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Gonzo Report: Dave Good's latest combo plays where good things come together
All manner of tooting at Vinya: vino + vinyasa
David Bowie’s “Changes” often plays in my noggin whenever things become different — when they evolve or devolve. It’s playing around the back of my skull at minimal volume as I approach Vinya: vino+ vinyasa — a former fabric store turned eatery, winery and yoga studio — where sax player Dave Good’s latest combo, The Organ Brothers, is playing. The place is the manifested dream of Patrick and Victoria Border, who wanted a space that both reflected and attracted Clairemont artists of all disciplines. A great story that I’ll explore someday, but right now, my primary aims are food and questions about farts. The two are, happily, not necessarily related.
I seat myself at a spacious long table and soak in the sound of Good and his bandmates guitarist Dwight Love (The Dwight Love Jazz Combo), Barry Farrar (The Blue Rockit Band, AWP) on drums, and Hammond organist Douglas Kvandal (Hammond Organ Jazz Trio). It sounds seamless to my ears, smooth without a saccharine film. I don’t sit long before my order’s taken. Charred tri tip and baked brie, that tasty molten morsel that has a history of bringing out the masochist in me. Not this time, brie, not this time. Good gives me a shout-out from the performance area, a dedicated space where the musicians are set up. It's not a stage, and the low-profile serves them well as they become an unobtrusive part of the scenery.
This is the third anniversary celebration for the Border’s business venture, and friends, regulars, and well-wishers mingle with those hungry for food and jazz. A small child stares at the band playing, then turns his attention to the bar area, wide-eyed and much more interested in the activity there. A man gets lost in a jazz trance, head bobbing and eyes closing while a family with a preteen converses next to him. They all fit, as everyone and everything does here. My tri-tip arrives, and tastes as good as it smells and looks. Perfect use of the sous vide method, finished with a quick char. I can’t pronounce it, but I can eat it. My brie is still being baked, so I’ll call it dessert.
When it arrives, the server warns me it’s hot. Ha! I know that, so I look around the space at the art. There’s a plethora, all from local artists. Drawings, paintings, ceramics, soaps...and a bevy of wines that make me wish I had a connoisseur to tell me if they were cool or not. I sit down to my brie, and a man who turns out to be co-owner Patrick warns me that it’s still hot. He’s right, but a quick chinwag with Good will surely give it enough time to cool. Right? Wrong! One bite is like like molten lava on my palate, but such tasty and creamy lava that I finish it anyway. Fine!
Victoria agrees to a brief interview with me, a bit nervous. She shares her vision for the venue: after yoga class, her group would have to decide where to go to get something to eat. So she co-created a place where she could hang out with her friends — and attract more. It’s wholesome and inspiring, but what I really wanna know is how she handles the farting. She's clearly not expecting this, so I expand on my question. Yoga, with all the bending and focused breathing, inevitably causes noxious gas leaks from the ass. When she recovers from laughing, she tells me that yes, that’s part of it (fart of it?) and that everyone in the class can feel safe that they won’t be judged or mocked.
One reason I don’t go to yoga classes: I have a juvenile sense of humor and am laughing now as I type this. She shows me the yoga studio, and there’s a sense of calm upon entering it, a clear room with no distractions. And it doesn’t smell like ass bombs, so maybe I’m exaggerating the danger. As it happens, Good is a practitioner, and encourages me to try it despite my sphincter fixation. He has amazing breath control needed to play the sax so maybe he’s on to something. But it’s Brian Border with whom I feel more of a kinship. He embraces yoga toots, as evidenced by his backing a Kickstarter card game and being rewarded with a custom card. He picked his own superpower: “farts during yoga.”
