Keeping the Beat for 50 Years in Humboldt

I felt like a stranger in a strange land when I drove into Rio Dell in March of 1975 to play a six-month job with a country band. 

Fortuna native Jerry Cooper, a musician I’d played with in San Francisco, had moved back home. He called me in San Francisco and offered six months of guaranteed gigs every Friday and Saturday for $50 a night at the Rendezvous Lounge in downtown Rio Dell.

I was 24.

I’d be playing with Jerry and his wife Karen in The Coopers. That’s the place I began my 50-year journey playing drums in Humboldt County. 

Fifty dollars a night was good money in those days so I said yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $50 in 1975 would be equivalent to $295 today. (Many of the music gigs around the county now are still $50 per night.)

I never imagined when I dropped out of the University of Wisconsin in Madison at 21 to learn to play the drums that I’d wind up three years later playing country music in Rio Dell. 

It seemed like it rained hard every day for the entire month of March. I rented a small house in Rio Dell close to the Eel River for $125 a month.

The Coopers played songs like “Silver Wings” and “Working Man’s Blues” by Merle Haggard, “Bony Fingers” by Hoyt Axton, “I Fall to Pieces” by Patsy Cline and other country favorites of the day. The polite crowd drank and danced. 

On weeknights, I’d drive to Eureka and Arcata to check out the music scene. Excellent jazz, blues and R&B, rock ‘n’ roll and country bands played at the numerous venues. Unlike the one-and-done nights most bands do these days, groups would play, two, three, four or five nights a week at one club.

In Eureka in the mid-1970s, people flocked to the Vance Log Cabin, Fog’s Fish and Chips, the Old Town Bar and Grill, the Captain’s Galley, the Ritz, the Den, JR’s, Fat Albert’s and more.   

Blue Lake rocked with the Mad River Rose and Walt’s Friendly Tavern. Arcatans danced at The Keg, The Phoenix, Flynn’s Inn, Bret Harte’s and the Jambalaya Club, started in 1973 by Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor. The Jambalaya had an open jam session every Sunday night. I played drums there sometimes and met Hough and Neighbor. A few years later I formed a popular dance band Caledonia with them, Chuck Garrett and Charles Horn.

In the era prior to the internet and streaming, going to live music was the thing to do for night owls. People would dance until 1:30 in the morning Wednesdays through Saturdays. Musicians would play from 9 at night until 1:30 in the morning, making between $40 and $75 a night.

While still in Rio Dell, I went to a jam session on Sunday nights at Harvey’s Club, a true honky tonk at the intersection of U.S. Highway 101 and State Route 36 in Alton. Ronnie Tharp and the Sons of Redwood Country, a veteran local country band, played every Friday and Saturday and hosted the Sunday jam. After one session, Tharp, the band’s leader, bassist and lead singer, asked me to join the band. I needed a job so it was great timing. Three nights a week, Friday through Sunday, $50 a night.

In addition to Tharp, the sweet-playing guitarist Granny Goose — I never learned his real name — was a legendary figure in the area. He played in a mellow Chet Atkins style and smoked joints on set breaks. Talented pedal steel guitarist Wayne McCartney, a lean, logging truck driver with a flat-top haircut, would provide an authentic honky-tonk sound. They were between 15 and 25 years older than me and they could really play country.

They turned me on to vintage country songs by George Jones, Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard, as well as the sounds of the day by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The Coopers were very good but the experienced Sons had earned a deep feel for country music. I learned a lot of that feel from them.

Harvey’s was a rowdy place filled with people drinking and dancing. It could get rough. One night while in the middle of a song, a fistfight broke out on the dancefloor. I looked up, stunned and afraid they might roll onto the stage. Tharp saw my reaction and between verses he shouted to me out of the side of his mouth, “Paul, just keep playing. If you stop, it’s just gonna get worse.” He was right. I kept drumming.

It was steady work for six months until I packed up and moved to Arcata, where my musical journey continued in 1976. Fifty years later, I’m still playing in Humboldt’s nightclubs, at festivals, private parties and concert stages.

As much as ever, I’m enjoying my bandmates and the audience. I’ve loved playing drums for dancers and feeling the non-verbal and mysterious interplay with them. I’ve witnessed many romances begin on the dancefloor. I’ve also seen the couples dancing with other people years later when the romance went south.

It’s been an intriguing lifetime — so far — of playing music in Humboldt County. 

Paul DeMark (he/him) plays in several bands, including one with his twin brother Jeff. He is the former managing editor of the Arcata Union newspaper.

This article appears in Cal Poly Presents’ Season of Change.