On Main Street, here in Huntington Beach, California, just a half a block from the Pacific Ocean and the iconic Huntington Beach Pier sits the downtown area’s oldest bar. While the rest of this sleepy, seaside, surf town reinvents itself, Perq’s, along with the waves that pound the shore just steps away, is just about the only link between the old Huntington Beach and the new. 

At 1:00 pm in the dead of winter on a Thursday afternoon, Perq’s will be dead. The dead of winter, I suppose is a relative term. In Huntington Beach it just means school is in session and we are not at the apex of the tourist season. Not much is happening. This relative calm is despite the perpetual blue skies and temperatures in the 70’s. Spending the afternoon in what might be described as a dive bar may be considered a waste of a lovely afternoon. Fair enough, but I thought I would take advantage of the relative proximity of musician David Kiefer aka San Pedro Slim and conduct this interview in person. In retrospect we picked the perfect place.

It is also the perfect time to let our readers know a little more about the man known throughout the blues world as San Pedro Slim. He has a new album which came out last year entitled In Times Like These. He will also be a featured performer at the third annual Winter Blues Spotlight on February 24^th in Long Beach, California. In times like these, we could use as much intelligence and wit as can be mustered. I have always enjoyed getting those valuable natural resources from the one and only San Pedro Slim.

David Mac (DM): We have got to know each other a little through the years, I don’t know if that makes doing this interview a little easier, but we are about to find out.  

San Pedro Slim (SPS): My lawyer will be joining us shortly, but we can go ahead and get started.

DM: Where are you from originally?

SPS: I grew up in San Pedro.

DM: (Laughs) Didn’t see that one coming.

SPS: I moved, as you know, a few years ago.  

DM: I’ll bet our readers don’t know that you and I were almost neighbors at one point a few years ago and you actually lived just four doors down the street from where I live now. It is my understanding that you moved out of the neighborhood right about the time I moved in.

SPS: We saw you and said, ‘Well there goes the neighborhood’, and got the hell out of there as fast as we could. We moved to nearby Costa Mesa, but now are back in Huntington Beach.

DM: (laughing) That was probably a good move for several reasons. Yet, you remain San Pedro Slim not Huntington Beach Slim. HB Slim is still up for grabs. Lord knows, nobody slapped that on me.  How did you get the San Pedro Slim moniker?

SPS: I was with a buddy of mine, Carl, one day and we were at Lamar's Records in Long Beach. We saw a car with those customized license plates and he said you should get a pair of plates that read, ‘SP Slim.’ It’s as simple as that.

DM: Let’s talk about San Pedro for a moment. I think it is safe to say, ‘You can take the man out of San Pedro, but you can’t take San Pedro out of the man.’

SPS: The thing about San Pedro is it’s almost like an island, in some ways it has this small-town feel. It’s a very isolated, blue collar town and at the bars there, everyone it seems has a nickname. Let’s say someone says, ‘Hey, I heard that Bill is going to the game.’ The response might be, ‘Which Bill?’ And you’ll get ‘Pile Driver Bill.’

One day I’m at this beer bar and this guy heard somebody call me San Pedro Slim and this drunk guy said to me, 'I know San Pedro Slim he is this big black guy’ and so I said, ‘OK, he can have it.’  I wasn’t going to argue about it.

DM: Damn, maybe I’m talking to the wrong guy.  San Pedro is a colorful place that probably lends itself to the development of musicians and artists of all kinds. You could have taken this kind of Charles Bukowski-esque type of environmental setting and done anything. Why blues music?

SPS: I used to hang out a lot at these bars either just playing pool and the jukebox or working in them as a musician. But to answer your question, I don’t know.

I do know that you have interviewed a lot of people who have said they picked this music up from their parents. It didn’t happen that way for me. When I was in high school the Police, Van Halen, U2 stuff like that was real huge. But Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray and Eric Clapton were also on the radio as well back then. I remember reading an interview with one of those guys and somebody mentioned B.B. King or Muddy Waters. It sent me off exploring. It was fun finding something new. I remember the first time I heard Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker or “Gatemouth” Brown. I was hooked.

The music intrigued me to the point where I went to this little record store, Jesse’s Records, in San Pedro. It’s not there anymore. I found the small blues section. They hadsix blues LPs in the entire store. I just went and grabbed them. B.B King Live at the Regal, Muddy Waters Live at Newport, Bobby Bland Two Steps From The Blues, Little Junior Parker Drivin’ Wheel and the Best of Little Walter and one other. So, I grab these old dusty, vinyl LPs, put them under my arm and walked up to the counter. The lady at the cash register looked kind of shocked that I was into this stuff. She said, ‘I can order anything you want.’ I didn’t know anybody at the time. I just saw the word blues. So, I didn’t know what to order from her.

