A native San Franciscan, Rudy Colombini was 14 when he experienced the Summer of Love in 1967. Fast-forward 50+ years to his vision: Music City San Francisco. Located on Bush Street near Polk, “MCSF is the future HUB of music in SF. From a music-themed hotel to multiple live music venues, rehearsal studios, bar, restaurant, this building was made for musicians, music lovers, and everyone in-between.” Rudy gave us a personal tour of the joint.
HSV: Last time I saw you it was at the Bill Graham mural unveiling. Thanks to Bill, music is a very inherent part of SF. Where does Music City fit in?
RC: I see Music City as a continuation of all the Bill Graham stuff. We’ll have 20 rehearsal spaces, 4 venues that are also rehearsal spaces when they’re not venues. So you’ve got 24 points of interest that are also audio-visually recording, which is a big thing about this place because this is the largest recording studio in Northern California.
There’s this relationship between everything going on in the building — all the rehearsals and all the recordings — and what’s happening out front. What’s happening out front is this will be the SF Music Hall of Fame. We grab all the energy from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and the ‘80s, and we combine it in one moment in time in Music City. We’re going to have 75 big beautiful exhibits, which are very important. We’re cashing in on the equity of SF music. We’ve got 91 pictorials of some of the greatest artists that have ever come to SF. The tourists will want to come see the Hall of Fame, and it’s also exciting because the musicians are here! When you put them both together, you’ve got something that’s not happening any place else in the City. Where else can you have that many bands? And you’re not even talking about the bands that we’ll have out there playing for them.
What do we have in SF that we’ve never had before? A musical epicenter! Aha! You think this might make a difference in SF culture? Yes, I think so! [walks into restaurant, bar, still under construction]. Here we are! This is where we sell the real estate: hostel, hotel, student housing, rehearsal, classes, memorabilia, schwag, guitars, distortion boxes, jewelry, all the fun stuff, possibly even tickets to see bands.
HSV: (Pointing to sign on wall: “Miracles”)
RC: Miracles are important in the world. This place is a miracle, the fact that it came together. And if you want to make a living as a musician, you’re gonna need miracles. So we’re gonna set the stage for miracles. The five classes we teach are all about musicians learning to make money.
HSV: What would you like to say to the Haight Ashbury community and communities everywhere?
RC: Support your local venues! Know any oligarchs? I’d have no problem putting this thing into a 501c3.
Stay on the edge, stay to the truth, honor yourself because music IS the edge. If you don’t have the edge, there’s nothing to say.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
RC: Alright. Here we are everyone. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at Music City San Francisco. We are now filming from the mezzanine down to the venue. We have some lovely people here and what we’re gonna try and do today is going to describe what we’re doing at Music City San Francisco. I’m going to hand the lovely lady the phone here, and we’re on!
HSV: So Rudy, what’s going on in this joint?
Cynthia Johnston: We’re rollin’, Bob.
RC: What’s going on is everything and anything. We’re gonna take over the world. [does Austin Powers moves]
HSV: So let me ask you this: This was a hotel first and foremost. You have a couple of hotels or something?
RC: There’s a hotel upstairs. This was the Gump’s store downstairs, Gump’s of San Francisco. And I bought this in 1988 so I’ve owned it 35 years.
HSV: Wow.
RC: This is not the beginning of Music City San Francisco either, because we had a basement with 18 studios for 10 years, and we have 2500 heads a month coming through. So if you meet a musician in San Francisco and you say, “You ever heard of Music City?” There’s probably a 50 percent chance that he’s going to say “yes” and he’s certainly heard of it.
HSV: How many rehearsal spaces do you have?
RC: We’ll have 20 rehearsal spaces and we’ll have 4 venues, and the venues are also rehearsal spaces too, when they’re not venues. So you’ve got 24 points of interest that are also audio-visually recording, which is a real big thing about this place because this is the largest recording studio in Northern California when you connect it all by Daunting — and it is all interconnected by Daunting.
HSV: By Daunting?
