Charlie Musselwhite dressed as Dan Ackroyd (“Trading Places”) Halloween, 1990
Please join us on Sunday, December 29 for American legend and blues master Charlie Musselwhite and his band at Palo Alto’s Jewish Community Center, a concert presented by Earthwise.
The JCC performing art center presents diverse programming of its own — though nothing as funky and earthshaking in its 10-year history as Charlie Musselwhite — in this case performing with Valerie Troutt featuring Howard Wiley and special guest MC Lars.
Personally I saw Black Violin at The JCC and was impressed — that’s an act of obviously hip and ethnic looking musicians playing classsical instruments with technical stylings and also keeping it real or street. I paid $50 per ticket which seemed high; I think the families with kids paid less or were comped in. {Actually, I just looked it up and Black Violin presented by the JCC was $80 EIGHTY DOLLARS and $60 for kids so there was some serious papering going on — and for that price you can take your whole family to see Charlie Musselwhite and two other acts, by Earthwise merely renting from the JCC though my parents were founders and funders, I’m just saying…)
Charlie Musselwhite spoke to Ben Sisario of the New York Times here in 2018, here internet not here here Silicon Valley
Here is a link to Charlie talking to New York Times
Other JCC shows I’ve been to were Amy Tan, the author and the City of Palo Alto State of The City Address and Sedge Thompson West Coast Live featuring the late great (and I think Jewish) Kathi Goldmark — I remember getting autographs on the program. Also, I went to a second stage event with author Sylvia Bronwrigg (Juliet Bell), who was married to Sedge and also went to my high school and elementary school but not Terman, which was renamed for a Jew named Mrs Fletcher.
I’m pushing the Chanukah or Hanukkah theme more than I intended here, to the exclusion — so to speak — of Charlie’s prowess and amazing career.
My understanding is that Charlie was from the South, Mississippi and Memphis, TN and noticed that friends of his had left home for Chicago and then returning with nice cars, from having good jobs, urban jobs. So he followed suit, so to speak, and years later was wearing a nice suit, and dark glasses and jamming on the South Side — where coincidentally I was born around that time but had not yet found the blues — with black musicians.
So, to some people’s reckoning, when Dan Ackroyd and his friend John Belushi started a comedy musical act with a backstory to some extent the Blues Brothers were based on Charlie Musselwhite — I have been following Charlie since 2002 or so when I managed the blues pianist Henry Butler and they did a tour together but did not think of the Blues Brothers, who after all play soul more than the blues.
I am praying that he is playing his famous medley 20 minutes “Cristo Redemptor>>>Hava Nagilah”
Also, and here I go again, if you search “Charlie” and “Palo Alto” you get a flyer from a show he did right across the street, San Antonio and Charleston is the site of the new JCC, at a place called The Big Beat. And if you check “Charlie Musselwhite” and “Jewish” beside a couple references to our Charlie show you get an interview with Musselwhite about his visit to Israel, on tour. Filling in for Lee Oskar, who is to Israelis what Jerry Lewis was to France. (which made me think about the horrible movie Jerry Lewis as a clown in a concentration camp – if I want to digress about Nazi’s besides Comedian Harmonists and a movie about The Jazz Guys — the Nazi’s thought jazz was degenerate — recently I saw Jojo Rabbit which is interesting and imagines a boy whose mother is murdered for her resistance and he has Helter as an imaginary friend and also the biopic about Gerhard Richter, whose sister was killed for being mentally ill).
Charlie Musselwhite did some recent work with Cyndi Lauper, Ben harper and Blind Boys of Alabama, which helps his crossever appeal.
He’s in his 70s so now is the time to check him out and get on that train, that train, that train. Or, if not now when?
If you do not go — Sunday — for Charlie Musselwhite, who do you go for? Valerie Troutt is an amazing artist based in Oakland and Richmond who I met backstage at a Ruthie Foster show at Stanford Jazz Workshop.
