Rock band Tesla powering on, showing they still resonate with their fans

Tesla frontman Jeff Keith is an excitable guy, and for a substantial portion of our phone interview last week, he was busy being excitable about …

Def Leppard, naturally. And guitarist Phil Collen, specifically, who he noted, "really took us under his wing" in recent years.

Oh yeah, how so?

"He helped us with kinda stepping up our [onstage] dress attire," Keith said earnestly.

Wait — so a guy known for never, ever, EVER wearing a shirt is giving you fashion tips?

And you're taking them?!

Keith knows the idea of it may sound silly, but he doesn't really care. More than three decades after the Sacramento-based band first burst onto the rock scene, Tesla is still out there making music and performing, including a headlining show Friday night at the Peppermill Concert Hall in Wendover, Nev. And anything that can possibly, potentially extend the band's longevity, well, he's willing to give it a shot.

"I'm just the guy they hand the mic to, and who's still working 31 years later," Keith said. "They're still handing me the mic, which I'm very grateful for."

The quintet's debut album, "Mechanical Resonance" came out in 1986, and the single "Modern Day Cowboy" vaulted them into the national consciousness. Follow-up hits in the ensuing years — especially the power ballad "Love Song" from 1989's "The Great Radio Controversy," and an acoustic cover of Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs" on 1990's "Five Man Acoustical Jam" — solidified their standing.

Until that whole grunge thing, anyway.

After going on hiatus for a few years, Tesla reconfigured in 2000 and have been carrying on ever since. Four of the five original band members remain, in Keith, guitarist Frank Hannon, bassist Brian Wheat and drummer Troy Luccketta. Guitarist Dave Rude replaced the fifth original, Tommy Skeoch, in 2006.

All the while, to be fair and give some context to Keith's apparent Def Lep infatuation, there has been a strong undercurrent of the Brits' influence on Tesla throughout the years, one that continues to this day.

Def Leppard took Tesla out on one of their first major tours. And the past few summers, Tesla has been part of a bill with them, opening for Def Leppard and Styx a couple years ago, then Def Leppard and REO Speedwagon, and Def Leppard and Poison this past June.

When Tesla issued "Mechanical Resonance Live!" last year, the 30th-anniversary tribute to their debut album was populated almost entirely by recently recorded live versions of those original songs. ("EZ Come EZ Go" begins with Keith yelling out, "Well hello, Salt Lake City!") Almost. There's also an original song, "Save That Goodness," which was written and produced by … Phil Collen.

"Well, you know, Def Leppard — they've always been like our big brothers. Always. … We toured, like, 14 months with 'em on the 'Hysteria' tour," Keith said. "… Phil just really took us under his wing. He's just passionate about the band. When we were first on tour with 'em [in recent years], he was like, 'My god, the people seem to really, really still be there for Tesla. They really enjoy the band, they're really there.' And he started taking a look at us and he said, 'Hey, what's missing?' And the next thing you know, he's helping us step things up."

The next step of that entails Collen serving as producer for Tesla's next studio album. Originally due out this spring, the album has been delayed a bit, potentially pushed back to early 2018, though Keith couldn't say for sure, light-heartedly noting he frequently misses out on all the big-picture discussions after being booted from the control room for talking too much and disrupting the workflow.

Regardless, he did reveal the majority of the album is "in the can," and gave rave reviews to Collen for pushing the band out of its comfort zone — specifically, getting them out of the habit of working exclusively on one song until its completion before even touching another.

The new approach made the studio an interesting place to be, he said.

"With Phil, we'd come in on a given day, work on maybe the bridge on a particular song, work on the chorus on this song, and then work on a verse — all in one day, all on different songs," Keith explained. "That was really fun and exciting, 'cause you could put the ideas down, take 'em home, chew on 'em for a couple days. … It was really fun doing it in that way, and it's the first time we've ever really done it like that."

After spending the past few months playing the short, paint-by-numbers sets that are a fact of life for the openers of the openers of the headliners, Tesla plan to have some more fun stretching out a bit on their own headlining tour now.

"We get to play more songs that we miss playing when we do these big shows. Obviously, we're grateful to be doing 'em and to be playing in front of big crowds, but you've only got so much time, you can only play — not even quite — all the staple songs," Keith said. "With an hour and a half, you get to play all the hits — I guess you'd call it — for Tesla, and we get to play some of the people's favorites, and we get to also, what we call, pull a rabbit our of a hat sometimes. … So it's always fun. We break out the bar stools and do a little acoustic set for the people, and they enjoy it, we enjoy it, everybody's happy."

As for whether everybody's enjoying and happy with their new Collen-approved couture, well … no vouching for that.

ewalden@sltrib.com

Twitter: @esotericwalden

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Tesla

When • Friday, 9 p.m. MT

Where • Peppermill Concert Hall, 680 Wendover Blvd., Wendover, Nev.

Tickets • $25-$60; wendoverfun.com/shows