A different drummer

SOMERVILLE -- It's 10 minutes until show time on a chilly Thursday night in Davis Square. An anxious energy permeates the air backstage, amplified by the low murmur of the waiting audience. In the subterranean dressing room of Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater, Woody Giessmann looks into the mirror one last time before going onstage.

This is no ordinary gig. Seemingly free of typical preshow jitters, Giessmann (pronounced ghees-man) contentedly chews a piece of gum. The show, featuring comedian Jimmy Tingle and local band the Swinging Steaks, is the first of a series of events benefiting Right Turn, a nonprofit organization that helps local artists and entertainers who are fighting substance abuse. Not only is Giessmann emceeing the event, he's the CEO and founder of the Arlington-based organization.

Giessmann's story is a rock 'n' roll metamorphosis.

More than two decades after he quit the famed Boston roots-rock band the Del Fuegos and stopped performing professionally, he is in a role that draws from his experiences in the entertainment world.

''Writing music and being an artist is a creative process," says Giessmann, 47, who was the band's drummer. ''So is getting sober for some people. I'm a transformer."

As a member of the Del Fuegos in the '80s, Giessmann lived through the hardships of touring and surviving in the world of professional music, and the substance abuse that led to his departure from the industry. Nearly 30 years after entering the music business, Giessmann is now a certified alcohol and drug abuse counselor and a member of the state Bureau of Substance Abuse's Client Advisory Board.

''I became the guy to go to in the music community if you had a drug or alcohol problem," he says. ''It's nonstop. I'm on call at all times."

Brent ''Woody" Giessmann grew up in Wichita, Kan. He first came to Boston in 1981, as the drummer for an alt-rock band called the Embarrassment, which happened to be on the same bill as the Del Fuegos at a concert at Boston University. Two years later, a fight with his girlfriend and the breakup of the Embarrassment prompted the drummer to move to Boston. With $300 in his pocket, Giessmann left Kansas on a train at midnight. Once he arrived, he slept at friends' houses and got a job selling shoes at Florsheim downtown, though he had his mind set on making music. By chance, a few weeks after his arrival, Giessmann bumped into Lilli Dennison, a rock manager and promoter who had attended the BU performance. Remembering the enthusiastic Midwesterner, Dennison decided to take him out for an introduction to Boston's music scene.

''She said, 'Weren't you that drummer from Kansas?' and invited me to a show -- the Lyres -- and soon after that she hooked me up with the Del Fuegos," Giessmann recalls.

The epitome of a hard-working band, the Del Fuegos formed in 1981 and worked their way up the local scene's pecking order by playing the club circuit -- venues such as the Rat, Storyville, Inn Square Men's Bar, and almost anywhere else that would hire them. Despite more than a few ''off" nights, the group gained a good reputation from both fans and critics with its unconstrained, raucous blend of roots- and blues-rock.

After the band recorded an independent release on a local label, the first drummer, Steve Morrell, left. With an introduction from Dennison, Giessmann joined in early 1983, and shortly thereafter the band signed with Slash Records. Its first major album, ''The Longest Day," received a four-star review in Rolling Stone.

The group was propelled into the spotlight. ''We literally went from playing the Rat for 250 friends to opening for ZZ Top at Nassau Coliseum in front of 18,000 people," Giessmann says. When the band began playing for larger crowds, he says he was ''petrified, but I worked it out."

He found a way to cope.

''I'd say alcohol probably saved my life at that point, because it gave me the courage to go out and do what I had to do."

Drinking helped the stage fright, but as the band's popularity swelled -- touring with Tom Petty, appearing in a Miller commercial during the first Live Aid -- the demands of stardom began to wear the band down.

''I think that the lifestyle might have gotten to be more important than the music making," says Dan Zanes, the lead singer and guitarist, who now makes children's music. ''I moved to New York, Woody moved to LA, and we weren't hanging out a lot like we used to and we had gotten more popular. I didn't have much sense of how to keep a band together."

Friction while recording the group's third effort in 1986, ''Stand Up," led Giessmann to leave the Del Fuegos. He was followed soon after by Dan's brother Warren, also a guitarist. Dan Zanes and bassist Tom Lloyd soldiered on, recording a fourth album, ''Smoking in the Fields," but the sound of the band changed drastically, and the group broke up in 1990.

For all four of them, withdrawing from the limelight was devastating.

''We chose to submerge ourselves in drugs and alcohol," Warren Zanes explains. ''It's a pretty common story. From that point on what happened is certainly unique. There's a lot of luck in our lives. Four guys went on to have a second chance."

Giessmann moved back to Boston in 1990, cleaned up, (he doesn't like to elaborate on it), and decided to continue his education.

''It was a great experience but a hard way to make a living . . . so I went back to school and studied addiction at UMass-Boston, working at a halfway house with people who had severe problems," he says.

After graduation, Giessmann got married, had two sons, and worked in hospitals specializing in helping patients suffering from trauma, depression, and other psychological issues paired with a substance abuse problem.

He worked at Massachusetts General Hospital with Dr. Anne Alonso, who urged him to use his background and apply his newly acquired skills beyond traditional hospital care.

''I worked with Dr. Alonso, one of the most celebrated therapists at MGH, and she said, 'You know, let's get organized, let's get this thing going.' . . . We opened our doors and said let's just see what happens, give it a year."

Alonso, a clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who runs the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies at Mass. General, met Giessmann through her daughter, Marjorie, a musician whose self-released 2000 album featured Giessmann. ''I went to the first meeting for Right Turn, and I found it very exciting," Alonso said. ''I think he is incredibly creative and dedicated, very compassionate . . . and he knows how to put together the impossible. He has persuasively argued that the traditional models [of therapy] do not attract artists."

Since 2003, Right Turn has treated 109 members of Greater Boston's arts and entertainment community who needed help with substance abuse, quitting smoking, and anger issues.

''It's crucial that they feel like they are being supported," Giessmann says. ''If I have to go into someone's house and pour out their alcohol, throw out their pipes, I will. . . . They have a special set of needs. People become very delusional when they abuse substances for a long time. They think they can no longer be creative without them."

When not on call to offer guidance and support personally (his cellphone is the emergency number), Giessmann lends his expertise to the airwaves on his new show, ''Recovery Road," on WRKO-AM (680).

''It's kind of funny, because all my experience as an entertainer and all my experience as an addiction counselor is coming together," he says. ''The radio show will just be an extension of what I do."

Giessmann says many members of his staff were artists or performers who eventually became certified as counselors, often working pro bono because most clients are uninsured and the only advertising is done by word of mouth.

To raise money to pay his staff and expand the organization, Giessmann initiated a series of events at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway and at Steve Sweeney's Comedy Café in Copley Square, pairing a local comedian and band on the bills. For the show Thursday at Jimmy Tingle's, local comic Tony V. is booked to co-headline with Rock E. Rollins and the Superstars; Rollins is also known as Sal Baglio of the Stompers.

Giessmann says he's found his calling. ''When I was in school," he says, ''a clinical supervisor said, 'You can't take a horse to the water to make them drink.' My job is to make them thirsty. I can't take any credit for stopping drug and alcohol abuse -- they have to do that themselves -- but I'm pretty damn good at what I do."