Let me tell you a story... Once upon a time (early 1997), when the boyfriend and I lived in Portland, one night I decided to go to a show by a Bay Area blues artist. Boyfriend couldn't go because he had a jazz gig, but he dropped me at the venue (a club he'd played dozens and dozens of times with several different bands) and said he'd be back to pick me up. When he came back after his gig, the show was still going on. I had scored a table right in front and was sitting there by myself. (I spent years going to shows by myself--I'm not the type to sit at home if I don't have someone to go with me.) Boyfriend spotted me, but being the shy type he is, he didn't want to walk right in front of the stage. So he went out the back door by the bar, walked through the patio behind the stage, re-entered through the side door at stage left and joined me.
This is where I should interject that all evening, the guitarist/singer (it was his band) seemed a bit peeved with his drummer. He kept turning around while they were playing and giving the guy dirty looks.
This was an artist I'd seen perform many times when I lived in the Bay Area, but I hadn't heard him play in years. Suddenly the guitarist noticed the boyfriend and was all smiles. I looked at the boyfriend like, "You know him?" Turns out they didn't exactly know each other, but they'd been on the same bill a time or two. After the show, the guitarist made a beeline for the boyfriend and wanted to chat with him, so they moved to the bar to talk. He said as soon as he saw the boyfriend walk in, he remembered how good he was. And when we walked out of the club that night, boyfriend had a new gig. He spent most of 1997 touring with this guy. They toured a lot--all over the U.S., several Canadian cities, over to Europe (London, Paris, Amsterdamn, Hamburg, etc.) There were fun gigs, too: Central Park, Buddy Guy's blues club in Chicago, Tanglewood, a whole bunch of blues festivals in the summertime, etc. But by year's end, he'd tired of the road. They were never gone for really long stints--I think three weeks was the longest they'd go out. But he grew weary of being home for only two or three days at a time. Plus, the rest of the band lived in the Bay Area, so he always had an extra leg coming and going--flying to San Francisco from Portland to meet up with them and then flying from San Francisco to Portland to get back home. But he and the guitarist had a lot of good times (and some wild times!) and he's still a friend. Our clubowner friend in St. Thomas brought the guitarist to St. Thomas for a weekend of shows in late 2000. Just him, not his band. And the boyfriend and some others backed him. It was good to see him and to hear him play with the boyfriend again.
But that night in 1997 when we walked out of that very familiar venue in Portland with the boyfriend having just been given the drummer's job if he wanted it, we were a bit awed. It was one of those freaky moments where you realize timing is everything...and wonder if there aren't hands of fate or destiny or something at play in your world. The same thing happened last night...
Having done some research before we decided on Davis and made our move, we were well aware that the jazz scene in Sacramento is nearly non-existent. Yes, there are some players and a few venues that occasionally host jazz, but boyfriend knew that if he wanted to do jazz club work, it might be tough to find in Sac. For weeks now, we've been scouring the club listings in the Sacramento News & Review (the free, alternative weekly). We've noticed that Thursday nights seemed to be the best. And there was one particular club that seemed to be the only club dedicated to jazz all week, so we thought that might be the best bet. But for several Thursdays running, something kept coming up. We still hadn't make it over to Sacramento to hear any music...until last night.
On the way home from San Francisco on Wednesday evening, we decided to bypass our exit and drive into downtown Sacramento. It had been years since I'd been there and boyfriend isn't familiar with it at all. We simply wanted to time the trip. It takes 15 minutes, tops. We'd driven around downtown a bit the other night, so when we decided to head out for the jazz club last night, we knew right where it was and how to get there. It's right downtown, across the street from Memorial Auditorium (where I saw Sly & the Family Stone in concert when I was 19). We found a parking place easily and walked across the street. There appeared to be two clubs side-by-side...or were they two rooms for the same venue? We walked up to the bouncer working the club that had music going on and asked him. He said they were separate venues--that the club we were at featured blues and had a small cover charge and that the club next door has jazz and there was no cover. We thanked him and said we were going to check out the jazz club (which was our destination anyway), but that we'd be back (even though we knew we wouldn't because the blues band was playing the kind of blues that really gets on the boyfriend's nerves). :)
We began walking toward the door of the jazz club, but as we looked through the windows we saw (and heard) that there wasn't any music being played and the place was EMPTY. This is how empty it was: there were three people working behind the bar, one single woman at one end of the bar, a single guy at the opposite end of the bar and one couple in between. And it's a nice club. There was a guy with an acoustic guitar setting up his amp on stage and there was a not-very-nice drum kit on stage. This was clearly not the jazz group they'd advertised as being slated to play there last night. Boyfriend, being the least pushy person you'll ever meet but trying to force himself to meet local musicians, walked up to the guitarist to introduce himself. They chatted briefly and when the guitarist heard he was a jazz musician, he said, "Well let me introduce you to D.--he's the owner." Um, okay. So he walked the boyfriend over to the end of the bar and introduced him to D. and they shook hands and boyfriend introduced me and I shook hands with D. and then we had a seat at the bar.
D. explained that there'd been a mix-up and the band that was supposed to play last night (the same band is playing there tonight) hadn't shown up. So he'd called his friend C. (the guitarist) who fills in when he needs him. C.'s from Barbados and seems quite nice. After much amp tweaking and battery replacement, C. finally sat down to play. By then another couple had come in and taken one of the tables and an older gentleman had taken a seat next to us at the bar. But the two single people who'd been at the bar had left, so it was a wash. Finally C. began to play and immediately asked the boyfriend if he'd like to join him. I knew the boyfriend really didn't want to play. The drum kit looked like shit and C. was playing rock and pop cover tunes, and that's fine, but it wasn't the jazz we'd expected to hear. Boyfriend looked at me and said under his breath, "How can I get out of this? Okay, I'll play one tune." He waited until C. had finished his first song and then he walked onstage. D. was in the back room when they began playing the next song, but as soon as he walked out mid-tune he walked over to me, leaned across the bar and said, "Man! He sounds SWEET!" I explained (as I often do, because the boyfriend HATES to promote himself) that the boyfriend is the most unassuming guy you could possibly meet, but he has world-class talent. D. kept exclaiming over his playing and then said, "I've gotta get him in here!" And then he said, with a bit of an awed smile on his face, "Sometimes people and things come into my life and I don't understand it...but I don't question it." I laughed and said I was just thinking the same thing, as in "How does this stuff happen to us?" D. and I chatted a bit--he wondered how we came to be there that night. I gave him a super-condensed "just spent five years in the Virgin Islands...just moved to Davis..." version.
Boyfriend kindly played several tunes with C. (we felt bad that the place was so empty) and then took his leave and rejoined me at the bar. D. immediately pulled up a stool to join us and began telling the boyfriend how he'd like to give him a regular weekly gig if he'd like to have one...and how he'd even round up all the other players to join him...and wondered if we could come back on Saturday night when their "All-Stars" are playing so he could meet all the best players...and that he'd probably be able to sit in and play, etc. Boyfriend was like, "Sure! Love to!" And when we said our goodbyes about 11:30, we were all of us (D., the boyfriend and me) smiling over what an odd bit of timing had just happened. Of all nights for us to finally go to that club--to pick the one night when a band hadn't shown up. Once again, the timing gods have smiled on us.
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