San Francisco pickers, Trouble Town boil a hot pot of folk, bluegrass, swing, jazz and rock into a rebel blend of music with a big acoustic sound. The band’s musical chemistry and diverse influences have allowed them to pull from a deep musical well and make it a special stew all their own. The band was formed in 2019 from a more traditional 5-piece that included a banjoist and fiddler. When both players moved out of state the remaining members found that the resulting trio format of the core band opened a plethora of musical possibilities. Led by Western Swing Hall of Famer, Pam Brandon (AKA Belle of Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys) on bass, with Forrest Allen (Dusty Green Bones Band) on mandolin, and Mark Ignatius (Burl Haggard, Boots and The Katz, Das Tapes) on guitar, the band worked through the pandemic by performing outdoors in parks and…

Paul Harding, whose brilliant and absorbing novel Tinkers took the world by surprise on its publication in 2009 by Bellevue Literary Press and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2010, will read at Bird & Beckett this coming Sunday from his recently published third novel, This Other Eden (W.W. Norton, 2023). Ten years in the writing, This Other Eden is richly imagined from the true story of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine, settled in 1793 by a former slave and his Galway wife. From that beginning, the multiracial community tended apple orchards, fished, did mainlanders’ laundry and found other ways to scrape by and flourish in many ways despite a severe and unforgiving environment, mostly isolated from the prejudices and violence of the mainland society. All that changed in 1911/12 when the mainland blue bloods, prosecutors of christian morality, officialdom and eugenicists decided in their wisdom and racist…

San Francisco journalist Denise Sullivan conducts a monthly series of conversations (the second Sunday of each month from 10-11 a.m.) with The City’s activists, educators, arts and cultural leaders and community workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books. Find the live stream 1t 10a.m. on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Use the “refresh” button at 10 a.m. if the stream isn’t not live when you first link to it! This month’s guest is designer, educator, musician and founder of Demonstration Gardens, Kasey Rios. As a public gardener, Rios has a vision for a greener city. But beyond gardening and fair use of public space, Rios is an advocate of  resilience work, community engagement and fair wages for all. From the Bright Sounds Apprenticeship Program, training future sound and recording engineers at Hyde Street Studios to the annual…

Pianist Ken Cook returns with his quartet for two sets of jazz. Rob Sudduth, saxophone Ken Cook, piano Doug Miller, bass Kendrick Freeman, drums Here’s evidence of his last Bird & Beckett quartet date, on January 13, 2023:

Born, raised and based in Los Angeles, electric 6-string bassist and composer Steuart Liebig has been a pillar of the new music scene there for decades, prolific in his explorations of modern creative jazz and free improvisation, as well as third stream and classical music. As a young player in the late 1970s, he played rhythm guitar in Les McCann’s soul jazz band, contributing to four McCann albums, and in the mid- to late 1980s he could be found working with Nels Cline in their fusion band BLOC and in Julius Hemphill’s band alongside Alex Cline and Bill Frisell. Countless associations and projects have followed. Here’s an enlightening article from JazzTimes magazine delving into his work ca. 2001. Liebig’s trio at Bird & Beckett tonight, with Bay Area improvisers Garth Powell on drums and Phillip Greenlief on saxophone, builds on past encounters among the three to forge something original and…

Always a good time when Eric attracts the In Crowd to Bird & Beckett! He’s here with a fresh band on the second Friday of every month. This time out, this is the fabulous band: Eric Shifrin, piano Willie Perez, guitar Joe Kyle Jr. bass Jason Hanson drums BYOB and a twenty for the band if you can manage it! Donations are voluntary, though necessary to support our determination to pay a decent guarantee regardless of audience turnout or financial enthusiasm. Be as enthusiastic as your pocketbook can manage, and as the music excites & pleases. Thanks for supporting live jazz in San Francisco in 2023! Mark your calendar now for the 2nd Friday in July, when he’ll be back with Nancy Wright on saxophone, Bing Nathan on bass and Mark Lee on drums. Here’s Eric’s last outing, the second Friday of April:

