Best of Both Worlds for This Byrd : Country-rock: While enjoying the past with the legendary folk-rock band, Chris Hillman is also having success with the Desert Rose Band, which will play in Santa Ana.

Not many bands merely three albums into their career issue greatest-hits packages, but that’s what the Desert Rose Band is doing in January, with a set called “A Dozen Roses.”

Though together only five years, and with its first album issued in 1987, the group--vocalist/guitarists Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, Orange County-bred guitarist/vocalist John Jorgenson, steel guitarist Jay Dee Maness, bassist Bill Bryson, and drummer Steve Duncan--has a body of songs deserving of enshrinement. With songs that include soaring harmonies, flawless yet passionate musicianship and lyrics that are actually about something, the band members have reason to be proud, which is exactly what Hillman, the frontman, is.

Speaking by phone from his Ventura home Monday, Hillman said: “I’m real proud of this band. I’m proud of the quality we went after. I think our songs stand up. One thing we’ve always tried to do is present a body of material that we’ll be able to listen to in 10 or 15 years, material that wasn’t some country-rock song that the record company asked us to record. We’re pretty well, 85% or 90% of the time, going for a little more substance in what we’re doing.”

He added: “That’s something I learned in the Byrds,” the seminal ‘60s folk-rock band of which Hillman was a founding member, and which will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January.

“Though there were a couple of times we fell and did some stupid songs--like every other act--the bulk of our work in the Byrds stands up today as good material, not your basic throwaway fluff,” Hillman said. “And I think Desert Rose has maintained a pretty high quality.”

The hits package, which contains the group’s five No. 1 country hits, three new songs and five other tunes, also buys some time for the band. Its shows Monday and Tuesday at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana (Tuesday’s show falls on Hillman’s birthday, by the way) are among the last the band has scheduled until late June. It’s their first real breather after years of diligent touring and work to get their distinctive music onto staid country-radio play lists, and Hillman plans to use the time to craft songs for their next album.

“I want to take my time with it. I don’t want to be rushed, or be pressured. It’s very crucial, every song we put out. I don’t want another bar band beating us as ‘Group of the Year’ again,’ ” Hillman said, just possibly referring to Desert Rose losing out this year in the Country Music Assn. awards to the Kentucky Headhunters in that category.

Hillman is in a fairly unique position of being ushered into a hall of fame while at the same time still trying to get his foot in the door with the Country Music Assn. and Academy of Country Music.

“I feel I’m doing my best stuff now,” he said, “But to have been a part of the Byrds and to be recognized for it now is certainly the highlight of my life, and as excited as I may get about a CMA nomination, it pales beside the Rock Hall of Fame. It’s very prestigious, and I’m honored to be a part of that.

“I’d like to win the CMA award someday too. But it’s funny, here we are in the midst of the Milli Vanilli controversy, and there was a couple of years where we lost out in a vocal group category in both the CMA and ACM, and the group that won didn’t sing on their record! Except for their girl lead singer, they didn’t really sing on their records.” (Though Hillman was too diplomatic to identify that group, one might note that the lists show the Desert Rose Band lost to Highway 101 in those awards.)

Along with the Byrds being canonized by the Hall of Fame, three founding members--Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Hillman--reunited in August to record four songs for a deluxe four-CD Byrds retrospective recently issued by Columbia. Though the three made rare appearances together in the last couple of years, the recording experience made them decide to make the Byrds fly again.

“I really feel like I’m in two bands now, and it feels great. Cutting those four new tracks was a wonderful, easy time, and it came out so well. Desert Rose, of course, is my priority. It’s my baby. With the Byrds, it’s really Roger who’s the leader and the lead singer, and that’s fine. I feel I’m up there to make him sound better, and that’s a role I really enjoy. And someday I’m sure we’ll make an album and go on the road or something.

Crosby’s recent motorcycle accident, in which he sustained multiple injuries, “has really put a clink in the plans. But the best thing about anything the Byrds might do, is we don’t have to do it. We’re not all desperate, thank God. Every time we get together, it’s the ultimate labor of love. We just get out and play, and it’s not a situation where we’re re-forming to cash in. You can’t bring the past back--it’s a real fleeting moment. I think there’s good music left in the Byrds, new stuff.”

Although Hillman enjoys being in the spotlight with Desert Rose, he also has accepted that some of his past achievements will continue to be overlooked. Most people equate the Byrds with McGuinn, though Hillman made a significant contribution, including steering the group to define country-rock along with late-’60s member Gram Parsons.

He and Parsons left to found the now-legendary Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969. Though Hillman co-wrote much of their genre-shaking material, Parsons--who died of drug-related causes in 1973--is usually the only name associated with them.

“Well, that happens,” Hillman said. “The bottom line is, Gram is gone, and he will get a little more recognition just in the fact that he died. There are songs where his name is listed first; it doesn’t matter to me. But ‘Sin City’ was half-written before he was awake, so in my heart I know what happened.

“And I’m alive! I’m real happy. I have a great family, and I’m quite successful with what I’m doing. So it’s a moot point. I’m sorry he died. I’m sorry he was so driven in the wrong direction. He was a very gifted kid.”

Drug abuse is a topic the Desert Rose Band addressed in “Darkness on the Playground” on this year’s “Pages of Life” album, a song Hillman has since had second thoughts about.

“I’m not going to defend that song, because, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really like it. I think it’s sort of a pretentious effort on my part. It’s one of those tunes where I really didn’t quite think before I put it down, although I feel strongly about the subject. It’s not my place to get on a soapbox and preach to anybody.

“That’s not really going to change anybody’s mentality. We’re dealing with a very, very serious situation, with a giant profit-oriented business selling poison to the less fortunate. And when there’s big profits involved, it’s not going to go away. Unfortunately, there’re a lot of kids out there doing it, and it isn’t just the drugs. There’s just a general sense of apathy on the part of younger kids, and there’s a huge bunch of these kids with one parent. Divorce has done more damage than drugs, and that’s what we were driving at (in the song). What is it that drives kids to do that? That’s what we were addressing. But doing it in country music isn’t going to change the world.”

Though few of the Desert Rose Band’s songs deal with such specific issues, themes of hope and compassion are nearly a constant in all their material.

“We don’t set out to do that--it just sort of happens,” Hillman said. “I think it’s real important. That’s basically what it’s all about, isn’t it? That we have a little hope and faith in our everyday situation, as opposed to the apathy I was just talking about. I don’t want to analyze the songs, but, yeah, that’s basically what we’re trying to do.”

For the next album’s songs, Hillman said he expects to be working with some “quite well-known songwriters” he’s worked with in the past, including his Byrd-mate Crosby.

He has some concerns that the half-year layoff will cost the band some of its success, but he’s confident about the long run.

“Once again we are at the whim of the radio and the general public. And being certainly a part of the dispose-a-culture society, we could be cold in a month or two. Hopefully not. I don’t think we’ve gotten our 15 minutes (of fame) yet. . . . Our best stuff is still around the corner. I’m quite confident we’ll go on as long as it works for all of us, and it works real good right now.”

The Desert Rose Band will play Monday and Tuesday at 7 and 10 p.m. at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow, Santa Ana. Tickets: $26.50. Information: (714) 549-1512.