Outside the rain is making a half-hearted effort to cleanse the grimy Mission Street sidewalks, while inside the cozy Make-Out Room, the artsy San Francisco nightclub is thick with musicians.

I'm here to talk with Smith Dobson V about the debut album he's getting ready to release, "Basement Bloodlines" (Evander), a consistently enthralling quartet session that's going to establish him as an essential new voice in jazz. The drummer, vibraphonist and scion of one of the region's most illustrious jazz families is eager to discuss his life in music, but whenever he begins to talk about himself, Dobson seems to get sidetracked by his plaudits for his fellow players.

Before his quartet takes the stage for the late set, he offers lavish praise for the bassist leading the protean opening trio, his old Santa Cruz comrade Robert Overbury, and a detailed account of the improvisational prowess and creative generosity of his own band, which features drummer Vijay Anderson, guitarist John Finkbeiner, pianist Dahveed Behroozi and bassist Devin Hoff.

"Vijay and I have such a powerful connection, we really lock in with each other," says Dobson, 30. "Devin is an incredible human being and musician. He's been so supportive of my music. And John isn't just a great guitarist, he recorded and engineered the whole album at his New Improved Recording Studio. So this isn't the Smith Dobson show with guests. This is a band and it's extremely important to find our own sound." 

While Dobson supports himself as a drummer accompanying a wide array of musicians, he concentrates on the vibes in his quartet. He's already given the group a strong identity with a body of original tunes that are unusually inviting, with bold, clear, often incantatory themes. While "Basement Bloodlines" moves from chamber jazz minimalism and loping cowboy swing to aggressive, rock-edged soundscapes and gentle songlike character studies, the quartet maintains a cohesive identity.

Dobson wrote most of the music in the year after his father, the beloved pianist and educator Smith Dobson IV, died in a car crash coming home from a gig in April 2001. Seeking to collect himself in the difficult aftermath, he moved in with his mother, the accomplished jazz singer and educator Gail Dobson, and ended up spending his evenings in the basement of her San Jose home.

"My dad's piano was down there, and every single night I'd go down and write," Dobson says. "I kept a musical journal and I filled it. I started really writing down my thoughts and feelings, writing almost every day."

A third generation jazz musician, Dobson credits his parents with providing his initial musical inspiration. He and his younger sister, vocalist Sasha Dobson, were barely in grade school when they became gigging musicians with the family band, performing widely in classrooms in Santa Cruz area and South Bay school districts.

"Bassist Stan Poplin did a lot of those gigs," Dobson says. "He was the fifth Dobson. That was my first gigging experience. There's a video of the first Dobson Family Band performance. It was just before I got into jazz. My dad sings 'Circles' by Billy Preston and 'La Bamba.' My mom sang a bossa nova, which I could pull off. Sasha is six. She's tiny, wearing a dress and she gets up and sings 'You Are My Sunshine,' and completely steals the crowd. As we got older we did straight ahead jazz numbers. My mom would pass around percussion instruments and try to get the kids involved. We were a family, and we'd have arguments on stage. The classic line was, 'Well, it's not the Partridge Family'."

His sister ended up moving to New York at 17, to pursue her jazz singing ambition. Her father's vast network of friends and former students helped get her established, and before long she gravitated to the scene at Small's, the West Village jazz spot that served as an incubator for many of brightest young players who emerged in the 90s. Sasha's already formidable reputation as a rising jazz talent was greatly enhanced by the fall 2004 release of "The Darkling Thrush" (Small's Records), the first album by a vocalist on the label created to showcase artists associated with the club. An emotionally taut session of standards with the Chris Byars Octet, the CD is dedicated to her father.

More recently, she's emerged as a singer/songwriter with last year's "Modern Romance" (Secret Sun), a comely, bossa nova-tinged collection of spare but sinuous songs, most of which were written by some combination of Dobson and guitarists Richard Julian and Jesse Harris, who gained fame for contributing five pieces to Norah Jones' hugely popular 2002 album "Come Away With Me," including the Grammy-winning hit "Don't Know Why."

Rather than leaving home, her older brother honed his craft in Santa Cruz. By the time he was in junior high, Dobson was a regular busker on the Pacific Garden Mall in a duo with trombonist Scott Larson.

"Scott and I played on the street every day," he recalls. "We played around Pacific Avenue, where a store had gone out business, and the cops would lets us play there. We were heavy into a trombone and drums duo. Robert Overbury met us on the street and became a trio called Guts, completely experimental. Later, he had an alto player who looked up to John Zorn."

Like many young musicians, Dobson was something of a social misfit. When most of his peers were just starting to figure out their musical tastes, he was holding down the drum chair at a jam session led by the inventive pianist Graham Connah. He escaped from high school by getting a GED, and continued his studies with the highly regarded educator Ray Brown at Cabrillo College. The prodigiously talented drummer Jeff Ballard, a student of Brown's who went on to tour and record with Chick Corea, became Dobson's first important trap set mentor.

"My father was incredible for trying out a bunch of teachers for me," Dobson says. "I was a little guy, kind of timid and scared. Some teachers are gruff, and a lot of jazz educators don't like kids. There were some teachers who frankly scared me. He tried Jeff, who was 19 at the time and going to Cabrillo College. I was nine, and I loved him. He was very strict, didn't mess around. He could tell if I hadn't practiced. I've always considered him my main teacher. He always found something in me. He's just as a good a teacher as a drummer, and he's a great drummer."

Later, he studied with veteran drummer Eddie Marshall, another strong influence. But when it comes to writing, it was his father who always had his back.

"He was such a monstrous player, but he wanted to become a better composer," Dobson says. "He'd take wedding gigs to put food on the table, and he'd have to learn pop songs. It made an impression on me. I was listening to jazz, but checking out the songwriting thing, and I'd sit at my dad's piano and come up with pop songs. He was incredibly encouraging. He said, 'Son, you have a gift for writing. You've got to keep it going. Don't ever stop doing it.' That really stuck with me."

Dobson also credits his father with turning him onto the vibraphone. Always interested in playing a melodic instrument (he began studying his first love, the alto sax, about seven years ago), he initially hated the vibes. But when his dad brought a set home, Dobson slowly started to explore it.

"I heard melody and I had written some stuff, and I saw that it wasn't going to work out on the sax," Dobson says. "Little by little I started messing around on the vibes. I didn't like playing it. It is a bitch of an instrument. But little by little it started to happen. A precious memory with my dad was getting to play duo with him. He was a busy, busy man. But when he was around, when he wasn't on the phone, he would sit at the piano and say, let's play something, 'How High the Moon,' or the head to 'Ornithology.'

"At some point I said, wow, I'm playing a melodic instrument. I can try to pull off what I'm hearing, and I started to get serious and practice. I'm basically self-taught. The only lesson I've ever had was a pretty good one, with Bobby Hutcherson. One of the things that helped me find inspiration was hearing the Bobby Hutcherson Quartet with my dad, Jeff Chambers and Eddie Marshall. I still to draw on the Bobby Hutcherson/Smith Dobson well for inspiration."

Andrew Gilbert, a writer based in the Berkeley area, covers jazz for several outlets, including the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Boston Globe, JazzTimes, and KQED's California Report.