Three long-time friends and colleagues converge to share their work. Art Beck will be reading from his latest book, Angel Rain, Poems 1977-2020 (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2022). He received the Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation for his book Opera Omnia Luxorius, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone (Otis Books/Seismicity 2012). His Mea Roma (Shearsman Books, 2018) a “meditative sampling” of Martial epigrams, was a runner up in the American Literary Translators Association’s 2018 Cliff Becker Book Prize. His Etudes, a Rilke Recital (Shanti Arts 2020) was a finalist in the 2021 NCBA. Denise Low, Ph.D., is a former Kansas Poet Laureate. Her essays about surviving COVID-19 are in Jigsaw Puzzling (Meadowlark Press, 2022). She won the a Red Mountain Press award for Shadow Light: Poems. Other publications are the memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (Univ. of Nebraska Press); Wing: Poems (Red Mountain, Hefner…

Author and journalist Zarina Zabrisky, well known on the San Francisco literary scene and for her political engagement since about 2010, has been based in Odesa, Ukraine since the early months of the Russian invasion. She will share photos and writings this evening, and will engage with the audience to answer their questions on the war and its human dimensions. Originally from the USSR, her childhood was split between summers in Ukraine and winters in Russia. After relocating to San Francisco, she worked in various literary genres, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is the author of five books, including the novel We, Monsters. As a journalist, Zabrisky has contributed to numerous publications, covering topics ranging from politics to culture and social issues. After the Russian invasion, she moved to Ukraine to report directly from the front lines. Based in Odesa, Zabrisky has traveled extensively across the war-torn country, contributing…

  Scott Foster’s CMC jazz combo performs 5-6pm followed by a jam session hosted by the Keith Saunders Trio. Your voluntary contributions help us pay a stipend to the student musicians and a fair guaranteed wage to the members of the trio. The Community Music Center has been teaching music to San Franciscans, young and old, for more than a century, and its jazz ensembles are coached by a dedicated faculty drawing from many of the City’s finest musicians.   The trio: Keith Saunders, piano Ollie Dudek, bass Ron Marabuto, drums The jam session is open to all non-professional players, though no players will be chased away due to their professional status! We appreciate you sharing your talents and experience! No charge to play or attend, although audience donations are gratefully solicited to help pay an honorarium to the students performing in the opening combo and a guaranteed wage to…

Katherine J. Williams reads from her new poetry collection, Still Life (Cherry Grove Collections, 2022). Katherine J. Williams, art therapist and clinical psychologist, was the Director of the Art Therapy Program at George Washington University, where she is now Associate Professor Emerita. Her clinical articles have appeared in The American Journal of Art Therapy and Art Therapy. Poems have been published in journals and anthologies such as Poet Lore, The Northern Virginia Review, 3rd Wednesday, The Poet’s Cookbook, The Widow’s Handbook, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. One of her poems was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Written with an artist’s eye, Still Life candidly and exquisitely explores moments of beauty, tenderness, doubt, and devastation. These poems from one life become a celebration of the human capacity for joy in its complexity. Readers will recognize themselves in Still Life, and will find ways to understand the…

Erik Jekabson, trumpet & flugelhorn Dave MacNab, guitar Dan Feiszli, bass Jason Lewis, drums A solid evening of standards and originals from four key players on the local scene. $20 cover (cash, please); byob. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Erik and his colleagues tonight demonstrate the depth of talent that has flowered in the Bay Area in recent decades. Keeping them working and resident in the Bay Area relies on having a healthy venue landscape. Thank you for supporting the venues that present the musicians! Bird & Beckett presents its music and poetry events under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which counts on the donations of individuals like you to augment audience revenues in order to pay the musicians fairly and cover operating costs. Please consider making a donation today. Only with a healthy donor base can we…

