Join Joe & the boys for a couple of hours reveling in the pain of heartache and demon alcohol, and a tribute or two to the valor of the American trucker! Sure they can close down the honky tonks, but they’ll never close down the bookshop! BYOB and a twenty for the band!  

Jazz and poetic compositions by saxophonist/poet Lewis Jordan, an international touring and recording artist, poet, actor and playwright, whose teachers are the music and poetry of Ayler, Shepp, Coleman, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago; the thoughts and spirit of Krishnamurti and Rumi. Music at Large includes Lewis Jordan’s long-time collaborators Sandi Poindexter, Ollen Erich Hunt and Jimmy Biala, who will appear on tonight’s program, and expands as circumstances allow to include such artists as Bruce Ackley, Pearl Ubungen, Tureeda Mikel, John-Carlos Perea, Karl Evangelista, Genny Lim, David Boyce, Ian Carey, Marshall Trammell, Masaru Koga, India Cook, and many others since its inception. https://www.musicatlarge.org/music-at-large The ensemble’s performance September 27, 2021 at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjMUFMF1Uk0. Lewis should be king! video production by Jeremy Allen | Musiquito Media https://www.musiquito.com/ Recordings by Lewis Jordan and Music at Large include This is Where I Came In (2017),…

Always a good time when the In Crowd gathers at Bird & Beckett. Eric Shifrin, piano Paul Smith, bass Raul Ramirez, drums $20 suggested, BYOB Can’t make it to the show? Check it out in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support the musicians & the stream!

Two scrappy poets with long histories in San Francisco bohemia make their way out to Bird & Beckett to make some noise in sleepy Glen Park! Jessica Loos’s work verges on performance art, channeling a strain of poetic tradition steeped in surrealism, dada and the best of Charles Bukowski. She’s a member of The Living Theatre and a collage artist as well, and organizes the poetry for the North Beach First Friday Artwalk and the North Beach Festival. Never satisfied, she also puts on readings, often with live music, at Specs Bar in Adler Alley opposite City Lights, and in Kerouac Alley between City Lights and Vesuvio opposite Specs–not to mention on Upper Grant Street on the sidewalk in front of Macchiarini Creative Design. Cara Vida left a life among the suits long ago to find a dizzying and earthy reality. With a carney’s purity, she utilizes a collage technique…

Liam Furey, tenor saxophone Anne Sajdera, piano Aaron Germain, bass Brian Andres, drums $20 suggested / byob reservations: 415-586-3733 Born and raised in Bird and Beckett’s own backyard in Glen Park, Liam Furey leads a top-flight rhythm section through two rewarding sets of reflective originals and unique standards. Liam has been involved in SF’s jazz scene for years, notably composing and recording the soundtrack for “Red Poet”, the documentary centering around the life of the late SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman. Visit Liam’s website at liamfurey.com for a taste of his rich tenor tone. His quartet for the date includes Anne Sajdera, a consummate jazz pianist with deep Brazilian and classical roots; bassist Aaron Germain, whose collaborations with musicians from a global range of traditions are widely acclaimed; and drummer Brian Andres, a key player on the Bay Area latin jazz scene.  

The Anhad Naad Collective this evening comprises vocalist Divya Vyas, Jun Ishimuro on flute and Charles Thomas on bass, joined by guest singer Madhuranjan Mohaan. $20-25 cover charge, sliding scale Anhad Naad Collective performance at Bird & Beckett can be viewed live and also after the fact on our bookshop’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. Please donate $5 or more using the venmo or paypal information on the screen to help us pay the performers and help with the streaming expense. Anhad Naad derives from the Sanskrit “Anahata Nad,” meaning “sound produced without touching two parts” and meaning at the same time “pure” or “clean, stainless”. The name of this chakra signifies the state of freshness that appears when we are able to become detached and to look at the different and apparently contradictory experiences of life with a state of openness (expansion). Flute player Jun Ishimuro came up with…

Master storyteller, able interlocutor of literary ancestors, Walker Brents III delves into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s fairy tale, groping in its lessons to get inside what it teaches, exploring the formative affinity he senses in it to the way consciousness actually goes along, seeking once again the place to which he’s always returned. Corollary themes of this endeavor, says Walker, include anthroposophy, Schiller’s insights into the education of the aesthetic sense, and the French Revolution, and some flashes of the Illuminati as well, prior to their being stirred so deeply into the collective cultural soup. Walker’s talks, monthly but for June and July when he travels the west once again, have been delivered only in our live stream since the beginning of the “special period” we have endured so long. Now, we can host a small audience in the shop. Call for a reservation: 415-586-3733. Or just grab a friend…

San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita Kim Shuck conducts a poetry reading on Zoom twice a month. Second Mondays include two featured readers and an open mic. On the fourth Monday of each month, the format is all open mic.  Zoom in and add your voice! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211

All welcome! Musicians, be our guests. Audience, help us pay the trio! Bring a twenty if you’re able, and consider donating to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, the 501(c)3 we use to fund our music, poetry and other cultural programming. That’s what makes it work when audiences can’t carry the burden of paying the talent. We’ve got a lot of talent in San Francisco, spanning the generations.

