PASSPORTGATE
This story starts with a great gig--my first ever in Mexico. I was invited to play at a club called “Baja Joe's” in La Ventana--a kite-surfing mecca 45 minutes south of La Paz and two hours north of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur.
Our trip down went smoothly--direct flight from Portland to Cabo followed by a 2-hour shuttle ride to La Ventana. And the view from the home of our host was lovely.
Getting the B-3 moved from the bassist's home studio to the venue was a little challenging, but it survived the trip unscathed
The other musicians--all excellent--reside in Mexico: bassist/vocalist Tim Scott (a former member of Tower of Power), drummer Willie Ornelas (formerly with Al Jarreau and many others), trumpeter Terry Townson (long-time member of Delbert McClinton's band) and a young blues guitarist from Mexico City named Emiliano Juarez. The gig--on Monday, 1/5/26--went great. In a word, we killed.
But the next morning, things took a turn; I couldn't find my passport.
We'll probably never know what happened to it. I'd been super paranoid about losing it from Day 1 (Sunday) and thought I had it in my backpack the whole time. But on Tuesday morning, when I belatedly decided to photograph it, I discovered that what I'd been carefully holding onto was actually Tracy's passport, not mine.
Over the next couple of days, we went thru all five stages of grief, starting with denial. SURELY the passport was somewhere in our room, in one of our bags or pockets, or--worse case--at the airport lost & found. But it wasn't at any of those places--although it was incredibly difficult to rule out the lost & found, as we were two hours from the Cabo airport and they don't answer phones there (on the rare occasions that they do, they hang up once they realize you don't speak Spanish).
Tracy worked the problem relentlessly (and heroically) on the phone and internet practically 24/7 until Wednesday night--the eve of our scheduled flight home--when it finally became clear that my only hope of getting home without first flying to Mexico City to visit the American Embassy was to file a police report near the Cabo airport, take that to the airport's Alaska Air counter along with my enhanced driver's license, and pray they'd let me on the flight. (Tracy's Alaska Air connection--including communication with the airline's station chief--made that possibility seem realistic, if no slam dunk.)
But we were up against a time crunch. We were a 2-hour drive from the Cabo airport (in La Ventana, where my gig had been), and our scheduled flight--the only one heading out on Thursday--would be leaving at 12:45 pm. The host/promoter we'd been staying with was adamant that there wasn't enough time the next morning to do all that (and he had 30 years' experience in Mexico). Plus, he was insistent that it was unnecessary: that we could simply drive to the airport (sans police report) and they'd let us on the plane. But that was just denial on his part (he was probably suffering his own five stages of grief).
To our host's great credit, he did agree to get up with us at 5:30 am and drive us the two hours--mainly in the dark on windy roads) to the appropriate police station near the Cabo airport. But simply figuring out what police station we should go to turned out to be FAR from easy. During our drive south, I discovered that the one I'd picked out the night before was actually hours from the airport. So instead we headed to the "tourista" police station--the one used by the Cabo airport police. Surely that'd be the right one.
NOT! We arrived there to find it was just a little building surrounded by a bunch of cop cars with two or three people inside who knew nothing about filing police reports of ANY kind!
After we got past the language barrier (thru the use of Google Translate), they did direct us to a nearby location. But when I walked into that building, I entered a very un-police station looking room with no one in it but a woman mopping the floor. She knew no English but gestured that she'd get someone to help. Several minutes later, a guy showed up who looked at the Google Translate explanation of our quest, said, "ten minutes," and promptly turned and left the room. Our host--who'd generously offered to stay the course with us thru the police reporting process and short drive to the airport--told me, "that means 20 minutes." But we still had hours to go before our flight, and things were looking promising, so we settled in to wait.
However, when 30+ minutes passed with us just sitting there in this empty little room, we realized we were in the wrong place yet again. At around that time, a woman entered who looked at the phone translation and said we were in the wrong building--that the one we wanted was the large "Centro De Justicia" building next door!
Once in there, we saw an official-looking counter but with no one at it. So I warily poked my head into a corridor and a woman in an office spotted me and came out to see what I wanted. Like everyone else we'd dealt with that morning, she was friendly and spoke no English. But no worries: she quickly found another woman who sat me down at a desk and, once Google Translate explained my mission and another woman arrived to assist her, proceeded to generate the lost/stolen passport report (once again, with a lot of use of that blessed Google Translate app). Success at last--with hours still left before our flight would be taking off!
