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Up From the Ashes: The Ash Grove Is Reborn on a UCLA Stage
Posted Apr 22nd 2008 11:00AM by Steve Hochman
Filed under: Around the World

A celebration marking a half century since the opening of the seminal Los Angeles folk/blues/world club the Ash Grove brought something home: The roots of American roots music is in rootlessness.

All night long, in the first of two evening concerts marking this milestone, artists who in more recent years shaped modern American roots music -- Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Dave Alvin -- reminisced warmly on the stage at UCLA's Royce Hall about teenage journeys to the Melrose Ave. music spot to worship and learn at the feet of the masters: bluesmen including Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Rev. Gary Davis, such mountain music mainstays as the Stanley Brothers, plains balladeers such as Ramblin' Jack Elliott, even Eastern European folk music revived under the direction of musicologist Mike Janusz.

"The Ash Grove," noted Alvin this night in a scorching electric blues song he wrote in tribute to the old club he and his brother Phil made regular pilgrimages to from nearby Downey, "that's where I come from."

If not for Ash Grove founder Ed Pearl, Alvin stressed, most of those blues greats would never have even come out to play in California. Folkie Arlo Guthrie, who as an unannounced guest opened the evening with a fine rendition of his dad Woody's anthem 'This Land Is Your Land,' said that his first West Coast trip was a 1965 gig at the club, when he was just a teen himself. Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and fellow Rolling Stones mate Bill Wyman were among those who would stop by when they were in town, not as performers but as fans.

The music the youngsters heard in the late '50s and through the '60s, though, was the music of the displaced, the refugees, the kidnapped, those forced to leave their homes: Africans stolen into slavery, Jews fleeing poverty and pogroms, Irish escaping famine and oppression, English and Scottish crushed under the Industrial Revolution. The people playing the original Ash Grove were direct descendants of these immigrants, just a generation or two removed, if not immigrants themselves, caught between two worlds, not exactly as welcomed here as some myths would have it, but with no "home" to which they could even think of returning.

But for the wide-eyed kids, coming of age in a postwar, consumer-driven suburbia, arguably the most stable and comfortable situation in the history of the non-upper-classes, the yearning of the rootless somehow resonated. And it wove a thematic thread through this show, with Ramblin' Jack doing Woody Guthrie's satirical Dust Bowl migrant ballad 'Do Re Me' and Cooder singing Agnes Cunningham's comparable 'How Can You Keep On Moving (Unless You Migrate Too),' a song he learned at the Ash Grove.

Sure, it's pretty much a social anthropological cliche by now: the combo of Eisenhower-years blandness, the true establishment of a middle class and the mass-media explosion that opens up windows to other cultures and ideas sparks a new consciousness, music helps fuel awareness of civil-rights issues, a generation comes of age questioning the values of the power structure and, well, the '60s happened. Don't sell it short. The Ash Grove alone was perceived as enough of a threat to someone that it suffered three arson fires, the last closing it for good in 1973.

In the highlights of this concert, though, the tone turned personal more than political. Alvin's short set held a particularly deep note for the death a few days before of long-time musical saddle pal Chris Gaffney, with a line tossed into 'Ash Grove' and a dedication of a moving 'Shenandoah' to "my best friend." But then he couldn't wipe a big grin off his face as he and band accompanied elder statesman Ramblin' Jack through his digression-filled tales of the drifting life. Cooder, teaming with veterans Mike Seeger and Roland White for a tribute to "old timey" music, remembered nights during high school accosting Elliot and Carter Stanley as they came off stage to show him licks they'd played, and also imitating Pearl decrying any sense of commercialism even in performers mentioning albums they were promoting. Emcee Dr. Demento told of when he was simply young Barry Hansen working as a ticket taker, stage manager and everything else at the club. Unannounced surprised guest Ben Harper brought a real sense of currency and continuity by being joined by his mother, Southern California folk maven Ellen Chase, for an entrancing unplugged set with his band, including a sweet mother-son duet on Dylan's 'Tomorrow Is a Long Time.' (Word is Ben and Mom are going to make an album together, which, based on this little taste, will be a treasure.)

