Cowboy Confessional

It is Labor Day in San Francisco, which means it is again time for cowgirls gone wild.

Few parts of San Francisco are wilder than the Mission District. Mission mavens are ‘colorful’ in the same sense that parrots and flamingos are and Liberace was. Mission residents are not considered properly dresses unless their tattoos are visible (ladies) and at least one silver facial piecing is in place (men, trannies and hermaphrodites). Unskewered and uncolored clods like me are voyeuristic rubes and barely tolerated.

As you can imagine, the Mission is littered with funky dive bars of variable reputation, safety and sanitary status. A star among these swill houses is the El Rio, a joint that is happy in its marginally controlled sanity. Aside from having a just-above-grimy local bar appeal, the El sports a large outdoor patio where the live music happens.

On Labor Day the cowgirls own the joint, and if you don’t like country music, they might rectally insert a boot into you (which in the Mission passes as sexual recreation and a polite gesture).

Cowgirl Palooza is the event’s name and normally no testicles are allowed to front a band (Four Year Bender is playing this year, which I will not complain about but which is somewhat out of kilter). Kitty Rose, Starlene and other regulars are scheduled.

Most interesting in the mix is, of course, Mighty Slim Pickins. This collection of diesel dykes always sucks the air out the audience. An equal mixture of serious rockabilly with somewhat sinister showwomanship and the unmistakable San Francisco in-your-face queerdom always makes for an interesting set.

Cowgirl Palooza is, in one way, an essence of San Francisco. People from across America land here for very different reasons and stay for mainly for one. Since there is a little of everything in San Francisco, there is always a place for each cluster to commune. It should surprise nobody that countrified bull lesbians formed a band, and have near-constant stage time and appreciative audiences, including straight ex-cowboys.

Oh, and the reason all the assorted people stay in San Francisco is our secret.

Bookmark to:

I could get used to this real quick.

There is a holy place in the unholy town of Berkeley, California. Smelted in the 1960’s along with several thousand other coffee shops (the American variety, not the Amsterdam kind, though in the 60’s the differences were minor) was The Freight. Its proper name is The Freight and Salvage Coffee Shop. The Freight came by their name dishonestly. When founded they took over a building that had been a freight and salvage warehouse and decided to keep the signage. The name stuck.

Unlike the several thousand other coffee shops in hippie-era Berkeley (or as we locals like to call it, Bizerkely) The Freight survived, and did so primarily because the music played there. Lord knows their coffee is not top-shelf and the price they take for a tiny cup would cause the typical gray-haired Berkley hippie to charge them with making obscene profits.

The Freight caters to folk music, be it Americana, Celtic, African or Martian. Anything that is native and unamplified. For 40 years, unknown and world renowned performers played tasty tunes on The Freight’s microscopic stage … after exiting a green room the size of a prison cell and with the same ambiance. History walked on The Freight’s stage.

Whenever I went to The Freight, I always stopped for a moment in the lobby. On the walls were calendars going back to their beginnings. One playbill showed the night Bukka White played. For those uneducated in the history of blues, Bukka was BB “Blues Boy” King’s older cousin who got BB into the music biz. Bukka did old school delta blues more authentic than anything else recorded with the exception of Robert Johnson.

Hopefully Bukka didn’t make any crossroad deals.

I loved playing on the tiny Freight and Salvage stage. I never gigged there as I don’t gig at all. But The Freight was the monthly meeting place for a songwriters’ competition. The room itself is completely improbable for good acoustics. It is a small rectangle of cinderblocks, custom made for harsh standing waves. But over the years sound buffers were erected here and there, a solid sound system was assembled, and dedicated mix masters manned the console.

The Freight made even me sound good.

And now it is gone … kinda. The old venue is closed. I’ll never have the chance to stand on that stage again, and this is a sad thing. Closed to the public are the quaint black walls, the mismatched and completely third hand chairs, and restrooms designed by some who took a lot of acid in the 1960’s. RIP Freight and Salvage.

Welcome the new joint.

After a couple of years and a lot of donated money (The Freight is a non-profit venture), they have opened a new venue that I visited today and in which I might want to be buried. Using salvaged wood from the old place, the walls are wonderfully absorbent, allowing undistorted sounds to come from the house speakers to your ears. The stage is wide and with enough back ported monitors to ensure tat every performer will know how they are doing. They have a new mixing board seeming designed by NASA (control knobs are embedded in touch screen panels, the all digital systems stores and recalls specific mixes, and the faders and motorized and move when a mix is restored). Audience seats are new, recline slightly, and match.

The coffee is still marginal.

And there is the rug. On the old stage there was a Persian carpet so think you would trip on the rise the first time you headed for a microphone. It was there to absorb the boot stomping of us excitable performers. And unless I am mistaken, that little slice of history – the same threads upon which many masters of music trod – was brought to its new home.

I sure hope it is the same one. I’m looking forward to standing on it again.

