Last Roundup at the Catalyst

Tonight may have been my last night playing music at the Catalyst. No, the venerable Santa Cruz institution is not closing its doors, although you'd wonder how they keep them open with the underutilized space, especially on the weeknights.

My history with this place goes back a long way, to the year I came to town. I had hitched a ride up here from Orange County on my way into the newly-opening College V dorms with a load of stuff, when the guy who gave me the ride asked me if I'd like to stop for a cup of coffee at the Catalyst. This was not the same Catalyst we know now, but the garden dinging room of the St. George Hotel that had been converted into a bohemian hangout. The St. George was on Pacific, but the Catalyst with its indoor, fern-covered fountain chugging away faced Front St.

That cup of coffee was the first one I'd ever really enjoyed in my life. It was a bottomless beige mug of pure pleasure. I don't know—maybe it was the beans or the roast or the way the drip was made, but there was something very substantial to the Catalyst's coffee.

A couple months into my College V experience got an unexpected phone call from Nick Robertson, who was in my jazz workshop class. He said he had a gig for me the following Saturday if I could make a rehearsal in Capitola. Not having explored the territory, I didn't know where Capitola was, but Nick offered to pick me up on campus and haul me to the rehearsal. I guess I did all right, because I played the gig on Saturday. The band was Dave Molinari, a piano player who taught at Soquel High School, his brother Jim Molinari on bass, Dan Sabanovitch on drums, Nick on vibes, a short tenor player whose name I can't remember, and me on alto.

I knew most of the tunes, which was a stroke of luck, because in 1969 making a tape to practice from was akin in its complexity to brain surgery. Fact was, I had most of the records which the repertoire was dawn from in my vinyl collection, which I'd schlepped up from Orange County to room B411 in the College V dorms. I can't remember exactly the tunes we played, but I know we played Tom Thumb and Footprints by Wayne Shorter. I do remember I wrote down some melodies on manuscript paper at the rehearsal, which served me well at the gig.

I remember the stage being small, and crowded with musicians and their equipment. Putting vibes in a band is not a trivial matter, and I suppose that Dave played a Fender Rhodes, because that's what you did in 1969. I was on stage right, and on my right  were the windows that opened to Front Street, next to the tenor player and Dave, the bandleader/pianist.

When we started playing, most of the packed house got into it, settling down to a quiet roar. I recall that they were all hairy, for after all this was the sixties and the counterculture was in full bloom. At that time, there was no cable TV in Santa Cruz, and with three over-the-air stations coming from Salinas and Monterey, the at-home entertainment options were limited, so naturally folks went out a lot more than they do now.

I remember the rough but fair owner of the Catalyst, a constant presence day and night at the club, which began life as a co-op occupying the Redwood Room–where the fountain was–and moving gradually into the former ballroom of the St. George, which served in the early history of the Catalyst as a storage area for paperwork for the nearby County Bank of Santa Cruz. Randall came up to the stage and let Dave know it when he thought the decibels were creeping up. Adjustments were made.

Most of all that night, I remember a gal sliding past the stage and smiling up at me named Jan Gillespie, who would leave UCSC in December of 1969, but never leave my heart.

Seven years later finds the Catalyst in new digs on Pacific Avenue. It finds me back from being on the road with Stan Kenton's band, back in Santa Cruz collecting unemployment insurance.

I am invited to the Catalyst for Friday Happy Hour with the Abalone Stompers. Jake Stock was a legendary clarinetist from Monterey who famously had two sets of false teeth, one for speaking and one for playing the clarinet. The pair not in use were in a glass of clear fluid which may well have been water next to his clarinet case.

Jake was a kind soul with a mean streak, but I mostly dealt with his son Jackson, one of the best trombone players I know, who taught me the repertoire of Dixieland music by gesture and gentle prodding. It's served me well over the years.

This is a picture of me at the old bowling alley we oldtimers will always choose to call the new Catalyst. Jake and Jackson had a gig elsewhere.

From the top left we have an unknown banjo player, Bill on guitar (who was the president of the local of the American Federation of Musicians and was here playing from the beginning of the Happy Hour gig regardless of being paid out of a tip jar, which Jake had a volunteer pretty girl circulate with protestations that we needed "a new roof on the church"), an unknown drummer, Daryl O'Day on tuba, front row is me, an unknown clarinet player, cornetist Lewis Keizer (still active in the 10th Avenue Band), and a guy named Moe who played trombone.

These were the good old days, around 1976. The crowds were into Dixieland as an accompaniment to the mating ritual provided by the Catalyst every Friday from 4 to 7. Then, sufficiently beered up, they'd go out to one of the two Mexican places on Pacific Avenue for something with tequila in it and a plate of enchiladas.

It was one of those Happy Hours that, in the recombining of the strands of life, I would for the first time go out for a plate of enchiladas with the women who is the mother of my children. Around the same time decide I wasn't good enough for the attention that a certain icy wise-mouth blonde was offering me, leading to all sorts of complications down the road three decades.

In that Bicentennial year, Randall was still prowling the premises with a dish towel, making sure that none of his customers had a dry glass, his employees weren't ripping him off, and the band didn't exceed his decidedly unscientific method of determining sonic excess on the part of the musicians. (There was a double standard at work here. In the Atrium, an open, boomy room, the musicians had to keep to down so that the customers could talk to each other. In the back room, where I played with Sofrito several times, the sky was literally the limit on loudness.)

Cut to the last couple years.

This is a view of the same area where we used to play Friday Dixieland on a Monday night when we had a Jazz Jam at the Atrium. The only identifiable constant is the staircase, visible through the door that wasn't there in 1976. The picture is from winter 2012, and the jam is in full swing. The room isn't what you'd call welcoming, and when people looked through the door they'd often turn tail.

Why? The Catalyst has changed hands with Randall's demise. The new owners are not identified, don't show up to keep track of how things are going, to supervise and make sure their employees aren't ripping them off. Nonetheless, saxophone player extraordinaire Kurt Stockdale booked us for Monday night jam sessions that start upstairs and gradually move into the Atrium, now with a permanent stage across the room from where we used to play Dixieland.

You can't buy a mug of that Catalyst coffee anymore, because the kitchen's been leased to an outfit that sells pizza by the slice to mostly homeless people out a window onto Pacific Avenue.

There's a dark deli counter where they used to sell the best sandwiches in town.

Behind the stage is a fancy fresco of the Bar at the Folies Bergere. But the bar is closed while we play, and, eventually, an ominous black curtain is pulled on the work.

The club does nothing to support our efforts, and does not pay the musicians. We get drink tickets, for which, for all I know, we'll be receiving a 1099 come tax time. Their website says nothing about the Jazz Jam on Monday nights for two years. We are seldom in their marquee. If you're one of the few people who show up, you're met with a dark, and, most seasons, cold room with a closed bar and no waitstaff. If you want a drink, you climb to the upstairs bar and get your own. Forom time to time, they rent the place out to promoters of Young People's Music. Sometimes they tell us, more often we show up and find a crowd of Rastafai have taken over the room.

It was a noble experiment, but it's done. Tiring of our red-haired stepchild status, Kurt's session moves next Monday, April 15, 2013, to the Reef on Union St.

Goodbye, Catalyst. At the important junctures of my adult life, you were there for me.

Thanks, Randall, wherever you are. Listen, the music is not too loud.