The inspiration took many forms: Holly Near, another graduate of the Ash Grove school, showed in her segment with East Coast duo Emma's Revolution how she channeled the lessons learned into a career of women's rights, civil rights and environmental activism. Culture Clash offered up political theater in the Ash Grove spirit with an excerpt from their 'Chavez Ravine,' another work about cultural and physical displacement in its pointed satire of the destruction of a multicultural community for the building of Dodger Stadium around the time the Ash Grove was founded. And younger musical artists Laura Love and Ashley Maher brought the Ash Grove aesthetic into newer contexts with, respectively, a distinctive brand of funk folk rooted in old spirituals and civil-rights anthems and a hybrid world music/dance bridging modern America and traditional Africa. And closing this first night, a motley Eastern European jam session blasted spiritedly into the wee hours.

The musical pinnacle came in the Cooder/Seeger/White set on a number in which Seeger played harmonica and fiddle simultaneously (a neat trick) on a mournful, haunting lick, singing lyrics about slaves being transported, with Cooder coming in for an electric slide solo that echoed Blind Willie Johnson's ghostly, despairing 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.' This performance at once captured that intersection of generations at the founding of the Ash Grove, that passing of rootless displacement into the realm of folklore roots, though the song itself shows that's nothing new. It was 'Stolen Souls From Africa,' a piece associated with white abolitionists more than a century before the Ash Grove even existed.

Pearl himself, in a brief address to the crowd, made a call for a new Ash Grove, something he said is needed in a time of complacency he likened to that of when he started the original club. The case can be made. Punk is by and large toothless, rap is becoming a caricature. There would seem not just a need but untapped demand for something really of substance, a unifying, galvanizing musical force that would bring in stray youth in search of, well, something. But is that even possible in the blogosphere era, when every music, every opinion, every thought is instantly accessible? No kid has to go to a club to learn about folk music or blues or anything today. Never mind creating something so threatening to the power structure that someone would burn it down once, let alone three times.

Ash Grove Gets Back to Its Roots
On April 17, 2008

L.A.'s preeminent venue for roots music rises from the ashes

BY DAVID KRONKE >LA.COM

Dave Alvin vividly recalls the night in 1970 when he, at the age of 14, first stepped into the Ash Grove - and discovered what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

Alvin, his brother and some older friends trekked the 25 miles from their home in Downey to the seminal nightclub on Melrose (where the Improv is today).

"I was into people like Little Walter and Muddy Waters, and my brother's friends said, `You gotta go to the Ash Grove,' " recalls the Grammy-winning roots rocker, who even titled a solo album "Ashgrove" in tribute to the club.

"Finally, we did. I remember my first show: Big Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker. I can even tell you the names of all the guys in the orchestra. For us junior record collectors, to go to a place where the people you listened to on old 78s really were - was wow!"

He adds, "I thought, `Oh my God. This is amazing; this is what I want to do.' It was sort of a personal crossroads, where everything came together. That combination of the music, the sensuality of music and the historical political aspect - you could dance and think at the same time. From there on, I was there constantly, by hook or by crook. I'd hitchhike, whatever it took to get there. It was Mecca."
From 1958 until its demise at the hands of arsonists in 1973, the Ash Grove was L.A.’s preeminent venue for roots music — folk, country, the blues and world music — in their raw, unfettered forms. Bluesmen from the Mississippi Delta, and country crooners and gospel singers from the rural South performed there. Politics and poetry were discussed there. Photo exhibits examining the black struggle of the ’60s were displayed in the lobby. Icons of ’60s and ’70s folk rock hung out and hooked up there. Had there been no Ash Grove, there may never have been a band called the Byrds, as one example.

“One of things that made it so unique was, it was the kind of place where everybody rubbed shoulders with everybody,” Alvin notes. “Today, there’s such a stratification to clubs. That wasn’t the case there. People would come from South Central, from Beverly Hills, from the Valley — it was a melting pot.” The club’s legacy is so enduring that UCLA Live is devoting a weekend to celebrating its 50th anniversary, with two all-star concerts at Royce Hall, and three afternoons of workshops and free concerts throughout the campus. Friday’s show features Alvin, Ry Cooder, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Bob Neuwirth, Culture Clash and Holly Near; Saturday’s includes Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Michelle Shocked and the
Watts Prophets.

“What set it apart was the quality of the music — its trueness to theform, to the culture,” says Taj Mahal, who worked as a doorman, met his first wife and even lived at the club for a while before his own career as a blues musician took off. “All of the other places had room for the commercial stuff,” he continues. “That alone made it unique — the level of music was incredible. You didn’t need to hype it. The audience was well-informed.”

