Members of Bluestar Express, from left: Joi Bailey-Saucy, Michael Beckley and Casey Nova.
Submitted photo

Bluestar Express, a Willamina-based rock band that will perform Friday at La Rambla in McMinnville, will not appeal to those who love the acoustic guitar. It will probably not appeal to those who love to dance, be it a smooth waltz or a pounding hip-hop. It will, however, appeal to those who enjoy earnest lyrics, a driving beat and straightforward rock music.

The band has three members: Kevin Nortness, who goes by the stage name Casey Nova; Michael Beckley; and Joi Bailey-Saucy. They write their own lyrics and Nova and Beckley both perform on the guitar. Bailey-Saucy sings, and on several songs the men join her.

The band started as a duo. Beckley and Nova met in 2006 and began playing together in October 2007.

Bailey-Saucy made it a trio when she joined in March 2008. The group is releasing its first CD by the end of July and Nova said they are ready to start touring full-time.

All three are enthusiastic about playing and touring together. “The chemistry is amazing,” Bailey-Saucy says, adding that she loves to perform. “I think I’ve been doing it since I could move.”

Beckley enjoys it as well, but usually tunes out the audience and becomes completely absorbed in his fingers on the guitar strings.

Nova, the only veteran of a touring band, gets the most stage fright. When he toured with his band, “Cool Rays,” in the ’80s, he experienced nightmares of the stage turning to jelly and expects to have them again.

He overcomes the stage fright by connecting with his audience, he said, and focuses on them. “It’s not a phony thing,” he says. “You know people are there, and they could be home watching TV.”

The band members are as different in musical taste as they are in their performances. Beckley said he is inspired by Chicago blues, jazz from the early ’60s, artists such as Charlie Parker and Joni Mitchell, and punk rock.

Nova, on the other hand, cites punk as his primary influence. The Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Clash — he sits up a little straighter and can’t stop once he starts talking about them.

He says he loves punk because “it’s harder, it’s faster, it’s much more raw. It’s not as polished.”

Classic rock, which he performed when he played in a cover band, isn’t his passion although he admits that the Rolling Stones and The Beatles show up in some aspects of his music. The latter are mainly a vague childhood memory.

“I watched The Beatles cartoon show,” he says. “I was more conscious of the Beatles as cartoon characters than a band.”

But while all of the Bluestar Express members say other bands influenced them, they write their own songs. All three musicians write, and they all do it differently.

For Bailey-Saucy, the words often come before the music. Occasionally, she has dreamed new songs and woken in the middle of the night to write them down.

Nova says the music generally comes first for him, but Beckley says that for him, “The music and the words were coming out and it’s like, ‘Write that down dude; you’re going to lose it.’”

Although they take different routes, the band members try to arrive in the same place with their songs. “You’re connecting to the human experience,” Bailey-Saucy says.

Nova adds, “Who knows how many people are going to relate? But that’s the point.”