MC Lars is from Stanford but I reached out to him because he is from Pacific Grove, CA near Monterrey and they eat shellfish which is not kosher but he had the good taste and fortune to meet Matt Sever, pka Matt the Electrician, who played Cubberley in another recent Earthwise show. Matt mentined Lars from the stage and I cheekily emailed Lars about such and then read aloud onstage Lars’ return greeting to Matt and then decided to add him to the show, as a walkup, meaning not sure when his set is or how long it is, and it will be fractured and he will wander and wonder which reminds me of the line after The Day After when Seymour Hersh said “The Whole World is Now Jewish”. Chaim Potok? I.B. Singer? Noam Chomsky, certainly not. Italo Calvino — actually Lisa Mezzacappa not a Jew has an Italo Calvino show set for the Mitch next April. Weirdly, I cannot think of the guy, the Holocaust writer guy. Not Amoz Oz.
Earthwise is at not the Mitch but The J partly because my parents Paul and Barbara Weiss z l were active in the Jewish Community and mostly because COPA shuts down between the 25th and the 31st and Charlie Musselwhite was available the 29th and I could not spin that Dreydl and get nun.
So celebrate the 7th day of Hanukkah or just being alive with us at Earthwise Welcomes Charlie Musselwhite Sunday, December 29 lord willing and the creek don’t rise. Only $25, retail. Online at EventBrite, see the link in first line, or at door.
The motor home parked in front of Chef Chu’s sells special layer cakes, sometimes known as Dobos Tortes, and they have a brick and mortar spot in Los Altos.
Tom Dubois, of whom there is a video jawing away with PAW’s Jocelyn Dong, is on city council, drives a cute little import jobber, plays hoops at lunch hour at the Y — i.e. he is layered.
I’m a newbie to the whole Molly Tuttle / Gryphon / Redwood Bluegrass vortex but in it with a passion, so I totally tripped out when I recognized the former little girl from next door, all growed up and plugging a bass and singing an original old timey song, jamming with the very close to stardom A.J. Lee and Blue Summit featuring Sullivan Tuttle.
I kind of geeked out and sent AJ a long text explaining my glee and surprise.
If Mom mentioned this to me, last I saw her, it was just before it clicked who Molly was — I saw her picture on the wall at Gryphon where her dad works while shopping with Jimmy Vivino who played July 6 in my concert series. I saw to Jeannette that I had seen a picture of her son in the student newspaper — the Gunn Oracle — about a band or recording project and if she mentioned to me all this it didn’t register so much.
Now I’m forgetting if CJ or Helen was a water polo goalie.
I had seen the mom jamming before a show at Redwood Bluegrass at a church on Cowper in Palo Alto, a couple years back.
Interestingly, at least to me – enough to stick it up here on this welltraveled blog — I also found out recently that Rupa Marya of Rupa and The April Fishes was also our — Helen and my — neighbor for many years growing up. More true for Helen, in that I think i moved to SF for four years when Rupa was in high school — at Castilleja — then Rupa would have been off to college when I came back.
We all lived near where Wallace Stegner lived for many years, when he taught at Stanford and wrote about the west and the land. and some stretchers.
I wonder if anyone else has ever mentioned “Helen Foley” and “Wallace Stegner” in the same breathe. I’m a gonna invite Helen into my songwriting project, Women On the Walls, based on the short stories of WS.
Wallace Stegner, Rupa Marya, Helen Foley — suss them out.
I’m likely the only person on the planet who knew all three of these creative people: Rupa Marya, Wallace Stegner and Helen Foley; the three of us grew up near Stegner’s longtime abode.
Fortythree cds stand out, recent acquisitons or somehow important (more so that the boxes I donated to the Palo Alto library — ironically, I buy cds back from the Mitchell Park library sale, especially when I am loading in a show, which happens every month or so).