DM: Speaking of getting anything you want, they have a jukebox in here and the music we are listening to now is starting to get to me and I know you know what to order.

(Kiefer makes a few selections and returns with the sound of John Coltrane’s version of My Favorite Things playing on the jukebox)

DM: I’d be willing to bet you those two guys sitting over there are going to leave before this song is halfway over. Anyway, getting back to your story David, did you start out playing harmonica?

SPS: No, I started out on guitar. I was really into Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was in town playing over at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa with Santana and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. So, I remember going over to my friend’s house. Remember when you just went over to people’s houses. You didn’t call or anything. You just showed up. If the door was closed you knocked. If it was open, you just walked in. Anyway, we went over to the show because he had a friend who could get us in. He did and he got us in the front row. As we sat down the T-Birds had just started playing. From that moment on I became a Jimmie Vaughan fan and wanted to play like Jimmie.  

From there I started getting into Anson (Funderburgh) and Ronnie Earl. I was into them before I got into the west coast guys.

DM: Yet you are primarily known for the other tools in your bag. Your harmonica and singing. We will get to the songwriting in a bit.

SPS: So, to make a long story short, everybody I knew it seemed played the guitar, so I picked up the harmonica and started singing. I know a lot of people who were nervous about trying to sing, but for me it was not that way. It was just something I was going to do. Through the years I’ve talked myself out of a lot of things, but this wasn’t one of them.

DM: Do you remember some of your early band experiences?

SPS: We mostly just rehearsed all the time and weren’t getting too many gigs. It is the complete opposite of how it is now.

DM: Do you remember any of those early band names?

SPS: There was something called, the Black Jack Blues Band, but we eventually just settled on San Pedro Slim and the Whatevers…I came up with The Night Dwellers. I remember we hired this guy at the bar to do sign paining for us. He was a wino named Sam. He would drink this cheap wine out of a jug, but he was really good and he would make our posters. He had great lettering, but one time he spelled Night Dwellers, Knight Dwellers and messed up my name….San Pedro Sum or something. Somehow, he couldn’t read the directions on the cocktail napkin. It was really cool though…really well done. Dave you really should have seen his lettering.

DM: I’m not a visionary or anything, but I could see some potential problematic situations arising from the data transfer from cocktail napkin to talented wino.  

SPS: Remember this is around 1990…91’ and I had been going to Lamar’s and getting my education there. Albums were coming out like Lynwood Slim’s Lost In America, James Harman’s Do Not Disturb, William Clarke’s Blowin’ Like Hell, Blues in the Dark by Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers and Mitch Kashmar’s band, The Pontiax and their album 100 Miles to Go.

You had all these guys traveling and playing here in Southern California fairly regularly as well….Little Charlie and the Nightcats, Anson with Sam Myers...it was great. You could go out every night and see these people.

DM: Those were glorious times, that’s for sure.

SPS: Around this time, I had met Rick Holmstrom. He said, ‘I like the way you play.’ He was really very encouraging which I still appreciate to this day. He had just left William Clarke’s band and was trying to get something together at that time with Johnny Dyer. I asked him if he wanted to play with me. He said, yes but he wanted to pick the rhythm section. I said sure. He brought in Tyler Pedersen on bass who had  been with William Clarke’s band as well.

I really didn’t have it together. I had a lot of songs already by then, but no amp. I would use Rick’s. He said, ‘We need to get you your own amp.’ So, we drove up to this place in Reseda, which at the time seemed like a million miles away and bought this amp. I still use it to this day…my only amp.

DM: How did that first San Pedro Slim album come about?

SPS: It was Rick who suggested I record a demo to give to bar owners so I could get more gigs. We ended up recording an album’s worth of material that became my first CD…Another Night on the Town.  

DM: Give me a time frame on this David.

SPS: That record came out in 1998. You know what…the 90’s were pretty special times looking back on it. We talked earlier about all those great records that came out and the traveling bands and what not, but if I might add on to that and talk about how things were back then.

DM: Go for it.

SPS: We were all young.  I was playing a lot with Henry Carvajal in those days. We were both in our twenties. Everybody was young. It was electric. There was lots going on. It was lot of fun. I didn’t think about it back then as to how special it was.

