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But for a simple twist of fate, Connecticut Americana rocker Chris Berardo could be somewhere in Los Angeles tonight, preparing for the Nov. 17 release of a greatest hits album by his band-that-could-have-been -- Motley Crue.

Instead, he'll be celebrating Halloween Eve with local rockers Mic Harrison and The High Score at The Square Room in downtown Knoxville. It's not as glamorous as a life with the Crue, but it's probably been one that spared him much of the heartache and headache and heroin withdrawals as the four guys in the Crue.

Berardo's brush with fame began in the early 1980s, he told The Daily Times in an interview this week. Having grown up in Connecticut, an hour from New York, he left for college in Miami and, shortly thereafter, headed out to the West Coast.

"I had my Fly boots, a Levi's shirt, $30 and my duffel bag," Berardo said. "I was pretty naive; I got there and thought, 'I'll just go get myself a rock band.' So I answered some ads for a singer."

One of those ads led him to an old, beat-up studio West Hollywood, where a bass player named Nikki Sixx was auditioning potential band members for a new project that would become Motley Crue. Everybody else had the glam-rock look of the day -- big hair, mascara and flashy clothes; Berardo looked around and had second thoughts.

"I would have been scared s---less, except I was so confused," he said with a laugh. "I wasn't intimidated by the 16-foot hair and the makeup; I saw the dude in front of me had showbiz photos -- these nice 8-by-10s. I didn't have anything like that, so basically, I chickened out and left."

But he didn't chicken out of music. It just took him a while to find his niche. After kicking around Los Angeles for a couple of years, he drifted to Washington, D.C., returning to the West Coast in the 1980s where he worked briefly with a songwriter who had helped pen hits for Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. But after a number of so-close-to-fame-he-could-taste-it moments, he threw in the towel.

"I was trying to find the thing that I did well, and eventually I just got so sick of it all," Berardo said. "I was so close, so many times, and it wasn't even the thing I loved the most to do, so I just decided to go home."

Back in Connecticut, he teamed up with his little brother, Marc, who was just learning to play the guitar. The Berardos hit the local bar scene -- mostly just for fun -- and Berardo found that spark for which he had been searching since leaving home almost a decade earlier.

"We would play old songs by The Eagles or Neil Young, and it hit me -- this is the music I grew up on, so why not do exactly what I want to do?" he said. "It started me back on track. I decided that was what I was going to do, and if I was going to fail, I would fail on my own terms."

But he didn't -- fail, that is. Putting together a backing band known as The DesBerardos, he began crafting a sound that rattles the chains of Americana ghosts -- roots-rock in the same vein as Whiskeytown or The Bottle Rockets or Blue Mountain. In fact, Berardo's sweet vocals are eerily reminiscent of those of Blue Mountain singer Cary Hudson's, with a little Roger Clyne -- of The Refreshments and The Peacemakers -- thrown in for good measure.

By the mid-1990s, The DesBerardos sounded like what their frontman always heard in his head -- the sweet, soulful sound of small-town American that was so prevalent on rock 'n' roll radio in the late 1970s. CDs began to perform well -- 2003's "Pure Faith" made it to No. 1 in several markets and peaked at No. 22 on the Freeform American Roots Chart in January 2004; its follow-up, "Ignoring All The Warning Signs," went to No. 49 on the Americana Chart and No. 15 on The Roots Music Report. It also spent two months in the Top 10 on XM Radio's X Country chart and earned the group performance slots with such luminaries as Levon Helm, David Allen Coe, Little Feat, Blue Rodeo, Dickey Betts and more.

But as good as the album sounds, it just can't do justice to a DesBerardos live experience.

"I'm proud of that record, but everybody tells us it's so much better seeing us live," Berardo said. "We're just that kind of thing -- a real band. A bar band, actually. Even when things get a little better for us and we have the occasion to play a lot of theaters with other people, that's still what we are.

"We're just in a bigger barroom, and I don't find anything wrong with it. That's sort of the honest approach for us, and I'm just happy we've found an area we're kind of suited for."