The Ash Grove was the brainchild of Ed Pearl, now 79, who managed the club, booked its acts, organized political events, fended off death threats and in general tried to shape order from chaos. He has spent three years organizing the weekend event. “Ed was eccentric,” says Taj Mahal. “He was a political guy who had an incredibly great heart, just had a big heart. He really loved to put the music out there where it belonged. He saw to it that people ate, because they could work at the Ash Grove. Take Clifton Chenier — not that he was destitute, but there were not many places in Los Angeles where he could play zydeco. But he could spend a week at theAsh Grove and make decent money and be exposed to a good audience.”

Sitting in an Echo Park coffee shop in a navy turtleneck and jeans, Pearl relates the history of his labor of love in long stories that name-drop (Bob Dylan never returned a harmonica rack he borrowed for a performance), traverse years, arc back upon themselves and improbably blend culture, politics and conspiracy theories. (Was it mere coincidence that such a hotbed of liberal activism was struck by arsonists three times during the Nixon administration?)

“I floundered around at first a little,” Pearl remembers. “I had people who were really good, but more developed from the Kingston Trio than from the Mississippi Delta. When I changed the character of the music, I drew a younger group that was really passionate about
the music.”

Once Pearl — and his club — found their voice, the Ash Grove became “a home for and a reflection of the movement of the ’60s in Los Angeles,” Pearl says. “We attracted people who were in favor of change. We had this combination of presenting and teaching the art of the great masters of black and country music almost from the
beginning.”

Of course, it was still a nightclub, so not everything that occurred there was so high-minded. Alvin remembers dice games in the alley. Pearl and Taj Mahal both have fond memories of the club’s testy cook — Pearl recalls a hammer hurled through the venue when a Canned Heat soundcheck woke the guy from a nap; Taj remembers, “He was really cool, then at some point he’d snap, and spaghetti pots would go flying and he’d storm out during a performance.”

There were more serious moments, as well, including the three incidents of arson. The first came two days before a film and
discussion about Cuba was scheduled; it shut the place down for several months. The second wasn’t as damaging, but it was more terrifying — anti-Castro Cubans stormed in and terrorized employees preparing for the evening’s show. Some were captured when a father of one of the club’s waitresses, a retired fireman, chased them down and pinned their car against the curb on Crescent Heights as, conveniently, a police cruiser happened to be motoring by.

By the time of the third fire, in 1973, Pearl was too burned out to rebuild again, and the Ash Grove became but a fond memory for a generation of music-loving Angelenos. By his own admission, he spent a decade drinking heavily; he cleaned up in 1983. An attempt to resurrect the Ash Grove in Santa Monica in the late ’90s lasted only a year. Still, Pearl’s memories of running an influential club during a pivotal time in American history seem reward enough.“It was a maelstrom behind the scenes constantly,” he says. “Money was never in abundance; it was always scarce. People were paid
modestly, but they were loyal. But for the audience, it was a great experience.”

THE KNITTERS TOUR-The Knitters Return for Winter Hoedown

October 16, 2007 10:10 AM
By Tjames Madison
LiveDaily Contributor
Venerable pop/punk/ roots-rockers The Knitters [ tickets ], whose lineup features former members of X and The Blasters, "dust off the acoustics" this winter for a short club tour.

The band, featuring three-fourths of the original lineup of X (Exene Cervenka, John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake), guitarist Dave Alvin from The Blasters and bassist Jonny Ray Bartel, will kick off an 11-city tour Nov. 30 in Chicago. The trek hits locations in the Midwest, Texas and Southwest before landing back in California. All dates are listed below.

The band's most recent album, 2005's "The Modern Sounds of The Knitters," picks up where the group's previous and only other recording, 1985's "Poor Little Critter in the Road," left off, offering the group's acoustic-driven interpretations of American roots music classics, with covers of songs by Flatt & Scruggs and Porter Waggoner, among others, as well as providing fresh takes on old X favorites like "Burning House of Love" and "In This House That I Call Home."

"When we first met Porter, he was singing in a plain brown suit and working solo," Cervenka said in the band's tounge-in-cheek online bio. "I told him, 'Boy, you could probably go far if you worked on your wardrobe a little and got yourself a partner--maybe a good-lookin', well-put-together woman.' Happily, he took my advice."

"When Zoe/Rounder Records asked us to make another record in our original style," added drummer Bonebrake, "we jumped at the chance. It took us back to the old days, when we used to sit around the fire in Glendale, a-pickin' out the great tunes. We just dusted off the old acoustics and got to it!"