DM: It was a full-blown scene to be sure. It was just great and so fun to be a fan in those days. I had no idea either how fleeting all of this was at the time.

SPS: It was a great thing to be a part of it in those days. It was so much fun. Then William Clarke died. One thing that really hurt was the fact that some young guys who could have kept the whole thing going passed away like Sean Costello, Nick Curran and Gary Primich for instance.

DM: Not to put too fine a point on it, but Lester Butler and Marco Fiume also passed away around this time. Hollywood Fats died just a decade or so earlier. These were all very charismatic individuals not to mention great musicians who had their own following with a younger crowd.  

SPS: That’s right. It was every night, if I wasn’t playing in my own band, I was checking out somebody else and I do mean every night. It was just so much fun. There are probably multiple reasons why this all went away, but probably best that we leave that discussion for another day. Can I squeeze one Sammy Myers story in here?

DM: Of course, we always have room for one of those. I’ll share some of mine off to the side. By the way those guys left over at the other end of the bar. They didn’t make it past the halfway mark of the song. I guess that song wasn’t one of their favorite things. So, about Sammy....

SPS: I met Sam when he was playing at the Blue Café with Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets. I really wanted to meet him, but didn’t want to approach him with the usual, ‘I really love your harp playing and singing.’ He hears that everywhere he goes. So, I walk up to him at the bar after the gig and said, ‘Sammy, you are a pretty big guy. You look like you might drive a Cadillac.’ He said, ‘No son…I drive a Lincoln.’  The funny part is of course that he is blind and doesn’t drive anything. It was just a lot of fun back in those days.

DM: It truly was, but if I might steer this vehicle away from memory lane, as once we go there, we may never want to leave. I wanted to talk to you about your songwriting abilities. In my mind it is what sets you apart from your peers. Let’s talk about this aspect of your music. 

SPS: I have written every single song on all my records except one on the new record that was written by the bass player and album producer Kenny Huff. The song he wrote, No Overtime, fits with the theme of the new album which is about shitty jobs and job loss.

DM: I remember the first time you hit my radar was your 2008 album Barhoppin’. As I come to find out that came out ten years after your first album we talked about earlier. It is why I have referred to you as a legend in your spare time. I might have to drop that line.

SPS: That’s right. I have stepped it up a little.

DM: You have two albums that have come out in the past few years. Two in the same decade even.  The latest on Mojo King Music like the others is just great. You mentioned Kenny Huff. He is an extremely talented guy. Let’s talk about Kenny Huff for a moment.

SPS: He is a great bass player. He did some tours in Scandinavia with Al Blake and has subbed for Larry Taylor on gigs over here in Al’s band The Hollywood Blue Flames.  

Kenny was really into the whole project. I wanted to do an album that had a little of that old Delmark Records sound of the 60’s as well as a little of that Stax Records sound from that same period. I don’t know if we achieved that or not. Looking back on it, that was a pretty lofty goal to begin with.

One Room Utilities Paid No Pets was recorded with Nathan (James) and his band. I went down to Oceanside and it was really hot. I walk in and Marty (Dotson) was there with no shirt on. Nathan had no shirt. Then Troy (Sandow) shows up without a shirt so I took my shirt off. I thought wow, ‘This would be a great photo for a 60’s album cover.’ Rick Holmstrom also plays on some tracks as well.

DM: Any shirt status on Rick?

SPS: I can’t remember. Maybe I shouldn’t give away any trade secrets, but this is how I approach my recordings. I just find an existing band that I like and record with them. On Barhoppin’ it was Rick Holmstrom’s band at the time and on One Room Utilities Paid No Pets I used Nathan’s band, The Rhythm Scratchers. The new record is with Pork Chop Tom’s old band. They’re all good players of course. They have also proven that they can work together.  You can get all the great talent in the world, but if they can’t work and play together, who cares?

DM: That is great, but if you don’t have the songs it doesn’t matter. We kind of both danced away from my original train of thought which might be something that you are too modest to want to talk about, but you write great songs. That is a simple fact.

SPS: Let me give credit to a guy I used to work with at this furniture store, Charles Payne. He was a literary teacher before that. We got along great, as I love to read. Short stories, novels, poetry anything…people might think I’m some kind of intellectual or trying to come off that way. I just love a good story.

I was discussing poetry with this guy one day and he said 'With poetry you have to use fewer words so you have fewer words to spare. So, you need to get to your point so you can tell your story.' That being said, I take that idea into my songwriting.