Luis Peralta, piano Brian Juarez, bass Ben Esposito, drums Spencer Hoeffert, guitar Pianist Luis Peralta, a young lion on the local jazz scene, is joined by three players who have all been making their mark in a big way in this post-pandemic era of live music. Bassist Brian Juarez is making his first Bird & Beckett appearance. Luis, Ben and Spencer have each crossed our stage on multiple occasions, making memorable music. Luis  is a 20-year-old native of Oakland who began playing piano at seven, embarking quickly on a serious study of European Classical and American Classical Music (Jazz). In 2017 he performed Alex Conde’s Concierto Para Piano Flamenco y Orquesta as a soloist with the Oakland Youth Orchestra. In 2019, Luis was awarded a full scholarship to study piano at the New School in New York City. He has studied with and performed with Bay Area figures such as…

Drummer Ron Vincent’s career notably includes seven years in Gerry Mulligan’s last quartet, 1989 to 1996, ending only with Mulligan’s death. Ron had graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1973, toured for six years then spent three years in Kansas City through 1982 when he settled in New York City. Seven years later, he was with Mulligan. He’s continued to be a key player in the New York City jazz scene; he works often as a sideman and has recorded for labels including GRP, Concord and Palmetto, where he’s been a producer as well as a co-producers for a number of projects. Ron was a member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and Mulligan’s Re-Birth of the Cool Tentet from 1989 until Mulligan’s passing in 1996. He recorded four cds with Mulligan and has also recorded with Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Randy Brecker, Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Charlap, John Lewis and…

Sonoma County poet laureate emeritus Bill Vartnaw (2012-2013) has been publisher of Taurean Horn Press since 1974. He is director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk, an annual poetry festival founded by Geri Digiorno in September 1996. His latest chapbook is “The Nile to the Milky Way,” available online at sharpgiving.com Jack Crimmins’ poetry is concerned with people, landscape and spirit. His books are “Kit Fox Blues”, with an introduction by Diane di Prima, published by di Prima’s press, Eidolon Editions; “The Rust Life”, an experimental long poem; and “Dancing In The Sun Room”. He’s worked for many years as a licensed psychotherapist and lives in Sonoma County. An open mic follows, so please bring your work. The open mic always reveals talent and insight that can’t be predicted but is ultimately so very rewarding, for the poets and audience alike. No charge to read at or attend our monthly 1st…

Michael Wilcox and Sheldon Brown have had an ongoing trio project going for several years, usually with drummers Bryan Bowman or Alan Hall. Bryan isn’t able to make it this time, and Alan Hall has (sadly for his trio mates) relocated . . . So this time around they are delighted to note that they’ll be playing with the fabulous Dillon Vado. Dillon is a young lion of jazz, a triple threat on drums, on vibes, and as an extraordinary educator. Michael and Sheldon have put together a book of tunes that covers a lot territory: from original pieces of theirs to adaptations of classical pieces by Brahms, Faure, Machaut and Bartok, Bulgarian music, Choro, music of Herbie Nichols, and much more. They assert that they’re very grateful to be playing at “one of the Bay Area’s premier venues for creative music,” Bird & Beckett. Michael Wilcox – Fretted and…

On the last Sunday of each month, drummer Vince Lateano conducts a jam session for all comers, this month with pianist Parker Grant and bassist Robb Fisher sitting in for Vince’s regular trio partners, Ben Stolorow and Peter Barshay. Ben and Peter are away on assignment (getting traveling drummer Ron Vincent primed for his date at Bird & Beckett on Friday, June 2nd followed by two nights at Keys on the weekend). No charge to attend or play in the jam session, though your contributions are certainly welcome and appreciated to stake us to the trio’s guarantee. Most always a surprise or two, always a pleasure. It’s byob at Bird & Beckett, so if you want something to sip, bring it with you.

John Calloway, flute Murray Low, piano Fred Randolph, bass Ricky Aguilar, percussion Annette A Aguilar, drums, percussion, vocals $20-30 sliding scale cover charge (cash please!) BYOB, Reservations: 415-586-3733 We can never get enough of Carnaval! We’ve got a descarga’s cargo of rhythm for you in the bookshop with NYC drummer & bandleader Annette A Aguilar, a San Francisco native and a world citizen of the music with a wonderful band. Catch them Saturday night at Bird & Beckett!

