In 48 years on the planet, Coco Montoya has been lucky, good, and to the brink of death, three of the many reasons to think he was born to play the blues.

Lucky: Barely 21 and a drummer in a California bar band, Montoya left his kit at the club one night after a gig. The next day, blues guitar legend Albert Collins came to play a matinee, and the club manager let him use the drums. When Montoya came by later and saw that someone had been playing in his seat, he let the manager know he didn't like it. Word got to Collins, who called to apologize, and a deep lifelong friendship was born.

A few months later, Collins called to ask if Montoya would join him on the road, and the first phase of his musical career had begun. Montoya had fiddled with guitars for years, but in hotel rooms, between shows, Collins imparted a lifetime of wisdom and wizardry. They toured steadily through 1975, but it wasn't really paying, and Montoya decided to give it up. He worked as a bartender, and in shipping and receiving in an electronics plant.

"I would just go at night and play in jam sessions, have fun, because I figured the career was over," said Montoya, who comes to the House of Blues Wednesday night, and has dates at the Call in Providence Aug. 19 and Marshfield at the North River Blues Festival Aug. 20.

Good: It was like that for years, until one night in 1983 when fate came calling again. He was jamming at the Central Club in LA when John Mayall came in. The Brit bluesman left so impressed that a couple of months later he asked Montoya to be one of his Bluesbreakers, one of the most significant blues bands ever.

It would be a chance to follow in the footsteps of some of the best, including Peter Green (later of Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (who played later with Dylan and the Stones). But it would also be a chance to follow in the footsteps of Eric Clapton, the very best, at least in Montoya's estimation. Years before, his first hearing of Clapton, with Mayall, had set him on a musical path.

To the brink of death: He took the job and really started learning about the blues. The pressure to perform, and impress, came from every direction, and practically every night, the antidote was drugs and drinking. Montoya said that Mayall, perhaps not intentionally, would pit him against the band's other guitar player, Walter Trout, and a harsh rivalry developed.

"We were both too drugged out and drunk and our egos were obviously riding high on our shoulders, like a chip. . . . It got psychotic there for a minute, it really did."

There was pressure, bordering on hatred, from fans, too: "Especially in the beginning, there were some cruel people out there. I remember when I replaced Mick Taylor, some Italian guy took a swing at me because he was so upset that I wasn't Mick Taylor!"

By the end of his 10-year run with the band, more than just band dynamics were weighing him down. His several-year relationship with fellow blues guitarist Debbie Davies had ended, he learned that Collins was dying of cancer, and he sensed that it was time to leave the Bluesbreakers behind.

"I was drinking a lot. I was binge eating until I threw up. . . . I was just out of control in so many ways." He reached 320 pounds before he finally realized he had to change.

"I think everyone hits their personal bottom. I guess the ultimate thing you come to is, `Do you love yourself enough to fix it [or do you] take the chicken . . . way out?' Shoot yourself. Something. And I realized, `Well, I don't want to do that.' "

He entered a clinic to lose the weight, and part of the bargain was that he give up alcohol; in November, he said proudly, it will be seven years since his last drink. At first he feared that without the booze, he wouldn't be able to perform. "You find that you can. And you find that you're actually hearing music, real music, again for the first time. You kind of go, `Wow, I don't have to be wasted, and I'm enjoying all this!' "

Montoya's first solo album, "Gotta Mind to Travel," came out in the United States in 1995, earning him good notices and the W. C. Handy award as the year's best new blues artist; "new" must be a relative term. Three albums have followed, including his most recent, "Suspicion," his first for the Alligator Records label.

He tours extensively, playing 150 to 175 dates a year. "Sometimes you get lonely out there. Sometimes it's kind of empty coming home to nothing but your bills. But I kind of like where I'm at. It's kind of like my last drug. I'm a road rat."

Like anyone, he's had plenty of wants in his up-and-down life. But in the best tradition of the blues, his millions of miles on the road have taught him what he needs: "It's coming to grips with the fact that you just want to be human, you just want to play and enjoy yourself. Everybody goes through that bit, `Oh yeah, I want to be a star. Oh, I want to be idolized.' Then you find out what it's like kind of to be in that position, and you realize, `You know what? I sure would rather just like my music.' "

SIDEBAR: Under an influence Coco Montoya has seen, heard, and played with some of the best guitar players ever, but ask him who he would go to see tonight if everyone were playing, and he blurts out a single name:

"Eric."

That's Eric as in Clapton, of course, and although they've never met, Montoya thinks of him as an older brother, "the one who went before."

"I think Eric said one time, I remember him saying, he was real uncomfortable being a hero to somebody, and I just say, `Well, you're just going to have to live with that.'

"He's got to come to the realization that the way he looks at Albert Collins, like I do, and Gatemouth [Clarence Brown], and Buddy [Guy], and B. B. King, we all look at them as our fathers who teach us this music. But he's one of them too. He doesn't realize that he's evolved into that."

Others on Montoya's A list: King; Guy; Anson Funderburgh ("one of my favorite guitar players"); Leroy Parnell ("a great slide player"); Jimmy Thackery; Vince Gill ("People don't know, or they've forgotten, what a great guitar player he is; I think he's fantastic").

And then there's Tom Enriquez, a Disney executive who helped make the recent movie "Dinosaur," Montoya's nominee for the best guitar player nobody ever heard of.

He's "a guitar player I used to hang with considerably and is very influential in my playing. Nobody knows about him because he never pursued it any further. . . . Even now, he'll come and jam and just blow me away.