The Seducers play every Second Sunday in Bird & Beckett’s weekly “Canyon Moonlight Music” series.  The band features guitarist and vocalist Mitch Polzak, pedal steel guitarist Joe Goldmark, singer and bassist Eddie Kendrick and drummer Kenny Owen. Classic country music for a moonlit November night hard by Glen Canyon, where the coyotes howl and the cats fear for their lives. 7:30-10 pm. $10 donation requested.

Join us for our Surf-a-billy Swing Time Dance Party finale!  After a swingin’ 14-month run, who better to wrap it up, tie a ribbon ’round it, and place it under your tree than the dynamo that started it off! Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Soultet featuring Jules Broussard and Danny Armstrong will thrill you and set you shimmying right into Christmas! Lavay has been the toast of the town since 1989.  With the fabulous band that is the Red Hot Skillet Lickers, she’s been a star attraction at Dizzy’s in New York, Sculler’s in Boston, The Green Mill in Chicago, The Dakota in Minneapolis, Jazz Alley in Seattle and The Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis. When not touring, the Skillet Lickers regularly pack them in at Biscuits & Blues, The Cafe du Nord, The Club Deluxe, Ashkenaz, Rancho Nicasio and any number of other hot spots around the Bay. Thousands of…

Duo at 4:00 with Chris Amberger on bass Quartet at 7:30, with Howard Wiley, sax; Chris Amberger, bass and Hamir Atwal, drums

Pianist Don Alberts and bassist Aaron Cohn join trombonist Pilorz for two sets testing the margins where bebop and hard bop constructions encounter harmonic concepts rife with possibility — all in the party atmosphere that we know and love on Friday evenings in San Francisco’s premier & southernmost outpost of literature and jazz — Bird & Beckett Books: setting the pace in Glen Park since 1999! Three generations of jazz musicians find their way to common ground.  

The long overdue SIXTH issue of AMERARCANA: A Bird & Beckett Review is now available, featuring art by Will Yackulic and writing by Garrett Caples, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Derek Fenner, Jackqueline Frost, Evan Kennedy, Frank Lima, Jason Morris, Rod Roland, Aaron Shurin, Cedar Sigo, Syd Staiti, Richard Tagett, Tara Thomas, and the editor, Nicholas James Whittington, along with translations of Hafez by Patrick James Dunagan and Ava Koohbor. Order now. And/or show your face and flash some cash on Wednesday, December 9th at 7:00 pm when we’ll hold a celebration of the publication with readings by contributors, libations, and general near-year-end levity. Please help spread the word!

Joshua Raoul Brody Christopher Gray Joe Cunningham are The Potrero Hillbillies! Joshua Raoul Brody writes:  Everybody loves the Kinks. Not everybody loves their widely overlooked album Muswell Hillbillies, and that is a shame: it’s one of those albums (like, in this writer’s opinion, Revolver, Loaded (what an interesting juxtaposition!), the Band’s 2nd album,Smiley Smile, Loudon Wainwright’s High Wide & Handsome, and Little Village) where every track is exquisite PLUS they all hang together to make a lovely whole PLUS it sounds like everybody had a lot of fun making it (whether or not that’s actually true) AND it’s a lot of fun to listen to. Underrated genius Ray Davies joined alternately witty and heartbreaking lyrics to his brother’s gift for irresistibly catchy guitar hooks and the result should have been even more successful than the previous year’s “Lola”, but somehow it didn’t take off – maybe switching record labels had something to…

Denise Perrier, vocals Jerry Logas, saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Adam Gay, bass Tony Johnson, drums “Denise has this wonderfully warm voice….Listening to her is like sipping the best glass of wine you ever had in your life. You savor every note that comes out of her mouth.” – Dee Spencer, pianist and professor of music. “Denise has everything a singer should: sound, soul, swing and feeling. And she’s a party!” — Houston Person, tenor saxophonist “Denise Perrier is more than a good singer. She is a complete entertainer, who is able to take a song and make it her own.” –Clifford Brown, Jr. radio host, KCSM “She’s the real deal, right in there with Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington.” – Bryan Gould, founder of big band Swing Fever “Perrier’s work is big, rich, melodic, and hits home with a remarkable punch. She has that swirling, dancing, ingratiating intimacy usually associated…

Smith Dobson, alto saxophone, leads a quartet that includes trumpeter Henry Hung, bassist Miles Wick and drummer Evan Hughes in an exploration of Ornette Coleman’s music. Coleman had a remarkable influence on the shape of jazz to come for so many generations of musicians that followed. Says Smith, “Ornette’s music started to liberate me from the confines of straight ahead jazz when I was still a teenager playing drums in a band in Santa Cruz days called Guts (with Robert Overbury, Jay Sanders and Scott Larson). We had a weekly gig at a long-defunct club and even a small but loyal following.  “What I love about Ornette is that although he freed up the concept of jazz improvisation, his roots are still deeply rooted in the tradition of bebop. I am a big fan of all eras of Ornette and plan to play some music spanning his whole life.”

Drummer Vinnie Rodriguez leads the date on an excursion through the music of Sonny Rollins, putting his worthy constituents Jay Sanders (piano), Mike Irwin Johnson (guitar) and Noah Schencker (bass) through their paces. Nary a reed player among them, much less a wind instrument…. Jay’s well known as a trumpeter, but here he navigates the keys. Ok, so it turns out he brought his trumpet. Our gain, there. The other players? Solidly in the pocket.  It’s Mike who will provide the charts and advise on the wealth of Sonny Rollins material for the choosing. Are you ready? Drop! Go Dodgers!

Twice a month, on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays, pianist Grant Levin performs with a duo partner at Bird & Beckett.  Grant is always amazing, and the rapport he builds with his fellow musicians is consistently deep.

The crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster inspired bassist Lisa Mezzacappa to cook up this project, which performed the suite recently at SFJazz.  Thanks to Marty Bigos for helping to underwrite AvantNOIR’s performance today at Bird & Beckett. And thanks to Jean Conner, whose support through the years has made our entire Sunday afternoon “which way west?” series possible. A sextet with Aaron Bennett, sax; John Finkbeiner, guitar; Vijay Anderson, drums; Lisa Mezzacappa, bass (Bait & Switch) plus William Wynant, percussion and Tim Perkis, electronics. music inspired by noir genre fiction set in New York City (LM’s hometown) and the San Francisco Bay Area (her adopted home for the past 13 years). avant-NOIR is a musical companion to Paul Auster’s abstract soft-boiled crime stories from his New York Trilogy of the 1980s, set in conversation with the West Coast classic hard-boiled 1920s-era detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett. The…