Trumpeter Mike Olmos fronts the Tony Johnson Quartet tonight at Bird & Beckett, with Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass, evoking countless nights of cocktails & beers, bebop & ballads, burners & bossas, standards & jazz classics at Jay Johnson’s venerable, now-gone bastion of San Francisco Jazz! Man, do we miss it! Catch the flavor this evening at Bird & Beckett’s 20+ years running Jazz Happy Hour in the Bookshop! Bring something to sip and a twenty for the band. That’ll git it! Photos courtesy Dennis Hearne (Featured photo, Tony Johnson, courtesy Jessica Levant)    

If you’re of a certain age, you well remember the brouhaha kicked up by Led Zeppelin when Little Roger & the Goosebumps launched their was-gonna-be-a-hit-record-but-immediately-embargoed “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” back in 1978 on Berserkley Records, the little East Bay hit factory that gave us Earth Quake (“Friday On My Mind”), The Rubinoos (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), Greg Kihn (“Hurt So Bad”) and, the king of ’em all, Jonathan Richman, who went from “Road Runner” and “I’m in Love with the Modern World” to “Ice Cream Man” and enduring permanence in the rock firmament. Dick Bright alongside Roger Clark was at the core of Little Roger et al, the hardest working bar band in the Bay Area and up and down the coast back then. Dick’s been in the business ever since, grinding out a blue collar workin’ life in a tux as the bandleader at the Fairmount’s Venetian Room…

Kim Shuck hosts our zoomed 2nd and 4th Monday poetry readings – with featured poets and an open mic on the 2nd Monday of each month, and an all-open-mic format on the 4th Mondays. Tonight, it’s the all open mic version! Zoom in and bring a poem to read, or just come to enjoy the poets’ work! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211  

Kierkegaard the poetic philosopher. Long honored as a founding spirit of what came to be called Existentialism, Kierkegaard’s appeal is even more hydra-headed than this. His ruling inspiration is to bring his readers into a deeper sense of themselves as they encounter the themes and metaphors which appear so richly in so many ways throughout his writings. We come to see him as a singular exemplar of a unique moral passion, gifted with numberless insights which only grow more profound as the ages roll on… Walker Brents III regales us with 90 minutes of cogent insight into the workings of the poetico-philosophical mind in one guise or another most every month, though he travels the byways of the American west in the summer and skips a few for that. Tune in to his talk via our Facebook page or YouTube channel. No in-store audience except by special request. Once you’re…

Gail Dobson, vocals Kam Mombasser, guitar Aaron Cohn, bass Omar Aran, drums and special guests $20 cover charge (cash please) Reservations, call 415-586-3733 BYOB Gail Dobson, a native-born San Franciscan with a smoky, amber contralto, traces her performance history to legendary North Beach haunts including the Purple Onion, the Hungry i and the Jazz Workshop, as well as the Bach, Dancing, and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay. For 23 years, she’s been the featured vocalist for Ray Brown’s Great Big Band, and she leads her own combos.Says Gail, “I’m a Jazz Singer, Recording Artist, Vocal Teacher, Mom, Grandma. I’ve sung all my life and have shared this blessing with my first husband, pianist George Muribus, with my late husband, Smith Dobson, pianist/singer, and with my children, Sasha Dobson, a fellow vocalist, and Smith Dobson V, a drummer, vibraphonist, saxophonist. I’ve experienced first hand what hard work and dedication, mixed…

Rebecca Faulker is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Her work has been anthologized in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 and published in journals in the UK and USA. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. The poems in her debut collection, Permit Me to Write My Own Ending (Write Bloody Press, 2023) span generations and timescapes – from gritty, defiant explorations of a London adolescence, to haunting poems detailing love and adulthood in the US. Faulkner’s language and form dissects the emotional impact of historical trauma, navigating and sharply reframing nationality and memory, interiority and…

