The Vibrant Melody of the Central Coast’s Music Scene

Music has the power to transport. Literally. Forty years ago when Gary Garett was traveling around the United States, he desperately needed to get home. He found himself in a dive bar in New Mexico and sang an original song. Someone from the crowd shouted, “Get this boy home!” Garrett found a ride back to Seattle, back to his parents place, back to his bed where he slept for a month.

Garett told this story in between his set of original songs at Songwriters at Play, a weekly event hosted at Schooner’s Cove in Cayucos. This event is just one of many that local musician, songwriter, producer and event planner Steve Key hosts. These events stimulate the community of local musicians in the county who make their living through music.

SLO might be full of weekend house shows, with people packed like sardines in a sweaty and loud living room, but an older crowd is also bringing people out to experience live music — and you just actually might have somewhere to sit.

Steve Key

Steve Key is kind of a legend in the local SLO music scene. Hosting multiple quasi-open mic nights a week plus organizing tribute shows, he gives a platform to local and touring musicians.

Every Tuesday, Key hosts Songwriters at Play at Schooners in Cayucos. Each showcase includes a featured artist, who plays a 45-minute set in the middle of the show. Up to five other performers play 4-song guest sets. It’s a free show, with the tip bucket going to the featured act. 

Key has been working as a musician and producer on the central coast since 2006. He’s a journalism graduate from San Jose State University and after working part-time as a reporter while playing music on the side, he ended up moving all around the U.S. trying to pursue music and songwriting.

On a larger scale, Key is best known for writing the song “33 45 78 (Record Time)” for the artist Kathy Mattea.

In 1995, he landed in Nashville and found himself with the writers — in Nashville, you don’t have to put ‘song’ in front to specify which type of writer.

Him and other writers collaborated multiple times a week, something he tries to emulate with his current songwriting students during his four month sessions. 

Key still writes songs, just now more on his own time and not with the goal of pitching to the industry. His last album came out three years ago. He just really enjoys producing shows. 

Cayucos locals Kimberly Denzel and Carol Dearman attend Songwriters at Play every week. They love that it’s a venue they can walk to and enjoy. They met at another event at Schooner’s and now attend this one every week.

During the pandemic, they say that the music scene in Cayucos did not change that much, since a lot of events already took place outside, but still missed enjoying dinner and a show.

Now, they do not take anything for granted.

“I don’t think twice about anything. I recently beat cancer and that was hell, now I’m not wasting any time,” Denzel said.

Recently, he and his wife Bonnie, attended a show at the iconic Troubadour venue in Los Angeles to see Semler whose opener was Olivia Klugman. The couple did not know any of Kulgman’s music and did not expect much, but were blown away.

 

“That’s the type of experience I want people to have with the musicians I book,” Key said. “I want people to take a chance on someone they do not know.”

Key books a lot of similar acts for his different shows, including the duo Bay Love that covers a lot of Joan Baez songs. The act will perform in the Joan Baez and Bob Dylan tribute Key and director Jill Turnbull are organizing June 4 in the 98-seat the Cambria Center for the Arts (CCAT) theater. Admission is now $25, but Key used to just pass around a tip jar.

“The goal of [what I do]  is to get a good venue, good people and to make musicians feel like they’ve been heard and appreciated,” Key said.

Toan Chau

Toan Chau hosts an open mic night every other Wednesday at SLO Wine and Beer, switching weeks with Key.. He also hosts open jam sessions every Monday at 8 p.m. at the Frog and Peach pub in downtown SLO.

His core band consists of himself on guitar, Brian Monzel on drums and Loren Acosta on bass. Chau describes the Mondays as super informal, no signing up required, anyone who brings their instrument is welcome to jam on stage. 

“We get a lot of music professors and semi-famous people coming to jam with us,” Chau said. “Just last week we had a famous drummer from Peru … he was incredible and very humble … anyone is welcome to join.” 

