Cruise-In Concerts closes season at fairgrounds
Ex-Garcia mate special guest with tribute band
For Jerry’s Middle Finger, it’s the seal of approval. Or, more accurately, Seals — as in Melvin Seals, who played 15 years with the Jerry Garcia Band.
Seals will be a special guest keyboardist Saturday with the the tribute band as it closes out the “Cruise-In Concerts” series at the Solano County Fairgrounds.
Few — besides promoter Greg Keidan of Mr. Hat Presents — could be more tickled than Middle Finger keyboard player Jon Gold, a longtime Seals fan.
“What an honor it is to have the legendary Melvin Seals playing with our band,” Gold said. “That’s endorsement enough from ‘The Man.'”
Keidan, hoping to repeat the sold- out 230- car attendance at the band’s fairgrounds debut, said he “thought it would be really fun to pair them up” with Seals. “This is looking likely to be another sold-out show.”
In doing five shows as a pandemic musical option — and escape from cocooning — Keidan said he’s “gotten a lot of positive feedback” from the drive-up concerts. “I think people appreciate the opportunity to safely enjoy live music. I am my toughest critic and I am always focused on how to improve and how we could make each experience better.”
Keidan has learned a few things since showcasing live music on the expansive stage constructed in front of the fairgrounds’ main entrance.
“I have added more speak
ers throughout the crowd in order to allow folks in the back to hear the show as well as those in the front,” he said. “I am also now including in the contract with any performers that they need to be willing to reschedule the show if circumstances beyond our control — say, smoke from a fire — causes postponement.”
What was first forecast to be four straight days of rain now looks like Friday only, with a cloudy 64 forecast as a Saturday high. And that’s good enough for Gold.
“We are pee-in-our-pants excited,” Gold said, believing after the first fairgrounds show that “there’s a safe way to be able to be together during this horrible time of pandemic. We all needed that release — the coming together of playing music and sharing that. It was stupendous.”
At the earlier show, with encouragement, motorists honked horns after a song or hit the headlights.
“That was great. And someone was on top of their car dancing their brains out,” Gold said. “There were
a lot of pent-up feelings they were able to release.”
Jerry’s Middle Finger is based in Southern California, Gold’s lifetime home. Born in Hollywood, he grew up in the San Fernando Valley city of Pacoima until moving in seventh grade to Beverly Glen, near the famed Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive.
Gold said his mother was a Julliard-trained classical pianist who gave it up to raise a family. Gold still plays the piano his mother played at home many years.
“She was so good,” he said. And proud. “If she lost
anything technically, she’d be embarrassed. I’m a little more willing to go out on limb, play what I feel and to take those risks — even during performance.”
His parents wanted him to take lessons early — Gold’s dad wasn’t a musician, but he read music — “but they wanted it to be someone who was neither of them,” Gold said.
It was a “foregone conclusion” the lad would take lessons, but “it was the forcing of lessons that killed it for me at the ripe old age of 6,” Gold said. “Soon as I quit, I didn’t have the burden of
having to practice. I could play with friends.”
With rock and roll basically outlawed in the house, when Gold’s parents were at social functions, “I would make sure I was home and could move the record needle. I learned all these songs by ear.”
It was always the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for Gold. And Jimi Hendrix. Much more enticing than college, which Gold “gave a spin for a minute” before taking a job as a singing waiter/busboy. A fellow busboy was Danny Elfman, who grew to become of the top composers in America.
It was in the 1970s when Gold caught his first Grateful Dead show at the Cow Palace. He was unimpressed.
“I thought they were awful. I didn’t think they could sing their way out of a brown paper bag,” Gold said. “It was horrible.”
It was at an arts college when Gold arranged a musical field trip — to see the Grateful Dead.
“That changed thing,” Gold said. every“They played in the moment and played off each other. It was amazing, the whole community feeling of the audience.”
Since then? Dozens of times. Then along comes Jerry’s Middle Finger and Gold could die a happy man. Or close to a happy man, anyway.
“This band checks all my boxes for what I would want in a musical life,” he said, praising his fellow musicians for “listening to each other and having each other’s musical back. We trust each other.”
As for this whole drive-up deal, Gold thinks it won’t end when the pandemic does.
“I think it’s a great way to have a show,” he said. “When the pandemic is over, it can be expanded.”
That’s good news for Keidan, who has a “full slate” of Cruise-In concerts set for 2021.
“I believe that these shows will be just as necessary next year as they were this year,” Keidan said. “I believe they will continue to be popular for years to come.”
At least he can always count Jerry’s Middle Finger in. If the backstage menu is acceptable. When it comes to disagreements, apparently the guys in JMF don’t argue about money, touring, girlfriends or bad habits.
Nope. There is one thing, Gold said.
“Probably food,” he laughs. “I’m a vegetarian but not a strict vegetarian. I eat meat.”
Mr. Hat Presents Jerry’s Middle Finger with special guest Melvin Seals and featuring the Mad Alchemy Liquid Light Show, this Saturday, 6 p.m. General vehicle admission $119 with a maximum of four adults. For more, visit mrhatpresents. com.