1. Willie Nelson
2. Sir Douglas Quintet
3. Johnny Gimble
4. Cajun anthology
5. Kotoja Dan Storper 1991
6. Jean du Pree the classical bass prodigy
7. Barber addagio (vs Patty Barber art music)
8-12 Dave Rempis
12-15 Larry Ochs
16. Naomi Moon Siegel with Wayne Horvitz
17 Allison Miller Boom Tic Boom Glitter Wolf
I prefer Doug
18. Parlour Game Jenny Scheinman and Alison Miller with Tony Scher and Carmen Staaf
19. Mitch Woods Tip of The Hat to Fats
20. Maria Muldaur Feel My Leg recorded in New Orleans 2018 with David Torkansky, Herlin Riley, Roland Guerin;
21. Yo La Tengo tho that’s more than a year ago, the one with the Turtle, although I gave away my turtle shirt to a fan I met at Stanford Bing;
22. Dayna Stephens
23. Bob Margolin
24. Dave Douglas engage with Jeff Parker
25. Dave Douglas Uri Caine
26. AJ Lee and the Tuttles w liner notes by Kathy Kalick
27. Linda Ronstadt Nelson Riddle
28. Terry bought Rolling Stones Forty Licks anthology to replace somehow the one i lost from the library, but then found;
29. Matt The Electrician The Doubles — a lot of these are signed by the artist;
30. or feature people who recently appeared in my music series;
31 John Santos with Omar Sosa I think;
32. Darren Johnston I think something about buildings in Chicago
33. Todd Sickafoos got a mixing credit I think on Jenny Scheinman cd while Ben Goldberg got a producer credit;
34. I also have several boxes, many new purchases to at least eyeball if not listen to;
35. When Dave Rempis handed me five titles I said to whoever was listening that it would take me a lifetime to learn to discern each set or song in the stack.
36. I’ve run out of recollection of this collection by title but am vamping until I get to the number referenced in the title
37. I sometimes call this “quotidian in quodlibet” which means a list of boring things and sometimes in the wrong order;
38. Elvin Bishop Big Fun Trio;
39. Sharon Isbin
40. English anthems ‘Lord Knows Why’
41.
42.
43.
watchman with me as I become the 3,000th person to see a 12 year old MC Lars live livin’ large video with the emphasis on “12 yo”, yo — I see what I and I did there.
If (Antoine) you are following along at home you might predict that the next thing I’m going to say is to explain that I am thinking of MC Lars because he will be appearing with Charlie Musselwhite and Valerie Troutt and Howard Wiley and a couple others maybe they will have an uncoordinated dance off which is kind of a pun in six days about 6 miles from here. Or: To what extent is Lars influence by Tenacious D or is it the other way around
AIR JORDAN: Golden Flash — don’t say Gordon Flash — shotcaller Jordan Love threw 30 completions including nine to a receiver also named Jordan.
I am thinking about the Cal bowl game, against Illinois. So it’s my favorite tax dollar at work — Cal — versus the state I was born in. It’s 2 pm on a Monday — my wife works until 8 that’s perfect.
I missed, even on TV the Don’t Call it Frisco Bowl. This featured Kent State — from don’t call it Kentucky — and Utah State, which is not BYU or in the pack 10. I looked it up and Kent State — though I cannot for life of me guess the mascot — had Julian Edelman who was from near San Francisco whereas Utah State –not the Utes — had Merlin Olson of the Folsome Foursome and Ed Berry who I watched return a kick for a TD in Carlmont’s 55-0 victory over Mills — John Capuzelo threw 5 tds including 3 to Vance Pascua. The thing that bothers me is that eight tds usually ends up with 56 points including PATs, but I called it 55 — not sure why. I think the editors of the PTT would have caught that if it were just a ding-aling error.
Go,Bears.
Steve Young the singer don’t ask him to play “Ohio” by Neil Young
I still call it Frisco…the city by the bay, not the one near Mexico. In Texas. High style versus hot tile. Coinkydinky, there is also a Palo Alto in Texas.
My other two posts today are: Steve Young, the country singer with a song about “falling” and Steve Young the HOF qb whose most famous play I saw in person, October, 1988 versus the Vicodans when he ran 60 yards, made six guys miss (compared to five he outran) and then stumbled and nearly fell the last 10 feet into the end zome.
Also: a earthwise ear in review or year in ear view with pictures and pithy recollections of all 10 shows or so this year: Beth Custer at PACC, Jane Monheit at MPCC, Amendola Blades Parker Skerik at PACC; Bob Margolin at MPCC; Dayna Stephens at MPCC; Dave Douglas Engage at MPCC; Larry Ochs Dave Rempis Darren Johnston Spectral Plus at PAAC — also, interrupting this flow, I stated as a stage announcement that we are arguing to have the name changed to Palo Alto Arts Center not Palo Alto Art Center, and to reclaim the green room — it’s labeled as such on the door — and Dave Rempis stumbled in on Amanda Salsbury merely following orders or signs; Amendola Dunn Bradstreet or so; Molly Tuttle — I guess I should list support acts tho in this show there was none; Elvin Bishop, Mitch Woods featuring Maria Muldaur; what am I missing? Motoko Honda, support act; a family band from near Oregon Expressway with a Spanish name;
I have photos on my cell pretty sure from all these shows, plus some video and audio: I should archive and index such.
