Silly Wizard LIVE in San Francisco
In a shared flat at No 69 Broughton Street Edinburgh frequented by quite a few
In a shared flat at No 69 Broughton Street Edinburgh frequented by quite a few local musicians a phone call was received from a local pub asking for a “scratch” band to play a couple of nights at one of the city centre pubs. This was sort of normal for the times and we assembled a motley crew of suspects and put together a set list. The venue asked us what the band was called and as we often did these short notice gigs with a mixture of different mates we usually made up a daft band name.
This time it was Silly Wizard (and there is indeed a story behind that too).
This time it was different – they liked us and asked us to come back and do it again.
Then they asked us to do a short residency – we were stuck with the name!
The mixed group settled around a basic core of Me, Bob Thomas and Johnny Cunningham and we took on the running of the Triangle Folk Club at the West End of Edinburgh. The Triangle grew and worked well with lots of guest musicians from all over helping to spread interest in the resident band – Silly Wizard.
Soon the band were touring all over the UK in borrowed cars – when suddenly we were asked to tour in France and had to actually buy a van!
Recording followed and with merch to sell things grew to the band touring Europe and playing main stage at festivals. The band grew also into a six piece with a (for the time) monster PA system.
Out of the blue came an offer to come to America and play at Philadelphia festival – we said yes, took a deep breath and found we had made a very substantial and exciting step. The Philadelphia festival mainstage concert was probably the big turning point – everything changed.
A few tours later we were playing the closing sets at Winnipeg Festival, Vancouver Festival, Nyon (Switzerland) and finally a main stage set at Cambridge on four consecutive weekends! (over those four weekends we probably played to more people than in many hundreds of folk club gigs).
A routine settled with European and North American Touring, rehearsal and lots of Scots TV work for some years until a final US tour in 1988 when we called it a day. There are a few absolute favourite and special audiences and venues that stand out across all those 17 plus years of touring – Chester festival was always a great place to play, our two festival time sell-out shows at the 4,500 seat Playhouse in Edinburgh were a great experience and something to be very proud of. One of those very special venues was The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, a venue with an incredible history, a great staff and our audiences there were always a joy to spend time with.
A great friend from San Francisco came to see me last year and handed me a cassette which had been recorded by the engineer on the night of our 1985 concert so I called in at Brian’s studio and we digitised it. Sadly the tape has been set up to play just the music – I say sadly because I know the whole of that night was just an amazing funny party for both us and the audience.
So here is a Scots band playing in San Francisco – it was a night to remember – but I still remember those nights playing with a bunch of mates in an Edinburgh pub having a great time with no idea where it would take us!
Gordon Jones
LIVE from
The Great American Hall
If you’d like to discover where the legendary folk band Silly Wizard began their incredible journey, take a read of the story right here on Openhouse Studio.
