Nick Sandro Love Fest: The Garner House 2024

(painting by Rob Ring)

On June 23^rd 2024 a memorial was staged honoring the life and times of Nick Sandro. He was perhaps best known as the owner and operator of Nick’s Caffé Trevi in Claremont California. We were introduced to each other by one of the areas main music connection-makers, Chris Darrow, in the early 80s. Our purest connection was our parallel concert venues, mine The Starvation Café (1982-1997) in Fontana, and his Caffe Trevi in Claremont. I never thought of it then, as I do now, how we complimented each other as tribal expression that together created a sort of slap dash music school and grassroots community. Mecca being of course The Folk Music Center nestled in the village. Looking back I see that it was a perfect architecttonic chemistry. When I presented an act it was like church to me. I would not let anyone talk during a performance; you could not only hear a pin drop, you could hear a pin dropping. I was so serious about it that it almost makes me laugh today. I grew up and got my prototype education from a coffee house in San Bernardino called The Penny University.

(Ben and Ellen Harper / photo: Brian Wade)

At The Starvation I tried to show the performers, many just new to their craft, what it felt like to be respected as they decided, or considered, whether this, albeit songwriting, singing, playing an instrument, or just public speaking, might be something they might do for a livelihood. At Nick’s you learned, on the other hand, to not be so thin skinned, as you might have to play a duet with the operatic baritone of a coffee grinder, and then to project your music over top of a couple of college students, high on expresso, in act of loud verbiage, taken over by the shear excitement of just discovering Frierich Nietztche. I now see that you need both factions to decide your life path. You need to graduate from both. Treating something as spiritual is not enough. Learning something in church doesn’t mean anything if you don’t take it out into the world, the sanctuary being just the starting place. Nick Sandro’s Caffe Trevi supplied just such a breeding ground. As many will attest, you can’t think of the Caffe Trevi without seeing a hologram of Nick, and visa versa. One of the great things I witnessed, and tried to learn from, was how he was able to make this all happen without forcing his personality in front of the music, humbler that just a puppet master.

(Nick Sandro and JP Plunier)

I was honored to be asked to perform at the memorial but was forced to cancel at the last moment due to health issues. I rehearsed for an entire week to try to get in shape, but finally concluded that I just couldn’t survive the 100-degree heat, which exasperated my dizziness, along with a smattering of other issues.

In considering what songs might be appropriate I chose a song that I wrote in 1989 called Little Precious State of Mind. I performed the song for the first time at Nick’s that year with my mentor-pal Chris Darrow, and after that I just forgot about it. I’ve written over five hundred songs in my day, so it’s nothing unusual for some of them to get buried in the mind’s landfill. But, over the years whenever I would stumble upon Nick he would always mention that song, and he was the only one that ever did. So, whenever I would think of it, I would always pleasantly think of him and him alone.

The other song I was considering was one that I wrote with my friend John Dietrich called Tell Me Darlin’ (What’s Your Name) which we wrote in my teardrop trailer in a weed choked field in Fontana. The song later appeared on a CD Sandro had recorded with his group Slim or Lefty (1996) which also included Marc Dietrich, and the photography of JP Plunier.

(Nick Sandro and Chris Darrow at The Starvation Cafe in Fontana California)

Little did Nick know that he would produce one last festival of love which would include a review of the best of an era that belongs exclusively to the Inland Empire. I was pleased to be able to view the streaming concert from my easy chair, eating fried chicken from Stater-Joes. The musical evening consisted of, The Citrus Sisters (with Ellen Harper who runs The Folk Music Center and Museum, Elizabeth Hangan, whose father was the great Clabe Hangan, and Margarette Millard) Also to “Pick for Nick” where, Jeff Masters and Don Gasiewicz, Jerry Waller, Roy (Dang Darn) Durnal, Jack Housen, John McKnight, Henry Barnes, Mahlia Jones, Lauren Jones and Silas (Dutchboy), Jerry O’Sullivan, Bill Barrett, Jim Shirey, The Baldy Crawlers, The Desperation Squad, Los Guys, and the man, Ben Charles Harper. Special thanks go out to Robin Young (coordination) and Pat Keegan (sound).