An unspoken rule of music journalism is that you never ask how a band got its name. It's just assumed that band monikers are meant to be catchy and nonsensical, fraught with unfathomably private symbolism, or so obvious that only an idiot would inquire about their provenance. Besides, nobody really cares whether a band is called Donna the Buffalo or Army of Prawns: all that really matters is the music.

That's the party line, anyway. But sometimes it's necessary to break from tradition--as when it came time to interview Dennis Gonzalez, whose trio opens Rime, a new Commercial Drive eatery and music venue, on Sunday and Monday (December 26 and 27). (Guests include French horn virtuoso Mark Taylor both nights, plus pianist Paul Plimley on Sunday and cellist Peggy Lee on Monday.) The trumpeter's band includes his sons Aaron and Stefan on bass and drums, respectively, and it's called Yells at Eels, which naturally invites a certain degree of speculation.

Is Gonzalez a devotee of the ancient art of sniggling? Are the Eels his kids? Is he a marine biologist manqué?

But when the veteran musician calls from his home in Dallas, Texas, his explanation is short and sweet: he simply sings a couple of lines from R&B producer Jerry Ragovoy's classic ballad, "Time Is on My Side".

"Ti-i-i-ime is on my side," he wails, in a passable imitation of Mick Jagger. "Yells at eels..."

"It's actually based on ebonics," he adds. "That's how an African-American would say 'Yes it is,' and because I played with a lot of black bands in the '80s and the early '90s, sometimes I find myself using a lot of these phrases. Like, in Mississippi they would say 'Ain't nothin' but a thang.' And you might ask 'Well, what does that mean?' but you'd just have to feel it. I couldn't give you a definition for it. And it's the same thing with 'yells at eels'. It's like a shout of joy, you know."

I've been walking around the house singing "Time is on my side/yells at eels" ever since. I've also been listening to a lot of Gonzalez's music, and it's clear that although the Mexican-American multi-instrumentalist is a relative unknown, he's a major talent. His Web site [www.dennisgonzalez.com/] lists a couple of dozen CDs issued under his own name and in collaboration with a diverse cast of international artists, and the four I've heard have been consistently remarkable. Gonzalez manages to write challenging, creative music that is also infused with an immense amount of warmth and joy--qualities he attributes to his early upbringing in the Southern Baptist church.

"Even though the services were in Spanish, we sang all these old hymns that came from Negro spirituals and from field hollers and things like that," he explains. "They had a deep sadness in them, but on top of everything there was also a sense of resolve--like 'Okay, we're here and we may have difficult times, but we're continually blessed and there's always something look forward to.'"

Gonzales is as deeply rooted in the jazz tradition as he is in the Baptist church. His various recordings contain hymns of praise to such icons as Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, and Julius Hemphill, in which he mixes gospel phraseology with passages derived from the musicians he eulogizes.

"There's an old Southern Baptist hymn that was originally called 'Holy Manna'," he says. "The idea being that if you have faith, you'll never be left destitute. Its melody sounds almost like a Chinese folk tune--it's pentatonic, it has five notes--and it's very, very adaptable to all these different feelings that I'm putting together. So I have what I call the hymn cycle: I've written between 25 and 30 of these, and they use the same melody but with different rhythmic or ethnic input. Different feelings, I guess, that somehow to me describe these heroes of mine."

At the moment, though, Gonzalez's main heroes are his Yells at Eels bandmates, who also perform in the thrash duo Akkolyte. "I was like 'Dear lord, don't let 'em be musicians; it's too hard a life,'" he says of the obviously gifted Aaron and Stefan. "But when you're around all these really fabulous musicians and you think of them as like your older brothers or something, it's catching.

"I had kind of gotten out of the jazz scene in the early '90s," he continues, "and when I came out of that little funk they were playing in a hardcore duo. It was difficult listening for a man my age, but I just let them do it--and then one day they said, 'You know, some of the stuff we play really reminds us of the stuff you did. Why don't we form a trio?'"

He laughs, clearly happy with the way things have turned out. "They're quite a gift." And as post-Christmas presents go, Yells at Eels' Vancouver debut is also sure to be a treat.