The name Tony Bataska is hardly a new one ‘round these parts. Chances are, you may have caught him playing a solo acoustic gig while you were lifting a Boddingtons over at the Fox & Goose, or a Guinness at the Boxing Donkey up in Roseville.

Or, for the Davis crowd, there’s almost no way you haven’t seen him at the G Street Pub (is an aluminum bottle of B-minus still the drink of choice over there?).

It’s hard to miss him. First of all, standing at 6’5”, it’s fair to say he stands out.

But it’s that natural, honest, pied piper quality in his voice that makes it hard not to look up from your adult beverage and the Facebook app on your phone while he plays.

And it’s also the fact that he seems to do it completely effortlessly, without even trying. He’s like that guy at the poker table that seems to get dealt a haymaker of a hand every time out of the gate – the kind you want to throw the hell out of your house because it just comes that easy to him, even though he'll leave with your cash in his pocket.

But this time around, Tony Bataska is taking a full length album and a full band out for a spin to see what it can do – perhaps to see if he is indeed more than just a “Saturday Boy.”

“I know a number of people in the Sac area are starting to get to know me, and I’ve found a niche I could easily do until I’m 50,” Bataska said, “but I’m hoping this album allows me and my band to kinda grow and just make a little bit more of a name for ourselves.

“Just in seeing how the album has turned out, I’m very proud of it.”

“This Time Around,” a labor of love several years in the making to follow up his previous eight-song acoustic offering, was released in late September, and Tony Bataska will play his first local show since the release at Marilyn’s on K on Wednesday, October 27.

Tony Bataska, performing solo, will share the bill with quirky Los Angeles electroacoutic duo yOya, as well as Greenhorse and Monkey Flower. Marilyn’s on K is at 908 K St., and cover is $5. The music is slated to start at 9 p.m., with Bataska performing first, so be prompt.

Also on the calendar is “An Evening with Tony Bataska” at the Fox & Goose (10th and R St.) at 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 4. Admission to that gig is free, and you can expect to see a few dashes of Tony’s fun-loving side in the form of a few cheeky covers.

The next order of business for Tony Bataska will be some full-band shows, so that audiences can get a taste of the sound on “This Time Around” that drummer Bart van der Zeeuw and the rest of the album’s supporting cast helped him find.

“When I met (Bart), we just expanded the scope of things,” Bataska said. “I was still the songwriter, but he really helped to give it a bigger scope.

“As I did a lot of the recording, he helped expand my mind to realize how important things like harmonies are. After awhile, my brain started opening up to more possibilities than I had maybe been limiting myself to – I’m really pleased that pretty much every song has that.”

Van der Zeeuw, who Bataska met through his days at UC Davis, was formerly the drummer for alt rock upstarts K’s Choice, and has played some gigs as a duo with Bataska at the G Street Pub. Along with bassist Dusty Miller (of Honeyspot fame) and sound engineer Karl Metts, he helped Bataska to slip his catalog of one-man tunes into a jumpsuit of pop-tinged rock and roll with “This Time Around.”

“These songs I think are much bigger than what I had envisioned before,” Bataska said, having been guided toward straight ahead rockers like “As You Wish” and the album’s title track, which steam with nods to groups like Oasis, the Beatles, Crowded House and even light whispers of Muse (such as the piano riff on “50 Stories”).

Even some nods to local artists like 2Me or Jackie Greene are noticeable in his eclectic pop tapestry.

But the true gems on this record are those where Bataska’s emotional side stands as tall as his six and a half foot frame. “Saturday Boy” is a tender outcry that starts out being about a girl who gradually gave him the cold shoulder (a song that no doubt needs to now be handled with care, given that he’s married – and not to the same girl) and ends up an ode to the scores of singers out there who, like himself, are just trying to make a name.

The album’s largest floodgate gush of teeth-bearing wanderlust emotionalism comes from “So Far Away,” an epic rock-laced ballad that will make you go right for the repeat button on the stereo – if for no other reason than you’ll just want to reach for something when you hear it. It’s the kind of genuine and catchy tune that virtually any alt rock act would release as their second single after dishing up a straight-up guitar rock jam.

The spit-shined and delightfully hook-laden “This Time Around” is a tantalizing preview of what this accomplished songwriter and solo performer is going to be able to do as the front man of a rock outfit.

“It’s been interesting over the years, to see that there’s a lot of musicians out there that really are ‘in a band’ and don’t play the solo shows, whereas I’m really comfortable with the solo gigs,” he said.

“Now, going the band direction, it’s almost a really easy transition, I know all my spots so well that it’s easy for me to help translate them to the other guys.”

As his song goes, “so close, yet so far away.”

It looks like he may not be that far away anymore.

Fox & Goose photo above by Christine Patel