RC: Daunting is a platform where all these studios, each studio — let’s just say we’re a band of 3, so we’re Cream [mimics a Cream song], we come in, if we’re recording Disraeli Gears, we probably want to do a little rehearsal, we’ll be able to do that. At a particular moment you might want to open up the doors and turn that rehearsal into a gig, and here you can! There’s a little monitor that says, “Welcome” to tell people you can come in. The last thing is, if you want to go viral and you want to go make this a television presentation, you can because we’ll have someone in that room there curating everything that happens in the building.
HSV: Last time I saw you it was at the Bill Graham mural unveiling.
RC: That’s right.
HSV: David Graham I’m interviewing on Wednesday on Zoom and we’re gonna talk about his dad, we’re gonna talk about the music scene and how we built this City on rock and roll and that whole thing and the essence of San Francisco and the spirit of San Francisco — music is very inherent, right? Huge. How do you see Music City sort of bridging … do you see Music City as sort of a continuing evolution of that? Where does Music City fit in?
RC: Actually I see this as a resurrection of that. A resurrection. And the body died, pretty much died, all the Bill Graham stuff. And I am Jesus. [laughter]. David, you might hear this, but — I don’t know what she [Linda] is going to say — but you actually should get David more involved because this is something that brought the Graham’s spirit and the Helm’s spirit. And we do need some financial support, I’m gonna say that. This is big. I’ve got $20 million bucks — probably more — in this. $20 million for sure. We’ve got some debt that we’re leaving behind for a loan. Will the loan come? [mimics the sign of the cross] I hope the loan does come. But one way or another we’re going to get this thing ignited.
HSV: Okay. So how do we get the buzz going? People are going to watch this on HSV, on Facebook …
RC: How do we get the buzz going? First of all we shouldn’t be talking about it because … is it not here? Have you not been through it?
HSV: It’s HERE!
RC: It is HERE. We’re receiving our final in a week. A final means you can use this building for what you want to use it for. It is for entertainment. It is for audio-visual recording. This is a big recording studio. You could have 660 people in this building at one time.
HSV: And what about the restaurant? What’s going on down there?
RC: First thing that happens is we open the studios, a week later we open probably the bar and probably a week or 2 later we open the restaurant.
HSV: I’m super excited about that. It’s going to be a new freakin’ venue where people can come, listen to a band and have a drink and …
RC: No. One band? No! We have 4 venues and let’s say you’re not into the 4 bands, you can actually go through the studios if you wanted to. I personally don’t mind during my rehearsal having an open rehearsal. As a matter of fact, it inspires me.
HSV: That’s the whole idea.
RC: That’s the whole idea. So what you could do is you could open the door, there are little monitors. Let’s just say this was a studio, there is a little monitor that says let’s say, “The Unauthorized Rolling Stones” or “The Rudy Colombini Band” You are welcome in. It’ll say it right here, and it also says who’s in, let’s just say, 12-3pm, who’s in from 3-6pm. Everything is listed, so you can go see your favorite band if you want to, in this building!
So come along with me.
HSV: Follow that guy. Follow Jesus. [laughter]
RC: Heyzeus [Jesus].
What’s interesting is this is the first time I’ve ever done a tour from this point of view. But the most important room in the house is grand central: This will be the VJ room. This is where you curate, on that wall, 24 points of interest. There will be this big monitor and you got your headset on and you’re going to search the building for, “Hey! Guess what! Rudy Colombini Band is in Studio 4! Wow, this is what they sound like. They’re sounding great! They’re doing a song The Truth is True [air guitars song].” You want to say that, you want to send it out to the world! But wait, no, no, you have Alvie Adams & the Breakfast Pigs down in Studio 23. Let’s go down there.
HSV: You got my pal Eric McFadden playing!
RC: Oh Eric! You know I love Eric.
HSV: Blue Lamp days. Love you Eric! Shoutout. And Kate Vargas!
RC: Yes, let’s throw a little plug to Eric. ERIC!
HSV: Eric! We love you! Gotta do the claw [reaching out for handshake]
RC: That’s right. And you know he’s gonna be a bit thing here.
HSV: He is a big thing.
