clear that the house, with its atypically large plot of land and garage full of musical equipment, is a gathering place not only for Perez and his band but also for friends and family. Wives, girlfriends and children of band members roam the house, and I find Perez in the living room with his band members, watching Wildboyz, a Jackass spin-off featuring all sorts of foolhardy stunts. He asks if I need anything, and I tell him to just do what he does. "This is what we do," he says, gesturing around the room.

It's appropriate that Perez and his boys (there are three band significant others around, but otherwise the house is overrun with men, both band members and friends) are watching this celebration of male exuberance and gleeful idiocy. Perez's wife, Julie, is out of town, and the men are running the show. Since yesterday was Perez's birthday, people keep bringing him presents, all of which appear to be alcoholic beverages of some kind. Everyone gets nice and lubricated before eventually settling into the garage (it's also the live room for Perez's home studio) to play.

Despite the drinking and the joking and the testosterone overload, when the band starts playing, they are impeccably tight. They run through songs from Poor Man's Son and My 4th of July, as well as a few covers that will fill out the nearly three-hour set they'll be playing at the Suncoast. Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You" and the Beatles' "Help!" are done fairly straight, but the band gives Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" a slower, rootsy feel, and turn Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man" into an exuberant rocker, probably the most energetic song they play all night.

Like in an episode of a sitcom, high jinks ensue while the wife is out of town and the boys are over for a night of drinking. Perez's daughter Emma, age 2, keeps wandering into rehearsal and demanding her father's attention. "Daddy needs to work," Perez says, unable to get Emma to sit still. Then, with perfect comic timing: "Daddy needs Mommy." One of the women comes out of the house to inform us that the septic system has died out, and the toilet is backing up onto the floor. The wife leaves and everything goes to shit, literally.

"Let's finish this thing and get to drinking," Perez says before "When I Was Young," a song from My 4th of July. There's finally a small mistake, courtesy of drummer Zak Weidle. "Zak's been drinking too much Jager," Perez sings when the song starts back up again. He's got a cigarette burning down between the tuning pegs on his guitar, and he looks like the happiest guy in the world. After "Young and Dumb," a non-album track, Perez jokes, "My wife hates that song."

"It's my favorite," opines a friend standing in the doorway. Then Perez, again with his perfect comic timing: "Mine too."

Clearly relishing every detail, Perez tells me how he got kicked off his first tour, opening for jam band O.A.R. after two weeks:

"I'm someone that likes accountability. I think people should be held accountable for their actions. I believe that if someone disrespects a lady, I'm not going to send my attorney after you; I'm going to kick your ass. That's the way I look at life. And the down side of that is my accountability, is, I'm going to go the hole.

"We're on tour with these guys, and we do what we do. To me, every time I step on a stage, regardless of if the band after me are my best friends, it's war. I came to entertain and perform and do my thing. I'm not going to let up because you and I had a beer before the gig. So we start doing our thing, and we can see the crowds are starting to warm up to us as the tour goes along. We're popping up all over their website and everything. So as that starts to happen, all of a sudden the negative starts to happen. The next thing we start to know is they stop feeding my band. Under contract, they're supposed to feed my guys. We've just been driving for 12 hours or 20 hours. We get there and my guys want to eat and by contract they're supposed to feed them. So the next thing you know they stop feeding my band.

"So all right, f--k it, I guess I've got to spend a little more money to feed my guys myself. Next thing, they start cutting sound checks. What the shit, man? Next thing you know, they're cutting hands, the people that help you get your stuff on stage. Now, when you've been traveling for 20 hours, and you only have 30 minutes to get onstage and perform, you need help. Next thing is, they start leaving you off the marquee. At the end of the day, I worked my ass off to get to this f--king point, even if it's three inches big, I want my name on the f--king marquee. I want to get off the bus and elbow my bass player, Peter, and go, 'Dude, look, bro. We're on the f--king marquee.' So all of a sudden, the name starts coming off the marquee, and we're like, what the shit? It's almost like they were pushing us out.

"We get to Florida. I have a lot of family in Florida. A lot of family in Florida. They schedule sound check for us. Let's say it was at 1. We don't go on until 8. It's the middle of the summer in Florida, so it's hot as balls. We get there and they make us park across the street. It's a parking lot the size of the f--king Thomas & Mack Center and they make us park across the street. So I walk up, I'm like, OK, that's fine, but at least cut us some hands to get us across the street and so we can get to sound check. So they give us some hands, we go all the way back across the street. 'Oh, sorry, your sound check got pushed back. You've got to put your stuff back on your car.' I'm still—at this point I'm trying to be civil. We pull our stuff up. We're sitting across the street in our damn RV. We're supposed to go on at 8.

