Under the Stars: Stepping into the future with Secret Sidewalk

Hey Everybody. It’s Under The Stars. A quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep it moving, hustling with the changes, thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years… Spend some time with us…

SECRET SIDEWALK

I attended a show at The Faight Collective this past Saturday. Secret Sidewalk.

Passin’ through the OG “slower-haight,” I had flashbacks. 

Zebra Records. Broun Fellinis taking over the dancefloor at The Top (now Underground SF), playing right on top of some drum and bass track I was mixing as to say “we got it from here buddy, take it down the street, we bout to lift off.” 

Or the run of jazz-adjacent nights back in the day at The Elbo Room. Karl Denison’s Tiny Universe, Greyboy All-Stars, Alphabet Soup, and the main draw for the decade, Charlie Hunter. All that concentration of live music, funk, and groove made Elbo Room and Valencia Street the spot to be at on any given evening. Or even the string of shows at Cafe du Nord during that time where Charlotte The Baroness would take dancefloors on funky-mystic trips through a DJ set that had you seeing visions, stars at set’s end. So much dancefloor jazz on her nights, Man.

That legacy from a different version of life made people move to the Bay Area from all points of the world, not for tech jobs, but to be around a certain kind of creativity, that energy. Folks would work at a coffee shop, bookstore, make sandwiches, become bike messengers, work at a unionized all-female-owned strip club in North Beach (RIP The Lusty Lady), or start their own record store (hello Vinyl Dreams), or the all-time favorite way to make cash—bartending (RIP, Uptown, miss ya Scott Ellsworth).

So after that quick mind sesh, I nearly stopped, dropped, and rolled going down the stairs into Faight Collective and had the strange and dangerously alternating timestamp essence of Oakland’s own Secret Sidewalk cushion my fall.

Comprised of Bay-Area natives Michael Reed, Alex Abalos, Marcus Stephens, and Mike Boo, the group grinds up breakbeats, trip-hop, abstract wave-forms, and bugged-out modular synth lines that would make Karl the Fog crack a smile and let some sunshine in for a sec. Sax player Michael Reed’s tone is a straight-up Eddie Harris vibe. Matter of fact, I told him that after the show, and the brother thanked me. Salute.

The cozy crowd in attendance took videos, nodded their head in rhythm to what the band had cookin’ and were so respectful of the process unfolding before them that I wanted to take this crowd with me to all shows and use it as a Ted Talk, instructing others on how to act while listening to music in a public setting. Some folk still need home-training.

I have word that Secret Sidewalk will be more visible this summer and into the fall.

I cannot recommend enough how much this band is futuristic, retrospective, and right friggin now all at once. Seek them out, people.

DERYA YILDIRIM & GRUP ŞIMŞEK AT THE CHAPEL, AUGUST 6

So it does not matter if you are not familiar with a “bağlama composition,” but it may be time to make that connection. Derya Yıldırım and her band Grup Şimşek, who play woozy, groove-tinged arrangements, got their band signed to Big Crown Records. Produced by the vibe-master himself, Leon Michels, it would be a good, great, and just plain solid look to catch this band on the up while they touch down at The Chapel.

The vibes should be emanating from a traditional Turkish string instrument, and you will be smitten with the smoke.

Look for tix here.

SLY & THE FAMILY STONE, THE FIRST FAMILY: LIVE AT WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL 1967 (HIGH MOON RECORDS)

There is a cover version of “I Wanna Take You Higher” by master organ player Brian Auger that I’ve been playing out a lot; it communicates a certain live version of the Sly Stone order. But with the recent The First Family: Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967, Sly and the Family Stone live recording from High Moon Records. I don’t have to wonder anymore.

Through the 10 songs in under 50 minutes recorded on March 26, 1967, listeners now in 2025, the ultimate year Sly passed in, can hear how familiar the crowd is with this band. Singing along to sounds, cheering band members on, just carrying on a respectful conversation with the eager young outfit, while they are playing, as if the audience is an extended family member, inserting themselves into the performance because it’s what the performers are used to.

This is Sly’s corner bar, of sorts, yeah it’s Redwood City, but it sounds like there is a familiarity going on here, at least it feels like it is, at his and his band’s locale that they can work on songs, try new things, blow off steam from a hectic week, or just revel in the love of their people, celebrating in the joy of live performance.