RC: We gotta do the claw.
HSV: You don’t know the claw? [demonstrating] You’ve gotta slide into it. [shake hands]That’s the claw.
RC: That’s the claw.
HSV: Yep, that’s the claw.
RC: [Continuing tour] So this guy will be out here doing podcasts and … there’s this relationship between everything going on in the building — all the rehearsals and all the recordings. And what’s happening out front? Well what’s happening out front is this will also be San Francisco Music Hall of Fame! We grab all the energy from the ‘60s — and the ‘50s! — and the ‘70s and the ‘80s … all that musical equity, we combine it in one moment in time in Music City. We’re going to have 75 really big beautiful exhibits. We’ve got 91 pictorials that are 3 x 5 pictures of some of the greatest artists that have ever come to San Francisco.
HSV: Yeah, we walked around and saw some of that.
RC: Yeah, did you catch some of that stuff?
HSV: Yes!
RC: And then we’ve got 300 bricks out front, and then the 20 bands that are rehearsing here all the time with the 4 bands that we’re actually paying them … paying us? We need the money. We need as much money as we can get. This is all about the money! That’s why I did this! [laughter] Give me more money!
HSV: This is not Music City, it’s Money City! [laughter]
Show us the front room so we can go down there, is that cool?
RC: You want to go down there? Okay, we’re walking through … this is the Hall of Fame. If you veer to your left here you can see these exhibits. Between each exhibit is a rehearsal/recording studio, audio-visual studio. So another way to look at what we do here is you’re really in something like music MGM. The reason for that is, at MGM you film everything. At MGM you have faux little cities, you had mountains where you were in Saudi Arabia or whatever, well this is a little bit like that because wherever you are, you’re everywhere because beyond you’re audio-visual recording.
[walking into a room] This would probably not be a studio. I might have this be our central room for corporate headquarters. Looking up [through skylight] that’s the hotel.
HSV: And what’s the address of this joint so people know?
RC: 1353 Bush Street.
HSV: Got it. We’ll put that in, but from the horse’s mouth.
RC: Again, more exhibits. This is, let’s say, Sly Stone, and coming over here we’ve got Chris Isaak. Up here you’ve got the Dead Kennedys.
HSV: Love them. Jello!
RC: This is what a smaller studio looks like, where you’ll have probably 4 people: drums, bass, guitar … a really good PA system so you’ll be able to hear yourself really well. You can be audio-visually recorded on 3 cameras. You’ve also got stereo sound. So you can do anything you want with it. If you want to make it a recording studio, it can do that. If you want to make it a rehearsal studio, you can do that too. We’re getting it altogether in here, it’s sounding good.
HSV: And it comes with a set of the drums and the rest?
RC: Yep.
HSV: It’s there. Okay.
RC: It’s all equipped. Probably keyboards, etc.
And then you’ve got all this. You’re coming down to area for food and more exhibits. We’re going to have little tables here. It’s like a space, giant coffee shop. I mean, how cool is this place to pick up chicks, right? [laughter] Why else would I build it?
HSV: You nut!
RC: Thank you!
This is one of our finer recording studios here. This is where the Unauthorized Rollings Stones play. And like I said, we’ve got these wonderful QSCs to connect with the vocalists. And the beautiful brick.
HSV: I love the brick.
RC: I know! And what they have here, the arch. The romans did this so they could actually hold up the rest of the bricks in a more structurally sound way.
HSV: And then you’ve got an alley out back?
RC: Alley out back. Here’s another studio, also in the morning, a classroom. Classroom in the morning, we have a karaoke possibility, having your own little party. Rather than throwing it at home, throw it at Music City. Bathrooms …
HSV: Am I allowed to ask you how much to rent a room?
RC: I’d say a room you have for about 2 and half hours for $35 to $40 bucks.
HSV: Okay. What about spending the night here, having a room, the hotel part?
RC: The hotel part. You’ve seen the capsules. They’re really cool.
HSV: It’s like being on a tour bus.
RC: They’re $75 … $70 bucks. Goes down in the winter probably goes up a little bit in the summer.
