Tag Archives: Folk Rock

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)

Ronee Blakley Recalls Drinkin’ Her Way Through Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue

I’m noticing a lot of sudden interest in the Dylan Rolling Thunder tour some 45 years since it was a thing, especially now that Martin Scorsese has dropped a disputable documentary on it.

Netflix Dylan Gif
Martin Scorsese Netflix Doc On Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review

So let’s check in with Renaldo & Clara Star Ronee Blakley in a 1978 freewheelin’ Freeform FM Radio Interview with broadcaster Patrick Carr reviewing them boozin’ Daze & Knights when she was entrenched on the road with many musical masterminds. She reveals some tidbits about the Thunder Road and making the film Renaldo and Clara with Dob Bylan and Boan Jaez.


The Renaldo & Clara film didn’t come out until 1978,  some 3 years after the tour, and was quickly panned by critics, as the Times They Were a Changin! Ratso Sloman actually wrote a book about traveling with Dylan in ’75 and recounts some major points fro the Rolling Thunder tour in this recent article in the LA Times here :

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue-larry-ratso-sloman-20190611-story.html

The film is streaming on Netflix here : https://www.netflix.com/title/80221016

Rolling Thunder Revue

Tags : Ronee Blakley (Actress), Bob Dylan (Author), Joan Baez (Musical Artist), Rolling Thunder Revue, Renaldo And Clara (Film), Booze, Blakely, Talkin Bout, The Rolling Thunder Revue, Rock History, The Seventies, Folk Rock, Alcoholism, Robert Altman’s Nashville, Show Business, DIR Broadcasting, Ratso Sloman, Martin Scorsese, Netflix

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