Wait!! Is Bird & Beckett a jazz venue? a rock-a-billy venue?

Is it too early in the month for a jazz-a-billy date?

Just what is jazz-a-billy anyway?

Exploring that last timeless question, you may want to check out the article linked here and then consider this statement attributed to Jinx from a great San Jose Mercury article that ran in the paper a few days ago:   “My whole approach is similar to a jazz musician. I like when music happens at a certain moment in a song and it may never happen that way again. There’s a kind of adventure to that.”

photo by Bob Hakins, San Jose Mercury News

In the San Jose Merc article, Jinx goes on to say “One thing I like about rockabilly — anything you can play in a blues, jazz, swing, or country music context, you can put all of that stuff into rockabilly and it fits.”

All true! And we’ve seen it get far crazier than that at Bird & Beckett time and again when Jinx & his trio travel the ‘billy byways! Just you wait ’til we flip on the disco ball lightshow for the trio’s forays into psychedelic territory, harkening back to this keystone incident from Jinx’s musical past, as relayed in the Merc article:

“One of Jinx’s early inspirations was a Colorado guitar band called The Astronauts. ‘The sound of surf music was a cool celebration of everything you could do with electric guitar. They drenched it in reverb. As a kid, I want to make that sound.’  He immersed himself in the sounds of The Ventures and British Invasion groups. One day, a friend said his dad could take them to a concert at a nearby college. ‘I said, “Who’s playing?” He said, “Some band from England — The Jimi Hendrix Experience.” I’d never heard of them, but said I’d go. That pretty much set me down the path.'”

Jinx’s path took him from his Colorado childhood into the bands of Chuck Berry and Roy Buchanan, and into the studio with Oakland’s own En Vogue, where he added memorable guitar work to their platinum selling “Funky Divas” album. (You’ll instantly recognize him on “Free Your Mind” once you’ve heard him play at Bird & Beckett!)

Come down to Bird & Beckett on the third Sunday night of each month for the Jazz-A-Billy All Stars, with Ken Owen on drums and Joe Kyle, Jr., on bass to find out just how far too far can go when Jinx straps on his guitar and lets it rip! Free your mind and the rest will follow!

And for our common day-to-day existence in this stressed present, we’d all do well to hear and heed the rest of En Vogue’s message in the chorus… be color blind, don’t be so shallow.