The sound of the band is better than any rectal ripping by far, and Love breaks into a solo during Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” just as I discover that my brie is finally cool enough to eat without injury. As I leave, I look at the mural that covers an outside wall of the establishment that says, “Good things have a way of coming together.” Indeed, they do.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Gonzo Report: Dave Good's latest combo plays where good things come together
All manner of tooting at Vinya: vino + vinyasa
Gonzo Report: Dave Good's latest combo plays where good things come together
All manner of tooting at Vinya: vino + vinyasa
David Bowie’s “Changes” often plays in my noggin whenever things become different — when they evolve or devolve. It’s playing around the back of my skull at minimal volume as I approach Vinya: vino+ vinyasa — a former fabric store turned eatery, winery and yoga studio — where sax player Dave Good’s latest combo, The Organ Brothers, is playing. The place is the manifested dream of Patrick and Victoria Border, who wanted a space that both reflected and attracted Clairemont artists of all disciplines. A great story that I’ll explore someday, but right now, my primary aims are food and questions about farts. The two are, happily, not necessarily related.
I seat myself at a spacious long table and soak in the sound of Good and his bandmates guitarist Dwight Love (The Dwight Love Jazz Combo), Barry Farrar (The Blue Rockit Band, AWP) on drums, and Hammond organist Douglas Kvandal (Hammond Organ Jazz Trio). It sounds seamless to my ears, smooth without a saccharine film. I don’t sit long before my order’s taken. Charred tri tip and baked brie, that tasty molten morsel that has a history of bringing out the masochist in me. Not this time, brie, not this time. Good gives me a shout-out from the performance area, a dedicated space where the musicians are set up. It's not a stage, and the low-profile serves them well as they become an unobtrusive part of the scenery.
This is the third anniversary celebration for the Border’s business venture, and friends, regulars, and well-wishers mingle with those hungry for food and jazz. A small child stares at the band playing, then turns his attention to the bar area, wide-eyed and much more interested in the activity there. A man gets lost in a jazz trance, head bobbing and eyes closing while a family with a preteen converses next to him. They all fit, as everyone and everything does here. My tri-tip arrives, and tastes as good as it smells and looks. Perfect use of the sous vide method, finished with a quick char. I can’t pronounce it, but I can eat it. My brie is still being baked, so I’ll call it dessert.
When it arrives, the server warns me it’s hot. Ha! I know that, so I look around the space at the art. There’s a plethora, all from local artists. Drawings, paintings, ceramics, soaps...and a bevy of wines that make me wish I had a connoisseur to tell me if they were cool or not. I sit down to my brie, and a man who turns out to be co-owner Patrick warns me that it’s still hot. He’s right, but a quick chinwag with Good will surely give it enough time to cool. Right? Wrong! One bite is like like molten lava on my palate, but such tasty and creamy lava that I finish it anyway. Fine!
Victoria agrees to a brief interview with me, a bit nervous. She shares her vision for the venue: after yoga class, her group would have to decide where to go to get something to eat. So she co-created a place where she could hang out with her friends — and attract more. It’s wholesome and inspiring, but what I really wanna know is how she handles the farting. She's clearly not expecting this, so I expand on my question. Yoga, with all the bending and focused breathing, inevitably causes noxious gas leaks from the ass. When she recovers from laughing, she tells me that yes, that’s part of it (fart of it?) and that everyone in the class can feel safe that they won’t be judged or mocked.
One reason I don’t go to yoga classes: I have a juvenile sense of humor and am laughing now as I type this. She shows me the yoga studio, and there’s a sense of calm upon entering it, a clear room with no distractions. And it doesn’t smell like ass bombs, so maybe I’m exaggerating the danger. As it happens, Good is a practitioner, and encourages me to try it despite my sphincter fixation. He has amazing breath control needed to play the sax so maybe he’s on to something. But it’s Brian Border with whom I feel more of a kinship. He embraces yoga toots, as evidenced by his backing a Kickstarter card game and being rewarded with a custom card. He picked his own superpower: “farts during yoga.”
The sound of the band is better than any rectal ripping by far, and Love breaks into a solo during Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” just as I discover that my brie is finally cool enough to eat without injury. As I leave, I look at the mural that covers an outside wall of the establishment that says, “Good things have a way of coming together.” Indeed, they do.
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