Entertaining Guests : The Coach House’s ‘Backstage Manager’ Calvin Hardy Sates the Whims of the Visiting Musicians, Making Sure They’re Comfortable . . . and Have Enough Socks

You have to wonder if there’s some mad-scientist matter-transforming device that resides upstairs at the Coach House: Night after night at the South County concert club, Calvin Hardy disappears up one flight of stairs with armloads of nachos, and soon after comes down another flight with a rock band in tow. He goes up with nachos--and down with a band; up with more nachos, down with a band. I figure that one of these nights a band member will get too close to the stage lights and melt back into plastic cheese goop.

In the meantime the 6-foot-3 Hardy is sticking to the story that he’s bringing the nachos to musicians. Hardy, after all, is known around these parts as Mr. Hospitality.

In his seven-year stint as what he calls “backstage manager” at the Coach House, it has been Hardy’s job to see to the comfort of the performers, to procure whatever items it takes to sate the depraved whims of the musicians.

Like socks.

“You’d be surprised how many groups want socks,” Hardy said, shaking his head. “Chris Isaak wants socks, Devo, the Tubes, Adam Ant. Chris Isaak wears a new pair of socks for every show. I can understand it. It’s almost like a dependency, a ritual. You put them on, go out there, and it’s like Whaaammm you’re onstage doing it.

“But you think, like, what, they must have a thousand socks. They collect them at every club, and they can’t wear them all.”

Usually, such needs are spelled out in a group’s rider. To musicians, a rider is to a contract what the Bill of Rights was to the Constitution. Riders delineate a band’s inalienable right to have bowls of M&Ms; with the brown ones removed; to have light bulbs of a certain wattage; to have so many magnums of chilled Dom Perignon; to have organic carrot juice.

In the concert industry Chuck Berry is nearly as legendary for his rider as for his performances. It stipulates even what temperature his dressing room will be--with a hefty fine for the club if it isn’t--and goes on for fine-print pages of such detail. At the other end of the spectrum, singer Jonathan Richman’s riders have simply called for a towel and a rented amp, and he’s recently dropped the towel from the list.

“Some acts are humble, down-to-earth people, and their riders project that attitude,” Hardy says. But even when an act’s attitude is pure attitude , Hardy doesn’t speak ill of them. This is a man who used to play bass for Ike and Tina Turner at the time when the duo came to a violent parting, and even of the much-vilified Ike, Hardy has nothing but kind words.

He’s seen how performers act when they’re away from public scrutiny, when they let their hair down, or don’t. We could tell you about the perpetually be-hatted country performer who’s pate is as bald as his knees, except we’re not that kind of newspaper, at least not when Hardy insists it’s off the record.

It’s no great revelation when he mentions that comedienne Sandra Bernhard strutted around backstage butt-naked, since she had done a portion of her performance topless.

A few more dressing room facts: David Crosby reads books; Ray Charles plays chess, running his hands over the pieces; most country bands eat steak; David Lindley bolts down so much Jolt Cola he should be its poster boy; George Carlin brings his dog. “And Timothy Leary was the only one to bump his head into a wall on the way to the stage. I don’t know if you should read anything into that,” Hardy said.

Some of the acts that play the club, such as Etta James, are ones Hardy used to perform with. “It might seem strange, serving people I used to be with. But I go on about my job and do it with integrity, and that takes away the embarrassment I might otherwise have. I don’t go around moaning ‘Oh, I wish I wasn’t working here,’ because I like working here,” he said.

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And just how important a job is it delivering nachos to the famous?

“It’s really important how these bands are treated in the dressing room,” says Coach House talent buyer Ken Phebus. “It makes my job a lot easier having Calvin there. Most of these acts come in here with serious road-burn, and Calvin takes care of them. When I’m talking to an act’s agent, one of the first things I’m asked is, ‘Is Calvin still there?’ ”

According to John Warren, who travels 200 days a year as tour manager for Chris Isaak, Bonnie Raitt and others, “Without a doubt one of the bright spots in my life on the road is coming to the Coach House with Calvin there. He makes it a very homey atmosphere and everything’s right. The guy’s got radar. You can think about a hamburger and it’s there. Some other clubs, the people are shady, there’s no food at all, and it’s so scurvy you don’t want to sit down anywhere for fear of sticking to something.”

Hardy has seen his share of those dressing rooms. Now 45, he was born in Virginia, getting his distinctive features from his African American and Blackfoot Indian heritage. In the late ‘60s he wound up in Woodstock, N.Y., and since everyone else there seemed to play an instrument, he took up the bass. Turning pro, he worked with Tim Hardin, John Hall of Orleans, James, the Turners, Elvin Bishop and others.

He moved to Orange County in the mid-’80s to work on a friend’s music project. When the money ran out he went to Coach House owner Gary Folgner--whom he’d met when playing the club with Bishop--and asked for a temporary job washing dishes. Instead Folgner hired him to be in charge of backstage hospitality.

“I’ve been on the other side, and I think that helps. I know what their life is like. When artists ask for something, they’re usually polite, saying, ‘When you have a moment.’ I do it immediately, because there’s not much else in their day that happens that way.” It is with perhaps just a touch of informed irony that he says, “I had thousands of dollars in my pocket, played the big halls. Now I’m Mr. Hospitality.”

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He knows artists don’t have much respect for the hired help fawning over them, nor for those who hang out inordinately to be “one of the guys.” He gauges each act, and strikes a balance, because he also maintains, “The best thing you can do is treat them like regular people, not with awe, with respect, but with the same respect you should give anyone, famous or not.”

He gets embarrassed when old band mates ask him to play his bass with them, because he’s let his chops go stale in the uninspiring local “stuck in Lodi” music scene. One vestige of his performing past he hasn’t given up is his attire. Hardy may come to work sporting a flashy tux one night and the next looking like he’d robbed Jimi Hendrix’s grave. The late Miles Davis, no slouch himself when it came to sartorial statements, once tried to get Hardy to give him the Indonesian outfit he was wearing one evening.

Most of the hundreds of acts he has attended to have treated him with respect, and when some instead strike prima donna attitudes or litter the carpet of his proudly maintained domain with cigarette butts, he takes it in stride.

“Once in a while a person will treat me with no respect. Not usually the star, but a band member or someone in the entourage trying to feel important, where I get the feeling they’re really trying to annoy me. But I always come back like they’re not. If you treat a jerk like a regular person, sometimes they stop being a jerk. And if they don’t, at least I did my part and didn’t fall into their personality, what they’re stuck with.”

Hardy has an almost monkish forbearance, with a California New-Age spin.

“I’m pretty much a spiritualist, where I consider people for their inner self and there we’re all the same, so I relate to that . I relate not to their personality but to the person I perceive to be in them that is in me. It breaks down walls and it really helps,” he said.