Matt the Electrician and Syvlie Simmons at Cubberley H-1 — which was not the site of Ron Jones Third Wave experiment despite me claiming so below. There is searchable contemporaneous reporting from Cubberley Catamount that names the room.
Weird segue plus tipping my hand and literally wearing my art on my sleeve: I want to commish Joey Piziali the former fastest guy on a Paly team, though coach, Cubberley grad and blues fan Earl Hanson says he would not have started in the defensive backfield of the CCS championship teams, to create something based on Earl discussing with a group of cronies at Zott’s the other day the proper way to mark a basketball court with badminton and volleyball flourishes; we would use Earl as a source and then do the opposite for artistic effect. I had previously asked Joey about creating a “green” mural in honor of Bill the national champion 400 meter runner, for whom there is a bench on campus.
Tom Harrell music of performed by Luis Perdomo trio; personally I had a Tom Harrell show of sorts — at Mills Hospital and two different hotel rooms and a couple car rides, but the audience had none.
What am I missing? John Santos Sextet.
It was a banner year, whatever that actually means. We went the whole nine yards and were dyed in the wool.
and1: my main source for a story in DAM about Don Cherry — don’t call him a hockey puck — said that in 1970 at Dartmouth a slang trope was “I’ll flash to that” which means it resonates or has meaning or is stimulating — sounds kind of druggy to me; which doesn’t excuse me for adding here for no reason at all that you can carry less than an ounce of marijuana in your car or gift that much but if you get caught with six or eight juicy plump not juice but fragrant buds you should immediately eat four. And don’t ask me to be the mule even for legal quantitiies.
SYTD don’t call it an ‘STD’ – Steve Young stumbles nearly falls — like the Steve Young song on “falling” not to be confused with the Steve Bruton song wherein falling feels like flying for a while; I was there, with fellow Dartmouthian ad guy Randy “Bits” Hibbits, Niners versus Vikings, October, 1988.
Elvin Bishop Big Fun Trio, Mitchell Park Center, Earthwise Of Palo Alto, December 20,2019
Thanks for coming, for reaching out and for raising the question about the staging per se of Earthwise Productions at The Mitchell Park Community Center, El Palo Alto Room.
I’ve done 10 shows in the room. My plan — although I’m moving the goal posts, so to speak — is to do 2 shows a month there for 2 years to see how it goes over.
In context, I’ve been producing shows here for 25 years — since Fall, 1994 — including a run of 150 shows at Cubberley, either the theatre or auditorium(cafeteria/multipurpose room/”temporary library”/”temporary junior museum”), 1994-2001. (For instance Cake, blink 182, Jonathan Richman, Train, AFI, Steve Lacy, Fred Eaglesmith et cetera).
Also, as a one-off, I produced a recent show in Cubberley H-1 — a classroom with banked seating but no stage — capacity 100; it was last month featuring Matt The Electrician and Sylvie Simmons.
I rent these rooms from the City, at a standard commercial rate. (I am not a 501.c3 nor co-sponsored by the City, the way, for example MusikWest is). I bring in my own sound, or more specifically subcontract such with a company Audio Pro (formerly LDR) of San Carlos, owned and run by Andy Heller.
The legal capacity for seated assembly at “The Mitch” is 210 — Elvin Bishop sold out in advance, and 98 percent of the tickets were sold online at EventBrite.
To my mind, based on my knowledge of the artist (born, 1942) and on several calls I had received from ticket holders and prosective attendees, I estimated ahead of time that the average audience member would be roughly 50-60 years old.
