Yo La Tengo Kicks Off San Francisco Run With Robyn Hitchcock, Meg Baird & Charlie Saufley

Yo La Tengo held the first two shows of a four-night run at The Chapel in San Francisco with performances last Friday and Saturday. Each show featured special guests sitting in with Yo La Tengo, who welcomed Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley on night one and Robyn Hitchcock on night two.

Baird and Saufley, who are members of Heron Oblivion, played an opening DJ set before Friday’s Chapel show. The pair returned at the end of Yo La Tengo’s second set. Baird played drums and Saufley played guitar alongside guitarist Ira Kaplan, bassist James McNew and drummer Georgia Hubley for “I Heard You Looking.”

Both guests were brought back when YLT came back for Friday’s encore. With a nod to the Bay Area, the Grateful Dead’s “The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)” was the first song of the three-song encore. Saufley stuck around for the subsequent covers of Tom Verlaine’s “Breakin’ in My Heart.” Opening night ended with Yo La Tengo dropping into Sandy Denny’s “Time It Gets Dark.”

Saturday’s encore at The Chapel saw Robyn Hitchcock accompanying Yo La Tengo for the full three-song set. The former Soft Boys frontman help YLT cover The Velvet Underground’s “Beginning to See the Light.” Covers kept coming in the form of the Pink Floyd song “Lucifer Sam.” Hitchcock and Yo La Tengo wrapped the night with The Beatles’ psychedelic classic “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

Yo La Tengo’s run at The Chapel finishes with shows tonight (Monday, May 12) and tomorrow (Tuesday, May 13).