Bookmark to:

Having written songs and performed solo for way too long, it is odd being in a band. (We’ll call it a band. More like four guys who wanted to jam and needed a good reason to drink week nights). Individually we are all quite good. Collectively we are sloppy with occasional outbursts of brilliance.

Working with TBD (the name for this mob, though the drummer is pushing to rename us the Poontang Clan) came with a few surprises. Interestingly the only western song I’ve ever written was the one onto which the band latched like malnourished remoras. I found this odd as note a single band member was hooked on westerns in real life. The drummer leans toward Dave Alvin and James McMurtry. The lead guitarist knows sleazy Stones and classic Beatles. The bass player covers anything including upholstery, but coughs up Jackson Brown and Phish numbers.

And they all went western. I can’t figure this one out. Perhaps they smoked a little/lotta something before rehearsal or my channeling Johnny Cash swayed them.

The biggest surprise was how I had to let go of my own song. I’m overly found of funky breaks, dramatic pauses, and changing tempos. These work when you are alone on stage, but drive most band members to drink. Sorry, to excessive drink. Wait, they already take booze intravenously. Let’s just say trying to follow me and my flourishes is as aggravating as the rap music I’m listening to at the very moment … coming from a Buick eight blocks away.

I had to release control of my own song. It is like offering up your first born male child to Michael Jackson (too soon?). The lead player wanted to pad the post-chorus turn-around with an extra bar. The bass player wanted double down on a fill chord. Everyone wanted a different ending. There were enough changes that I had trouble following my own tune.

But the changes were good. As a unit, the combo produced something live audiences would enjoy more and that we were less likely to botch on stage. I love the original song most, but I love this bastard step child just the same.

We often read about bands breaking apart due to creative differences. Understandable. All creative people have a vision, and those dropping LSD by the fist full have many visions. All artists want to see their visions fulfilled. There comes a point when individuals need to create a body of work uniquely their own. But before that, there is a long period of collaboration, of give-and-take. It has to happen because four soloists on stage sounds like Hell with hemorrhoids, which sounds like the rap music I’m listening to at the very moment … coming from a Chevy nine blocks away.

I’m unsure where the boundary lay. My band mates have not required anything of me I was unwilling to do (reluctant, yes – unwilling, no). But I’m willing – perhaps even anxious – for them to keep pushing. Their creativity counts.

Bookmark to:

A hurricane died this week.

Koko Taylor was nothing less than a growling storm of blues. Hailed as the Queen of the Blues, Koko possessed seemingly endless energy erupting from her paunchy Chicago blues body and soul. When performing you lived in fear that either she or the audience would explode in frenzied elation, like a revival tent gone horribly right.

I first caught Koko in Richmond, Virginia. Like many touring acts, her band first warmed up as the mixing board jockeys got the sound levels right. One and a half songs into the opening set, Koko sashayed onto the stage and smiled at the crowd like a hungry man grins at a steak dinner. She assaulted her microphone with one hand and belted out an opening lung full that caused her sound engineers and half the audience to wet themselves.

Cliché it may be, but Koko was a force of nature. Lighting barely contained in a half full bottle of Tennessee bourbon.

Aside from a voice of thunder in a cement mixer, Koko knew how to let near reckless abandon infect an audience. Unbridled, she could cause a crowd in venues small or large to lose their inhibitions. When a slick south side brother and a conservatively dressed middle class suburban woman jump simultaneously onto a table and dance like Saint Vitus had a lien on their souls, you knew Koko was singing.

Like many other road hardened blues masters, Koto merely got better with time. It is said that as one looks down the backside of life, they care less about what other people think and start exploring. Liberated from conformity’s prison, these folks begin mapping new territories. Johnny Cash’s final records on the American label fused country with Nine Inch Nails. Ray Wylie Hubbard has let swamp and Texas dust decorate his recent works.

Koko just became more Koko, which was unique to begin with. Concentrated and pure, she was the essence of herself and something that will never be duplicated.

Bookmark to:

I want to brag about a local band, not because they are good great musicians, but because they write honest songs.

The outfit is called Houston Jones, and their music is as they bill it “high-octane Americana.”  Fitting description as they rather seamlessly weave together sounds from blues, folk, country, gospel and their own cosmic connections.  The sound is unique while sounding oddly familiar.

The band’s moniker was hijacked from the last names of their lead singer (Travis Jones) and their most talented and digitally bizarre lead guitarist Glenn Houston (Glenn plays left handed, but with the guitar strung for right handed players.  I can only assume he got bored trying find left handed axes and learned to play them upside down as well as backwards).

Chris Kee, the band’s bass and cello player has been accused of writing most of their songs.  Bassist songwriters are not unknown, but are slightly rarer than virgin girls in a brothel.  Much is explained by the fact that Chris is degreed in ethnomusicology and has so many frequent player miles that new tunes are likely sprouting out of his ears.

I won’t go into any more detail on their songwriting, aside from saying that it ranges from sweet, to driving, to outright silly (Sleepy Armadillo is a song about road kill).  Listen and experience and see how music can be simple and simultaneously masterful.

Bookmark to: