Spotlight on the Arts: Ramblin’ Jack Performs in Larkspur House Concert

Let's be frank; a lot of us are not that big on the stadium-concert thing anymore. Too crowded, too crazy, too hard to get to wherever it is, find parking, find a seat, and get home again. For some, it's even a hassle to drive into the city to stand in line at Bimbo's or whatnot.

It just got a little harder for me, I must say, now that I've fallen into the Acoustic Vortex. This is what Larkspur physician-musician-impresario Bruce Victor calls the house concerts he puts on every three weeks or so. More on him next time—I want to tell you about seeing Ramblin' Jack Elliott with fewer than 100 people in Victor's home last Saturday night.

A psychiatrist with a practice in San Francisco, Victor has a two-story, nautically narrow house on the little inlet formed by Corte Madera Creek just east of Piper Park. For the past five years, he's been inviting music lovers on his Evite list to come to performances, which take place in a long, skinny room with floor-to-ceiling windows facing Mount Tam (and, on those evenings, filled with folding chairs).

Normally, he says, within a few days some 35 to 55 people say yes — enticed by the $25 donation (wine and snacks included) and the chance to see stellar acoustic guitar players and other musicians in such congenial surroundings. One of his guests told him, "It's like a party with a concert thrown in."

For Ramblin' Jack, Victor reached the cutoff of 85 people in 16 hours. "It's the only time we had to do the Studio 54 thing," he says, "with a table manned by an attorney at the door."

"I'm not a cowboy, I just hang out with cowboys," Jack told us once seated with his Martin D-28 in the little stage area. "I'm not even a musician." No, he's just a Grammy-winning, National Medal of Arts-receiving, 40-plus-album-recording "American treasure" (President Bill Clinton), who traveled with Woody Guthrie and knew or knows everyone from Big Bill Broonzy to Bruce Springsteen.

"His tone of voice is sharp, focused and piercing," Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles: Volume One. "He's so confident he makes me sick. All that and he plays the guitar effortlessly in a fluid flat-picking perfected style.... Most folk musicians waited for you to come to them. Jack went out and grabbed you."

Jack is still doing that at 80, and his audience in Larkspur—many of whom were there for the umpteenth time—could not have been more into it. He chose from what seemed a massive list of songs ("I'm looking at strange titles of songs I used to know"), telling long, occasionally hilarious stories between them. One involved the word pyrography, "which is in an old cowboy song I might remember to sing later." Another time, he commented, "This is a long story I can tell is miring down into the mud, so fast forward" into a song—it was "San Francisco Bay Blues," or maybe "Don't Think Twice" or "With God on Our Side."

He only got stronger after the break (which included more of the ham and turkey wraps, fresh fruit and strawberry yogurt dip, fresh veggies and veggie dip, and all the wine or other drink you wanted, perhaps enjoyed on the spacious deck). A major highlight was Jack's rendition of a song by Scotsman Will Fyfe, complete with a great story told in a brogue so thick it took awhile to decipher the song's catch phrase and title, "I Belong to Glasgow." It was unforgettable, but you had to be there.

The next Acoustic Vortex performance, with guitarist and pianist Ruth Gerson, is July 29. If you're interested in being added to the Evite list, contact Bruce@acousticvortex.com.