Friday, August 31st – 5:30 to 8:00 pm

Special 5th Friday booking in our
weekly jazz in the bookshop series

Scott Foster Trio

live jazz without fail every Friday since October 2002!!
10 years & counting…

Each Friday, we present one of four combos in rotation, but when there’s a fifth Friday in a month, we have latitude to bring in a special guest act.

This week, guitarist Scott Foster brings in bassist Chris Fouts and drummer Dan Foltz for two sets of classic jazz rooted in the 1950s sound that flowed out of the bop era to make small combo jazz a hugely popular music in cities across the nation.

We’ve long considered Scott our favorite guitarist on the local scene– and his confederates on this date are completely in sync with his conception and spirit.  Another wonderful jazz date in Glen Park.

 Sunday, August 26 – 1:00 pm

RD Armstrong & G. Murray Thomas

Two SoCal (Long Beach) writers on tour through the Bay Area & Sacramento, including a stop at Bird & Beckett, RD Armstrong (E/OR: Living Among the Mangled, Lummox Press, 2010 and Last Call: The Bukowski Legacy Continues,Lummox Press, 2011) will be joined by G. Murray Thomas (My Kidney Just Arrived, Tebot Bach, 2011 and News Clips and Ego Trips, Write Bloody Press, 2012).

Armstrong’s E/OR is based on
the writer’s experiences as a diabetic
and L.A. County health-care patient.

After being diagnosed as diabetic and
nearly losing his right foot to infection
back in 2008, Armstrong began his
journey through the health
maintenance system provided to the
poor and indigent members of
Los Angeles County.

It has been a wild ride thus far.

 

Thomas’ My Kidney Just Arrived is based on his experiences as a dialysis and kidney transplant patient.

After seven years on dialysis, Thomas received a new kidney in April 2010, as part of a chain donation. His kidney came from Jodi Tamen, an altruistic donor in Chicago, who had no idea who would receive her kidney. In return, Thomas’s sister, Jeananne, donated a kidney to a man in Salt Lake City, whose wife then donated to another patient.  In the end, five people received new kidneys from this chain.

 

RD Armstrong is characterized as a somewhat enigmatic figure in the Southern California poetry scene. He has featured all over SoCal, including the Redondo Poets, Beyond Baroque in Venice, Book Soup in Hollywood, and the Artists Union Gallery Reading in Ventura. He has also read in the Bay Area and at the Sacramento Poetry Center, as well as in Grass Valley. Between 1995 and 2006, he published and edited The Lummox Journal, a monthly lit/arts magazine, distributed via subscription across the United States and to seven countries worldwide. He also operates the Lummox Press, which publishes the Little Red Book series and has also published 28 full length titles (including five of his own).

G. Murray Thomas is a longstanding figure in the Southern California poetry scene.  Like RD, he has featured all over SoCal, including Laguna Poets, Beyond Baroque in Venice, the Ugly Mug in Orange, and After the Carnival in Long Beach.  Between 1994 and 1998, he published and edited Next… Magazine, a monthly poetry calendar and newsmagazine, distributed for free throughout SoCal.  He has previously published the full-length collection of poems Cows on the Freeway, as well as five chapbooks.  Thomas also edited Paper Shredders, an anthology of poetry and prose about surfing.

 

 

We at Bird & Beckett want to dedicate this reading to long-time Bay Area bookman Steve Choisser, who lost his life far too young as a consequence of a local health system that poorly managed his diabetes and related health issues.

 

 

 

Sunday, August 26 – 2:30 pm

Walker Talks!

The Poetics of Space:
Observations from a
summer driving the long
American highway

Walker Brents III does monthly talks at Bird & Beckett on a wide variety of topics– but in the summer months (June and July) he and his wife Joyce are always on the road, visiting family and revisiting the road & the landscape west of Great Plains… this August, after shaking off the road dust, Walker will explore Bachelard’s famous text in light of the summer’s wanderings…

Sunday, August 26 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm

The Jim Grantham Quartet

another jazz date in our weekly “which way west?” Sunday afternoon concert series — no cover, but your donations are crucial to help us pay the musicians.

Jim Grantham is one of the Bay Area’s best-kept secrets, a tenor player of great power, skill and dexterity who has graced the bandstand at Bird & Beckett dozens of times over the past ten years.

For all that, Jim has been too long absent from our stage and we’re glad to get him back for this rare date — in the company of three of the region’s best jazz players:  Keith Saunders on piano; Jeff Neighbor on bass and Jack Dorsey on drums.

Over his 30-years-plus career in the area, Jim has played jazz alongside Bobby McFerrin, George Cables, Eddie Moore, Mark Isham, Ed Kelly, and Frank Tusa, among many others.  He has recorded with Jessica Williams and Eddie Henderson.  He ran a jazz class at the famed Keystone Korner.  And he’s brought terrific small combos into long runs at any number of small venues around the area over the years.

Don’t miss this chance to hear one of Bird & Beckett’s favorite tenor players — and we know a lot of great ones!