The Elvin Bishop crowd, in a room as intimate as The Mitch, would not, for example prefer the entire house be arranged for dancing or standing, like, at The Fillmore. In some ways, without using the term in advertising, I see the Mitch series as “a listening room” or “theatre-style” (though in fact the El Palo Alto Room — which confusingly can be rented half-house as El Palo Alto North and or El Palo Alto South — though I would NEVER do such — is in places called “a ball room”).
Of the 10 shows I have produced so far — jazz, bluegrass, and blues –the average attendence was closer to 100 than 200, i.e. half full. The only other show where the size of the audience influenced my thinking on your topic was Molly Tuttle, Monday, September 30 — also a sellout, clean. And in fact I left up to her tour manager the final call for a stage or no stage. (And, further, I fretted about this topic or ruminated until about 30 hours before my show at which time I was attending the Gryphon Stringed Instruments 50th anniversary party and show Sunday, September 29 featuring Molly Tuttle as an secret special guest — her dad Jack works there — and noted that their stage including Molly’s set was not a stage but merely the ground level parking lot of the auto body shop across the street. My thought was: if ground level staging was good enough for Molly’s set at the Gryphon party Sunday, it was good enough for Molly Monday at The Mitch. I did, if memory serves, tell her agent that the previous shows in that room were stageless and there would be a discussion with the tour manager when they advanced the show, although he the tm never brought it up).
If I had a band that I knew could definitely sell 350 tickets at The Mitch and the audience was young enough to stand or dance the entire night, I might elevate the band and strike the seats — I think Yoshi’s and Freight and Salvage have, at times, struck seating and tables to create a dance floor or room for “kelpers”* at Charlie Hunter shows or for salsa bands.
So, basically, my concept is an intimate environment to hear and see (in that order) local national and international acts of various genre but to put the artists at the audience level, and not elevated. Besides the simplicity of the staging (“KISS”), and the cost savings, I feel that there is something egalitarian about staging in that manner — in all my shows, over 25 years and 300 or more events, with 500 or more booked acts, and maybe 10,000 attendees, there is a blurring between act and audience and staff. For example, many fans — like yourself, apparently, I learn — are also musicians, as are my staff, or volunteers. (I’ve never hired security per se for an event — when required, by the City, I had laminates designating Earthiwise Cubberley staff but they were frequently worn by musicians, who also helped load in — not the featured performer but off-duty musicians, who frequented my shows.
I have been asked this question, or fielded that comment several times. I usually say that because the seats are stackable and not fixed — meaning we lay them out. In Friday’s case I personally unstacked and set out all 200 chairs — so that people like you can move your chair to the left or right if that helps your sight-line. You can also, in open seating, move closer to the stage, or stand, or dance. (And we left it up to Elvin’s team whether, in the event of a rush on tickets, we would try to accomodate all comes versus leaving more room for the comfort level of the artist performing).
Further or similarly, if I had employed a feature offered by EventBrite, that lets me “scan” and not merely inspect all the tickets — hard copies and electronic — I might have been able to ascertain the order of arrival for paid parties and for example, learned, potentially if you had arrived early or late to the show, which might have influenced how I answered your question: I’m guessing that someone who asked such a question arrived late, and therefore sat in the back. But, I prefer to “Keep It Simple”, and have not even downloaded the app that would let me scan all tickets and gather such data — the service does tell me the names and email addresses of ticket holders).
That Elvin Bishop not only sits during Big Fun Trio but to my observation slouches probably worsens the problem you identify.
(Another question I fielded more than once Friday was whether we should get a bar to serve alcohol, or sell more food. Although I did take the business card of the bartending crew at the Palo Alto Black and White ball recently — at Lucie Stern Center – -I doubt I will ever sell alcohol at Earthwise events; for concessions, OTOH, I was expecting ADA’s Cafe to remain open, but somehow I dropped the ball in coordinating that with Mrs. Hughes, the spearhead of that project; for the Molly Tuttle show the artist, whose mom is friends with Mrs. Hughes, even called from the stage for the audience to visit the cafe during her set break.