From the high deserts of western Colorado comes Danny Rosen, a poet, publisher, and bookseller after our own heart, whose Lithic Press has published a wealth of fine poetry, prose and art books in recent years, and whose bookstore and gallery of the same name in Fruita, CO has been the site of many great readings and exhibitions. Joining him on the Bird & Beckett stage will be the inimitable wordsmith and drummer Clark Coolidge, and writer and City Lights editor Garrett Caples, as well as poet, biographer, and emcee for the day, Neeli Cherkovski. More about the poets: Each morning Danny Rosen pees on the bank of the largest unnamed tributary to the East Branch of Big Salt Wash which flows into the Colorado River several miles below Fruita, Colorado. Early on he learned to swing a hammer and that changed everything. He has been a poet, publisher, teacher,…

Dave Tidball, alto sax. Charlie Keagle, tenor sax. Henry Hung, trumpet. Peter Barshay, bass. David Rokeach, drums. $25 cover charge / byob. reservations: call the shop at 415-586-3733. Tidball5 plays three-horn arrangements of alto player Dave Tidball’s compositions that he’s arranged for an ensemble with no chord-playing instrument (such as piano or guitar). Soloists are accompanied and supported by textures and lines of the non-soloing horns, along with the rhythm section. More from Dave: “I had a seven-piece band in Boston which was fun – I enjoy writing for multiple horns. In the 90s I formed Threedom, a trio which included bassist Bill Douglass and drummer Robert Kaufman, reveling in the freedom of that format. This new group is like an amalgamation of those two worlds” Dave, a multi-reed instrumentalist, arranger and composer born in Wales, became active in the London jazz scene in the 1970s, recording two albums and…

three avatars of the san francisco cultural stew invite you to come browse the stacks and buy some books. it’s the only way we’re going to dig out of this mess, and the plumping of the cash drawer is their intent in gathering you here today. we ourselves will content ourselves with ringing up the sales, humming along quietly, nodding sagely at the wisdom of their observations. know thyself, they say, but we say we’ll leave that to them what’s got a better perspective. we’ll take the sally field position on the matter. we’re just happy to be an outpost on the city’s cocktail circuit, where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life, to get the feel of life… the fray can wait.

Come out for the funkified soul of Jairo Vargas, Eli Goldlink, Bil Hagar and Pat Korte Rojai in the Pocket! $20 cover / byob  

It all started back at the turn of the century… we fell into conversation with the bassist John Clark, flipping through the jazz record bins, and the next thing we knew, we’d agreed on presenting a trio on a Friday evening a few weeks hence. John arrived with veteran drummer Vince Lateano and the pianist Lee Bloom, who brought along an electric keyboard… A few weeks later, one of Lee’s piano students, Jon Anderson, assembled a trio with his buddy Andrew Kelsey, George & Evelyn’s kid from up on Miguel Street… Not long after that, Eric Shifrin set up his keyboard with a trio. The neighbors clamored for more, especially Blanche Bebb’s friend Mary Goode… The proprietor told ’em, we gotta pay the musicians,  you know…  and that got serious when a retired tenor sax player from up on Martha Street, Chuck Peterson, heard from Mary that Bird & Beckett…

RDL+ celebrates the release of their five-album CD set “Bay Area Bridges” with an intimate concert at Bird & Beckett. Ruthie Dineen (piano) Doug Lee (bass) Luis Salcedo (guitar) $20 cover charge (cash, please); byob To reserve a seat, call 415-586-3733 RDL+, conceived and developed its “Bay Area Bridges” series in a 4-year residency at Studio Grand in Oakland as an evolving encounter with guests artists focused on original composition and collaboration, spanning jazz, classical and many other influences, moving from solo to trio and up to large ensemble based on the individual and collective artistic inspiration of the musicians. Tonight, they perform with special guests to celebrate that project and the resultant, newly released five-CD set. “We are interested in being creative and full musicians, both on on our own and as a group. When we come together, it feels right; seamless, exhilarating and meaningful all at once.” Beginning…