A Saxophone Beckons for Jazz in the Night

From the northbound lanes of the Ventura Freeway, a nighttime glance to the right reveals it: a giant, glowing saxophone, icon to all who have ever been moved by John Coltrane or Coleman Hawkins or Illinois Jaquet or any other player who transformed mute lung air into lush resonant tones that put a sweet bounce in the step or aching hole in the heart.

The sax has always done that, and this particular instrument along the highway is not a horn at all, but a sax-shaped sign on wheels, back-lit to catch the eye and placed at the entrance to the region’s newest jazz club, Friends & Strangers. Anything to bring them in.

Bringing customers in, however, is tough to do in the jazz trade. The music is recognized worldwide as America’s only indigenous art and arguably one of the highest expressions of culture--but those are facts that have little to do with whether or not lemonade sells.

Jazz is a specific taste, sometimes idiosyncratic, with a specific clientele, sometimes idiosyncratic. And houses where the music is played have always worn a certain idiosyncrasy with pride.

The Village Vanguard, hallowed dungeon in New York City, rattles as the subway roars by; Fat Tuesdays, also in New York, is an ironic stretch on its name, as it sandwiches listeners into a virtual hallway of basement space. Even 22 Victoria, in Santa Barbara, shunts musicians off into a corner space that overwhelms some diners and gives those in the bar neck aches from craning.

Friends & Strangers, by world standards, operates on an exalted plane. Surely, the building oddly wears the inescapable idiosyncrasy of previous use. Once the Heidleberg bar, featuring Ike & Tina Turner in performance in 1967, it became an Italian restaurant and then a boat dealership and then a biker bar before its last incarnation as Deja Vu, a teen club whose walls were caked with the neon paints that glow beneath black lights.

Shed of its psychedelia, however, the flat-black interior is now perfect for jazz: spacious and sleekly dark, with large smoked glass tables and vaulted ceilings. The bar is separate from the main room, which features a stage for the band and small dance floor before it. Acoustics are impeccably tuned and without the percussive “hot spots” of Catalina’s Bar & Grill or the sometimes harsh piano blur of the Jazz Bakery, each a leading jazz venue in Los Angeles.

Moreover, the ethos--the one undefinable quality that jazz aficionados refer to as “vibe,” or the way a room feels--is just right: warm, intimate and dignified without pretension. This owes, undoubtedly, to the friends who staked their livelihoods so that they could embrace strangers.

Dwayne Johnson and Joe Turner, former football mates at Ventura College and now counselors with the California Youth Authority in Camarillo, joined with their wives, Monica and Robin, respectively, to open the club. Each has a specific duty in this entrepreneurial democracy: Dwayne on plant operations, Joe on booking the talent, Monica on keeping the accounts straight, and Robin on advertising and legal matters. Dwayne Johnson’s sister, Drende, helps out wherever she’s needed.

“We vote on the important things, and then that’s what we do,” Johnson says. “We’re all in this, deeply committed, and so it’s the only way.”

Deeply committed. The Johnsons and the Turners, with homes in Oxnard, pooled resources in cash and retirement savings to lease and refurbish the place and pay for a liquor license. They did this first for their love of jazz music, Turner says, and they live by a set of rules, cited by Dwayne and Joe, that might just as easily serve any new-to-the-scene jazz musician:

1. Hang In (translation: Don’t give up).

2. Don’t Quit the Day Job (translation: The California Youth Authority offers benefits and is a secure source of income, which Friends & Strangers is not).

3. Remain Positive (translation: Bad things will happen, cover charges sometimes may not meet expenses, but never lose the poise that comes with belief).

On Friday, 26 people sat in the performance area of Friends & Strangers and listened to Robert Kyle, a Los Angeles tenor saxophonist who has done studio work with Kenny Loggins, Linda Rondstadt and Linda Hopkins.

Kyle is not exactly the progeny of traditionalist bopmeister Clifford Jordan; his considerable and blues-inflected command is melded to groove tracks recalling mainstream, funkified players as diverse as Grover Washington and Tom Scott. Indeed, Joe Turner, who books the musicians, has a personal taste for this style of music, which makes Friends & Strangers a specific niche market for jazz-rooted funk and fusion. This is good, although it does not exempt Friends & Strangers from the straight-ahead jazz-club ethic of sometimes getting by on very few customers.

No matter--for now anyway. Like so many jazz entrepreneurs before them, the Johnsons and the Turners will, on a night on which they’re losing money, look you in the eye and tell you that their passion is their guide.

“It’s like having a kid,” Turner says. “It’s expensive, but you wait till he can walk on his own two feet.”

Johnson, ever the pragmatist, chimes in: “No, we’re not making it--yet. It’s going to be a struggle. But we believe in our thing here. If this were a sandwich shop in Oxnard, I’d be worried that we have product problems. But our product here is the music, and we know there’s no problem with it. People who come here love the music, and they love the place. We’ve actually drawn from San Diego.”

Johnson, who soon excuses himself to wait on tables in a natty black double-breasted suit, then reaches for a line that he and Turner trade on all the time: “The hungry dog runs the fastest. If we hustle, we’ll make it.”

A truer axiom about jazz music itself couldn’t be said.