SLO Singer-Songwriter showcases By admin | April 26th, 2008
I hear a lot of people talking about the Crosby, Stills & Nash concert coming up, or the other stars of the 60s and 70s playing the Chumash Casino or Mid-State Fair. I still listen to some of those old songs, but my passion is discovering the new singer-songwriters, the musical poets who can write story songs as engaging as Jim Croce’s, or whose soulful singing can get to me the way James Taylor used to.
That’s one reason why I host weekly singer-songwriter showcases in SLO, and produce concerts featuring traveling troubadours you’ve probably never heard of. I’m addicted to the thrill of discovery — like when my high school buddy turned me on to Neil Young’s “Harvest” LP, or when I was 17 and it seemed like Janis Ian was singing “At Seventeen” just for me.
I taught myself to play my dad’s folk guitar when I was in Boy Scout camp, strumming John Denver and Creedence songs. Later, I wrote my own songs, got gigs playing in Bay Area bars, and went off to New York to hang out with the new singer-songwriters of Greenwich Village. If you listen to Sonnie Brown’s “Minstrel Song Show” on KCBX, then you’ll know names like Shawn Colvin, Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, Richard Shindell, and Lucy Kaplansky. That was the New York folk scene in the mid-80s.
Mondays were Hoot Nights, open mikes that ran into the wee hours, dozens of performers ranging from rank newcomers to touring pros on a night off. Musicians who played their two songs and left just didn’t get it. The point was to hang out and wait to hear that diamond in the rough. To me, listening was as important as performing.
I had my moments: getting to play some big festivals, opening for some big names, even hearing one of those headliners sing one of my songs to an audience of several thousand. I put out a few CDs, toured around, got my songs on the radio. But nothing real big.
I went on to Nashville in the mid-90s, trying to get more famous people to sing my songs, and I heard many more great songs by writers whose hits you know but whose names you don’t. I often thought the writers did better versions than the stars did. I hosted a weekly Writers Night, every Thursday night for four years in east Nashville, and it was like Hoot Night all over again.
It’s a lot like what I do now on Tuesday nights at The Clubhouse (known for years as “This Old House”) in San Luis Obispo. It’s a three-hour showcase, with a featured act in the middle playing a 45-minute set, and up to 8 others playing short guest sets, usually three songs apiece. Most are solo singer-songwriters playing guitars, but we’ve had duos, trios, even four- and five-piece bands.
The Clubhouse bar is a cozy room, usually about 20 or 30 in the audience, some of whom are chatting with friends at the bar or enjoying dinner with the family. Then there’s that moment, when something in the singer’s voice catches their ears, and the chatting stops, all eyes on the performer. That’s the moment I love.
It may not happen this Tuesday. Or the next. But I remember one time when Mario Matteoli dropped by for a guest set on a Tuesday, and we wished he would have played all night. He lives in Austin, Texas, but has family around here. Some people say he sounds like Neil Young, but I hear deeper roots, like Woody Guthrie or Townes Van Zandt. I’ll produce a concert for Mario at the Clubhouse on Saturday, May 31, hoping to hear more of that sound that had us saying “Who WAS that guy?”
You can get more information about my music and the shows I produce at www.stevekey.com