[Walks into yet another room] Studio here. This feels to me like recording.
HSV: Yeah, this feels like shit’s gonna get done.
RC: [Walks into another room] Here, again, more acoustic kind of thing. Why? Because the hotel is upstairs and we can’t make too much noise in this particular room.
My office, because it was so expensive to build this place, our offices are probably going to be somewhere else, like rent across the street for a couple of bucks a square foot when this thing is just a churning engine trying to produce money. But no, music.
My interest in this is like if you think I could change the world as a songwriter, just wait til I import this engine.
HSV: I’m free-form here. What about someone like Chris Isaak. Where is he these days? Get him in here and have him do a show or whatever.
RC: As they say, everybody’s hiding in the bush and doing their thing.
HSV: Yeah.
RC: When this thing gets rollin’, they will come. You saw … fields, something fields.
CJ: Strawberry Fields?
RC: You build it and they will come.
HSV: Yeah, isn’t that the Bible?
RC: It’s in the Bible.
HSV: I don’t know. You’re Jesus, you’re supposed to know that rap.
CJ: Elysian Fields?
RC: Field of Dreams.
So everything you see here, again, the exhibits are very important. We are cashing in on the equity of San Francisco music. We’re cashing it in and we’re bringing artists here — Metallica, Sly & the Family Stone — we’re going to be plastering these exhibits with their memorial works, their attributes in physical form.
Let me show you our beautiful bathrooms.
HSV: Hanging out in the bathroom y’all!
RC: Come on over, again, more studios.
We’re going to take you out front now. This is a carbon copy of what was upstairs. This room here is our little theater.
HSV: Viewing room.
RC: Viewing room, yes. There’s a possibility of a hologram, but we’re not sure of that. This is where we can educate tourists of our wonderful city and what we’ve done.
HSV: Speaking of the City, because this is the Haight Street Voice — there’s a vibrancy coming back in the Haight, there’s a vibrancy in North Beach. There’s some life going on. Those 2 places back in the day are where the Beats and the Hippies, and now it’s sort of coming back around, those 2 neighborhoods.
RC: North Beach and the Haight, right, yeah.
HSV: How do we get those people to come to this venue?
RC: I just want to ask more or less of you: How do we get them to come?
HSV: That’s the thing. I’m trying to liaison.
RC: Well first of all, you just BE. You just let this roll. But the heart of it is the 20 studios that musicians want to come to because they’re coming here to express themselves, learn their art, rehearse, get better, get talented, have relationships. Each studio has 6 slots a day. One studio like this will have 6 slots times an average of 4 —that’s 24 people in each one of these rooms every day working on their art times 20. So 6 times 20, now we’re talking 120. And then we’ve got 20 studios and you add it all up, there’s right under 500 people that can come through 20 studios.
So let’s just say each slot was 100 people and you have 6 of those slots you have 600 people. You have 80 people in each slot. You’ve got 20 studios, they’re full of musicians right now, 4 persons per studio, that’s 80 people times 6. So you’ve got 480 coming here rehearsing.
HSV: Okay.
RC: Alright. Okay, so then you’ve got the Hall of Fame. I think the tourists might want to come see the Hall of Fame. Give it 150 people a day and it’s also exciting because the musicians are here. So when you put them both together, you’ve got something that’s not happening any place else in the City. And where else can you have that many bands — and you’re not even talking about the bands that we’ll have out there playing for them.
So there are lots of reasons to come to Music City. And we’re hoping that the food is good. (Laughter)
HSV: Word of mouth …
RC: Word of mouth. But actually, people like you getting behind us and saying, “Hey! Oh my god! What do we have in San Francisco that we’ve never had before? A musical epicenter! Aha!” You think this might make a difference in San Francisco culture? Yes, I think so. [continuing tour] This is gonna be a big beautiful mural — I’m gonna say Santana at Woodstock.
HSV: Ah! When he was so high on acid and his guitar turned into a snake!
RC: [laughter] And he was doing all of that [air guitaring] We fill the exhibits.
