From a failed label comes a trove of music magic
Peter Varshavsky’s unique videos capture Bay Area artists at their best
Peter Varshavsky didn’t set out to create a time capsule of the Mission District music scene at the turn of the last decade. Shooting videos started as a sideline while running Porto Franco Records, a label he founded with his father to document the creative ferment unfolding nightly at venues like the Red Poppy Art House, Amnesia, Viracocha and Revolution Cafe.
As a business venture, Porto Franco was “an abject failure,” Varshavsky admits. With the economy just starting to emerge from the destruction wrought by the Great Recession and CD sales plunging, 2009 wasn’t an auspicious moment to start a new label.
Some 30 albums and four years later, the Varshavskys decided to cease production after failing to recoup more than $250,000. Their investment was responsible for widely hailed projects by artists like bassist-composer Marcus Shelby, singer-songwriter Meklit Hadero, the Gypsy jazz combo Gaucho, and the experimental vocal duo Ramon and Jessica.
The albums more than stand the test of time, but it turns out that Varshavsky created a far more precious legacy. In the months since the pandemic made it almost impossible to experience live music, I’ve been haunting the Porto Franco YouTube channel and reliving some of the glories of the Bay Area scene. Collectively, Varshavsky’s videos reveal a creatively surging scene that in COVID-inflected hindsight feels all too fragile.
With more than 100 videos capturing a far wider range of artists than the label managed to record, the channel conjures a protean moment when styles and players mixed and matched according to the needs of a particular body of music. Some of the musicians have left the Bay Area, like Ramon and Jessica’s Dina Maccabee, Tin Hat violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, soul singer Quinn DeVeaux and trumpeter Darren Johnston. And a few have permanently departed, like the irrepressible horn player Ralph Carney, who makes his presence felt on several Gaucho videos featuring New York vocalist Tamar Korn.
With his background in photography and love of documentary film, Varshavsky turns each piece into a naturalistic character study, up close and personal. Beautifully shot and edited, the videos are arresting creations that stand on their own as works of art.
He approached each video shoot deliberately, “but there were many happy accidents and things I was lucky with,” says Varshavsky, who now works as a software engineer at Dropbox. “I preferred to be in an artist’s home or backstage or on stage next to them, intimate places where you don’t usually get to go so you get an experience you don’t get at a bar or club.”
Oakland accordionist Rob Reich is featured on at least 10 videos in various settings, from the ad hoc Porto Franco Klezmer All-Stars to Gaucho, guitarist Dave Ricketts’ long-running combo, to an alfresco art-song shoot with Tin Hat and a session of French impressionist compositions led by bassist Seth FordYoung. His personal favorite is a sizzling version of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz” featuring his trio with bassist Daniel Fabricant and drummer Elizabeth Goodfellow at speakeasy-like club Viracocha.
“We’d recently found each other and started playing together,” Reich says. “Peter really caught the fun we were having on that video.”
In writing about music I’m often dismayed to find that even well-established musicians don’t have professional or even proficient video at hand to accompany a story. The versatile San Francisco vocalist Karina Deniké didn’t think much would come from a Porto Franco shoot when Varshavsky approached her in 2012, but the resulting videos continue to open new doors.
She opted for a strippeddown session at Porto Franco’s Mission District office with harmony vocalists Lily Taylor and Melody Jeune Ferris backed by James Frazier’s guitar, performing her luscious original “Mango Leaves” and an exquisite cover of the Beach Boys’ “Lonely Sea.” The latter garnered a Twitter shoutout from Brian Wilson himself, and directly led to an opening slot on a tour with Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval.
“I still get comments all the time from people,” Deniké says. “‘These videos! Where did you do them? How did you do them?’ Peter was very adamant about how he wanted it to feel very natural, intimate and freeing performance quality, and everybody responded. It feels timeless.”
While Varshavsky concentrated on documenting the Mission District scene, he was also ready to seize special moments when they flew by, like the breathtaking a cappella video of New York-based Sudanese vocalists Alsarah and Nahid, which has more than 400,000 views.
Married with a 4-year-old son and a daughter on the way, Varshavsky still managed to find time to edit and post the first new Porto Franco video in years. From the same Hyde Street Studios session that produced two earlier pieces by saxophonist Howard Wiley and Extra Nappy, “LJ’s Tune” features the band’s prodigious organist LJ Holoman.
“I felt bad waiting so long to put it out,” Varshavsky says. “He’s a fantastic musician and I wish he had more visibility. I can’t get away from regret. The more I did it the more I knew this was the tip of the iceberg of this scene. I could have captured so much more.”