Subdudes lead vocalist Tommy Malone referred to the magic of Mendocino as he breathed frigid air and told of the distinctive stomach-churning curvy road escape from hot weather to witness the advance of the fog on Sunday morning.
“We had never heard of Mendocino until I heard the McGarrigle Sisters song (“Talk to me of Mendocino”). It sounded like a magical place … and it is,” he told a sellout crowd at Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden.
The event brought the community together to enjoy a top-flight band in the Garden”s truly magical surroundings, while raising funds for both the Garden and for salmon fishermen.
Despite the unseasonable cool, many people made a full day of it, enjoying the Garden from oceanfront to spectacular dahlias and visiting booths for local fishing-related groups, such as the Salmon Trollers Association before two hours of listening and dancing to the subdudes.
“I thought it was a very successful event,” said Chris Woods, executive director of the Botanical Garden. “People came and enjoyed the gardens and the music and celebrated the fisheries,” he said. “It was a great partnership.”
Ben Platt of the Salmon Trollers Association spoke to the crowd before the concert, praising the work of Congressman Mike Thompson and describing how salmon fishing is a regulated resource that could be restored with environmental work on major salmon rivers.
“As bleak as the salmon picture may look right now, the solutions are fairly simple,” Platt said. “Salmon are a sustainable resource. Salmon don”t demand a whole lot, but they do need cool, clean, quickly-moving water to survive their journey to and from the sea.”
Woods said that as one of the centers for community in the region, the Botanical Garden wanted to give a hand to the salmon fishers, who are suffering through the first fully-closed season in California history. The Garden, too, is suffering from the economic downturn, he said.
The amount raised and total attendance Sunday hadn”t been figured by press time. Organizer Lynelle Johnson said there were about 1,100 people at the event.
“The amount of money raised isn”t going to turn things around for [salmon fishers]. The event did help with their awareness campaign and to educate people about the plight of salmon fishing,” Woods said.
“The reaction from people at the event was all positive,” Platt said after the event.
“Locals especially seemed to be real sad about the situation. We have all seen so much of what we love about our town change so fast, especially fishing, logging and the mills. I get the impression from the things people say to me that they strongly empathize because they have already been through it.”
After a weekend of Winesong and the subdudes, the Garden will take a breath before moving to the next event. Then it will be on to creating more Mendocino magic using the Garden as a greater community venue for events ranging “from poetry to theater to classical music to whole range of music,” Woods said.
“Once we have recovered from this, we will get into planning more community events, more concerts, more ways of drawing people into the Garden,” Woods said.
There is an extension of the succulent garden coming in the Gardens. A mini railroad exhibit will be set up at Thanksgiving, Woods said.
Woods, born in the United Kingdom, is now American by nationality and had a long resume with distinctive gardens from Pennyslvania to Santa Barbara before taking over eight months ago.
The band members told the crowd it was the first time they had played unplugged. It reminded Malone of the days when they were getting started in the mid-1980s. At one point they came out into the crowd and played three songs in the middle of the audience with no microphones or amps but plenty of harmonic vocal power.
The subdudes provide a communal sound of jazz, rock and folk that makes them hard to brand by region or genre. The five-man band includes no drum set, but true to their New Orleans roots, a tambourine player instead, who also played a cowbell and a conga drum.
The band was greeted by enthusiastic local fans, such as a sign that read, “Branscomb loves the subdudes.”
“Is that a town or a person?” Malone asked.