Our long-suffering host quickly dropped us off at the airport and we said our goodbyes--promising to have every passport back-up conceivable the next time we flew down for a gig!
Not that Passportgate was finally over--not by a long shot! It took an eternity to get thru the line to the Alaska Air counter, and longer still before the helpful Alaska station chief--who Tracy had been communicating with on the phone over the past day--was freed up to start working our problem.
But she was great, and after processing some paperwork with us she said we were good to go: that is, if the local customs people signed off--agreeing with Alaska's recommendation to let me on the flight sans passport! She said we'd probably be fine, but that we'd need to wait another 15 minutes to--hopefully--receive that final OK.
Needless to say, that was an extremely long 15 minutes! But by that time we were too physically and emotionally worn out to stress as much as you might expect. And when the 15 minutes were up we went back to the counter and were promptly given boarding passes for our flight. Hallelujah!!!
All went smoothly from that point (Tracy even managed to get us a row to ourselves on the flight) until we landed at PDX and had to go thru customs. One of Tracy's fellow Alaska employees had warned that, even if Alaska let me fly home, the customs people at PDX might send me right back to Mexico on the next flight out! So we were still sweating, especially when a PDX customs agent escorted us into a back room where we sat while they reviewed our paperwork.
But it turned out we'd never needed to worry about the "go back to Mexico" scenario. The PDX customs guys soon said we were good to go, and added that since I was in the U.S. and in possession of a Real ID driver's license, they could care less how I'd gotten here--I'm a US citizen and that's all that mattered to them. Once again: Hallelujah!!!--"Passportgate" was finally and completely over.
EPILOGUE: The PDX customs guys did say that I'd want to report the lost/stolen passport to the State Department ASAP, and THAT turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult process. After spending around an hour yesterday morning trying to handle it on line, I gave up and instead filled out the necessary form--which also allowed me to request a new passport--and took that along with other documents to the local post office. A knowledgable guy there took care of all the paperwork, took my passport photo, and $185 later I was truly done with the whole nightmare.
We're already being invited to come back, and we probably will eventually. Tracy and I are only suffering from mild PTSD...and the La Ventana musicians are great, the scenery is gorgeous, the local people super friendly, and the food is to die for!
MY FIRST GIG
Lately I’ve been asked a few times about how I became a musician, which has got me to reminiscing a bit. Those reminisces have included memories of my very first gig. I was still a teenager, attending George Washington High in San Francisco. I’d only been playing music for a couple years, studying with a blues organist named Norm Bellas at a downtown music store. I’d persuaded my parents to first buy me a spinet-sized organ—a Hammond model M-3—followed by a full-sized WWII-era axe: a Hammond CV. It wasn’t the coveted, iconic B-3 model, but pretty close.
After I’d had a local organ tech “chop” that ungainly console into a slightly more portable version, I was ready to start playing gigs. (The chopped organ was built like a tank and actually weighed more than the stock instrument, but the legs did fold up and it had built-in wheels & handles.)
Only a couple of problems remained: I didn't drive or own a vehicle yet, so I had no way of transporting the organ & accompanying Leslie speaker (a huge 150-lp wooden box) to gigs. And I didn’t have any gigs to play it at. Oh, and there was a third thing: I was too young to play in nightclubs! But I solved that problem by simply making a photocopy of my birth certificate, whiting out the year, typing in the year required to make me 21, and then photocopying the altered document. Did that actually fool anyone? No way, but I guess clubs just needed to be able to say that I’d shown them something.
The transportation problem was solved when my dad said he’d drive me to gigs in his International Travelall (precursor of modern SUV’s). And the no-gigs issue began to be resolved when an alto sax player and fellow Washington High student named Karl Young said the cover band he’d been rehearsing with needed a keyboard player and might have some gigs soon.
The band consisted of three young Italian friends of Karl's—Joe, Dom, & Carl—who rehearsed in the basement of Joe’s parents’ home in North Beach (San Francisco’s “Little Italy”). All the guys were extremely amiable and reasonably competent musicians (probably more competent than I was). We’d walk into the home, invariably greeted by Joe’s grandfather with a quip in Italian—always the same quip, to which Joe would offer an appropriate response—also in Italian. Then we’d set to work learning tunes off the “Top 40” chart of the moment. This was mid-1971, and “Only The Beginning” by Chicago, Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” and Mark-Almond’s “The City” are three tunes I remember our playing.
