The Valley Music Hall of Fame announces an awesome class of inductees for 2025
Plus, is Fresno getting a new record label?
In case you missed my story over at The Fresno Bee, the Valley Music Hall of Fame announced inductees for its 2025 class and set a date for official induction ceremony, which will happen Sept. 17 at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theatre.
This list reminds me (again) that within the history of Fresno’s music scene there is so much left to uncover, even for someone who ostensibly studies this stuff for a living.
Like, I knew there was this infamous Monday night jam session that happened at Zapp’s Park well before the dive bar got overrun by the loud-rock hipster kids. And I had probably, vaguely, heard of its taskmaster host, even if it was just the name; Omar Shariff.
But I hadn’t ever put the two things together. I certainly wasn’t aware of the significance of those jams nights. Or of the man himself, a blues pianist with multiple records (like original vinyl), connections to major-league blues players and a lineage running back to the boogie-woogie progenitors.
And it’s like that down the line with this year’s inductees.
I know Pat Wolk. I’ve interviewed her before and for years have received correspondence about the various concerts the Fresno Folklore Society has brought through town, many to her back-yard concert venue (aka the Wolk Garden). But there is something solidifying in thinking about her through the lens of the Hall of Fame.
Ditto with Bill Church. I was familiar with the man through his son, Trevor. I knew he was a (maybe retired) bass player from Fresno, who was in the rock band Montrose in the 1970s. And because of that, he had a connection with Sammy Hagar. I didn’t know he was Hagar’s go-to bassist during the first decade of his solo career, or that Church’s full resume included a stint playing on Van Morrison records. Or, that he came to Fresno, at least partly because Hagar joined Van Halen.
I surely came across Jo Stafford at some point while deep scrolling through some Fresno Youtube search. But without taking the time to go down that particular rabbit hole, I never knew that she was so famous for her USO tour shows that they nicknamed her G.I. Jo. Or that she had her own prime-time TV program in 1954. The video below sums up just how ridiculous her voice was throughout her career (it lasted through the 1970s).
Somehow, I didn’t know about Agustin Lira, even though he performed earlier this month at the Canciones del San Joaquín concert, an event that had been on my (and other’s) radar. The Fresno Bee also did this profile of his work in 2015, when it was announced he’d landed a record deal with Smithsonian Folkways.
All of this to say: The Valley Music Hall of Fame is doing God’s work for those of us who derive joy from nerding out on Fresno’s history stuff. It should be supported, which you can do here.
What the heck is Valley Floor Records?
Is Fresno getting a proper collaborative indie record label?
Earlier this month, an Instagram account popped up for Valley Floor Records, which despite this post claiming the opposite, appears to be, maybe, a record label of some sort.
From its website (which offers this the way of detail):
“We’re not about genre.
You could be garage psych or lo-fi gospel, lost highway funk or janky bedroom cumbia — it’s all good with us. If it’s weird but real, but straight from the heart, we got room for you.
We don’t polish the edges. We let ‘em stick out and catch the light.
So bring out your demos, your dusty 3AM voice memos, your canciones about love, loss, aliens — whatever.
Because the world needs more of that.”
You can “be first to hear about our upcoming releases, secret shows, and record label magic in the works,” by joining the email list.
It’s isn’t exactly clear who is behind Valley Floor Record.
But there are clues.
For instance, this post, which tags its location as the Pearl Building. In the early 2000s, the downtown apartment complex was the well-known home (and haven and hangout) for any number of Fresno music and arts type (including Rademacher’s Malcom Sosa).
It did occur to me to reach out and get more information for y’all.
But it’s also kinda nice to have some mystery in our lives. So … I’m gonna leave it here for now.
This comes just after Paul Cruikshank at Ragin Records put a call out for hive-mind thoughts on a new 7” record label he’s starting. “Local artists of course,” he wrote. From what I know, aside from timing, the two are unrelated.
That’s it for this week. Remember you can now hear me on the Homegrown Show Sundays at 8 p.m. on New Rock 104.1 FM. Tonight I’m in studio with a playlist curated by Valley Echoes. Laura is in studio for an interview as well. Follow my other writing at The Fresno Bee. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com