Skateboarding remains a sport with a profound impact on culture. It’s a community that was built on major risk-taking. Having those onions, these stones, an outsider’s panache. Sometimes it means fronting: acting like a total dick in public, to hide and protect what’s really under the skin. Deep in the heart. (RIP Jake Phelps, editor of Thrasher.)
It’s become yet another means by which we find our entertainers. Forget the likes, these are the fools we believe in. They’ve spilled their own blood, risked their lives for what they believe in. That’s real weight.
San Francisco former pro-skater Tommy Guerrero, who was raised by his mother in the Inner Sunset, began playing music at the age of nine. Skateboarding at 12. He prospered at both. A variety and rarity for sure, which permitted the entire Bay Area to watch him evolve through many phases over the past several decades since his career(s) launched in the 1980s.
There is a quasi-joke, more of a real-life truism, that bartenders in The Mission used to make in reference to observing their clientele grey with age: When punk-rockers get old they turn down the ruckus and gravitate toward country and bluegrass. That’s not quite the case here, but there’s plenty of mellow funk sunshine.
Guerrero, who claims he’s a better bass player than a guitarist, closed out the Bottom of The Hill portion of this year’s Noise Pop Festival with a 90-minute set of what he’s identified as “groove music,” which kept an intergenerational, culturally swirled well-wisher lot in a merry and at times reckless state of optimism. Folks were out here… acknowledging, and rightfully so, that cool ass Uncle-type energy. Guerero, accompanied by Louie Senor on drums, Josh Lippi on bass, and Matt Rodriguez on congas-percussion kept this elated mob on lock.
Unlike the previous night where hipsters and bros were making appearances and doing coolness stare-downs, turning a wonderful night of local indie-pop into second-fiddle fodder. But this “one for the books” Sunday-Funday afternoon of February 27th, folks were here first, for Tommy and his funk bag. Windows to the walls attendance, fam, elder Bay Area skateboarders got the opportunity to get mildly… buck. Graduating from the hip-hop of their skinned kneed youth, into the funky blues segment of their life transformation.
There is a jam, my jam for that matter, from Guerrero’s most recent release, Sunshine Radio, called “The Road Under My Shoes,” which takes a bluesy stroll into the jazz ether, suggesting ever so calmly to “sit your old ass down.” It’s moody, mellow, and all kinds of dope. Speaking to those years of running at peak capacity. It’s done, Son.
You can’t do, whatcha did, no more.
A small but dedicated few came with that energy on Sunday, adorned in tattered trucker hats, still waiting for some missing teeth to grow back, while other members of the congregation wore thrift store sweaters, with fanny packs tossed over the shoulder, haphazardly waiting for their girlfriends to float back from the bar with more wine or tequila. Sometimes both. Most times not.
“I think I’m warmed up now” Guererro joked about 30 minutes into his set. As the crowd laughed, cheered, and hollered at the comment—Tommy was hurling fastballs all afternoon mind you—he poked on with delight. “I’m old. It takes a while to warm up these old bones. I’m usually all warmed up when we are done” which met with a thunderous response.
Nobody was really buying that humble pie bish. I mean, everyone knows he’s humble. But c’mon. Dude can rip.
An instrumental tapestry from early ZZ Top-type boogie to Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery pattern expression into Brian Auger’s rock-jazz cruising motif. TG was dealing. Serving combustibles all day. It’s what everybody came for. Prayers from lockdown received.
One cut “Down At The Uptown,” the dirtiest funk-blues strand of the afternoon, he explained as “for those who know San Francisco bars, you know where it’s at”. From then on Guerrero slow-rolled down the windows and lead his fans into a blistering set of cutting shuffling rockers with off-tempo shrift making the date, just one beautiful hang.
When he waved to the crowd after his final cut, with everyone boppin, swaying, moving, on-time and mostly in rhythm—no Catalina Wine Mixer white man overbite BS up in here—the Chulita Vinyl Club DJ crew, the all-woman, all-vinyl collective, cut into “Cisco Kid” by War and sent the room singing out the door.
