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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