The New Fillmore

“YOU HAVE TIME for one more before this joint closes forever?” asked the vocalist for the Hot Sardines, who performed on January 14 — the final night at Fillmore’s jazz showcase, which had opened to great fanfare seven years earlier as Yoshi’s San Francisco.

The end came quickly. Just the day before, the new owners announced they were shutting down “due to some financial hardships resulting from reduced revenue.”

The minority partners had taken over the business only six months ago, on July 1, and rebranded it as The Addition on November 1, sacking the Yoshi’s marquee with a temporary covering.

Former Yoshi’s programmer Peter Williams returned to expand the bookings beyond jazz into soul and R&B. But business declined precipitously and the bar and restaurant — which never got a new concept or chef — had been largely empty.

The new management team, the Fillmore Live Entertainment Group, was led by Michael Johnson, the developer who built the club, two restaurants and 80 condominiums above at Fillmore and Eddy.

“FLEG is in the process of determining how to address existing liabilities of the business,” said a statement the group released. The group is also seeking “a potential lead partner to take over operations [of the club] in addition to re-concepting the existing restaurant.”

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MUSIC | BARBARA KATE REPA

The Fillmore Auditorium has existed as the neighborhood’s dance hall and rock emporium for more than a century. And in all that time, there has been one common characteristic among those performing and running the shows: All were men. That will change on January 31, with The First All Lady Show featuring four Bay Area bands — all comprised of female musicians.

“We’ve been dreaming of playing at The Fillmore for a long time,” says Erin Chapin, who sings and plays guitar and other instruments with The Rainbow Girls, one of the featured acts. “Even Janis Joplin never had a band of ladies playing with her.”

The idea for the show was born out of condescension and fueled by frustration. Chapin says it’s “clearly different” being in an all-female band and navigating through the music world, which is still very much dominated by men.

“On one hand, you have a leg up, so to speak,” she says. “But you still have to smile and nod when people talk down to you. And too often, we get called a ‘girl band.’ It’s unfortunate that term is degrading.”

She has many stories of being underestimated by those in the business, especially the venue technicians, who seem to expect “a few singers with guitars” rather than a full-blown band.

“One sound guy even said to us: ‘Can’t you little ladies just a share a microphone?’ ’’ she recalls. “I just wanted to kick him in his little man.”

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Photograph of opening night at Yoshi’s on November 27, 2007, by Mina Pahlevan

By Chris Barnett

AFTER A DIZZYING seven year roller-coaster ride — from its opening as the hot new jazz club on the West Coast to a plunge into bankruptcy — Yoshi’s on Fillmore was taken over by new owners July 1 and is tuning up for its next gig.

Yoshi’s San Francisco, launched at the end of 2007 as the offspring of 42-year-old Yoshi’s in Oakland, will no longer be a jazz club, despite its heritage and its locale in what was once the fabled Harlem of the West. In fact, it hasn’t been a jazz club for several years, and the music promises to get still more eclectic under new management.

The big question is what the new Yoshi’s is going to look like, sound like and taste like. It’s hard to say just yet because the take-over management team, headed by longtime minority owner and successful urban developer Michael E. Johnson — who developed the Fillmore Heritage Center housing Yoshi’s, 1300 on Fillmore and 80 condominiums above — took control suddenly last month without a fully developed business plan. Even as the curtain rises this month, the new Yoshi’s, including its new name, is a work in progress.

This much is known: The business known as Yoshi’s San Francisco — which includes the 420-seat club and the 370-seat Japanese restaurant and lounge — was sold by an investment consortium headed by Yoshie Akiba and Kaz Kajimura to the Fillmore Live Entertainment Group, where Johnson is the managing director. No one including Johnson is saying what Fillmore Live paid, if anything. The club complex, separate from the building Johnson developed and controls, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012. The sale does not affect the mothership Yoshi’s in Jack London Square.

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Yoshi’s will still have jazz, but it won’t be a jazz club, its artistic director says.

By Chris Barnett

YOSHI’S ON FILLMORE is already booked this summer with acts lined up before the ownership changed on July 1.

But it almost went dark. Just a few weeks ago, the mood at Yoshi’s was deathly. Backstage, insiders could practically hear a New Orleans funeral band playing Just a Closer Walk With Thee, the traditional dirge of the deceased.

But on the way to the cemetery, a miracle happened. Almost every investor with a financial stake in Yoshi’s — owners, borrowers, lenders, private citizens, city and state governmental agencies — took a haircut, and in some cases a real scalping, so the club could emerge from bankruptcy and survive. Investors who despised each other set aside their differences and, in some instances, ponied up more cash or personal commitments to rescue a dream that had turned into a financial nightmare.

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By JASON OLAINE
Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival

While 1992 might have been tagged the “Year of the Woman” in politics, this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival might well be dubbed the same, as we raise our flags up and down the street to salute talented “Women in Jazz and Beyond.”

Here in the Bay Area — and this weekend on Fillmore — we are blessed to have a cornucopia of talented female artists who not only excel at their craft, but run the gamut of styles, perform on a variety of instruments and excite and energize audiences. Whether it’s jazz or blues, flamenco or folk, world music or soul, the women performing this weekend have style and substance in spades.

Some of the performers in 2014 return to the festival and are household names up and down the peninsula — including jazz and blues singers Faye Carol, Kim Nalley, Lavay Smith and flamenco pioneer Yaelisa and her group Caminos Flamencos, who tore the non-existent roof off of the festival in 2012. Other artists are household names but are here for the first time or returning after a long sabbatical — including singers Kitty Margolis, Pamela Rose, Carla Helmbrecht, Shayna Steele, Anna Kristina and Ila Cantor.

We are lucky to have bands or groups with us that feature or are led by women, including the all-woman world music outfit Azúcar Con Aché, the dynamic, multi-cultural 15-member strong Oakland Jazz Choir, the most in-demand blues bassist on the planet, Bay Area resident Ruth Davies and her band Blues Thing, vocalist Ariel Friedman’s Waves of Silver and the California Jazz Conservatory’s Arabelle Schoenberg and Nora Stanley Group.

With such a diverse and inspiring lineup, the best tip might be to arrive early and stay late — and wear comfortable shoes. These streets were made for walking, and I know that’s just what I’ll do. There’s so much music to catch, so many artists to support, so many arts and crafts and goods for sale that the weekend will be gone before you know it.

ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULE

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ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | JASON OLAINE

When artistic director Jason Olaine began planning this year’s lineup for the Fillmore Jazz Festival, he found himself booking so many women performers he had a theme.

“There are so many great women jazz artists in the Bay Area,” he says, “and not just vocalists.”

Olaine’s day job as director of programming and touring for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York keeps him on the front lines of jazz around the world. But Olaine says he is always happy to come back to the Bay Area.

“The Bay Area is my home — I am a third-generation Palo Altan,” he says. “My first jobs in the jazz world were at Yoshi’s in Oakland and the Gavin Report back in the early ’90s. I also interned at KJAZ and Jazz in the City, now SF Jazz. When Jazz at Lincoln Center approached me in 2011, there were a few things I asked for. One was whether I could continue as artistic director of the Fillmore Jazz Festival.”

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