Dennis Quaid returns to Memphis — but this time, he's bringing a band

Dennis Quaid, Memphis and rock 'n' roll have a relationship that now goes back 30 years.

Even as the annual Gonerfest celebration of punk rock brings to a dark club a band named Surfbort whose signature song is "Hippie Vomit Inhaler," Quaid and his longtime combo, the Sharks, will take the stage of the Halloran Centre with a more traditional if no less enthusiastic brand of rock that includes "three of the four in the Million Dollar Quartet," Quaid said, in a phone interview from his Los Angeles area home. "We do Jerry Lee and Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins songs."

An infrequent visitor to the so-called birthplace of rock 'n' roll since he was encamped here in 1988 while shooting the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic "Great Balls of Fire!" — at that time the most highly publicized movie ever made in Memphis — Quaid returns fronting a four-man band that makes music that he says is "high-powered and meant to get people up and moving. You got a lot of actors with bands out there, but this time you're going to come to see the actor or movie star, but I bet you'll stay for the music. 

"Memphis is a place that can appreciate more what we do because the music came out of Memphis," Quaid continued. "We have a kind of junkyard of America music because it's all in there together."

A would-be music star before he became a bona fide movie star, Quaid, 64, was born in Houston, Texas, which at the time, he said, was "something between a cow town and a big city."

His grandmother played piano, his third cousin was Gene Autry, and his dad was a music fan whose record collection included Hank Williams, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, so Quaid was attracted to music as a possible vocation. That changed when he took his first acting class at the University of Houston with the late theater professor Cecil Pickett, whom Quaid still cites as a key mentor and influence. 

"I knew within the first week in his class that that's what I wanted to do with my life," said Quaid. "I've always been interested in human nature, and that's what he made his class, it was a study in human nature." 

Quaid soon learned that his shark-like heartbreaker's grin was made to order for the movie camera, but the music wouldn't leave him alone.

In 1981, Quaid was acting in "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," a movie inspired by Vicki Lawrence's No. 1 hit single from 1972, when a famous stranger showed up at his motel. Remembered Quaid: "We were in Chattanooga and Jack just showed up at my door and said, 'How'd you like to be a country-and-western star?'"

Jack, in this case, was the late "Cowboy" Jack Clement, the legendary Sun Records and Nashville engineer, producer and songwriter. In the film, Quaid was cast as "a small-town stud who wants to go to Nashville and be a big country star" (to quote the Internet Movie Database synopsis), so Clement "moved into the room next to me, and we just sat up playing every song there was." 

In 1988, Quaid moved to Memphis for the filming of "Great Balls of Fire!," a Jerry Lee Lewis biopic that largely focused on the Killer's relationship with his child bride and cousin, Myra (Winona Ryder). Eschewing grit for a "Bye Bye Birdie"-esque candy-colored pop cartoonishness that was more Wesselmann than "Walk the Line" (to cite a future Sun-connected biopic that critics embraced), the movie made at least one person happy, at least in retrospect: Dennis Quaid. 

"That movie, over the years, I've really come to love it, to tell the truth," Quaid said. "Jim (McBride) and I kind of butted heads on it, and they sold it as a summer movie, almost a summer family movie... But you had a relationship with a 21-year-old guy and a 12-year-old girl, so I can't see moms dropping their kids off to see that story."

Even so, "I have really fond memories. First of all, just to be there at Sun Studios, where it all happened. I was lucky enough that Sam Phillips was still with us then, and he would pull out the contract where he sold Elvis (to RCA) for $50,000 or whatever it was.  

"Jerry Lee, it seemed to me he was there on the set, every day. He was so gracious to me, he taught me a lot of piano." However, "His main thing was, he didn't want me to sing the songs, he didn't want me to be the singer, and I guess rightfully so — I'm more a baritone." (In fact, Quaid lip-syncs new Lewis recordings produced by T Bone Burnett in the film.)

Of course, the Lewis biopic could have been very different. "Terry Malick actually wrote a script about Jerry Lee that had darker side to it," said Quaid, referring to the acclaimed Terrence Malick, director of "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven."

Another of Quaid's mentors was the late Memphis boogie-woogie blues piano player Booker T. Laury, who died in 1995 at 81. "I still listen to the tracks that I have of just me and him together," Quaid said. "I used to tape-record his lessons to me. He was missing a finger and he still had the best left hand I ever heard."

Quaid said he and Laury became "like family, almost. He came out here and stayed with me about four months. He really taught me a lot about piano and how it's a percussion instrument. It's about feel."

Keeping things Memphicentric, in 2011, Quaid appeared as a music-mistrusting minister in the "Footloose" remake directed by Memphis' Craig Brewer (but shot in Georgia). A good experience, sure, but Quaid cites "The Right Stuff," in which he played astronaut Gordon Cooper, as perhaps the favorite of his films.

Soon, he'll have an album, too: After close to two decades together, Quaid said he and the Sharks are about to release their debut LP via Omnivore, a boutique label that specializes in reissues. The band consists of Quaid on vocals, guitar and piano,  accompanied by Jamie James (guitar), Tom Slick (bass), Ken Stange (keyboards) and Tom Walsh (drums). James — formerly of The Kingbees — said the band name, the Sharks, was suggested in 2000 by Quaid's young son, a fan of "Shark Week" at the time. So, no, for better or worse, the band name is not related to what may be Quaid's most infamous movie, the 1983 sequel, "Jaws 3-D."

Dennis Quaid and the Sharks

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29

Where: The Halloran Centre at the Orpheum, 225 S. Main

Tickets: $45

More information: orpheum-memphis.com