County Rockers to Cross Border to Meet Challenge

In a way, it is a sad commentary: A promoter wants to put on an innovative evening of acoustic rock music and performance art to spotlight county talent, and he has to cross the county line to do it.

But the Orange County Artists Festival coming up at Bogart’s in Long Beach Wednesday night also offers reason to take heart. Despite the dearth of clubs featuring original rock in Orange County, the festival next door shows that a wide cross section of local talent--10 separate acts--remains game for a creative challenge.

The man laying down the challenge is Jim Palmer, who used to be the booking agent at Big John’s. The rock club in Anaheim burned down in January, leaving Orange County with just one venue, Night Moves in Huntington Beach, regularly booking local musicians who play their own songs.

“Since the fire at Big John’s, I’m trying not to drop out of the scene,” Palmer said. “I want to keep up with it until I get my own club”--something he hopes to accomplish this summer. In putting together the bill at Bogart’s, Palmer decided not merely to keep up with the scene, but to try to stir new creative ripples with a program formally dubbed the Orange County Artists Festival of Acoustic and Spoken Word.

The festival’s premise is to take electric rockers out of their usual band surroundings and let them play in solo or duo settings. But in recruiting talent for the show, Palmer decided to try to shake things up even more.

“I told them, ‘I don’t want it to have anything to do with the band.’ It’s supposed to be something diverse and completely different from what they normally do.”

So instead of merely singing their accustomed songs solo, musicians in a lineup that includes members of El Grupo Sexo, the Bell Jar, National People’s Gang and Black Daphne, among others, will be doing things they have never done before, at least not publicly. Poets and performance artists, some appearing in collaboration with the rockers, will add to the avant-garde cast of the evening. The host will be Sam Lanni, who established a tradition of setting aside evenings for the offbeat at his own club, the now-defunct Safari Sam’s.

Matey Yalch, who usually sings brooding rock with the Bell Jar, will merge songs, spoken bits and audience participation in a piece called “The Phone Call.”

“It’s stuff I’ve wanted to do but can’t do with the band,” he said. “The songs I’ll be singing, I can’t foresee the band doing them. They’re too personal. It gives me a chance to go out and show another side of myself that people can’t see within the structure of the band. I never thought of it as a novelty at all. We’ll see: If it goes well, maybe I’ll pursue it more.”

Nick Pyzow, the leader of Nick Pyzow and the Fire but also popular as a solo acoustic performer, said he is thinking of using the evening’s free form to try singing a cappella.

“In a show like this, there’s no holds barred, no images, no reputation to live up to,” Pyzow said. “It offers an alternative, and the more alternatives in music, the better. It’ll challenge me. Maybe it’ll open up something I’ll get a chance to do again.”

David Swinson, who books talent for Bogart’s, invited Palmer to bring his Orange County entourage into the club, which is only a short hop across the county line, in the Marina Pacifica Mall at Pacific Coast Highway and 2nd Street in Long Beach. The festival concept is exactly the sort of thing Swinson had in mind about six weeks ago when he started designating Wednesday as the “Esoteric Evening.”

Swinson said he got the idea one night in January when Mike Watt and George Hurley, the rhythm team of Firehose, got up to jam during a performance by Elliot Sharp, an avant-garde guitarist from New York.

Bogart’s had its first Esoteric Evening on Feb. 3, with an acoustic set by John Doe of X. The idea, Swinson said, is to change the atmosphere from rock ‘n’ roll club to coffee house for one night a week.

As it turns out, Swinson said, esoteric doesn’t mean unpopular: The Wednesday evening programs have been drawing 125 to 250 people to the 280-capacity club.

The Orange County Artists Festival starts at 9 p.m. Wednesday, with admission $4.

Speaking of veterans of the county rock wars, Kevin Kirby, formerly the assistant booking agent at the defunct Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, is ready to campaign again. Kirby, who lives in Huntington Beach, said he is trying to stage original rock shows by name bands at the Tree House Cabaret, 999 N. Diamond Bar Blvd. in Diamond Bar. He is starting with the Busboys on March 20.

An ambitious campaign to bring more live jazz to the county starts Sunday, when a new organization, Jazz Pacific, sponsors the first in a series of monthly jazz festivals. The Ambrosia Jazz Festival will run from 1 to 9 p.m. at the Ambrosia Restaurant, 695 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

The lineup features guest artist Bill Watrous sitting in with three different big bands drawn from the Orange Coast College jazz program, as well as smaller county-based acts: the Dan Jacobs Quartet, Mike Fahn Quintet, Alan Rowe Quintet, Eric Marienthal Quintet, Elena George and the George Gilliam Quartet, Stephanie Haynes, Shelly Moore and Rowanne Mark with the Marshall Otwell Quartet.