T.J. Kirk Bio 2004

Return with us now to an earlier, seemingly more innocent time, when the San Francisco Bay Area was awash with youthful energy and promise, when the S. F. neighborhood known as Soma was buzzing to a new sound and a generation found its voice. When nightclubs such as the Paradise Lounge, the Up and Down Club, and Club 11 teemed with young, affluent and partially educated cognoscenti, mingling with celebrities such as Christie Turlington, Rob Scheinder and Charles Barkley.

It is, of course, naive to imagine that we could see this earlier era through rose-colored glasses, knowing too well how all this energy and promise came to such disappointment and ruin. The money ran out, the clubs folded, and the record companies moved on to some bright new oasis of cool. Today Soma is a desolate and bitter landscape with too many places to park. Musicians who once played piper at the gates of the dot com dawn now hold down lonely straight jobs with no benefits.

The names of such endeavors such as Alphabet Soup, the Charlie Hunter Trio and Jazz on the Line now belong to history, architects of a musical gumbo as bold as the City's famous Noevelle Cuisine. Musicians fled from all parts of the country to be a part of this vibrant and distinctive sound. Record contracts were being signed as fast as they could be printed, and among the brightest jewels in this crown was a little collaboration between friends, known as James T. Kirk.

Oops, I mean T. J. Kirk.

During their short lived life, T. J. Kirk, nursing the engorged breast of Warner Bros. and in collaboration with legendary producer Lee Townsend, made two highly regarded CDs that today fetch a tidy sum on Ebay. The second of these two, 1995's If Four Was One, was nominated for a Grammy. In addition, recordings of their incendiary live shows are widely circulated in collector's circles and over the internet. (Early next year the band will attempt to get a piece of the action, releasing on CD a show from 1996, one of their last.)

The T. J. Kirk sound brought together the music of patriarchs "T"helonious Monk, "J"ames Brown, and Rahssan Roland "Kirk," spiced with Little Richard, Prince, and Bob Wills, in a sensuous and heady brew of guitars, grooves, and historical anxiety. With a dizzying predilection for cutting across a wide range of stylistic genres and leavening the results with a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, T. J. Kirk put on a musical variety show that was not to be missed. "It's like putting your head in a blender," comments John Schott, the mad blues scientist of the group.

For one or possibly two nights this winter, in defiance of all the pessimism and cruelty we now take for granted, the four original members of T. J. Kirk - Scott Amendola, Will Bernard, Charlie Hunter and John Schott - will come together to turn back the hands of time, to challenge San Francisco to live up to its promise, and to breath new life into the fetid corpse of their legendary collaboration.

James T. Kirk.

I mean T. J. Kirk.