Let’s go see the front room that is [stops] This is the heart of the Music City Hall of Fame. This room is where the royalty items live. There are gonna be beautiful racks that are just solid glass and they encase the walls of the room. There is a total of 9 beautiful exhibits.
HSV: [panning to blueprints] Look at these blueprints ladies and gentlemen! My dad was an architect so I appreciate this stuff. Wow, that’s a lot!
RC: [presses hands on blueprints] This was really complicated to build! I wouldn’t want to do it again if I had to start over.
HSV: But you did it!
RC: I know! We did it!
HSV: Beautiful! Round of applause [to Cynthia]!
RC: [walks into main room, restaurant, bar, still under construction]. Here we are!
HSV: Okay, here we are!
RC: Okay, this is where we sell the real estate: hostel, hotel, student housing, rehearsal, memorabilia, schwag: guitars, you want a distortion box, you want some jewelry, so this is all the fun stuff, possibly even tickets to see the bands.
HSV: Like the Masonic up the hill …
RC: Sell tickets to the Masonic too.
HSV: The Fillmore …
RC: And to the Fillmore. That’s actually a revenue stream I hadn’t thought about. Maybe you should be our consultant! We can talk about that …
HSV: We’ll talk about that behind the scenes … [laughter]
RC: [back to tour]: We’re going to have 3 bars — 3 and a half bars cuz one of the bars is beer only. We’ve got the sort of heavy metal, S &M vibe here.
HSV: Industrial.
RC: A lot of male energy.
HSV: Get next to Jerry over here.
RC: We’ve got some Jerry vibes …
HSV: Jerry!
CJ: Rudy!
HSV: What about your music background? Did you grow up here?
RC: I grew up here.
HSV: Did you grow up with the Grateful Dead and the whole thing or were you too young?
RC: Yeah, I did. “Too young’ thank you very much! [laughter]
I was there at the Summer of Love, 14 years old.
HSV: Mine was the Sex Pistols at Winterland when I was 15.
RC: I was there. Hit me right there [high five]
HSV: I was there! Avengers opened.
RC: What a trip.
HSV: Mabuhay Gardens.
RC: Mabuhay Gardens! I must’ve been checking you out!
HSV: Maybe. I was 15.
RC: Did we sleep together?
HSV: No. I don’t think so. I was too young.
RC: [gets on stage] Ladies and Gentlemen: Music City San Francisco! Yeah, baby!
HSV: It’s fucking awesome!
RC: Come on up here. Come a little closer, closer, a little closer [laughter] Put you in the corner here. How does that feel? Oh yeah!
HSV: Get out of the way!
RC: No wait, stay right there.
So this will be the radio station [points to control room above bar]. Oh my god. Somebody comes in, there are a few things to look at: First of all you have the most attractive band in the studio at the top looking out. Hot chicks, hot guys, just the right thing. Podcast, radio, booze, food, little place to dance: Music City San Francisco.
HSV: Then you’re going to get foot traffic because here’s Bush Street right here ladies and gentlemen.
RC: [about floor to ceiling window in front] I really don’t want to kill this. There was this thought we were going to have a lot of curtains here, but I don’t think so.
HSV: Options.
RC: Options, yes, right. Just kind of have them hang low like this … we’ll see.
HSV: This is beautiful.
[about metal decorative writing on wall] I see “Miracles” over there. What’s that about?
RC: Miracles just first of all, I do this thing called A Course in Miracles. I think that miracles are necessary and important in the world. This place is a miracle, the fact that this place came together. Also, if you want to make a living as a musician, you’re gonna need miracles in San Francisco especially. So we’re gonna set the stage for miracles. Our 5 classes that we teach are all about musicians not learning their music but learning to make money. It’s all media, branding, touring — how you’re gonna make your money.
HSV: I love it. That’s huge.
RC: So that’s the miracles, you got the Hall of Fame here. The attitude is sexy.
What I’d like to do is I’d like to take you downstairs to our …
HSV: I’ve got to say, I can only do a half hour because people don’t have very much bandwidth. I mean, we can keep rollin’ Bob, but …
RC: Come around [walk through construction]
HSV: I can’t wait til this place is poppin’. I’ll be here. We could do a Haight Street Voice release party in here.
