Pool of rock

NORTH WILDWOOD - His audience stretches out in front of him: six people at the bar. A dozen or two in the pool. Nine people lined up across the street at the hot-dog cart. A few folks unloading their cars in the parking lot. A handful out on the balconies, hanging towels.

And, depending on the direction of the wind and the stage of the tide, sometimes even the people sunbathing on the Third Avenue beach can hear the strumming.

Yup, Johnny Cash and George Thorogood covers from a one-man band, poolside in the afternoon at the Acropolis Motel in North Wildwood, the toasted and tattooed crowd bopping their noodles in the shallow end.

Really, does the Jersey Shore get any sweeter than this?

Not in North Wildwood anyway, where for three decades, itinerant bluesy-guitar classic Lynyrd Skynyrd-y Southern rock musician John Gunther, 54, also known as Billy Jack, carrying a lifetime of small heartaches and near misses in a weathered face and worn leopard guitar strap, has played the same songs for many of the same people. His latest gig runs Tuesday and Sunday afternoons from this happy little poolside bar on JFK Boulevard across from the beach.

The only new song he's added recently is the "Free Credit Report Dot Com" jingle.

"There's no new band," says Gunther. "There's no band."

He had a band once upon a time, but it was simpler just doing it himself, with his acoustic guitar electrified, a little black drum box propped on a bar stool, a wireless mike around his neck, the better to lead spontaneous conga lines around the pool.

("The trick is to involve people," he says. Tuesday's 16-person-deep conga line was highlighted by retired machinist Jim Willis, 81, and his granddaughter Katie, 18.)

Gunther's no mike hog. He gladly cedes the vocals to his friend Gus Hauser, a Philadelphia firefighter (Engine 33, Bridesburg), to sing "Born to Be Wild" not once but twice during the 2-to-6-p.m. set.

Like any musician who has put in his time, he's got regulars who dutifully show up a few minutes before he starts and stay until the end.

There's Hauser, who explains his relationship to Gunther in what sounds like an accusation - "He's dating my sister." But he is. "At least as of yesterday," says Hauser.

There's Capt. Ron Jeminey, who retired from Philly to North Wildwood in June after a career as a roofer (Local 30) and is dating Marie Schwakoff, 47, a waitress at the Shamrock who has known Gunther for 20 years.

Jeminey, 54, arrives with his own tambourine, and a black muscle shirt that says "Billy Jack Rocks" in pink glittery letters on the back, which he had made on the boardwalk because he got tired of waiting for Gunther (whose own remaining Billy Jack shirt looks like it's been slept in for a few nights straight) to come up with the new ones. "To wait for him to make it, the summer would be gone," says Jeminey, as he straightens up the tables and chairs before Gunther begins.

Those chairs will fill up as the afternoon yields into a more traditional happy hour, with a crowd more and more willing to accept a bongo or a maraca from Gunther, who in turn will accept a daiquiri or two from bartender Allen Higgins, who on Sunday will join Gunther for an Elvis show that will attempt to recoup the losses from the Make-a-Wish Foundation jar that was stolen last week. That's life at the Konides-family-owned Acropolis, where rooms rent for $190 a night.

He fills out his summer routine with gigs at Bloody Mary's on Friday and Saturday afternoons and the Shamrock on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. "He could play seven days a week, but he needs a couple days to recuperate," says Jeminey, with the enthusiasm of a new convert to the Billy Jack lifestyle. "He's that popular."

It's an easy crowd to win over, if you don't count the ones who doze off at the pool or dive underwater. Gunther notes that unlike some performers, he doesn't use computer tracks for various guitar parts: He plays bass, rhythm, and lead lines all himself, and quite capably, on his acoustic guitar. As Gunther tells the crowd: "Living large here in North Wildwood."

Some Tuesdays, the doo-wop trio the Fun Seekers are poolside at the nearby North Wind Motel at the same time as Billy Jack, and a walk up Fourth Street gives you both gigs intermingling with the fruit guy's bell.

For the post-beach audience cooling off at the pool, Gunther's sounds - Jimmy Buffett, the Animals, Steppenwolf, John Cougar Mellencamp, even a decent attempt at all the verses in "American Pie" - are a trip back to a time when the forest scenes and dog heads and heart tattoos were not so faded by the sun.

"We're on vacation, man, you putting me to work?" says the gray-shoulder-length-haired Jim Noonan of Saddle Brook, N.J., declining Gunther's attempt to put tambourine in his hands. He's only kidding, and, once the car is unloaded, happily takes a seat and allows Gunther to put the bongo in his lap. He doesn't move for two hours.

Across JFK Boulevard is Cliff, a retired beach-patrol lieutenant turned hot-dog guy, who sells out of dogs by 4 p.m. He allows that the hot-dog business may be more lucrative than the one-man-poolside-band business, but that Gunther, whom he's known since 1977 at the Barefoot Bar on Diamond Beach where Billy Jack had his first beach gig, "is much more lucrative in the chick department."

"He's still doing the same act," says Cliff, who doesn't wish to share his last name (Gunther, in the throes of performance, can't come up with it when asked). "He doesn't have any new songs."

It's kind of sweet, though, Gunther shouting over on the mike to Cliff across the street at various times during his show, two veterans of the North Wildwood beach and bar scene anchoring this one block between Third and Fourth Streets. In a way, yes, they do own the joint.

"We'll take a little break," Gunther is saying.

"You just took a break!" the hot-dog guy calls back.

Sure enough, Gunther plays two more songs - "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and another go at "Born to Be Wild" - before stopping. During an earlier break, he was prompted to tell the story about how a friend had arranged for him to play with George Thorogood at the House of Blues in Atlantic City, but he was on a cruise in the Bahamas and missed the call.

There is some debate on the moral of this story - the cruise was with Hauser's sister, with whom, last anyone checked, Gunther was still involved. The point goes unresolved. There will be plenty of time to think it through in the off-season, when Gunther hits the road and heads to Florida for gigs, and to Ohio, where two sons and an ex-wife still live.

And as the last beach stragglers head up from the sand, and the balance shifts so that more people are at the bar listening to Gunther than on the beach itself, the inevitable Neil Diamond cover shows up in the Billy Jack poolside rotation.

"Sweet Caroline," he sings, after getting the bar crowd to hold hands ("Touching hands"). "Good times never seemed so good."

"So GOOD! So GOOD! So GOOD!" his crowd shouts back.

"I've been inclined . . . "

"OH! OH! OH!"

" . . . to believe they never would."