We had a great day in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.  The weather was sunny, the crowd was big and friendly and the music was for the most part incredible.   We just breezed right in to the foot of the Golden Towers Stage thanks to the efforts of some gracious friends that had gotten to the park around 4:00 AM to set up tarps right at the foot of the various stages.  ”Just look for the yellow smiley face!” Arlene said.  After catching some well deserved rest at the Stanyon hotel they began to filter in to the park.  Evan and his wife Jaimie from Turlock with Arlene and Melissa from back east. Then Greta (the pride of Manresa Beach!) came meandering in. Last but not least , Jet City interlopers  ;^)  Davo and Grant taxied in from SFO at the last minute .      

We had decided to make the Golden Towers Stage our base of operations because Buddy Miller was starting the day off there.  I hadn’t seen him perform a full set of his own music  since 2002.  It was so good to see him with a full band in good spirits and obviously good health. He turned in a typical great, twangy Buddy Miller set with Regina Carey singing all the Julie parts and Emmylou Harris joining in on a couple songs. Then Robert Plant came in and helped close out the set with “I’m Movin On”, “What You Gonna Do LeRoy?” and “Sea of Heartbreak”.   

Buddy Miller aka The Jesus of Twang

Robert Plant dropped by to pay his respects

Next up was a band called Okkervil River.  I’d never heard of them and we intended to bug out and go over to catch Boz Scaggs but these kids totally won me over. Lead singer Will Sheff poured his heart and soul and eventually his body into this music.  They had the crowd right from the start but then disaster hit when the Will’s mike stand loosened up and  dropped down to waist level. Doh! Sheff  just dropped to his knees and kept singing as the crowd roared.  

Eventually one of his mates came and fixed him up (no help at all from the local soundguys)  Then the poor guy’s guitar cable popped out and again the sound crew didn’t move a muscle to help.  Will looked lost and then angry for maybe…half a second and then he just started dancing and leaping about while furiously strumming a guitar nobody could hear. Scott Brackett, the keyboard player had to quit playing (again) and run up and get things plugged in. Eventually everything settled down and the band melded one of their songs into Sloop John B with the whole meadow joining in on the chorus while Sheff and bassist Patrick Pestorius laughed and triumphantly shoulder butted each other at the mike loving every minute of it.  Ahhhhhh to be young…….

Okkervil 2: Scott Brackett, Lauren Gurgiolo and Travis Nelson

Next up at the Towers of Gold Stage was Old 97s.  A band I was really looking forward to seeing for some reason I can’t remember anymore.  A  joyless performance made worse by a couple of guitars that refused to stay in tune. Best thing I can say is  Jon Langford and Xene Cervenca came out on separate songs to help get the crowd going.  

Ken Bethea, Jon Langford and Rhett Miller

One thing I’d like to mention is the crowd at this event is also part of the show.  You find yourself meeting with music lovers from everywhere around the world. Take for instance Denver and Mary pictured below.  They were visiting California from St. Louis, MO and had run into Marty Stuart at their Hotel.  He told them about the festival and they grabbed a bus to catch his set.  We insisted they share our tarp with us as the ground they were siting on was a bit muddy.  I found out Denver is a passionate and very knowledgeable country music aficionado. This guy took me to school and meeting them was just as much a treat as any of the music we’d heard.  

Mary and Denver Perkins

Last up for Saturday at the Golden Towers Stage was Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives.  I’ll probably be writing more about these guys.  Suffice it to say Brother Marty and his crew brought a ton of Nashville flash and professionalism to San Francisco. I was blown away.

Kenny Vaughn, Harry Stinson, Marty Stuart and Paul Martin

Blue Man

Red Man

Joel Kotkin has written a timely article about  Red vs Blue politics and economies.  What really caught my eye was the following excerpt including a quote from one of my neighbors.

Perhaps the most searing disaster is unfolding in the rich Central Valley. Large areas are about to be returned to desert—due less to a mild drought than to regulations designed to save obscure fish species in the state’s delta. Over 450,000 acres have been allowed to go fallow. Nearly 30,000 agriculture jobs—mostly held by Latinos—were lost just in May. Unemployment, 17 percent across the Central Valley, reaches to more than 40 percent in some towns such as Mendota.

“We are getting the sense some people want us to die,” notes native son Tim Stearns, a professor of entrepreneurship at California State University at Fresno. “It’s kind of like they like the status quo and what happens in the Central Valley doesn’t matter. These are just a bunch of crummy towns to them.”

Hat tip Belmont Club

I swear this post isn’t about Michael Jackson.  I have nothing to add to all..that.  To my mind this following story is even more pathetic. 

I wrote earlier about the California Latino Water Coalition and the problems facing West Side farmers because of a three year drought and recent court rulings under the Endangered Species Act. Water law and politics are the most convoluted subjects I’ve ever dealt with and I don’t want to get into minutiae here. Suffice it to say fresh water is the lifeblood of California.

Some regions of the state have an abundance and some regions have very little.  Over the years there have been projects to build dams and canals to help store and distribute the water. Some of these projects are under state control others are federal, some are combined.  Historically water has been divided among urban and rural customers.  Cities need drinking water, farmers need irrigation water and they’ve been fighting each other for years.  

