Rustic Rail brings community together with shows
Over the next two days, the Rustic Rail, that quirky train-depot neighborhood bar off of Norris Road, will host a couple of shows appealing to our community’s better natures with a lot of high-musicianship to spare.
Today, the bar will host a benefit concert to help pay for the funeral expenses of Thelma Jean “T.J.” Vancill. It is being put on by her son, Charles “Cliff” (a nickname based on his middle name, Clifton) Vancill, with the help of local drummer and longtime friend Tanner Byrom.
Byrom will be joined by Tim Stonelake and The Byrom Brothers to perform Stonelake’s excellent 2021 debut album “Moonlight Mountain” in its entirety.
Also on the bill is an assortment of disparate bands and genres with some of them — Art and the
Resistance featuring the bellowing, epic tenor of frontman Art Machuca and the psychedelic, fun and funky soul-rock act Dancing Tommy — tied together by their personal relationships with Cliff and his mother.
In a bit of tragic synchronicity, the Paul Gervasi-directed video for Art and the Resistance’s 2018 single “Letters” featured Cliff Vancill in a cameo role playing a priest presiding over a funeral.
“Art is like a brother to me,” Vancill said. “(And) I’ve known all the members, except for Rudy (Hernandez), of Dancing Tommy, since they were kids. In fact, Tobi (Solorzano), I rocked him to sleep in church one time when he was a baby. I’ve known that family forever. I love those kids. I mean, I know they’re not kids now, but ...”
The feeling is reciprocated,
given that Solorzano’s sister and fellow Dancing Tommy Sonia Solorzano has set up a crowdfunding GoFundMe page to help Vancill.
“Mom, she didn’t really have
much saved and so we’re just kind of pulling money from all kinds of sources,” Vancill said.
Both Art and the Resistance and Dancing Tommy are returning to
Bakersfield for this show, donating their time. According to Vancill, all of the suggested $20 entry donation will go to his mother’s funeral costs.
Also performing are Old Friends and Mike Peters, who will close out the evening with his brand of solemn country covers.
“The funny thing is that the kind of music Mike plays is the kind of stuff my mom would have loved to sit and listen to,” Vancill said. “So it’s cool because he’s going to finish out the night and Art’s band is going to start it.”
According to Vancill, his mother was a diminutive firecracker of a human being. As he wrote about her on the GoFundMe bio, “She was a perfectly imperfect person.”
“She believed family was a term not limited to whether or not someone shared the same genetics.”
According to her son, TJ Vancill moved to Bakersfield from
Oklahoma as a young girl and was raised by her older sister after her mother died in childbirth. That tough upbringing made for a tough spirit and a rocky relationship with Cliff.
As Cliff Vancill described her via GoFundMe, “I guess in the end, the word that most accurately described my mother is that she was a survivor.”
He described her as someone who could infuriate you then “show you the most love.” The pair made amends with each other in the end, Vancill said.
“(Mom) passed really peacefully,” Cliff said. “It didn’t look like she was in any pain.”
She passed at age 72 from health complications.
“I’m really lucky to have a lot of friends who’ve been really supportive, you know?” Vancill said. “You kind of forget how many you have until something like this happens.”
For those that can’t make the show but would still like to help, donations can be made at gofundme.com/f/ thelma-jean-vancill.
On Friday, Paul South, backed by the other Byrom brother, Monty, will perform with his band Buddha’s Beef in support of his superb upcoming album “Monsters in Love.”
The album, due out soon, is my favorite of the year so far, and if you’re a fan of Todd Rundgren, XTC and Adrien Belew, this album is a must-listen. From the one-two punch of “Torches and Pitchforks,” describing
the troubled love life of Frankenstein’s monster (it would make a fantastic musical) and the simply stunning “Heavy Rain,” you’ll be hooked.
The album is a killer and so are the musicians who will be performing it this weekend, with keyboardist Chris Neufeld as the band’s not-so-secret weapon.
Rustic Rail (147 E. Norris Road) events: T.J. Vancill benefit, 7 p.m. today; Buddha’s Beef, 8 p.m. Friday. $20 suggested donation for today; free admission on Friday.
CESAREO’S PICK Lioneer
(formerly known as Rosedale), We Are Chapters, Godspeed Your Love, The
Disassociates, 6 p.m. Friday, Jerry’s Pizza & Pub, 1817 Chester Ave. $15 at the door.
Mike Liorti might be better known by some older (by older, I mean mid-30s) local music fans by his previous one-man solo act Rosedale, named after a Canadian street he frequented as a youth, not the area we might be more familiar with.
The conceit behind it was pretty neat. Liorti recorded all of the music himself and footage of him performing all of the parts would be projected, sequenced to the music, on a movie screen behind him. In essence, he was playing with his clones.
His latest project, Lioneer, will play Friday at Jerry’s Pizza & Pub, where Liorti will play with actual humans this time. Based on the band’s latest single,”Don’t Wait For Tomorrow” (released late February), Liorti still indulges in his penchant for big, solid sing-along anthems.
He’s an unstoppable talent.
Get there early though to catch the impressive local bands who are also playing: Godspeed Your Love, We Are Chapters, and The Disassociates, which is worth the price of admission alone.
Each of the bands playing Jerry’s Pizza Friday — in their own way — will be demonstrating that the dream of midaughts Warped Tour emo (heck, likewise mid-aughts Jerry’s Pizza emo) never really went away. It just had to be reclaimed.