For instance, on the album One Room Utilities Paid No Pets there is a song on there called The Apartment Song. I had to tell the story of my fuckin’ apartment with very few words. The last line of the song was the hardest to sing, ‘Plastic blinds, cheap carpet, kitchen linoleum. I got friends in nice houses, but I have to live here in the slums.’ That’s a lot of words to spit out.

DM: My favorite line in that song is, ‘Walls  so thin I can hear my neighbor change his mind.’ That is just great.

SPS: There is an absurdity in certain things. The stumbling and fumbling through life…if it’s good, bad or painful, it’s all part of life and all part of my songs.

Part of why I write songs is because I enjoy it, but also if I’m going to sing it, it has to be believable. I write about my own life experiences. I wrote a song that is on the last album called Working for the EDD. It is a song about being unemployed. I went through that. It’s comical in a sense. ‘Up at 11:00, crack a beer by noon.’  Because I didn’t have anywhere to go. Some people might think it is comical or funny, but there is nothing funny about it.

DM: There is another aspect of your music that we haven’t discussed yet and that is your live performances. One of the things I have always enjoyed about a San Pedro Slim show is the humor you bring to the bandstand.

SPS: I don’t really know where that comes from. Maybe its genetic or my point of view on things…I don’t know. I do like talking to the audience. Maybe it came from an experience I had as a kid. I was fourteen years old and we went to lunch with my mom and her friend. They would always go out to lunch together and for some reason they drug me along this one time. We were at some Mexican restaurant at Ports of Call, right on the water there at the L.A Harbor. There were these old guys playing jazz and the band leader was a guy, I don’t know if you know who he is, but his name was Jack Sheldon.

DM: I know Jack Sheldon. He was a serious west coast jazz trumpeter and then got all kinds of gigs in Hollywood. I don’t remember everything he did, but he’s done television, voice over work, movies, all kinds of stuff.

SPS: He talked to the audience between songs and he was FUNNY. Another guy who might be considered an influence was James Harman. I've always loved to see James perform because not only is he a great singer, musician and songwriter, but his rap between songs is instilled with humor and great storytelling.

Another influence was when I first heard The Hollywood Fats Band album. I bought that naturally at Lamar’s. I was really digging the music and thinking everything I would love to do is right here on this record. I loved buying the record or CD because I love reading the liner notes. I don’t do downloads for that reason. You don’t own it. You can’t read the liner notes.

DM: Amen to that.

SPS: So, there I am listening to the Fats Band record for the millionth time and I see that there is a comic book on the inside. That makes me like the record even more if that’s possible. That may have influenced the art work I did on Barhoppin’.

DM: This might be a good time to talk about your other talent…your artwork. How would you describe what you do?

SPS: I think it is called folk art because I have had no training. I do have a background in graphic design. I also had a lot of art classes in high school. It really is something that I enjoy doing.

DM: You did the great artwork on Barhoppin’ as you mentioned; the other that I’m aware of is the Mighty Mojo Prophets’ Record Store where you depicted Lamar’s Record Store on the front cover and “Kieferized” Tommy Eliff and Mitch Dow on the back.  

The one thing that you do which might be interesting to our readers is your characterizations of blues musicians. Let’s talk about that.

SPS: I started out doing that on weekends. I would put some music on and just draw. I started posting some of these on Facebook and got some positive feedback. Then I started putting them on t-shirts.

DM: Which ones are your best sellers?

SPS: Muddy and Little Walter…Charles Bukowski did pretty good. Not so much with Hunter S. Thompson. John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy (Mack Rice) did OK.

DM: I still have my Lightnin’ Hopkins that you gave me on March 16^th, 2012, at a Tiki Bar show which had The Rick Holmstrom Band headlining that night. Come to think of it, Nathan James and the Rhythm Scratchers played as well. We should have billed the show “The San Pedro Slim Back-Up Band Jamboree.” Holy crap we had a band called Black Cat Bone that had Tyler Pedersen on bass that night. Yikes…that is kind of weird. I also recall that you got up on stage and played Holmstrom’s guitar. It was the only time I can recall hearing you play the guitar.

SPS: The good news is that Rick has found a great gig.  He and his band are a perfect fit for Mavis (Staples).

DM: Yeah, Mavis is pretty good. I think if she keeps after it she will start to attract a following.

Anyway, the Lightnin’ Hopkins was a very cool gift that just knocked me out. It was to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of his birth which was the day before. You really captured his essence. Even though it is a caricature you can immediately tell who it is.

SPS: That’s the idea. I did another one last year that is the same way.

DM: Who was that?

SPS: It was you…dummy.

