Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New Year's Eve at the Stronghold : New Year's Day at Pappy & Harriet's

It's been a wonderful year. It's been a helluva decade.

We gonna finish it out at the Stronghold New Year's Eve.

1625 Abbot Kinney Blvd. Venice, CA 90291

10pm: Peter Goetz

11pm: Honey Honey (Ironworks Records)

Midnight Special: Paul Chesne & The Love Handles

1am: The Legendary Willie Chambers of the Chambers Brothers

40 bucks -- But before you get all excited. Free drinks! And you can bring whatever you like too. $40 ain't no thang really. Especially on NYE! That's like 4 or 5 drinks at a bar. Seriously. And great music. Sitting in with us on bass will be the newest addition to Ryan Adams' band. That's pretty pimptacular.

Then we're getting in the van the next day and headed up to start the new year/decade off at my favorite place in the world. Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace, It's out there in the desert near Joshua Tree. We start there at 7pm and go all night.

Hope to see you. And either way may you have the happiest of new years!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Crazy Girls Wednesday At 10pm. MSG Me For $5 Discount List!

Crazy Girls. 1433 N. La Brea Ave.

It's the one with the sign that says "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

Wednesday December 23rd. 10pm

The night before the night before Christmas.

Creatures will be stirring.

No one has to work on Thursday so this is what we in the business like to call a party.

MSG me for $5 discount list otherwise it's 10 bucks.


Here's a video of us playing live at the Redwood Bar & Grill on 12/5.


Friday, December 18, 2009

Stronghold In Venice On Saturday

Saturday the 19th at midnight the Stronghold in Venice.

1625 Abbot Kinney. 90291. It's a kinda byob speakeasy musician's lodge. I've been going down there like 3-4 times a week and playing until late. Like sunrise even. With like 50 people still there.

Our buddy Jonny Kaplan is gonna play earlier.

It's $10, but you don't have to buy drinks. They do have some drinks for sale. Keep your bottles or whatever else on the DL a little bit.

Ask me for guest list if you're broke. I don't want anyone not there because of $. I'll do a $5 and a free list. Don't be shy. But realize that the place only holds about 100 people. It is a cozy awesome room.

It is the best new venue in LA. I have not seen a parade of talent come through a place like this ever in the last 10 years.

We will be having some special guests dropping in. Our good friend Willie Chambers of the Chambers Brothers. Here he is hanging out on the Mike Douglas show with John & Yoko getting his autograph!



There's been lots of super-famous celebs and musicians hanging out down there. Who knows! If we're not good enough for you.

Pics from Willie Chambers last week at the Stronghold.

Check out our friends Leslie & The Badgers: Song of the day on KCRW on Wed.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Leslie & The Badgers & Other Friends On KCRW

I'm sexist.

If I hear a really good/great female songwriter, I'll like it more than I'll like a male of the same caliber.

One of my favorites, happens to be my friend Leslie Stevens of Leslie & The Badgers. We've played a bunch of shows with them.

I've actually been playing shows with her since she was in Ze Auto Parts. A really loud punk band that used to play at the Kibitz Room almost as much as me.

Ze Auto Parts at the Kibitz Room on January 6, 2004.

Now Leslie does quieter music. Her latest album is getting all kinds of critical acclaim. They are Morning Becomes Eclectic's song of the day and you can download it free here:
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/tu/tu091216leslie_and_the_badge

A couple months ago some other good friends of mine, Rosey and Ireesh of Lal Meri, were featured on the same program, Morning Becomes Eclectic. Last week Rosey and I jammed until dawn with Willie Chambers and a whole host of other superstars.

Check their performance on MBE out here:
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb090722lal_meri

And finally the oldest friend of mine I will now be mentioning in the female singer/songwriter kicking ass realm is Juliette Commagere. (Don't forget, I've already written about Holland Greco, The Webb Sisters and The Dahl Sisters). I've known Juliette and her man Joachim Cooder since they were in a band called Speakeasy in high school. I saw them play at Fais Do Do in 1992! The bass player at that point was Bradford Craig who ended up being my bass player about 12 years later for a spell. Since Speakeasy which featured Joachim's dad Ry Cooder on guitar, Juliette & Joachim started Vagenius.

Here they are performing at Spaceland on February 3rd, 2004.

And then due to some legal conflict they changed their name to Hello Stranger. Now she's gone solo and finally been embraced by Morning Becomes Enigmatic. Check their performance on MBE out here:
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb081218juliette_commagere

Well now you've got the tip of the iceberg's worth of great chick singers to enjoy recommended by your friendly neighborhood sexist.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

eden ahbez : The First Hippie



I have just stumbled on an amazing fact. eden ahbez, the man who wrote "Nature Boy" a #1 hit for 8 weeks straight for Nat "King" Cole, was also a raw food hippie. This was in 1947!
He is the prototypical hippie. A sort of Jesus figure that lived for a time under the "L" in the Hollywood sign.
Check out this article:
http://shadowboxstudio.com/ahbefiles/1977.htm

He died in 1995 after being hit by a car. His life though is an extraordinary story.