Circling back to your comment or what I started to say: I think the old Cubberley High for 150 events in the 1990s “quaint” whereas today, 25 years later it would be “sad”. (And I am of the age to recall attending a high school dance in that same multipurpose room). I also think Cubberley Theatre per se (but not H-1, different department) is slightly mismanaged, relative to the staffing or policy of the 1990s and that to me is a barrier or disincentive to resume a series there. I did the Matt The Electrican show on a whim and although Room H-1 is not ideal, I am pondering an ongoing singer-songwriter series there, between now and when the wrecking ball hits (you may know that Cubberley is targeted for redevelopment). For me, with banked seating, a folk series there would not need a stage although we brought in sound – but no technical staff. It’s debatable whether such a series or repeat production needs sound reinforcement, though I would more likely err on the side of better-than-needed sound rather than making do with less. What I think H-1 might need, however, if you excuse the digression, for purchase as a room for the arts, might be a mural on the wall that indicates subtly that art belongs there — not to the exclusion or more mundance uses and not to the extent of naming a series or identifying the producer: more like a rendering of a musician or something with a graffiti-styling and the words “sound” or “noise” or the like; mos def not WELCOME TO EARTHWISE AT H-1. Similarly, although I should have stated this further up, in lieu of a stage for the Mitch shows we purchased you may have noticed a Persian rug which we jokingly call “a magic carpet” on which the featuring musicians set up — although even that, the tour manager/guitar tech before he realized what he was dealing with started to direct us to use the rug for the drummer only, even on cajon. We usually have a second, less fancy rug specifically for a drum kit, as you likely know, to prevent the kit from sliding.
A rock band with a kit drummer we might get a drum riser, but have not yet had call to do so.
I am also in part booking “to the room” in that I have a series of piano-duos coming — in that series or sub-series we are trying it with no sound. The room you may have noticed has a passable Baldwin donated at the opening five years ago, which Mitch Woods but not Bob Welch played Friday.
I don’t think I will decide conclusively on the utility of Mitchell Park for a great concert series until after the first 50 shows. The room was not designed for concerts, yet I believe my concerts are its highest and best use. (With Cubberley I did not decide after a while: and in fact it was Charlie Hunter, the first to sell out the room, and who returned four times with five different combos, who said I had to keep doing the shows; he said that when he played a bar in San Jose he was unsure whether he or the mixed drinks were the draw, whereas my room, the Cubberley Theatre, was a true listening room, or a pure listening room).
I’m producing a Charlie Musselwhite show at the Palo Alto JCC— my first show there — on Sunday, Decembe. 29 — with Valerie Troutt featuring Howard Wiley and a special appaerance by MC Lars – fro $25, and that show will mos def have a stage: if you buy a ticket I will comp you a second ticket as my guest, in light of your letter.
Regards,
Mark Weiss
dba Earthwise
(650) 305-VIEW
How was the sound?
P.S. to readers of Plastic Alto: if you a, attended the Elvin Bishop show, and b, read this, you can “comment” below at Plastic Alto / WordPress as RSVP and I will comp you a ticket for each purchase order for Charlie Musselwhite, a week from tomorrow.
Coming attraction:
thanks for pointing this out
Bob Welch, Elvin Bishop, Willie Jordan performers known as Big Fun Trio
CHT 1.0: Kind of a red herring but I was looking on the video archive for Charlie playing while standing i.e. 1990 to 1994 or so, versus examples since 1995, seated. I heard that due to the nature of his playing, two parts at a time, he switched to seated to avoid tendonitis and the like; he’s a total f-in’ genius and phenomenon; someday he will start to appear while levitating six inches from the ground, maybe at The Mitch, and on its flying carpet
I didn’t hear this song (and Amy L. pointed out that he also skipped “Fishin”) but he strutted nonetheless:
Per my headline I read this famous passage by Emerson at Dartmouth in the 1980s:
We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.
andand:
There is a whole festival of Big Ears in Knoxville, TN March 26-29, 2020: Anthony Braxton, Ches Smith, Kronos Quartet, Dan Weiss no relation.
andandand: local musician Jeff Weber, who is or was brother in law to trompe l’loeil muralist Gre Brown:
*”kelpers” is or was jargon by Charlie Hunter and his sideman my former management client John Ellis to describe the dancers at his show, their swaying and bobbing.
A flyer from a Charlie Musselwhite/ Old Davis show in Palo Alto, probably not by Greg Brown although he called me once to offer to show me his work for that nearly forgetten local group.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 