Break Out the Floor Speakers: Gone, yet still with us
Remembering San Diego folkies Hot Rod Harris, Chelsea Flor and Jeffrey Joe Morin
Writing about music — or, more to the point, the musicians who make the music — is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done professionally.
While I’d gotten paying jobs writing about music even before I’d gotten on staff with any newspapers, those had been freelance gigs, one-offs, paid by the assignment.
Some of them paid pretty well, some of them were pretty prestigious.
But I’d earned my living as a news reporter or editor (or technical writing, on forays outside journalism). Not writing about music, my first love.
In 2006, I was the assistant online editor at the North County Times. We’d grown our circulation to almost 100,000 in the decade since the merger of the Oceanside Blade-Citizen and Escondido Times-Advocate to form the NCT, but were constantly locked in a tight battle with the much larger San Diego paper.
As part of our ongoing marketing strategies, we’d conduct focus groups and such to see what our readers — along with former subscribers, and nonreaders who might be interested — wanted to see or not see in our pages.
Interestingly, one of the things readers wanted to see more of was coverage of local music.
San Diego has long had an underrated music scene. While no New York or New Orleans, San Diego’s local music community can hold its own against better-known locales like Minneapolis or Seattle.
Acts like the Beat Farmers, Mojo Nixon, the Paladins and Cindy Lee Berryhill had put San Diego on the roots map in the 1980s. In the ’90s, bands like Rocket From the Crypt, blink-182, P.O.D., Switchfoot and Stone Temple Pilots had brought attention to the fertile alternative scene.
And in the early 2000s, San Diego had a burgeoning singer-songerwriter thing going on — in addition to the alternative, jazz and blues clubs around the county.
I’d written about music off and on for the paper when something struck my fancy. But in March of 2006, my editor, Kent, pulled me into a conference room with Pam, the arts editor, and asked if I was interested in moving to the entertainment desk full-time? I’d cover music for most of my hours, but would also help edit the weekly entertainment tab, overseeing the movies section.
I don’t remember if I played it cool or jumped, but I was definitely jumping on the inside.
My first task was to do a deep dive into San Diego’s local music scene and find out who was who. I’d been working nights and raising two kids, and so hadn’t been following local music for probably 15 years at the time.
We set up an NCT Music page on MySpace, and invited local bands to send us announcements. I also switched to a day shift, and so would then go out at night to check out local clubs.
While jazz and blues are my favorite genres, and San Diego is blessed with some wonderful local players, what grabbed my attention — and then my ear — in the spring of 2006 was the acoustic folk scene in town.
In particular, there was a coffee house in a strip mall just north of Poway called the Hot Java Café that hosted live music several nights a week, including an open mic night on weekends.
There was a sense of camaraderie there among the musicians and fans I’ve not found anywhere else. The musicians who weren’t booked that night would come to support those who were playing. The same fans would come back night after night, week after week, no matter who was on stage.
There were other venues further south in San Diego proper, too, and you’d see many of the same faces there as well, everyone moving from one club or coffee shop to another depending on the night of the week.
While I’m not a particular fan of Google — their business practices and one-sided censorship come to mind — I will say that YouTube allows me to revisit those times, and some of the musicians and friends no longer with us, and I find it a great comfort.
Look, I realize none of the folks I want to share with you here was likely to become The Next Big Thing — you may not ever listen to them again.
But for a lot of us who were in town at that time, three in particular who frequented the stage at Hot Java carved out some pretty significant swaths of our hearts.
Rod Harris — given the nickname “Hot Rod” after the Hot Jave Café where he handled the booking of singers and also emceed — was a former Navy man, I believe. He had a quiet charisma and a way of making everyone feel welcome. He often put his own singing aside in order to promote other acts, but when he did perform, it was always wonderful, as were the handful of originals he sang alongside his tasteful covers.
Hot Rod didn’t live long enough to record an album; cancer took him from us far too young. I’m just grateful for these few performances (and there are some more on YouTube if you’re curious) that preserve his warm charm and rich musicality.
Chelsea Flor originally hailed from the East Coast, and related hilarious stories of her teenage years sharing stages with folks like Frank Stallone and Jon Bon Jovi. Chelsea mostly performed her own songs — and I thought a couple of them had some real potential.
Chelsea also lost a battle with cancer, also before she could issue an album. I know she went into the studio at least twice, but I’ve never seen anything issued. Shortly before she passed in 2014, she recorded some tracks with Slugger Trask, who had played in former Grinderswitch front man Dru Lumbar’s band, Dr. Hector & The Groove Injectors, but, again, no album ever came out.
Jeffrey Joe Morin was an imposing physical presence, but the gentlest soul I may have ever met. Another Navy veteran, he bore the scars of his military service with grace and good charm — even when he was in barely bearable pain.
He started off coming around open mic nights doing covers of old-timey songs, but after awhile began singing his own originals as well.
Jeffrey did get to see his first album issued, “Big Ol’ Heart,” in 2012. His second album, “Don’t Get to Know Me,” came out shortly after his passing in 2017.
There were others — many others — in that Hot Java circle, and I mean no disrespect to any of them by highlighting Hot Rod, Chels, and Jeffrey Joe. But those three were all part of some very magical evenings — often all three of them together in the same room.
I miss them and their music greatly, and like to think they’re making music together again.
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