MVFF doc captures musician’s farewell
Video of a drummer’s emotional farewell debuts at Mill Valley Film Festival
One of the most poignant stories in local music unfolded last fall with the end of jazz drummer Michael Aragon’s 36year run at Sausalito’s No Name Bar. I was there for one of the 75-year- old musician’s final shows. And so were a pair of young videographers who captured the warmth of that bittersweet evening in a video making its debut in the
Mill Valley Film Festival, which opened Thursday night and runs through Oct. 18.
“Michael Aragon: The Beat Goes On” is a charmingly sweet sketch of a charismatic drummer and bandleader who made a musical home for himself in a tiny little bar on the Sausalito waterfront, playing weekly shows there with his combos for a remarkable four decades, the longest continuous jazz gig in the Bay Area.
The video, by 28-year- old Erin Turney and 33-year- old SamHuff, is only seven minutes long, but good things often come in small packages.
Aragon is something of a musical guru, who attracted a cult of devoted fans and followers over the years, becoming a Sausalito treasure. Shooting during his penultimate gig with his quartet, the videographers intersperse his between-songs banter (when a dog wanders onto the stage, he introduces it as “our guest vocalist”) with interviews with his bandmates and snippets from a two-hour interview in the home of Aragon’s friend, singer Haley Mears, the video’s producer.
“We hadn’t met Michael until that night, his second-to-last show,” Huff says.
“Haley told us, “You’ve gotta meet this guy and once you meet him, you’ll know. He’s a man who’s lived for themusic for most of his life and has some amazing insight into what it’s like to play with other people and connect on that level.’”
Over the course of the evening, Aragon talks about his musical philosophy (“It’s not about playing music, it’s about playing life”), brotherhood on the bandstand (“We’ve not only played together, we’ve loved each other”) and finding bliss (“I found mine at the No Name Bar”).
The main reason his retirement was especially melancholy for his fans is that four years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones. He doesn’t know howmany years he has left and wants to make the most of them. But the videographers chose not to mention that, so when he talks about how playingmusic relieves the pain in his body, their video lacks the
“We focusedonthe energy of that evening. Because of his charisma, you kind of fall in lovewithMichael asapersonandas a musician.”
— Erin Turney
context that would make that remark truly meaningful.
“We focused on the energy of that evening,” Turney says. “Because of his charisma, you kind of fall in love with Michael as a person and as a musician. Diving into making this piece, we were trying to get his personality on top of his talent.”
Turneywas a film school graduate and freelance videographer when she met Huff, a part-timemusician, when they were both kayak guides on the Chicago
River and Lake Michigan. “That’s when we started making little videos here and there,” she says. “The first collaborations we did were me filming his band’s shows and some outdoor adventure videos.”
After moving to the Bay Area, they formed Bearfish Productions in July 2018, specializing in outdoor sports, music and documentary videos. Huff lived in Larkspur and Turney lived in the city, while they worked as kayak guides at Sea Trek in Sausalito and built their company.
“In these beginning years of our production company, we’re molding our personal passions,” Turney says.
“With Sam being a musician and my main focus being documentaries, we combinemusic with nature and the outdoors.”
The best example of that is a series of Bearfish videos, “Outdoor Acoustic Sessions,” featuring musicians playing by the ocean, beside flowing rivers and in groves of redwoods.
“We’re creating a new experience, for both the musician and the viewer,” Turney says.
Because of the pandemic, they’ve both moved back to theMidwest, where they’re from, to be closer to their families. Turney is in St. Louis and Huff is in Illinois in a town full of cornfields about an hour south of Champagne. They continue to work remotely and hope to return to the Bay Area once the virus crisis passes.
Having their video accepted into the 43rd Mill Valley Film Festival, which will be both drive-in and online this year because of COVID-19 precautions, is giving their fledgling company some major credibility and visibility. For me, it brought back the mellow conviviality of that prepandemic night. As I mentioned in a 2019 column about Aragon’s retirement, he and I have known each other since the early 1970s,
when we played in a memorable jam together. This column gave me an excuse to give hima call to see how he’s doing. As usual, he sounded enthusiastic and upbeat, especially about the new video.
“It’s wonderful,” he says. “They capture the essence of the evening, for sure.”
Free from having to put a band on stage every week, he had hoped to do some overseas traveling with his wife, Amanda, until the lockdown nixed a trip to Portugal and kept himclose to home. As the months of staying-at-home pass, he’s been working in his garden and practicing
a lot, fooling around with a set of vibes in his living room that once belonged to Milt Jackson.
Born in Sausalito, he lived in Marin for many years before moving to Santa Rosa. His many fans will be happy to hear that he has a new gig, playing outdoors with jazz pianist Dick Conte from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday evenings at Murphy’s Irish Pub in Sonoma.
“I’m surrounded by good energy,” he says. “That’s a good thing for me right now.”