Boogie beat: (L-R) John Allair, Tom Martin, and Peter Lind at the Rio Nido Roadhouse.
woogie piano man
By Robert Feuer
John Allair, who
has been recording
and touring with
Van Morrison since the
early 1970s, remembers
opening for the world-
class musician at the
Lion’s Share in San
Anselmo, once Marin’s
premiere rock venue.
Randy Newman played
his first ever concert
there in 1969, and two
years later the Grateful
Dead took that stage at Janis Joplin’s wake.
After the Morrison date, Allair says, “He started
calling me, then I got in the band. Now, when he
comes over here (Morrison resides in England),
he throws me in the mix.”
On a balmy summer evening, Allair appears
at the Rio Nido Roadhouse, two miles east
of Guerneville. Brad Metzger and Lee Anne
Birka purchased the bar last year and added
a restaurant with an outdoor patio and live
music.
There’s a small outdoor stage, shaded by
towering redwoods, with an adjacent shuffle-
board court and a public swimming pool a
beach ball’s throw away. It may be the only
music venue where you can stand in a shower
stall and watch the show.
With the early evening sun filtering through
the trees, Allair, his long white hair curling at the
shoulders, wears shorts, sneakers, and a black
T-shirt with a large letter “A,” referencing New
York’s “A Train.” He begins with the rollicking
boogie woogie numbers, “Train Boogie” and
“Rock the House Tonight,” sometimes playing
with one hand while standing or going to one
knee. A small gremlin doll, naked, with electric
blue hair, stands on his keyboard. His band,
including Tom Martin on standup bass, and
Pete Lind, who has 50 years experience with
Allair, on drums, conjures up the 1950s with
rousing versions of rhythm and blues classics,
like “Stagger Lee,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,”
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “Kansas
City.” Allair smiles while singing “I feel so good,
plenty women, plenty wine.”
Between songs the band rifles through a
notebook, selecting their next number. Allair
dedicates the most laid-back version of “Do You
Wanna Dance” in the annals of musical history
“to all you dancers who want to rub your bodies
together.”
In an interview before the show, Allair talks
of growing up in Oakland. As a nine -year-
old he picked up on Jumpin’ George who, on
KWBR, played the only R&B available on the
radio then, for only a half-hour each day. “Early
R&B was hip. It was called race music,” Allair
says, “before rock n’roll, an inside black thing.”
He started collecting used 78s culled from
jukeboxes, ten for a dollar at a record store on
Third and Broadway.
As a 12-year-old he says, “I started banging on
pianos at people’s houses, driving their parents
nuts, beat the shit out of it, all the time boogie
woogie.” Three years later, after Allair got
thrown out of several piano stores, his family
moved to Marin County and bought a piano.
Allair played at high school rallies and joined a
Marin City “black singing group,” the Starlit ers.
He formed several bands while in college, playing
five nights a week, then moved to Hollywood
and got a record deal. He joined a band in New
York, called “Pure Love and Pleasure,” before
returning to Marin and meeting Morrison at the
Lion’s Share.
Then came gigs with Steve Miller and Dan
Hicks at a Bohemian Club benefit and one
backing Big Mama Thornton at a Fairfax club,
River City. Allair describes her as “heavy duty,
original.” With Morrison’s band, he played and
recorded with John Lee Hooker and opened for
the Rolling Stones at the Oakland Coliseum
last year. “Hooker’s like the witch doctor in an
African tribe,” Allair says, “he’d play one chord
and get that hypnotic thing going.”
“Fm having the best time of my life right
now, doing my own music,” Allair says. When
he’s not traveling with Morrison, three or four
times a year, he’s in Petaluma, his home for the
past 20 years. “I don’t like to travel, but don’t
mind the nice hotels and private jets.” Since
the money is “not enough to get by,” he’s also a
piano technician, tuning pianos, adjusting their
action, in recording studios and homes. His
list of clients includes Neil Young, Tom Waits,
Johnny Otis and Linda Ronstadt. 1
