A look back at a year in Marin music that ‘whistled past too fast’

Before we get too deep into the new year, I’d like to pump the brakes for a moment and look back at some of the columns I wrote in 2023 about our endlessly engaging, incredibly creative, ever-changing and always rockin’ music scene. Let’s call this column a kind of sound check before Marin music again takes center stage in this space in 2024.

Fado in Marin

Last year at this time, my wife and I were in Lisbon, Portugal, for the birth of granddaughter No. 3. While we were celebrating the joyous event and exploring this San Francisco-like city of roller-coaster hills and trolley cars, I wrote about falling in love with fado, the soulful music that is often thought of as the Portuguese blues.

I was pleased when that column hit home with Marin’s historic Portuguese community. Tiburon’s Vasco Morais emailed me about the Fado at the Pines show he co-produces every year at the Pines Mansion in Sausalito. The annual concert, he says, “mimics the ambience of fado in the Alfama,” the Alfama being the charmingly cobblestoned neighborhood in Lisbon that houses the Fado Museum and some of Lisbon’s finest fado clubs. I’m marking my calendar for this year’s show, set for May 24, and featuring homegrown California fado musicians. Check fadoatthepines.com periodically for details.

Speaking from his vacation home from the surfer’s paradise on the coastline north of Lisbon, Morais reports that 41-year-old Portuguese pianist and composer Júlio Resende, pioneer of a new musical genre called “fado jazz,” will perform April 7 at SFJAZZ, part of the Portuguese Consulate’s 50th anniversary celebration of the non-violent Carnation Revolution that rid the country of the fascist dictator António Salazar.

Since my Portuguese sojourn, what has continued to impress me is the passion that Portuguese musicians have for their music and its history, demanding undivided attention from audiences, a trait often missing among Marin clubgoers, hence the “STFU” T-shirts for sale at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley commemorating the night Bobby Weir told an unruly crowd to “shut the f— up.” The Portuguese are less strident about it, preferring to remind music fans that “silence is part of the show” — words to listen by.

The kids are all right

In case you’re wondering if the future of music is in good hands, look no further than the sensational young bluegrass group Crying Uncle — brothers Miles and Teo Quale on fiddle and mandolin, respectively, guitarist Ian Ly and Marin-grown bassist Andrew Osborn. I’d been aware of the precocious virtuosity of this rootsy string quartet for a couple of years, having been awed by them when I first heard them at Old St. Hilary’s Landmark in Tiburon when they were all still teenagers. Two years later, they were coming off the highlight of their budding career, winning the  International Bluegrass Music Association’s prestigious Momentum Band of the Year Award in Raleigh, North Carolina, so the timing was right to finally write about them before their sold-out show in November at HopMonk Tavern in Novato, where they blew the minds of their growing legion of fans. As I wrote at the time, what’s most impressive is that they have lives and interests outside of Crying Uncle and the music whirl. All are college students. Miles Quale, for one, is majoring in global jazz and astrophysics at UCLA. Sounds like he and his bandmates will be playing the music of the spheres for a long time.

A rockin’ rerelease

I was honored to interview some of the revered elders of our music community in 2023, including Marin’s original rocker, 83-year-old piano pounder John Allair, who celebrated the rerelease of his 1995 album, “John Allair Cleans House,” as a limited-edition double-disc set in blue and white vinyl with a pamphlet of photos from his career, including 50 years as a sideman for Van Morrison, and liner notes by rock critic Joel Selvin, who writes: “In the realm of rhythm and blues, he’s a pianist’s pianist, a virtual Horowitz of blues and boogie.”

Another O.G.

After the death of Tony Bennett, I had the pleasure of hanging out with his longtime drummer, the gracious 83-year-old Harold Jones, at his home in Woodacre. Reflecting on his distinguished career as “the singer’s drummer” for the likes of Bennet, Natalie Cole, Lady Gaga, Ella Fitzgerald and numerous other bold-name stars, Jones flashed one of his signature disarming smiles, telling me with the joy and enthusiasm of someone much younger: “When you’re playing music, everything is beautiful. You’re a rich man.”

Rancho Nicasio anniversary

Bob Brown and Angela Strehli celebrated 25 years of live music at their beloved Rancho Nicasio with a packed schedule of shows and outdoor barbecues in 2023.

I was lucky enough to have been at their West Marin roadhouse when 84-year-old bluesman Nick Gravenites, who wrote “Born in Chicago” for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and “Buried Alive in the Blues” for Janis Joplin, made an unannounced appearance with Los Lobos. He had to be helped onto a chair on the stage but went on to deliver a standing-ovation performance sitting in with the East Los Angeles rockers.

When I interviewed the octogenarian blues legend a few days later at his woodsy home in the hills of Sonoma County, he talked about the blues migration from Chicago to San Francisco he led in the ’60s and reminisced about Janis, Butterfield, guitar hero Michael Bloomfield, Otis Redding and others who, sadly, died before their time. At his age, he admits, it’s hard sometimes to look back at the important people that were in his life that he’s outlived, but then he just shrugs and reminds me: “That’s the blues.”

From guitar slinger to guitar maker

Even though working musicians are playing gigs again after the pandemic, some of them are having to deal with the unfortunate fact that the live music business has yet to return to its pre-COVID levels. Lamenting “tip jar culture,” transplanted Texan Danny Click, leader of the popular Marin band Danny Click and the Hell Yeahs!, looked to supplement his income as a guitar player by becoming a guitar maker, launching DC Guitars in 2023 with a fall concert in Piccolo Pavilion in Corte Madera. Click is marketing a line of custom-made electrics that he builds in a workshop in his San Rafael home by hand. His aim is to make them “simple and perfect.” “I want them to be bulletproof,” he says.