On Monday May 15, the core three jammed for more than an hour, both messing around with chords and sounds and performing some covers, like a blend of the Pink Floyd songs “Breathe(In the Air)” and “Wish You Were Here.” They weaved seamlessly back and forth between the two songs, in a 10 minute long jam that culminated in something sounding more heavy metal.

Chau began the Monday night jams at Frog and Peach back in 2006, put them on pause in 2018 and started them back up again last year. Prior to that, he and some friends would jam every Thursday in a friend’s garage, up until the friend who hosted the sessions passed away from lymphoma.

Before his passing, he asked Chau to make sure the sessions continue once he’s gone. Nobody’s houses were going to work as a venue, so that’s when he reached out to Frog and Peach and they went for it. 

Chau is in seven bands, playing live shows four to five times a week throughout the county.

“I have found that being a part of these different bands prevents me from feeling burnt out,” Chau said.

He also teaches guitar part-time at Lightning Joe’s in SLO

“Music has been a driving force of how I live — everyone I know in my life is through music,” Chau said. 

Bay Love

Kevin Turmunde and Linda Martin make up the duo Bay Love, which they’ve been playing in for five years. In addition to performing originals, the pair also covers a lot of Joan Baez songs, putting together tribute shows when the pandemic first hit. 

They enjoy traveling and playing pop-up concerts wherever they go.

“We go up to Monterey a lot, set up at Lover’s Point and play for tips,” Martin said. “We travel with a battery-powered system.”

They play a lot in Orange County as well as three to four shows a month in SLO County.

Even in their non-tribute shows, Bay Love will still perform a lot of Joan Baez songs, as well as a few original songs either written for or inspired by Baez’s work.

“The Lady from the House in the Tree” is one of those songs written for Baez.

“We want to continue her legacy by singing her music and believing in the nonviolent social justice and human rights activism,” Martin says before she sits back down to play her cajon box drum and sing while Termunde plays guitar.

Baez retired from music five years ago to focus more on her writing and art, publishing a drawing book in April titled “Am I Pretty When I Fly?”. She held a book signing at City Lights BookStore in San Francisco, and Bay Love had the chance to meet her at the signing.

“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds when we say ‘we met Joan Baez,” Termunde jokes. “We knew we’d meet her if we bought a book and stood in line.”

After waiting in line the first time to get their copy signed, Termunde and Martin waited again so they could get a picture with Baez.

All of the pair’s original songs are available for free on their website, with lyrics and recording details included.

Gary Garrett

Garrett is a self-proclaimed “vagabond” — he is only in SLO county now for about two or three months of the year. He leaves to cat sit in San Francisco, spend winters in Denver, travel northwest and sometimes spend time in Hawaii.

He’s been performing for 50 years, making his living by doing music for 10 years. He was in a duo called The Harmony People with musician Anjalisa Aitken, who would harmonize with Garret from the audience while he performed.

The duo stopped making music together during the pandemic and now Garrett works solo.

“Music’s been a consistent thread throughout my life,” Garrett said.

While he’s on the central coast, Garrett tries to play at as many of Key’s events as he can, which averages around seven or eight shows. Garrett moved to SLO in 1995 and discovered Key’s Songwriters at Play in its infancy back in 2007.

“I loved what Steve was doing, curating local songwriters and having half a dozen of them perform every week,” Garrett said. “I had never seen anything like it before.”

An original song he performs a lot is “Real Girl,” which he recently entered in Key’s songwriting contest. During musical breaks or bridges, Garrett either whistles or makes horn-noises, which entertains the audience.

“Real Girl” took Garrett about a month or two to write, which he says is much quicker than his usual process. The other song he entered in the contest, “Someday Children,” took him more than five years.

He got the idea for “Someday Children” while on a road trip and actually wrote it first as a poem, which he says is rare. The song is about how horrible people are treating Earth’s biosphere. 

“The nugget of a song or the most important piece comes at me all at once out of the blue,” Garrett said. “Then it’s a long process, sometimes decades, of expanding that into a completed song.”

He looks over his lyrics extensively, comparing lyrics to a “very dense poem.”

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