"At 7:15 their tour manager comes and goes—we've been waiting the entire time—he comes back and he says, 'All right, you guys can sound check now.' I'm biting my lip, I'm like, 'This motherf--ker.' I'm biting my lip. 'OK, do I have hands to get my shit back across the street?' And he says, 'No, we sent them to lunch.' At 7 o'clock at night. That's it. I had had it. I tried to do the professional thing and sic my tour manager on him. I said, 'Handle this. This is ridiculous. Here's all the things that have happened: They stopped feeding my band, they cut our set time, they cut our sound checks, they cut our hands. Tell them this is completely out of line.' He goes—and this guy isn't with us any longer either—he goes and they do whatever. He's standing with his tail between his legs so now it's up to me. So f--k it.

"I went back across the street. Things were said and things were thrown around and tour managers were cornered into corners and bands were threatened. And we played that gig for my Miami family crowd, and the next day I got a call at like 11 o'clock in the morning. I just woke up to this: 'What the f--k did you do?' And I'm like, 'What are you talking about?' They're like, 'Dude, you've been on tour for two weeks and you just got kicked off your first tour.' It's kind of rock 'n' roll that I got kicked off my first tour. Needless to say, I don't think O.A.R. will be asking me to share a stage anymore. You know what? F--k them."

There are several ways to get to what makes Franky Perez tick. You can listen closely to his soul-baring lyrics, which detail the ups and downs of relationships, his working class upbringing and his love of Las Vegas. "I won't lie for an honest buck / I'm a messenger in a pickup truck," he sings on "Cry Freedom," from Poor Man's Son. The blue-collar integrity is not an affectation, either. "I've done every odd job there is known in this town. I've worked construction, I've waited tables. Regardless, man, I'll provide for my family," he told me in 2003, right as Poor Man's Son was about to be released. It's just as true today. "You'll be the first I call and say, 'Dude, come interview me, I'm tending bar at Money Plays,'" he jokes, and I don't doubt that it's true.

You can watch Perez onstage, where he really comes to life, bringing energy to even his most subdued songs. At his first Suncoast show, Perez plays to an appreciative crowd, especially a concentrated section of fans who cheer at the beginning of every song. The room isn't full, but a fair number of people populate the tables in the back two sections. No one, however, is on the floor in front of the stage, so there's a deep chasm between Perez and his audience. In the extended solo set, just Perez on the guitar or the piano, you can hear a good amount of audience chatter.

During the break, Perez asks what I think of the show. I tell him the distance is tough on him. Remembering the slightly inebriated guy with the baseball cap rehearsing in his garage, I remark that the tucked-in, buttoned shirt is a little formal for him. I wonder if the lengthy, low-key solo set killed his momentum. He convinces me to stay for the second set. A few minutes later, Perez bounds on stage in a T-shirt and launches into a version of Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream" with the full band backing him up. It rocks. He's giving it everything he has to win the crowd over.

For my money, though, the real core of Franky Perez isn't in his lyrics or his stage show; it's in watching him ride dirt bikes. After rehearsal, with the house too redolent of sewage to go back inside, Perez, his band and his friends take to the corral in the front yard to race on an ATV and a small motorbike. Big guys ride on vehicles meant for people much smaller, going in circles in the dirt meant for horse-riding. There's a makeshift ramp made from an old piano case wedged into the dirt. Perez is laughing and smiling, never more than when his 3-year-old son, Presley (named after the King, of course), takes a spin. He encourages me to give it a try, but I hang back, just watching the spectacle.

Earlier in the evening, standing on the balcony, I saw the corral and the stables and asked Perez if he rides horses. "I ride motorcycles," he said, and as soon as I heard it I realized that was the only thing he possibly could have said. Six days later at the Suncoast show, Perez has scrapes on his face. He tells the audience that he took a nasty fall riding a friend's motorcycle out in the desert. Later he shows me the wounds up close; they look pretty minor. I ask him if it discourages him from riding, but I know the answer before he gives it: Of course it doesn't. Whatever the setbacks, whatever the spills, whatever the bruises, Franky Perez will always get back up on the bike. He can't stay away; he just enjoys the ride way too much.