Category Archives: Americana

Fundraiser For Fun Raisers At Make-Out Room & Latin American Club in SF

“Hello you beautiful people! …so began an email plea from my friends that run the SF Make-Out Room, amidst all the worrisome news related to the covid-19 panic was the news that a few dozen fine people I know, and the businesses they work for are desperately struggling during to the efforts to stem the spread of some “novel” virus…

It continued “I hope everybody is holding up OK and staying safe during these unprecedented times. As many of you know, once we are free to go back to our day to day lives, the city of San Francisco, and many of our favorite bars and venues, wont be the same, if they are even there at all.”

Then came the call to action…

“That’s why the Make Out Room and the Latin American Club need your help. And why I am begging you to donate anything you can. ”

-click to read more at link below from my friends on the Make-Out Room Staff hard hit by the Corona Virus lockdown and if you can, help support them while their jobs are in limbo…

Make-Out Room & Latin American Club Staff Go Fund Me

Or as my pal Pat Thomas (a multipurpose culture vulture whom you can see talks with here) put it more succinctly: “In 1997, my band Mushroom played their first ever gig at the Make Out Room in San Francisco. Our most recent gig (August 2019) was there too. Over the past decades for many of us – the Make Out Room has been a home away from home. Not only a place to play, but a place that has had weddings and funerals for members of the Bay Area music scene. I encourage every San Francisco musician who has ever graced the stage, every fan who attended a show, every drinker who got wasted there to donate even just $10-20 dollars – if we all do it, we can save Marty’s sweet succulent ass. click on the link here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-make-out-room-and-latin…


Here below are some linked videos I shot to give ya an idea of the type of recent music related events the Make-Out Room has hosted over just the past 5 years… the club also hosts numerous gigs, “Writers With Drinks” & “Litquake” spoken word events, comedy, burlesque, DJ music and many other types of community gatherings ranging from birthday parties and political benefits to cumbia dance nights.

I donated instantly because music seems about main thing that makes my life worth living, and there is no where else left in SF that would serve as a clubhouse people like this… it is a creative concentration camp of affable alcoholics, cantankerous cranks, dapocaginous DJ’s, hirsute hipsters harboring bad bourgeois beards, musical misfits & morose mopers amidst the last of the loquacious & lovely ladies that all should know better. This injustice will not stand…this too shall pass. Vive La MakeOut! There’s links below to two dozen some videos of various live music I’ve edited from the Make-Out over the past few years fer yer perusal

Dig into the video links below…

Continue reading Fundraiser For Fun Raisers At Make-Out Room & Latin American Club in SF

Highlights Of Chuck Prophet’s Hardly Strictly Weekend 2019

Here’s a two song video clip from the opening salvo of the Chuck Prophet Official annual two night stand at The Make-Out Room this weekend as his post Hardly Strictly after party tradition. The two tunes I edited up here are the set opener “Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins” from the Yep Roc album of the same name and the song “Balinese Dancer” which appeared first in the early 90’s on one of his earliest solo albums. The sound for these San Francisco shows this first weekend of October 2019 was pretty darn good, especially with dedicated knob twiddler Damien Rasmussen handling duties at the board.

Here is a capture of the live feed provided by the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest website of Chuck’s full set Friday from the Swan stage at the outdoor festival in Golden Gate Park, as reposted by Craig Love

Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express
Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express Live At The Make-Out Room

Gary Floyd’s Buddha Brothers …it was the happiest day of their lives

Live at The SF Eagle

“Franklyn & Susie got married…it was the happiest day of their lives”

…and then some sh/t went down…

Just another folk fable as sung by the mighty Gary Floyd. A true San Francisco via Texas music icon, since arriving in the city by the bay with his band The Dicks in the early 80’s, Gary Floyd has painted with many musical colors, from the red , hot & fierce roars of bands like Black Kali Ma, to the more subtle swamp tones he tends to hit here with The Buddha Brothers. Whipping up wistful folk with some sweet & occasionally nasty down home blues elements, imagine Gary and the boys on some shaded country front porch obliviously jamming as the day passes by. Gary’s mournful howls rise above the sound of squealin’ baby pigs in the nearby sty, and his Buddha Brothers keep happily hammering home harmonies, and rapturous riffs a-plenty long after the sweltering sun goes down.

Shot at their seeming home away from home, the SF Eagle, in this video Gary’s Buddha Brothers are Gary Floyd, Greg Dale, Chewy Marzolo, Edgar San Gabriel, Mark Smotroff and Pokechoppums

Check out these links below to Bandcamp and search for Buddha Brothers music, you can find at two separate releases from this informal amalgamation of San Francisco Bay Area musicians.