I don’t recall how it came about, but soon we were calling ourselves “Friendship” and were playing a steady 5-nights-a-week gig at a San Francisco singles club on Fillmore Street called—I kid you not—“The Cock’s Inn.” The English pub-style sign above the venue featured an image of a rooster—get it? But then, double-entendre nightclub names were big in SF back in the day. (A lot of creativity certainly went into the naming of gay bars!) Poking around on line just now, I wasn’t able to find a photo of The Cock’s Inn, although I did find the image of a matchbook cover for sale on eBay!
But back to the gig itself: talk about a different era in the music business. Five near-beginners getting to play decent-paying gigs every Wednesday thru Sunday—and at the same venue. I don’t recall for certain now, but we probably didn’t even have to move our equipment for as long as that engagement lasted! We certainly tried to emulate the hit records, but we had our own little arrangements, and we took improvised solos. (I came across a cassette awhile back that included me taking a solo on “The City.” Much to my surprise, it’s not bad at all.) Bottom line: gigs like that one—where fledgling musicians can learn their craft playing night after night for live audiences and getting paid decently for it—just don’t exist anymore. I didn't realize it then, but I was extremely fortunate to start playing music in that time & place with those guys.
Speaking of that time & place: thanks to my fake I.D., at The Cock’s Inn I had my first real experience with drinking alcohol. I’d tried beer before but hadn’t liked the taste. Now, though, I discovered a drink for non-drinkers: rum & coke. That appealed to my sweet tooth, and I drank one or two per gig. One night, however, a waitress looked closely at my mouth and said, “you need to get to a dentist.”
As it happened, my dad was a dentist. Yes, “Dr. Pain”—who was a bit of a Bay Area legend, not just because of his name but also because of his eccentric ways—including the habit of playing his bagpipes while patients waited for the novacaine to kick in. (I heard that Dad’s patients would often cry out, “drill me—I’m numb!” just to make the racket stop.) Anyway, thirty-some-odd fillings later the damage to my teeth from those rum & cokes was repaired. But going forward I said “goodbye” to mixed drinks and “hello” to regular toothbrushing.
Before long I left Friendship and the gig at The Cock’s Inn. The guys were great, the gigs were fun, and I learned a lot. But I was ambitious and wanted learn by playing with musicians who were more advanced than me. My dream wasn’t to become rich & famous—it was to play with great musicians. That’s what I fantasized about, and it did eventually happen. Particularly since moving north to Portland, I've gotten to play with a lot of world-class musicians—some renowned and some not—including Bernard Purdie, Bruce Conte, Mel Brown, Martha Reeves, Phil Upchurch, Renato Caranto, Linda Hornbuckle, and Janice Scroggins.
Still, playing with Friendship at The Cock’s Inn was a wonderful first gig for sure—one that I didn’t even begin to appreciate at the time.
Addendum: In 2013, during a visit to the Bay Area, I sat in with my friend David K. Mathews’ “Ray Charles Project” at Yoshi’s in Oakland. As I walked off stage, I heard someone call my name. When I spotted the guy and approached him, he said, “Joe Tarantino.” I was baffled at first; the name and face were familiar, but only barely so. He laughed at my obvious confusion, then said, “Friendship!,” and recognition began to dawn.
I remembered Joe from the band, but there was something else: that name. It was TOO familiar considering I hadn’t thought about Friendship in decades. Then I realized what it was: I’d been reading the name “Joe Tarantino” on the backs of albums and CDs for years. Among other things, he’d remastered over 1,500 CDs for Fantasy Records, many of them jazz classics! Joe is one of the top mastering engineers on the planet--I'd even looked for his name when deciding which remastered CD's to buy--but I’d never put the name together with my old bandmate from 1971. Small world!
https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/feature-articles/on-music/556-a-visit-with-mastering-engineer-joe-tarantino
Addendum #2: I just contacted Joe to share this reminiscence, and he replied saying that, in addition to his still busy career as a mastering engineer, he’s been playing gigs with Carl the bassist from Friendship—including resort & casino gigs with a 10-piece Elvis tribute band. He also informed me that the band that had played the off-nights during Friendship's run at The Cock’s Inn—The Justice Brothers—had featured Sammy Hagar on guitar & vocals! Hmm…maybe Friendship was better than I thought!
