Category Archives: Live At The Chapel

Trapper Schoepp – Freight Train (Sister Double Happiness cover at The Chapel)

I was pleasantly surprised by an opening act at a recent concert in San Francisco, a young singer out of Milwaukee named Trapper Schoepp performing with his brother.  The songwriter has been on the road for months promoting his indie magnum opus album “Primetime Illusion“, one he’s put his heart soul and life on the line to get the word out about, which is what you have to do as a rapscallion road troubadour.

Trapper Schoepp onstage

Liking what I heard, but still settling into the venue, I quickly jolted up, when I heard him announce his next song was to be a cover our the late great beloved San Francisco bluesy hard rock act Sister Double Happiness that was fronted by Dicks’ vocalist Gary Floyd. The 21st century hipster audience of early arrivals seemed somewhat nonplused as they’d probably never heard of this largely forgotten local group.

Sister Double Happiness original 1980’s lineup as seen clockwise from upper right guitarist Ben Cohen, singer Gary Floyd , drummer Lynn Perko, bassist Mikey Donaldson

I’ll have to interject, and hereby attest that SDH were likely the best band in town when I moved to San Francisco in 1987, a hard rocking band with pedigreed punk roots but moving quickly past that generic genre cage and into their own threnodious turf. Just before disbanding in 1988, they’d released a searing, smokin’ debut on Greg Ginn‘s SST label featuring a fierce tune called “Freight Train” that poignantly documented the fear, loss, despair and confusion of the AIDS era that stole so many lives before any sort of viable medical treatments were available.

 

Somewhere along the line, this maverick millennial Milwaukee songster was taught a decades old and out-of-print dirge called “Freight Train” backstage at a Jayhawks show or something, and has resurrected this beautiful abandoned beast of a song out of the blue to share with a new generation of listeners.

Trapper, who seems like a very hopeful, talented and earnest young man has included a supple studio version on his new album “Primetime Illusion” that is awash in electric guitar and piano played by Wilco‘s Pat Sansone, but this stream below is video of the raw stripped down acoustic duo arrangement delivered live in a big room full of strangers. I commend the Schoepp brothers here for their excellent taste and sincere commitment to the material.

I caught this surprising performance on a cell phone camera at The Chapel in San Francisco in October 2019. The song’s poetic stanzas were written by Gary Floyd circa 1986, who put this epic cry for understanding onto tape, and his heart and soul into every performance he gave at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, which was ravaging through our city and a whole generation at that time.

An intense hard driving live band that I saw dozens of times, Sister Double Happiness never failed to kill onstage, giving headliners like Nirvana and Soundgarden a run for their money when on tour opening for them, yet never quite fit into any music industry category or achieve any radio or solid video support from any of their numerous labels, and they just slowly lost momentum and petered out in the mid 90’s. From the looks of him, I doubt Trapper Schoepp coulda even been born when any of this happened.

Sister Double Happiness haven’t played together in probably twenty years, and their debut record with the song “Freight Train” on it is long out of print. Their incredible musical energy and legacy has been dissipating into time much like a hazy puff of faint incense smoke.

It was strange seeing a young man this in 2019, choose to deliver such a relatively obscure Reagan era song dealing with death, despair, confusion and need for support and love, who was not born at the time it was composed.

Some good news on the Sister Double Happiness front is that I heard recently from the song’s co-writer, guitarist Ben Cohen that he has secured the rights and masters, and is on the road to re-releasing the long lost album on all the formats both hard plastic and streaming.  Stay Tuned!

Flyer for SDH at Mabuhay Gardens in 1987 with Faith No More and Leaving Trains
(Flyer by Rob Collison)

The Mekons Find It Hard To Be Human Again, How Many Stars?

Got to see the mighty Mekons the other night at the The Chapel in San Francisco. w/ Skokie Girls..

The two sequential songs from the sold out show in this first black & white edited video below date back to the 1988 “So Good It Hurts” album which was a sorta joint release twixt Twin/Tone and A & M labels and the second tune is from 1985’s “Fear & Whiskey” LP originally released on Sophie Bourbon’s SIN RECORDS label.

I believe the Mekons were the very first band I ever snuck in with a fake ID as an underage teenage runaway and saw at the I-Beam in San Francisco circa May 1987… In some ways, not much as changed, which is awesome and terrifying, most of the original band members I know and love are still onstage and accounted for, and sadly the world is still a greedy, stupid, venal, hostile, politically painful place in need of a good poetically poignant Mekons musical vivisecting.

However, instead of vile Tory Maggie Thatcher to rant about, there is this Boris Johnson dude…whatever. It is all the same… and most of us are aging, and if not gracefully, at least some of us had the good graces to show up for the show, at least far more paying customers than were there in 1987.

This video has slightly improved sound dynamics over a version I placed on Instagram, so rejoice in the additional camera angles and sonics here from two Mekons faves. Rumor has it Mr Langford will be back this fall as part of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass thang and, uh, he is bringing an entire two dozen member Welsh Boys Choir… you have been warned.