Recently a wild card has been thrown into the mix and that wild card is environmental  activists.  It seems that after decades of flushing their toilets into the San Francisco Bay, many people up there are now concerned about water quality. What they want is more Sierra Nevada water let out of storage facilities to run free into the bay to dilute and flush their mess out to the Pacific Ocean and they are using the Endangered Species Act to get that done.  

The pumps at the Tracy plant have now been turned off in order to save a little baitfish, the notorious Delta Smelt.  This results in significantly less water down the California Aqueduct going to SoCal cities and Central Valley farms and more water running through the Delta and on out to the Pacific.  In SoCal this translates into higher residential and commercial utility rates.  In small farming towns like Mendota it translates into dying crops, thousands of acres gone fallow, financial ruin and death.  There have been suicides. Out on the westside there is open talk of violence.

Enter a celebrity. Paul Rodiriguez might not be on anybody’s A-list but he is a celebrity. He also owns a small farm here in the valley that his parents run.  It was Paul that really put the California Latino Water Coalition on the map.  For some reason, people in San Francisco or Santa Monica have no sympathy for white farmers, but you get some downtrodden Latinos with some T-shirts and signs and they just might pay attention between sips of their Venti soy mochas.  

Rodriguez was able to finally bring a bit of national attention to this issue. He has given interviews with many national news shows and been a regular on Ray Appleton’s radio talk show.  Appleton’s mic is plugged into a 50,000 watt blowtorch of an AM radio station that covers most of central and northern California and he has also done a great job of keeping us locals informed and fired up.  All the information I have about this episode of the water war has been gleaned listening to the radio while driving up and down Hwy 99.

Together, Rodriguez and Appleton have raised such a stink that the politicians had to get involved. I’m really trying to keep party affiliations out of this but congressman Devin Nunes was more than up for the challenge and has been aggressively crafting and promoting legislation that will get the pumps turned back on.  Lets just say Jim Costa is more of a behind the scenes guy and probably has his loyalties divided between Nancy Pelosi,  environmentalists and the Latino community.  

Nunes had come up with some legislation that would at least temporarily get the water flowing to valley farms. It was all set to be voted on last night.  Nunes was hopeful that a fragile coalition of Republicans and Democrats was forming. Rodriguez ,  Appleton and some local experts were set to come to Washington DC to lobby lawmakers. For some reason after talking with Jim Costa last Friday, Paul Rodriguez decided to bail out.  

Now here comes the pathetic part.  According to Appleton, those lawmakers that were all set to receive our valley’s little delegation suddenly had no desire to talk with a guy like Mario Santoyo, a lifelong water manager because he’s not even a little bit famous. The trip was cancelled and Nunes’ amendment went down in flames last night. In Appleton’s own words they wanted to talk to somebody famous that could speak Spanish. 

There is something very very fucked up wrong when Congress would rather talk water issues with a comedienne than a guy that has spent his adult life turning Sierra snowmelt into crops and drinking water.  As far as I know Mario Santoyo doesn’t Twitter or have a Facebook Page. He certainly doesn’t have an agent.  Working people…people that make this country run shouldn’t need an agent to have their voice heard.

Reclusive musical icon, still heavily medicated, still working through some issues…still breathing.

Must have video.

CA State Senate Bill 420, which was signed into law in October 2003 and took effect on January 1, 2004, imposes statewide guidelines outlining how much medicinal marijuana patients may grow and possess. Under the guidelines, qualified patients and/or their primary caregivers may possess no more than eight ounces of dried marijuana and/or six mature (or 12 immature) marijuana plants. However, S.B. 420 allows patients to possess larger amounts of marijuana when such quantities are recommended by a physician. The legislation also allows counties and municipalities to approve and/or maintain local ordinances permitting patients to possess larger quantities of medicinal pot than allowed under the new state guidelines.

Patrice  You’re unusually quiet this morning.

Silence.

Patrice  Honey, are you OK?

Brad  Huh?…I’m sorry what?

Patrice  You’ve been staring out the window and rubbing your face for the last twenty minutes, are you feeling alright?

Brad  I don’t know my lips are tingling and I feel sort of anxious.”

Patrice  -suddenly concerned-  Your color’s good, here squeeze my hands…ouch! OK maybe it’s just your blood sugar is a little low…I’ll get you some orange juice and then we’ll have some brunch OK?

Brad  -doing his best Vincent Vega-  Orange Juice tastes goood…Banana Bread tastes goood. 

Patrice  Brad…..honey did you eat banana bread this morning?

Brad  Yeah.

Patrice  -laughing now- There’s a quarter lb. of…. that butter in the banana bread!

Brad  You put pot in the banana bread too? I thought it was just the Oatmeal Cookies…holy shit!

Patrice  No! I baked the Biscotti for you. How much banana bread did you eat?

Brad  I had three slices. It was real good…all warm and soft…with butter…

Patrice  Holy shit!

"Did you say something about Orange Juice and brunch?"