You can behold early workings of “Dance To The Music” in the opening song “I A’int Got Nobody”, hear Sly work through the musical question, one he seemed to keep coming back to throughout his career, “What Is Soul?,” check the bands cover “I Cant Turn You Loose” (no it’s not an intro to The Blues Brothers movie), mingle and peruse the blues through the trumpet playing of Cynthia Robinson, a founding member of the band on “Saint James Infirmary” to a conclusive standing ovation from the crowd.

But the extremely mindblowing idea is this. This soulful, review version of Sly’s band probably would have been better received at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the subject of Questlove’s Academy Award-winning documentary Summer of Soul. But in truth, you can never predict the future.  Sly and his merry band of musicians dressed in Haight Street’s finest vines were done with appeasing audiences, black or white; the version of Sly and The Family Stone that showed up in Harlem on that day was a-shuffling no more.

Purchase this live recording here.

OUTSIDE LANDS NIGHT SHOWS, AUGUST 3-10

As much as Golden Gate Park is taking a beating with all the concerts jammed up in that valuable greenery this summer, I gotta admit, Outside Lands Night shows around The Bay are the opposite of the hectic three days of running from stage to stage, in the heat.

I’ve been lucky and privileged to witness two stellar shows associated with Outside Lands at Rickshaw Stop. I caught local phenom SpaceMoth a couple of years back, she was amazing people, and the surf-rock amalgamation band that fuses dub with Middle Eastern melodies laid out over cumbia, hailing from Colombia, that is BALTHVS. That heady trio had a crowd so badly in the fits last summer that a skinny white dude, in a puffy Patagonia jacket, could not decide if he was breakdancing or doing some Deadhead wave—so he merged the two into one. 

That’s how hard Bogotá’s finest crushed on that night.

So reserve judgment, and if you choose to stick around on Outside Lands weekend and the surrounding days, consider the 13 intimate, after-hours sets across San Francisco and Oakland a’s shows associated with your venues. Still Woozy, Thundercat, Floating Points (Live), Fujii Kaze, BLOND:ISH, Black Coffee, Hope Tala & Luna Li, and more just may turn your head.

Grab more info here.

TORPEDO, “SOME WOLVES” (BROKEN CLOVER RECORDS)

So what do we do, how do we process this first track from the Lausanne, Switzerland trio Torpedo, who fire away at noise rock, post-proto punk, industrial, and psychedelic treats way past the speed limit, huh?

Dig in on the breakneck drumming, the tearing away at it guitar lines, even breathe in the droney start of the tune. And be sure this minute and change of a darkly-toned spark is just the beginning. 

Don’t be surprised that they are on the local imprint, known for their “I just can’t quite pin it down” tendencies, called Broken Clover Records.

Pick it up here.

MADELINE KENNEY, “SEMITONES” FROM KISS FROM THE BALCONY (CARPARK)

Alright, let’s dive in. My boss, Marke B, advised me to keep an eye on Madeline Kenney. I’ve heard a couple of her singles in the past that caught my attention. And now, she has released something new that truly stands out.

“Semitones” holds a sacred space where Kate Bush ended—and Kenney, who I never thought I’d compare to the ultimate golden goose, picks up that odd and obtuse sonic torch and marches that sucker right through the Bay. With a squelchy mid-tempo production, thundering drums, rich atmospherics, and full-on dramatics in the video, it does work, I’m starting to hear what all the hubbub is about.

Pick up Kiss From The Balcony here.

RAVI COLTRANE & COLTRAXX AT SFJAZZ MINER AUDITORIUM, FRI/25

On the week Ravi Coltrane settles into his duties as Resident Artistic Director, he fronts the fiesty, fire-breathing acoustic quartet known as Coltraxx, which includes pianist David Virelles, bassist Dezron Douglas, and drummer Johnathan Blake. Douglass, you may remember from the 11-song suite Force Majeure, recorded with harpist Brandee Younger back in the deep, deep times that were 2020.

It’s been highlighted in the press that this unit, comprised of respected bandleaders and composers, loosens up the formalities to form a daunting impromptu core that shakes up their known qualities in exchange for undesignated locations. When this unit gets rolling, liftoff is always just a second away.

Grab tix here.