DM: Even I see the resemblance. I love it. My face is already a cartoon…I don’t know if that was helpful. My favorite thing is that you got that crooked smile that I’m not aware of, but my Dad used to make comments about. You also got the eyes. Like Lightin’ you could have done it with sunglasses, but it wouldn’t have been the same.

SPS: Tracy sent me several pictures. It came together pretty quickly.

DM: A lot of blues musicians, in fact, most, if not all of the really talented blues musicians, and that includes you David even if you don’t want to admit it, have a real affinity for jazz music. You and I have talked on the phone for hours discussing jazz for instance. While in many cases this may not apply directly to the music, there is still a lot of love for jazz. Do you remember how you got into the type of jazz you just played on the jukebox?

(Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy is playing in the background)

SPS: I guess it starts with the fact that I listen to a variety of music. I remember buying my first jazz album simply because it had a picture of a saxophone on the cover. I didn’t know any of the names yet. It turned out to be Sonny Stitt.

I was working at this record store when I was young and this girl said to me that I should get into jazz. I didn’t know anything about it. She recommended some guy who was playing that Kenny G-ish kind of shit, but I didn’t know. So, I asked this assistant manager. He said, ‘You don’t want that shit.’ He then took me over to the real jazz section and showed me some John Coltrane.

DM: Uh Oh…

SPS: Oh yeah…and not even the Atlantic stuff, but the stuff on the Impulse label.

DM: So, he tossed you into the deep end immediately. What was your initial reaction to that?

SPS: At first it seemed kind of discombobulated, but I kept listening and started getting into it. Then I got into trumpet players. I loved that sound and at the top of my list was Miles. His work with the muted trumpet might be my favorite.

DM: Good timing David. 

(So, What from Miles’ Kind of Blue begins playing in the background.) 

DM: There are so many types of music from which to draw inspiration and ideas. There are a lot of blues players who borrow heavily from jazz. You mentioned Jimmie Vaughan for instance. We have talked about how he incorporated various horn players' ideas into his solos.

SPS: How about Junior Watson? He does the same thing. He is heavily into jazz as well. I don’t know Junior, but I did have a chance to visit with him out at the Riverside Blues Festival last October.

DM: That was a great festival. We have another true blues festival coming up in which you are also a featured performer.

SPS: Sweet Lou’s Winter Blues Spotlight!

DM: It is my understanding that you and Lou go way back.

SPS: He had a place that was the first place I ever played called Little John’s. I don’t even remember what city that was in. Then he had that place called the Red Rooster in Montebello.

DM: …up on Washington Avenue. That’s the first time I became aware of Lou.

SPS: Then he started up his catering business. He would put me to work if I was between jobs. That was tough work let me tell you. I was cutting up meat, doing some prep and even a little cooking. He is a real great guy and I am hoping he sells a lot of tickets to this event.

DM: One of the things I like about Lou and why I love his Winter Blues Spotlight, which is now in its third year, is that he is not new to the music. This isn’t some passing fancy for him. He knows the music. He knows the musicians and he is the real deal. He loves the music and that is something that is very evident with Lou and not something always present with promoters.

SPS: I was talking to Charlie Lange the other day. I buy CDs from him of course. We were talking about this event. He was very excited to be coming down from Santa Cruz for this show. Charlie reminds me of Lamar at the old record store in Long Beach, in that he knows what he’s talking about. He always shoots me straight. Maybe I’d try and pick up an Albert King record. He made a lot of albums. Lamar would say, ‘You don’t really want that one, but if you don’t have this one, this is what you want to hear.’ Charlie is the same way. He’s never given me a bad piece of advice. I’m glad to see that he is coming down for the Winter Blues Spotlight.

DM: It doesn’t really seem like a festival unless Charlie has his Bluebeat Music store on site. You can practically judge a festival’s line-up as to how good it is based on the Charlie Lange factor. By the way, he carries the last three San Pedro Slim albums on his site as well as several others on which you appear as a special guest.

SPS: Was that a plug?

DM: Hey, I’m asking the questions around here. I got just one more.

What is up with your political Facebook posts? Are you one of these soulless Orange County right wing assholes or are you one of these California progressive, bleeding heart, liberal, ideologue, snowflake, tree-hugging libtards…or whatever names they call people like me this week.

SPS: I’m a political atheist. I just throw some questions out there and then sit back and watch you fight with people Dave. I love to see you get all worked up.

DM: Now that’s a steady gig. Thanks…hey, let’s play some blues on the jukebox.

SPS: Let’s get another round.