Here’s to the musicians who make the bar scene happen

Any music fan will tell you the value of having a bar — or several — in the community. Besides being generally safe, vibrant places to meet and socialize, they are often the only places where one can see live popular music.
For musicians, bars and roadhouses are the primary outlet for their expression. A musician’s chops are honed through performance, and if your thing is pop or rock music, that means playing in bars — on the way up, on the way down, or, more likely, throughout your career.
My friend Mike Pupo is a perfect case in point. I first met him in the Bay Area almost 30 years ago. He was living in an old van and parking it at a popular Sunnyvale biker bar. The van also held his drum kit, which he would set up in the bar every day so he could jam with others that night and provide the patrons with free music. A young, brash guy whose rocker proclivities generally separated him from the bikers, we all liked him anyhow because he was so obviously dedicated to his art and to playing.
It’s a story every musician knows, one summed up perfectly in a popular song by AC/DC: “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.”
Years of learning how to play, years of trying to find other musicians of similar talent with similar goals and desires, years of scrapping for gigs in bars and nightclubs for little or no money, all while trying to get noticed by the right person or persons.
You, of course, want to play your original material — the folks in the bar want you to play somebody else’s hit records. It’s night after night of packing up your equipment, driving to the gig and setting up, playing until 2 a.m., then breaking down and driving home. If there is any pay at all, by the time it’s split up, each member gets $40 or $50. Then you get up in the morning and go to a real job so you can afford to keep playing music.
Even if lightning does strike, if you get the pie-in-the-sky record contract, the label will send you on the road to do 150 to 200 dates a year in bars and similar venues to develop a wider audience and generate record sales.
Mike Pupo no longer lives in a van. He’s an in-demand cabinet and fixture contractor with some large corporate clients, has a nice house on a good-sized property on Bear Creek Road, and has been the drummer on record and in performance with Larry Hosford, the revered “bard of Salinas,” for 10 years or more. He’s also a member of Undercover, with one CD released so far, and plays in the Walt Gafvert Band. He’s an extremely accomplished and versatile drummer. These days he gets a dream gig now and then, but mostly it’s the rocker’s life: playin’ in some bar or another two or three nights a week.
It’s those dedicated musicians, willing to play for free or next to it in a loud bar, with no stage and poor acoustics, that keep real rock and roll alive. No club DJ and no subwoofer can replicate the rush of seeing someone thumping a bass line two feet away. Few musical experiences can hook you like the cathartic heartbeat from a tasteful drummer.
Watching real people playing real instruments is how music is meant to be experienced.
We are fortunate — on any given night there are several bars and clubs offering live music of virtually every genre. Often, the bands are presented without charge.
We also have a couple extremely good concert venues for mid- and top-level acts, but the best value is at the bars.
Make it a point to get out and see some live entertainment. If you catch a good band on a good night, you’ll remember it forever.
Support your local musicians, and support the local bars that give ’em a place to play.
Steve Bailey of Boulder Creek has spent plenty of time in recreational activities. Contact him at [email protected].