RC: Okay, we’ll do it!
HSV: Next year, live band.
RC: Yes!
HSV: [on wall] Ooh, what does that say: “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t you’re at.”
RC: I want to support your world and your business.
HSV: And vice versa.
RC: Have you been downstairs?
HSV: I haven’t been here.
RC: Come down here. Here’s our kitchen. We can feed hundreds of people.
Again, more of our museum. This might be dedicated to Rolling Stone magazine and all of the things that have budded from Rolling Stone magazine.
HSV: Ben Fong-Torres, my buddy.
RC: Yo Ben!
Okay so this is restaurant, tables, more venues.
HSV: Wow. It just keeps going. It just keeps going!
RC: [singing] “Can’t stop, you gotta go, here comes yet another show …]
We’re going to keep the walls white so we can project whatever we want, make it what we desire. These are all rehearsal studios …
Just that we can really kind of understand the master plan of how the money is made, these studios properly watched are also venues. Three of them are authorized for big audiences — 45, 60, 80, something like that, right? The one upstairs is 180. If you put them all together you’ve got a venue of 340 people. When you think about that that’s a lot of people, but you haven’t really considered yet the other studios because people can be in those other studios if the musicians want them to be in those studios. So provided you’re not increasing the load on the building to 1000, you can have 660 people in this building, that’s a ticket because we’ve got 5 floors and alcohol too. We can serve alcohol on 5 floors.
HSV: I was thinking about my buddy Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s guitar player. If he were in town and he was like, “Hey man, I just want to go check out that new music joint” and then people are like, “Oh Lenny Kaye is over at Music City” have that be, not an event, but sort of a thing.
RC: Everyone knows who Prairie Prince used to be, musicians coming by, and I’m sure all the artists and famous ones will want to come. After all, we’re honoring them.
HSV: Chuck Prophet, Eric McFadden, local boys.
RC: Chuck Prophet, one of my favorties. In fact one of the greatest lines ever written: “She saw a light, I saw a freight train coming.”
HSV: I was in a band with Chuck when he was 16 or something — Bad Attitude.
RC: I remember that band. Cool beans. So what did you play?
HSV: Keyboards, back up singing, and tambourine. Anyway, enough about me. So let’s wrap it up. What would you like to say to the Haight …
RC: I want to show you something very important.
HSV: We’re runnin over time.
RC: This room is another one of our venues downstairs. We’re gonna change it up a little and make it more attractive.
HSV: Where does that door go, the alley?
RC: Let’s take that door out. We are going to a place you have not seen, I believe. By the way, the alley is here. You can have about 1000 people in the alley. We’re usurping it to some degree. The parties we want to have here, the shows, are Wednesday through Saturday afternoons. And we serve to that alley. The restaurant down the hall and it comes through here and this is a small cafe. This window [out to alley] literally we can pump on it a lot. Food and alcohol.
HSV: That’s key!
RC: Again, another bar right here where we can serve from. And you can also come from the alley into this room.
I think I’m there. I think you’ve seen Music City San Francisco. The back alley is rather attractive.
HSV: So let me ask you this, I ask everybody: Haight Street Voice is hyper-local with a global perspective: What would you like to say to the Haight Ashbury community let alone communities everywhere?
RC: I would like to say, support your local venues everywhere! Whether it’s us or anyone else, as far as we’re concerned, we could use , if you know any oligarchs that would want to come in I would have no problem putting this thing into a 501c3, someone who would like to be partner, strategic partner means they’re also in the business and they have to have money, serious money. David Graham would be great. His legacy weaved into something like Music City could change his life too.
Again, stay on the edge, stay to the truth, honor yourself — because music IS the edge. If you don’t have the edge, there’s nothing to say.
I’m done!
HSV: Peace out, man!
RC: Peace out. I’m complete. [holds up peace sign] Actually, you have to have victory over the ego before you can have peace.
HSV: There you go. I love that. Thank you, Rudy. We love ya!