‘Makin’ it in the Music Business’

Greenbrae’s Dick Bright, the madcap 70-year-old violinist and former leader of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel band, used the forced idleness of the pandemic to put some of the hard-earned wisdom he’s picked up in his long career between the pages of a book, “Workin’ for a Livin’: Makin’ it in the Music Business,” that’s aimed at helping the next generation of musicians avoid making the same mistakes he did.

In 17 chapters, the onetime “maestro of the San Francisco music scene” covers everything from starting a band and handling money to marketing and promotion, arranging a dance set and even dealing with stage fright. He also threw in war stories from fellow musicians as well as some cringe-worthy, dad-like musician jokes. To wit: “What do you call a guitar player without a girlfriend? Answer: homeless.”

Celebrating women in music

Some bright new stars emerged on the Marin music scene in 2023. The glamorous 44-year-old bassist Angeline Saris, fresh from the Celebrating David Bowie tour with Todd Rundgren, was one of them, releasing “Come Undone,” the first in a series of eight singles she plans to unveil over two years in support of an initiative she’s launching called GROW, which stands for Global Reach of Women. “Each single is going to be dedicated to raising money and awareness for a foundation that helps women thrive either locally or globally,” the lifelong Marin resident says, describing “Come Undone” as “a high-energy dance song that feels like a farewell party to the outdated ways the world has perceived women.” And it’s highlighted by a killer bass solo.

Choosing jazz over Wall Street

Thirty-year-old trumpet player and bandleader Jonathan Dely, who grew up in the country club culture of New York’s Long Island and is now living in Sausalito, turned down a six-figure job on Wall Street for the uncertain life of a jazz musician, a story so dramatic it became a short film, “Goodbye Jonathan’s Soul,” with Dely playing himself in his acting debut.

In December, Dely made his Bay Area musical debut with a pair of sold-out shows at SFJazz. He’s looking to record his first album in 2024. Without the big bucks he would have made as an investment banker, he’s launched a fundraising campaign to help pay for the record at fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/jonathan-dely. Maybe he should call it “Tip Jar Culture.”

Harrison performs

The Talking Heads celebrated the 40th anniversary of the concert film “Stop Making Sense” with a restored version that has had fans dancing in the aisles at IMAX theaters across the country. Close to home, thousands of Marin music fans got to see the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew perform many of the band’s songs live, including tunes from its groundbreaking album “Remain in Light,” on the second day of the Mill Valley Music Festival in May. The 2024 festival, by the way, is set for May 11 and 12.

I interviewed Harrison in his Mount Tamalpais home before the Mill Valley show, the first date on the Remain in Light band’s spring tour. Since he, David Byrne and the other Talking Heads are not about to reunite anytime soon, if ever, this tour is the next best thing. And it’s been a tonic for the 74-year-old Harrison.

“It makes me feel younger and it makes me feel a great sense of happiness and gratification coming back from the audience,” he told me. “One of the things that has happened is that so many people have come up to me and said, ‘I thought I’d never see this music performed live again. Thank you.’”

‘Mini music festival’

I got to shine a much-deserved light in on Clare Wasserman and Stephanie Clarke, who have been producing live music shows for the Mill Valley Film Festival for more than 30 years, working with a galaxy of major stars, from Jerry Garcia and Rickie Lee Jones to Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt and Carlos Santana. This past year, they honored 96-year-old folk-blues-jazz legend Barbara Dane with a Sweetwater tribute starring Holly Near, Willie Chambers and Dane’s Cuban son and grandson. After the screening of “Feast Your Ears,” a documentary on underground radio, Jesse Colin Young and Taj Mahal performed and Ben Fong-Torres hosted a discussion with former KSAN DJ’s Richard Gossett and Bonnie Simmons.

Festival founder and executive director Mark Fishkin described their productions as “like a mini music festival within the film festival.”

Drama at Sound Summit

Brokedown in Bakersfield headlined the 2023 Sound Summit, the daylong concert in the stone amphitheater on Mount Tam in September, bringing together the band’s lead singers, the formerly married couple Tim and Nicki Bluhm, for the first time since their acrimonious breakup eight years before. Everyone who knew about the awkward situation was wondering how it would go down when they at long last faced each other onstage.

“I think we’re both a little nervous about it,” Tim Bluhm told me before the show. “But I think it’s going to be fine. At least I hope so. We’ll see.”

From where I sat among the thousands of concertgoers that day, it was more than fine. The Bluhms looked and sounded great together. There was even talk of the possibility of more Brokedown in Bakersfield shows this summer, but to date nothing’s on the books. Time will tell.

A year that ‘whistled past too fast’

Time will tell what the new year holds musically and otherwise. We can only be rest assured that music can make whatever happens better. Scrolling through social media today, I saw that someone had posted a 1991 column by the late Herb Caen, an idol of mine I was lucky enough to rub elbows with when I worked at the Chronicle. One of his Sunday paeans to San Francisco, this particular column was a nostalgic end-of-the-year lament on the swiftness of time passing. Or, as he so eloquently put it, the “years that whistled past too fast.” He also referenced a quote by physicist John Archibald Wheeler that “time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” I like that. I also like that Wheeler said he first saw that quote written on a men’s room wall in Austin, Texas. On that note, I’ll be looking forward to what’s going to happen in Marin music in 2024, however it comes. I wasn’t able to mention everyone I wrote about last year, but I thank them all for sharing their stories with me. Keep on keepin’ on in 2024!

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net