Members of ALO & Brothers Comatose Come Together For Paige Clem’s ‘Songs About Something’

Images and Words by: Alan Sheckter

Songs About Something: Old, New, Borrowed & Blue :: 1.5.17 :: Ivy Room :: Albany, CA

Charismatic San Francisco singer-songwriter and music industry vet Paige Clem presided over an impressive installment of her Songs About Something: Old, New Borrowed & Blue series on January 5. The live event, which she hosts monthly, includes a roundtable of prominent local musicians who perform an old and new song of their own, a cover (“borrowed”) tune, and a blues number. The setting: the lively Ivy Room in Albany, California just a few paces from the colorful East Bay community of Berkeley.

On this night, joining Paige at center stage were Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz (ALO, Lebo & Friends) and Steve Adams (ALO, Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers), Alex and Ben Morrison of the Brothers Comatose and keyboardist Jordan Feinstein, who was perched below the stage in kind of an orchestra pit of one. While the Morrisons knew each other’s songs, as did Lebo and Adams, this was not a rehearsed sextet. Rather, each person introduced their own song and the key it was in. The others, fine players and vocalists all, slowly and quietly began what their ears told them was a meaningful accompaniment, and by song’s end, a unique and perhaps never-to-be-repeated musical creation was achieved. And clearly, the musicians as well as the audience appreciated the uniqueness and musical craftiness of the proceedings.

“It’s really fun to get people together in these different settings, getting some people out of their comfort zone. You know, badass people that everyone loves – in a different kind of setting,” said Paige, who was raised in Birmingham and settled in San Francisco permanently seven years ago.

This musical series at the Ivy Room takes place the first Thursday of every month. Already booked through June, Paige teased that she now has Joe Craven, Mark Karan (RatDog), Elliott Peck (Midnight North), Erik Yates (Hot Buttered Rum) and more on the roster.

On this occasion, the first-round proceedings, of something old, were indicative of the two-hour-plus first set’s activities. With a sultry, Jewel-reminiscent vocal quality, Paige Clem began by crooning a tender love ballad called “Obviously.” Within a minute, Lebo joined in with a perfectly restrained-yet-intricate noodling guitar jam/accompaniment, Alex Morrison and Adams softly contributed some banjo and bass background sounds and Feinstein found just the right organ passage while Ben Morrison tapped along on the tambourine.

Ben Morrison followed with his “Into The Old,” featured on Brothers Comatose’s first album, Songs from the Stoop, with brother Alex providing supportive banjo strumming. Again, Lebo, Adams and Feinstein contributed meaningful accompaniments to a song they were hearing for the first time. Next in the round, Alex Morrison delivered a twangy traveling ditty “Yohio,” with guitar support from Ben (who knew the song) and spritely piano passages and country-tinged guitar licks from Feinstein and Lebo, as well as backing bass and Paige on tambourine egg shaker.

Ben, clearly impressed with what was happening around him, said immediately after the song, “Just to clarify, none of these people know these songs, so, they’re just kicking ass.”

Then it was Adams turn and he brought out one of his originals, “Edge Of The World.” “It’s sat in a journal for four years,” he said before accompanying himself on ukulele on the song about the Fernwood Lodge in Big Sur, California (site of the annual Hipnic music festival). Finally, Lebo strummed and sang an old original song about a person who in the afterlife is having a reflective discussion at the precipice of the gates of heaven.

And so it continued. The next round of new, original songs began with a Paige song that was inspired by Steve Poltz featuring the unusual title, “Kombucha and Condoms,” likely to be included on her upcoming musical project, she said. Next came Ben Morrison’s “25 Miles,” Alex Morrison’s “Yellow Moon,” Adams’ “The Apology,” which he wrote to his ALO bandmates after missing a flight and a gig and a song that Lebo had written within the past 10 days.

The cover songs section of the set was as pleasing as it was diverse, with Ben delivering David Allan Coe’s old “Tennessee Whiskey,” Alex leading The Kinks’ “Strangers,” Adams performing Johnny Nash’s reggae-influenced “Hold Me Tight,” and Lebo finishing up by leading an improbable but awesome rendition of “That’s What Friends Are For,” which prompted sweet, swaying arm-in-arm gestures from the band. The set ended with a Paige-led inspiring group performance of George Michael’s “Freedom ’90,” with the audience helping out on vocals.

The second set consisted of short sets by Paige, Ben and Alex Morrison, and Lebo and Adams. Well after midnight, the show ended with a jam-happy group performance of “Sitting On Top Of The World.”

