Mo’Fone’s improvisations and concept have twice earned them the award for Best Jazz Group in the East Bay Express Readers’ Poll, and secured them repeated slots at the Monterey, San Francisco and Sonoma Jazz Festivals, in addition to gigs sharing the stage with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at the Bay Area’s premier live music venues. 

“I was hooked from the first track,” wrote the Contra Costa Times of the band’s debut disc, Surf’s Up (Evander Music, 2003). “Mo’Fone proves it’s the biggest little band on the scene. On each piece, the trio finds ingenious ways of creating a full, multitextured, hard swinging sound.” 

A healthy portion of their sound comes from the mighty baritone sax of Jim Peterson, alternating seamlessly between walking bass lines and powerful melodic riffs. A stalwart of the Bay Area scene for more than 30 years, Jim is a veteran of Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s, Indigo Swing, and Motordude Zydeco and other great local bands. Soaring overhead on alto sax, clarinet and flute is Larry De La Cruz, whose own impressive resume includes stints with Phil Woods, Bobby Hutcherson, the Temptations, Boca do Rio, and Doc Severinsen. Completing the Mo’Fone magic is drummer Jeremy Steinkoler, “a master of second line syncopation” (SF Bay Guardian) whose orchestral approach to the traps drives the trio’s turn-on-a-dime dynamics and gives Mo’Fone its third ceaselessly inventive solo voice.

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Your cover charge at the show helps us guarantee a fair wage to the musicians that work here. Individual donations from a great many generous members of the Bird & Beckett community are also necessary. If you can and haven’t, please join their number. Bird & Beckett will always be a work in progress… Thanks for being part of the solution with your dollars, ears, intellect and loyalty!

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Help strengthen  a vibrant music scene in the Bay Area and beyond by voicing your support for Fair Play for Musicians today. Support the Fair Play Initiative, a Bay Area coalition of musicians, grassroots organizations, organized labor and cultural producers working together to improve freelance musicians’ wages and working conditions. Sponsors include the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, the Independent Musicians Alliance, Jazz in the Neighborhood, Whippoorwill Arts , AFM Local 6, the San Francisco Labor Council, the Contra Costa County Labor Council, the Alameda County Labor Council, the South Bay Labor Council, and IATSE Local 16.

Fair Play’s first step is to partner with selected cities to establish a guaranteed pay “floor” secured through a “prevailing wage ordinance” in city charters. It would not put a ceiling on what musicians are paid to work on municipally-financed events, series, and festivals but rather standardize a minimum rate to eliminate unclear or exploitive pay practices that are insufficient to sustain musicians as they work hard and struggle to live in the very expensive Bay Area.

Following up on this prevailing wage effort, Fair Play will further shore up musicians’ working conditions and opportunities:  initiate city-based fair procurement standards that include equity in booking, full disabled access and professional protections and benefits for all working musicians, along with other city-based support favorable to venues, community agencies, and producers who adhere to these protocols (such as permitting help and grants) to help venues & producers who strive to treat Musicians fairly.

Read more about how you can support the Fair Play Initiative here.

It’s up to us, the public, to convince our elected representatives in local governments around the San Francisco Bay to make it possible for freelance musicians to afford to live here, practice their craft here, and enrich our lives!