Paul Griffiths is a singer/songwriter known and widely admired for such timeless classics as “Headless Body in a Topless Bar.” Tonight, his Scofflaws include Charlie Hancock, Sean Silverman and Randy Lee Odell. Meredith Edgar plies the same trade, writing and performing her songs about bittersweet love, drowning, mistakes, the ocean, and the dark underbelly of relationships. Drummer Randy Lee Odell puts together the shows for the first Thursday of each month, in our “canyon moonlight” series…   Born at an early age in Manchester England, Paul Griffith’s “at times comic, at times tragic” original songs have been characterized as “Briti-Cana: Americana with a British flavor.” Initially inspired by the high energy country covers of British boogie bands and later pub rock’s good-time-Charleys, Paul learned guitar and some stage craft from the guitar-loving boyfriends of his big sister, right before punk rock’s scorched-earth-year-zero ideology ripped a hole in British pop culture.…

Bring $10 for the band and $10 for hurricane relief – through the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund established by Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. Mitch Polzak is one swingin’ cat! Wait ’til you hear him smoke that pig with lightning speed. His trio is the toast of rockabilly festivals, county fairs, bars and clubs throughout the Bay Area and the Central Valley, as well as the Club Deluxe over on Haight, Blondies over on Valencia, and now, Bird & Beckett! Hank’s been on the scene for a couple decades at least, playing lead guitar and bass, singing, all manner of country music, swing for dancers, whatever requires a fabulous stage presence and consummate skill and talent. As for Mr. K.O.? Kenny “The Haiku Cowboy” Owen? All defer to this legend of the country music circuit. He’s a granddaddy of the scene, and the proud granddad…

Bring $10 for the band and $10 for hurricane relief – through the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund established by Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. wordwind chorus comprises the poets q.r. hand, brian auerbach and lewis jordan, and, safe in heaven dead (to quote Jack Kerouac), the late great reginald lockett. lewis plays alto saxophone as well, the three voices and the sax intermingling & contrapuntalizing to summon up powerful, edifying, and delightful gusts of thought, feeling, insight… it’s profound, for sure, and a true pleasure.   if i were king   if i were king i’d have the teachers preach and the preachers teach if i were king i’d speak truth to power i’d tell myself what i really believed even if it made me uncomfortable   if i were king i’d call for my pipe and have a bowl while listenin to B.B. or…

Bring $15 for the band and $15 for hurricane relief – through the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund established by Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. Guitarist Tom Lander is joined by Charlie McCarthy on sax, Grant Levin on piano, Chuck Bennett on bass and Mark Lee on drums. Seasoned musicians among the very best San Francisco has to offer. $15 cover charge  

Bring $10 for the band and $10 for hurricane relief – through the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund established by Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. Drummer Vince Lateano joins up with bassist Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble tonight — Al Molina on trumpet and flugelhorn and Jerry Logas on flute, clarinet and sax. Bebop, standards and jazz experiments for your listening pleasure. Vince has been a stalwart on the San Francisco scene for decades — known to many of us from his long tenure as the house drummer at Pearl’s in North Beach, and for being in the first trio to grace Bird & Beckett way back in 1999 or 2000, when he came in with bassist John Clark and keyboard player Lee Bloom. Now, he’s a first call drummer for all manner of top drawer jazz players passing through town and holds down the drum chair…

Bring $10 for the band and $10 for hurricane relief – through the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund established by Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. It’s Macy Blackman’s Mighty Fine Trio! Macy is a piano professor of the first water. Says jazz writer Andrew Gilbert in Berkeleyside, “Macy is as comfortable rockin’ Ellington and Gershwin as he is swingin’ Joe Turner and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.” But it’s New Orleans’ music that’s at the heart of so much of Macy Blackman’s music, ever since the mid 70’s when he began to specialize in New Orleans R&B after forming a tight bond of friendship with one of its masters, drummer Charles “Hungry” Williams. As for his trio, Nancy Wright is a hard swinging tenor player and a dynamite singer with a reputation, cds and performance history that just doesn’t quit. And bassist Bing Nathan has been the coolest cat…

Once upon a tme in California… Mallory M. O’Connor talks about her novel, American River: Tributaries, on Tuesday, August 29 at 7 p.m. “O’Connor weaves a complex tapestry that shows us that immigrant bigotry did not start with Trump’s call for a wall.” — Hilary Hemingway, author of Hemingway in Cuba A part of O’Connor’s novel is set in San Francisco, where one of the main characters, Carl Fitzgerald, a young musician, hopes to make his mark in the world of classical music. The story takes place in the 1960s and the book refers to llocal landmarks including City Lights Bookstore, The Black Hawk, and Cafe Trieste among others. The book also addresses a number of social issues—including immigration, LGBT rights, and women’s rights—that are still very significant today.