Jim Witzel, guitar Dann Zinn, saxophone Brian Ho, organ Jason Lewis, drums $20 cover charge; BYOB Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Tonight at Bird & Beckett, Jim Witzel’s working quartet draws on original material from their current release, Feelin’ It, along with pieces from Jim’s album Give and Take, with a few standard tunes thrown in for good measure. Born and raised in the North Bay, Jim studied under John Handy at San Francisco State and went on to freelance extensively around the Bay Area, working clubs and concerts as both a leader and sideman with such players as Mark Isham, Art Lande, Mike Clark, Delbert Bump, Michael Barsimanto, Glenn Cronkite, Mike Formanek, Chris Amberger and Tod Dickow. During this period he joined the “Life is Color” band along with vocalist Jesse Foster and vibist Jon Ericson, and hosted a weekly television series “Jazz After Midnight.” Jim studied under guitarist Howard Roberts…

Tonight: The Scott Foster Quartet conducts “Further Experiments with Tom Hassett” Tom Hassett, drums Dan Seamans bass Jim Peterson sax Scott Foster, guitar Musical journeys flowing from the mind of Mr. Hassett, including repertoire from the John Scofield Quartet, Billy Strayhorn, Bill Evans and others Scott Foster has been bringing jazz to Bird & Beckett for twenty-plus years on Fridays, beginning in late 2002–when it was a weekly engagement for years with the late tenor player Chuck Peterson leading the band. Now, Scott leads his own combos and shares the Fridays with a passel of other bands, still holding down the third Friday of each month, 5:30 to 8:00pm. It’s the cornerstone booking in our jazz calendar. Scott is a supremely talented and versatile player, composer and jazz educator, always a pleasure to hear. Come down and find out for yourself. BYOB and a twenty for the band. Pay just…

A mainstay of the San Francisco jazz scene for years, bassist Adam Gay decamped for Brooklyn several years ago, where he’s been brewing beer and playing jazz, much to Brooklyn’s benefit and San Francisco’s loss! But he’s coming back to town for some good gigs, and one of them is at Bird & Beckett in the company of some old friends, colleagues and artistes. A quintet date that will fill you with pure joy, we assure you! Erik Jekabson, trumpet & flugelhorn James Mahone, sax Keith Saunders, piano Adam Gay, bass James Gallagher, drums $20 cover charge tonight for the quintet! It’s a bargain, to welcome Adam back. Cash please! BYOB  

Way out west… The Seducers — America’s favorite Honky Tonk band! Joe Goldmark, pedal steel       Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Tim Wagar, bass guitar       Paul Revelli, drums The Seducers play Bird & Beckett every other month – January, March, May, July, September, November – on the second Sunday of the month at 5pm. Alternating months feature a fine batch of San Francisco’s best Americana bands. There’s a little sin and seduction in each of us. And we’re all either a mother or came from one. Or both in some cases, come to think of it! Join us to celebrate! BYOB and a twenty for the band!

The short stories gathered in Angelo Presicci’s book, Fighting the Bad War present a vivid, first person account of realities that faced American soldiers in our war on North Vietnam and upon their return home. Published by Robert Anbien’s Night Horn Books in early 2022, Fighting the Bad War  has been republished and relaunched by Iven Lourie’s Artemis Press, which took on the book after Anbien passed away late last year. In November 1966, Angelo Presicci found himself manning an M50 machine gun atop an armored personnel carrier in the jungles of Vietnam’s Tay Ninh Province. He was a 22-year-old gay draftee from a small town in upstate New York. The linked stories in Fighting the Bad War are based on Presicci’s experiences in battle and on the long way home from America’s most unpopular war, the last entrusted to a citizen army. This was not their fathers’ good war.…

San Francisco journalist Denise Sullivan conducts a monthly series of conversations (the second Sunday of each month from 10-11 a.m.) with The City’s activists, educators, arts and cultural leaders and lesser-known workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books Today’s guest is Malia Spanyol, who owns four unique small businesses in San Francisco and her most recent brainchild is Mother Bar. The queer and femme-centered space is located in the Mission, which has historically held space for queer/lesbian communities (despite price-outs and gentrification). Spanyol’s experience as a small business owner in the city – including the Muay Thai gym Woodenman, Thee Parkside, and La Lucha coffee shop – naturally led her to the creation of Mother Bar, dedicated to continuing lesbian culture in the Mission. Catch the conversation between Malia and Denise on Sunday 5/14 at 10, live streamed…