November 16–23, 2000

six pick

Ray’s Vast Basement

Ray’s Vast Basement, named for a fictional California cave-turned-speakeasy, is a fuzzy-bordered San Francisco outfit purveying an imaginative breed of West Coast country for the hip and the down-home alike. Jon Bernson, who’s been compared to Tom Waits for his swarthy-voiced singing and oblique lyrics, is the songwriter behind it all, spinning dark ballads of an imagined town. Audacious and poetic, he takes on the voice of a destructive fire, a no-good drifter, the earth itself. Behind him, acoustic and electric guitars unite with violins, pianos, the occasional trumpet or saxophone. RVB’s self-released CD, On The Banks Of The Time, comes with a songbook and chord charts. But half the songs in the book aren’t on the CD, as if the others got lost somewhere, maybe dropped into that California cave you can’t find on any real map. Who knows what else is hiding under RVB’s cliffs?

—Sara Marcus

Thu., Nov. 16, with Del Pez and the Butcher Holler Boys, North Star Bar, 27th and Poplar Sts., 215-922-LIVE, www.northstarbar.com, $6.