Coffee Gallery Backstage

Don't miss The Roadhouse Series' Bob Dylan birthday tribute concert this Saturday in Covina, CA at The Fret House. The show features many of the Roadhouse Regulars who performed regularly here at Coffee Gallery Backstage. Get tickets at https://frethouse.com/ 🎟️

Terry Paul Roland's Roadhouse Series that began at Coffee Gallery Backstage has moved to The Fret House Underground in Covina CA. These are high-quality variety shows starring some of LA's finest musicians, singers and songwriters. The next Roadhouse show is May 23rd, a tribute to Bob Dylan! Give their page a follow: https://www.facebook.com/RoadhouseSeries/

Not nearly enough people know this interesting story about the West Coast folk music revival in LA.

This man, Will Geer, was much more than Grandpa “Zeb” Walton. He was - as a singer, actor and social activist - a pivotal figure in American folk music. He was known to have collaborated with his close friend, folk icon Woody Guthrie. It was Geer who introduced Guthrie to Pete Seeger, and who organized progressive benefit concerts as early as 1940. 🌹

Since Geer was sympathetic to socialism, he was blacklisted in the early 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result, Geer founded, with his wife, actress Herta Ware, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, CA in 1951. This theater’s productions featured similarly blacklisted actors as well as folk singers like Guthrie, Seeger, and Burl Ives.

Beginning in 1952, Guthrie, suffering from Huntington’s disease, lived in a small building on Geer’s Theatricum property for several years, where, though he had ceased performing, continued to write songs.

In our early days, we actually performed in front of the Woody Guthrie “shack” at Theatricum twice, both 4th of July Celebrations. Pretty cool! 🤠

What's the phrase? "When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me"?

Never Assume! 🤣 George Clooney lip-synching “Man of Constant Sorrow” and Dan Tyminski, the actual singer of the song popularized in the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou”.

"They assumed I could sing because my aunt was Rosemary Clooney, and I assumed I could sing. It literally sounded like a cat caught in the wheel well of a truck driving down the street,” Clooney said. “Then they brought in Dan Tyminski and he sang it for me. It was pretty humiliating.” Never assume! 🤠

Tyminski was a member of Alison Krauss' Union Station, but as a singer-songwriter, musician, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist, he is a bluegrass star in his own right. The song received a Grammy in 2002.



Image of Dan Tyminski: Frank Baker