Though everyone is the room was awesomely synchronous, it was no surprise that the mighty Lebo was the most dynamic instrumentalist, playing acoustic guitar and a mini lap-steel as well as bongos and a Telecaster fueled by several special-effects pedals which were, appropriately for this night, turned way down low. The top-hatted Feinstein, who has an uncanny ability to pick up and run with a song he’s never before heard, was a close second. He alternated between the twin-level Nord-Electro and Yamaha keyboards he brought with him, as well as the Ivy Room’s classic upright piano and a little melodica blow-organ.

Orchestrating a vibe and setting that were more akin an indoor campfire circle than a concert stage, the affable Paige kept the proceedings aligned with the theme of the night – which was and is a great formula for a gratifying, lo-fi evening. Of course, “lo-fi” does not mean low energy. Not with these kindred-spirited musical troubadours in the house.

Another major ingredient to the monthly Songs About Something is the venue itself. The venerable Ivy Room, which opened in the early 1940s and was recently acquired by new co-owners Summer Gerbing and Lani Torres. Gerbing and Torres have both worked extensively in the area, with Summer managing the North Beach Bar, Columbus Cafe, and 111 Minna Gallery (Summer still works at Oakland’s Fox Theatre). Meanwhile, Lani has worked at Santa Cruz’s The Blue Lagoon, and New York’s famed CBGB’s and The Bowery Ballroom. She also does double duty as bar manager of The Independent in San Francisco.

“I had met Lani and Summer at a business function, and I knew they had the Ivy Room and I said, ‘Oh I’ve got this idea that I want to do,’” said Clem. “So this is the third one and we’re going to keep it going.”

The Northern California music scene is a better place with Paige in it. Like a baseball player who can hit, field, throw, and run, Ms. Clem’s uncanny mix of music-biz skills are numerous, in front of, and behind the scenes.

“I’ve always had an organizational type-A side that translates well into project management and administrative work,” Paige said in a follow-up interview. “And my artistic side comes into play well when it comes to marketing and promoting. So somehow I managed to forge a professional career in the music business using all of those skills in different ways at different times.”

But more than music promotions, which in 2017 will include DelFest (Cumberland, Maryland), High Sierra Music Festival (Quincy, California), Hangtown Music Festival (Placerville, California) [Full Disclosure: JamBase has worked with Paige on the promotion of these events], she has also held roles of responsibility at the Rex Foundation, Music Magazine Publishers Association, and The Root: San Francisco Bay Area Music Community.

On her own musical front, Paige has been prolific in recent years as front person for Clem & Them, a recently folded roots/R&B band; for a retro funk ‘n’ soul cover band called Paige & the Rage and as a vocalist for The Eleven, a Grateful Dead tribute band whose gigs have gotten fewer and far between due to its members moving hither and yon. These days, she’s in the midst of putting together a new project called Paige & The Clementines, with Erik Yates (Hot Buttered Rum), Jordan Feinstein, Scott Griffen Padden (Goodnight Texas) and Ben Lauffer (American Nomad). They will be appearing at The Boom Boom Room in San Francisco on February 8.

Thoughts about recording her material, and what she said was something she didn’t know how to do, or afford, changed with the help of Steve Poltz, who during a ride to the airport after one of his shows in San Francisco, “He proceeded to launch into a 10-minute monologue that pretty much included every single thing I (or anyone) needed to do to record a song,” she said. “It was a turning point for me.” Gaining more momentum thanks to a successful crowd-funded effort and working with Jeff Berkley of San Diego’s Berkley Sound, Paige is set to finish her own full-length album in the next few months with some live shows planned around the release of that project. And she’s already got her eyes on a second release down the road.

For Paige, as much as she likes working in the business, the desire to make music herself was always there. Playing piano and writing music back in high school, her dad loaned her a Martin Dreadnought guitar “since I couldn’t bring a piano to college,” Clem said. Feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by the San Francisco music scene at first, writing and performing music took a back seat to the business end of the scene for a while.

“I was passionate about music and couldn’t stay away from it so I figured out how to stay immersed but through the business side,” she said. “I always felt a longing to be more of a part of the creative side of it. After a series of really heavy personal crises in my mid-30s, I found myself turning to my own music again and realized that it was actually more painful to not be an artist than to continue to go on discounting that very natural part of myself. So I learned how to get out of my own way and start honoring that part of myself that had been there all along.”

And we should be glad that she did.

Video From 1/5 (Thanks to Rupert Coles, Eric Finkelman and Jordan Feinstein)