04/15/2026
Best review ever!
Not sure if I've promoted this one adequately. Or if central Californians are aware of HOW FU**IN STRANGE this micro-town, Locke, is. Situated between Sacramento and Stockton, about 9 miles west of I-5, Locke is basically a single street, with century-old saloons and two-story brothels with open balconies tilting precariously toward the earth on either side. To round the corner from Walnut Grove, or normality, and turn into Locke, is to enter into a place in time that seems very bygone yet never truly existed, except in the febrile backgrounds of Russ Meyer's movie, Lorna.
My friend Mark bought a building there some years ago and started putting on shows, booking musicians that normal people have never heard of but he likes. By the standards of some of the people that come to "The Pearl" to perform, I'm Sabrina Carpenter. (Ecstatically voiced zaghroutas are welcomed at my shows, however.) Jenny Scheinman and I will stand on stage at 6:00 this Sunday evening and sing into a single mic plugged into a plonky little tube amplifier that Mark cobbled together in his garage. A dim light will glow onto Main Street, through the big window behind you, illuminating zombified locals stumbling around with piles of laundry and confused travelers who took a wrong turn....
Will anyone be in Locke to see us? Hard to say. There's no data on this. Last time it was a nice turnout. Mark filled a plastic pitcher with bank notes collected at the door and the merchandise area. We went to sleep at his place across the way and he left the pitcher on the bar. The next day we returned to the Pearl and he dumped all the bills out and piled and counted them, then bagged them and handed me the bag. Then I shot him to death. No, but the rest is true.
Listen, I'm a boutique-scale troubadour. A cultic item, perhaps. Even so, almost all my shows take place at professional venues. The promoters offer tickets online. Credit cards are accepted, dues are paid to performance orgs, a PA is on site. This on the other hand is a tumbledown, tenebrous parlor in an unknown, nearly make-believe town, where professionalism, promotion, and the comforting symbols of modern industry are but a distant rumor. You're gonna love it.