Here is a 360 degree video clip for the song “Thee Olde Trip To Jerusalem” (available on The Mekons album “Out Of Our Heads” and also featured in the Cd included in the 200 page book “United” that was released in 1996 via the Touch & Go affiliate label Quarterstick)

The last video I’ve pasted in below is the last song from their set, a Mekons song from their latest album, recorded some 30 years fater the earlier tunes were released, and Rolling Stone scribe Will Hermes said of the song ““How Many Stars” takes the classic form of an English folk song about a man lost at sea, and woman who dies of a broken heart, the band wondering at the sheltering sky in raggedly sympathetic harmony. “

Matt Baldwin – Passing Through

Event host & organizer as well as author of a Leonard Cohen biography, Sylvie Simmons, introduces solo guitarist Matt Baldwin who performs a classic progressive folk tune from the late 40’s. apparently “PASSING THROUGH” is the only published tune by a Chicago folk musician named Richard (Dick) Cleveland Blakeslee. Inspired to send it to the People’s Songs organization in New York, his home-cut acetate disc arrived at the offices of the loose knit non-profit predecessor to “Sing-Out’ whose members included Mo Asch, Anges “Sis” Cunningham, Tom Glazer, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays. They regularly published a newsletter to share new folk songs for the progressive labor movement to shareand in turn, the tune was soon introduced via the newsletter to sympathetic subscribers around the same time as We Shall Overcome. Blakeslee’s song was recorded and popularized by Pete Seeger, and sung by him regularly throughout the  1948 Presidential election campaign when Seeger was backing Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. Other renditions of the song have been recorded by The HighwaymenCisco HoustonEarl Scruggs, & on a 1970 live album by Leonard Cohen.

I saw jesus on the cross on a hill called calvary
“do you hate mankind for what they done to you? “
He said, “talk of love not hate, things to do – it’s getting late.
I’ve so little time and I’m only passing through.”Passing through, passing through.


Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that you saw me passing through.

I saw adam leave the garden with an apple in his hand,
I said “now you’re out, what are you going to do? “
“plant some crops and pray for rain, maybe raise a little cane.
I’m an orphan now, and I’m only passing through.”Passing through, passing through

…I was with Washington at valley ford, shivering in the snow.

I said, “how come the men here suffer like they do? “
“men will suffer, men will fight, even die for what is right
Even though they know they’re only passing through”Passing through, passing through

…I was with Franklin Roosevelt’s side on the night before he died.
He said, “one world must come out of world war two” (ah, the fool)
“yankee, russian, white or tan, ” he said, “a man is still a man.


We’re all on one road, and we’re only passing through.”Passing through, passing through …Passing through, passing through …

-Dick Blakeslee

This was recorded at a post-humous Cohen tribute and benefit for the San Francisco Community Music Center held at The Chapel at 777 Valencia St in San Francisco. The San Francisco Community Music Center ( http://SFCMC.org) is a non-profit school founded in 1921 with the mission of making music accessible to all people, regardless of their financial means. They offer classes for people of all ages, abilities and interests and financial aid to all who need it.

Peter Murphy – Jean Genie Bowie Tribute

In the midst a long awaited and sold out 17 shows in a row stand at The Chapel in San Francisco in March of 2017, former Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy added a special David Bowie Tribute night to the slate of performances.

His voice was a bit of ragged glory all night, as he could barely speak, yet managed to soar through the choruses of the Bowie back catalog. After this song he introduces the touring band featuring drummer Marc Slutsky, guitarist Mark Gemini Thwaite, and multi instrumentalists Casey McAllister and Emilio Zef China who’d just tackled the classic 70’s glam rock album cut Jean Genie.

Cocker Power at The Chapel

This video documents two opening numbers from the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tribute band Cocker Power playing a concert at The Chapel. The band who mine the touring period of Joe Cocker & Leon Russell’s most fertile musical legacy are comprised of friends and members of numerous local San Francisco based indie rock acts both past & present including Oranger, Tarnation, Sweet Chariot, Men’s Club and others.

On this occasion at The Chapel in San Francisco members of the mob included: Patrick Main, Paula Frazer, Tex Dworkin , Donnelle Malnick, Tom Galbraith, Dave Leonard, Mark Gordon , Chris Guthridge , Scott Larson, Carroll Ashby, Dan Carr, Justin Frahm, with a fantabulous Liquid Light show by Mad Alchemy

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Sarah Bethe Nelson – Leonard Cohen Tribute

The Song “Lover, Lover, Lover” with assistance from Rusty Miller & Wren Peterson

“Lover,Lover,Lover”

Live At The Chapel

introduced by Sylvie Simmons, in this video Sarah Bethe Nelson, Anna Wren Peterson & Russell James Miller perform at the Leonard Cohen Tribute Night held at the Chapel on Valencia in San Francisco 11/27/2016, a benefit For The San Francisco Community Music Center (sfcmc.org). Sarah Bethe’s has three full length releases available on Burger Records, previews available here http://j.mp/sarahbethe

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