Local troubadour Jesse DeNatale comes around the corner to meet me for coffee, and I immediately notice he’s dressed casually, in a well-thought out, cool kind of way.
He’s here to talk about his upcoming show on Sunday, April 27 at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. But this mental note will come into play later, so I thought it wise to mention it up top.
As he sits down, he pulls out his phone, excited to talk about a recent internet rabbit hole he went down regarding long lost Bay Area AM radio stations of the ’60s. “I pulled up a playlist of what we were listening to in 1962 AM radio,” DeNatale says.
“So, this was KEWB AM, and songs like ‘Stranger on the Shore’ by Acker Bilk, ‘End of the World’ by Skeeter Davis, ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ by Brian Hyland,” he continues.
Sensing he may be losing me, DeNatale pauses and asks if I’ve heard of the Hyland song. When I confess I have not, he croons out a few verses, which indeed ring a bell.
Admittedly, I’ve only heard of a handful of these songs (who doesn’t love that zany one-hit wonder, “Palisades Park”?), but the chill enthusiasm with which DeNatale recalls them already has me thinking of making a playlist.
Born in San Francisco to immigrant parents, DeNatale moved to Terra Linda in the early ’60s as his father became part owner of Ondines, a restaurant in Sausalito. It’s worth noting that perhaps mystically, his father’s gig was located above the famous Marin folk venue, The Trident. Thus, in many ways, DeNatale was raised in the shadow of the Bay Area music scene.
He wistfully speaks about Marin County clubs of yesteryear like the Lion’s Share, George’s (before it was “new,” like it is now), Pepperland and seeing the Grateful Dead at the armory building located where the Marin County Civic Center complex is now. “We would walk over there, and we would call it ‘the moon’—it was dry and cracked earth, big craters and wide open space, and then, in the middle of it, was the armory. That’s the first place I saw The Dead.”
The trip down a sonic memory lane continues: “I saw Van Morrison, Boz Scaggs and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, just to name a few, in the late ’60s at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo. Van would come into the House of Pancakes after hours, where I was washing dishes during the graveyard shift. He would sit in the corner booth and write. The radio above the sink would always be playing his songs. I thought songwriting must be where it’s at.”
DeNatale has since become a close friend of West Marinite Ramblin’ Jack and also took a valuable lesson from his music at an early age.
“Jack had a song called ‘912 Greens’ that really kind of broke the boundaries of songwriting for a lot of people because it wasn’t a linear story song,” says DeNatale.
While the song proved to be an early influence on his burgeoning songwriting style, DeNatale also gleaned the notion of music meaning different things to different people.
“I would listen to that song every morning before school, and my mother would come stand in my doorway. She’d say, ‘Why do you listen to that? It’s Okie music,’” he says. But rather than a case of “these damn kids and their hippie music,” DeNatale’s parents explained that they “did a lot of work to get away from that kind of music, that kind of poverty music.
“My mother was poor and came from Oaxaca; my dad too, from Sicily. They started out poor, and now we were in the middle class,” DeNatale says, then leans in. “They kind of made it out. And to have this kind of music in the air just reminded them of hard times, which really made sense to me.”
As a longstanding result, DeNatale has become more committed to being intentional with his songwriting. Yet, the shiny, clean façade of suburban Marin wasn’t a space for much musical inspiration.
“When you grow up in suburbia, you’re leading kind of an easy life, at least on the outside. There’s all these Eichler homes, cherry blossoms. There’s no crime; there’s no real violence. But there’s a kind of nearby undercurrent, so you had to look deep to get inspiration. Like, what am I writing about? There’s no angst here, no conflict,” he notes.
DeNatale decamped for the East Coast in the early ’70s after high school, which was when he really began to hone his singer-songwriter career. Adventuring, working and crafting his music while living mainly in New England and New York, he slowly started to figure out his own sound. This involved pulling in influences from bands he mentioned previously, as well as from ones he had seen in Marin County and from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who today he considers a good friend.
It honestly feels like the North Bay music scene hasn’t been as vibrant as it is now since the ’60s, ’70s and maybe the ’80s. There’s a slew of music venues populating the area again, which is fantastic. However, if one follows the scene here, it’s constantly inundated with what feels like the same artists and bands, as well as the usual proliferation of tribute bands and what seems like a new Grateful Dead tribute situation every month.
Again, this is where DeNatale has used his ability to really be intentional with his live performances, choosing only to play a few times a year in this area and also taking time to get out on the road frequently. As a result, his local shows are an almost rare treat.
After a great, self-effacing talk, which includes me asking about support he’s received from local musical luminaries like former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres (“[his] songs are not only well worth hearing; they’re well worth hearing again and again”) and Tom Waits (of whom DeNatale gracefully, almost shyly, says, “I’ve always appreciated his very insightful artistry. He’s got a big heart, and I’ve nothing but gratitude”), it’s when talking about his band that the musician finally brags a little a bit.
“I think I have the best band in the Bay Area,” he says. Consisting of Marc Capelle on keys, Paul Olguin on bass, Tom Heyman on electric guitar and pedal steel, and Tony Sales on drums, this is the lineup one will see at the April 27 show at Sweetwater. Heyman will also be opening the show.
As we close out our coffee meetup, DeNatale wants to make sure I note, “[With] the radio and today’s trying times, I do believe the history of Marin lives in my music and songwriting, and it’s something I’m wishing to share. I’m always excited to play with this band, because it always sounds new.”
Listen to Jesse DeNatale’s music, and see news, tour dates and more, at jessedenatale.com.