Made my day.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Offshore Bank Accounts (Live) -- 12/5 at the Redwood Bar & Grill In Downtown LA



Thanks to Levi Nunez of Old Californio for filming and sending this along.

Next show is 12/19 at the Stronghold in Venice.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

3 Hecklers in 2 Songs Last Night.

I know I invite chaos and challenge the audience from time to time, but come on.

Heckler 1: I told that Jonas Brother looking mutherfucker if I had his $ I'd be heckling me too.

Heckler 2: is actually an actual Venice bum. After I finished "You Owe Me," he said, "That was good now, let's hear something original." I said "Actually that was original." I guess he was joking? You Owe Me. He says & thinks he's in U2. I'm not kidding. This wasn't our 1st run-in. Last week when he interrupted me mid-song to tell me that he is in fact in U2, I immediately stopped the song I was playing, took off my guitar and handed it to him. He put it on and stood there for a minute. Then took it off and never played a note. Oh Venice Beach. I love thee so.

Heckler 3 comes on stage and sings outta tune like a bum just like heckler 2. Yeah did I mention heckler 2 actually had the audacity to get on stage and start singing. It was bad. Afterwards heckler 3 says my songs are too good for my voice. He thinks that he should be singing my songs because "Bob couldn't sing either." Which one are you Sonny or Cher mutherfucker?

Anyways, peace and love throughout the galaxy.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Friday @ Redwood Bar & Grill in Downtown LA : Saturday In Bakersfield : 7 Deadly Sins‏

Friday we play at the Redwood Bar & Grill, 316 W. Second St. LA, CA 90012

We go on at 11pm. Old Californio goes on at 9:30. They are real good.

The place is an old pirate bar (!) downtown and it has good food. Free!


Saturday we open up for Trainwreck featuring KG of Tenacious D at Fishlips in Bakersfield.

The other band on the bill is called Band Of Bigfoot and they do songs like "Yeti for love. Oh baby I'm yeti for love?!"

$10. We go on at 9 on Saturday.


We've gots some other great shows coming up before the end of the year and beyond.

Farmer's Market

Strip club

Kibitz Room 10 year anniversary of the Chesne Band's existence & Dutch's birthday!!!

Speakeasies, secret parties, dive bars.

I think we will also be concomitantly committing all of the 7 deadly sins.

Ya know, the usual.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Mobil Station Party HQ In Pacific Palisades

When I was a teenager growing up, there wasn't no Twitter. No Facebook Events. No Myspace bulletins. No Evite. No Friendster. No Hotmail. Not even Motorola Startac cell phones!

But there was a Mobil Gas station in Pacific Palisades where all the kids would congregate on Friday and Saturday nights looking for the hot parties to attend. Bel-Air Patrol would congregate there too, but if you got there at the right time you would be in.

I remember one time we went down there and heard about some party up Bienveneda Canyon. We were in 9th grade. (That would make it circa 1991.) And this was some senior at Palisades High School's house whose parents were clearly out of town. It was just a friend, my step-brother & I.

When we arrived we're like "Whoa this is intimidatingly out of our league of coolness." We each weighed about 100 pounds and were private school nerds surrounded by the best Jim Morrison's, Matthew McConaughey's, Alicia Silverstone's and Lindsay Lohan's Pali had to offer.

A tank of nitrous was the De facto centerpiece & the aroma of schwag weed was wafting. Led Zeppelin poured out over the canyon from the living room speakers which were pointed toward the terrace where 150 or so kids were debauching. It was one of those houses built right in to the side of a hill with a large pool patio area basically on stilts. We walked over to the edge to check out the chicks and gauge the situation. Really just trying not to get our asses kicked.

After sussing it out my friend decides to take his first hit of Nitrous Oxide. Apparently, he got a good one and almost fell directly in to the empty pool. The older kids finally noticed us and started yelling at him to get away. My step-brother & I guided him over to the edge of the terrace high over the slope below overlooking the relaxing million dollar city and canyon view. Taking his first post-nitrous high deep breath, he leans against the railing.

Next thing you know he falls like 15-20 feet down. The railing was broken & just barely balancing together. Putting any weight on it at all made it fall & sure enough he went with it.

The music stopped. Like a scene from a movie. Everyone was freaking out. Yelling and running to his aid.

It ended up that he landed on some sort of scrub brush that kind of placed him, without so much as a scrape, gently on the side of the hill about 6 inches to the right of one of those mountainside sprinkler heads that juts 4 feet out of the ground and would certainly have impaled him.

100 people gathered around to try and help him back up. He had long blond surfer dude hair. Once they pull his scraggly ass back on the terrace, they realize he's not the owner of the house's girlfriend as was feared. The Zeppelin roars back up immediately and everyone walks away.

Paul Chesne Band's Fan Box