The most recent release basically features the lineup in this video, and was recorded by Donny Newenhouse at El Studio in San Francisco in 2018 on fat two inch analog tape and includes a striking cover of Karen Dalton’s “Something On Your Mind” https://chewymarzolo1.bandcamp.com/album/buddha-brothers-2018

The  first Buddha Brothers digital collection was recorded a couple years earlier by Doug Hilsinger who played some pedal steel along with a lineup that included

  • Gary Floyd: vocals, harmonica
  • Edgar San Gabriel: bass
  • Jeff Hashfield: piano, organ
  • Danny Roman: guitar
  • Elliott Shannonhouse: guitar
  • Josh Walker: drums
    and Ms Caroleen Beatty on backing vocals

    https://garyfloydandthebuddhabrothers.bandcamp.com/album/buddha-light

  • Garland Jeffreys & Chuck Prophet – Wild In The Streets

    Lou Reed’s college roommate,  Garland Jeffreys is retiring from the stage with two farewell performance sets on June 29th 2019 at City Winery in NYC. 

    The sexiest man in Scandinavia! The poet laureate of Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn! He is hanging up his high heel sneakers. The Matador is throwing down his cape.

     My ol’ pals Chuck Prophet and Stephanie Finch and are going to be onstage as special  guests to bid him adieu, as well as other musical luminaries from his past. I hear, David Johansen and a few more musicians are expected to make it one for the history books. Garland’s 75 now, and it’s your last chance to see him onstage.

    Here are Chuck & Steph with him from a gig I was lucky enough to be at his final west coast show at the Bootleg Theater LA on April 22nd 2016. 

    In the heat of the summer
    Better call up the plumber
    And turn on the street pump
    To cool me off


    With your newspaper writers
    And your big crime fighters
    You still need a drugstore
    To cure my cough


    Running wild in the streets
    We got a gang called Shady
    And a midnight lady
    And two transvestites
    To beat the band


    You better not touch us
    You best believe us
    Your teenage Johnny’s
    Gonna be a man


    Runnin’ wild in the streets
    Mrs. America
    Tell me how is your favorite son?
    Do you really care
    What he has done?
    Runnin’ wild in the streets

    – Garland Jeffreys “Wild In The Streets”

    Robbie Fulks Trio – Long To Ride

    Robbie Fulks Trio featuring Shad Cobb on fiddle performing the song “Long To Ride” from the Bloodshot Records album ” “Gone Away Backward” in a house concert

    Fulks has long been a Bloodshot Recording Alt-Country artist based out of the Chicago area , originally via North Carolina who puts an urbane spin on his finely craafted Appalachian Bluegrass Edged Country tunes that are seemingly unwelcome in Nashville or LA.

    #Bluegrass #ShadCobb #Fiddle #RealCountryMusic #AltCountry

    Jon Langford’s Four Lost Souls – Natchez Trace (Live)

    A Tale Of Highways And History From Four Lost Souls found ambling onto the stage Live at The Make-Out Room in San Francisco

    John Szymanski, Jon Langford, Tawny Newsome and Bethany Thomas live at The Makeout Room in San Francisco celebrating the release of their album JON LANGFORD’S FOUR LOST SOULS produced by Norbert Putnam on Bloodshot Records. For more info see http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/four-…

    Carlos Guitarlos & Chuck Prophet – Ramblin’ On My Mind Jam at the SF Eagle

    Bad ass bar room blues guitarist Carlos Guitarlos (Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs, Bottom Of The Can Band) joined Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express onstage in early 2002 at legendary leather bar the SF Eagle. They jammed on this version of a storied blues refrain “Ramblin On My Mind”.

    I got ramblin’
    I got ramblin’ on my mind
    I got ramblin’
    I got ramblin’ all on my mind
    Hate to leave my baby
    But you treats me so unkind
    I got mean things
    I got mean things on my mind

    When I recorded this clip back in 2002, Chuck Prophet’s backing band The Mission Express included Max Butler on guitar, “Teenage” Rob Douglas on bass, Paul Revelli on drums, and Chuck’s amazing wife Miss Stephanie Finch on keys.

    #CarlosGuitarlos can be found on the web at http://facebook.com/CarlosGuitarlosMusic

    #ChuckProphet at http://ChuckProphet.com

    @LilMikeSF Media Maker Myriorama