James Patrick Regan

St. Laurent is playing Napa Bowl? Wait, what year is this?

A full decade after the hard-rocking band named for bassist Bob St. Laurent roared out its last encore, the group is back with a new CD and a pair of Bay Area gigs this week, including a Saturday night show at the Napa Bowl Lounge.
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Share“We never really broke out,” St. Laurent said of the 1980s, when his band sold out San Francisco clubs like the now-revered Mabuhay Gardens.

Ten years ago, the four musicians went their separate ways, pursuing careers from law (drummer and attorney Danny Cantrell of Benicia) to agriculture (guitarist and vineyard manager James “Thor” Regan of Napa).
Last year, St. Laurent — who divides his time between Napa and Maui — bumped into Cantrell, and the two soon organized a reunion with Regan and singer Mark Tate, now a real estate agent in Napa.

“Within three months we were opening for Journey and Def Leppard,” St. Laurent said. “And just like that, we’re right back where we were and climbing higher.”

Sponsored by Full Sail Ale, W Hotel and several equipment manufacturers, the band plays San Francisco’s W Hotel on Thursday and the Napa Bowl Lounge on Saturday from 9 p.m. until midnight.

“Expect an outdoor partying coliseum act jammed into a little room at the bowling alley,” St. Laurent said. “It’s just gonna be too much fun.”

Everybody’s mellowed

To St. Laurent, “partying” is not about getting loaded onstage or trashing hotel rooms. “Happy partying, not destructive partying — I haven’t had a drink in 10 years,” he said. “Everybody’s mellowed out.”

Today, the band seldom plays clubs; but after answering a Craigslist ad last year, St. Laurent is now the official rock band of the NorCal Roller Girls, an amateur roller-derby league based in Chico.

“Our first time we played for 800 people and said ‘OK, we’ve found our new home,’” St. Laurent said. “This is way better — there are families, it’s a much cleaner, happier scene.”

The band is also preparing to book the summer touring season, with plans already in place to perform at Shoreline Amphitheatre (one of several arenas where Bob St. Laurent works as a “production runner,” or temporary personal assistant for headlining musicians — “I walk Sheryl Crow’s dog,” he said), Concord Pavilion and Marysville Amphitheatre.

St. Laurent has a new, five-song CD of originals, principally written by Regan, that hint at the band’s explosive live energy. Crisply and professionally recorded, the disc doubles as a demo designed to attract major-label interest and a stopgap for fans clamoring to hear more. The disc is available from the band at gigs or www.stlaurentband.com.

“It’s just good time rock and roll,” said Bob St. Laurent.
- Napa Register

It’s been a busy year for Napa musicians Bob St. Laurent and James Regan, who will play a rare, mostly-acoustic concert with their band St. Laurent at Copia on Nov. 15.

“We’ve done well over 80 shows,” said bassist St. Laurent, who plays with guitarist Regan in three very different groups: St. Laurent, their powerful rock quartet first founded in the 1980s; Urban Slack, a Hawaiian-inspired act Regan formed a few years ago; and a new instrumental trio with a tongue-in-cheek name: The Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics.
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Share“We’re starting to shorten it to ‘the Deadlies,’” joked St. Laurent. He and Regan developed their power-surf style while playing the corner of First and Main streets during this summer’s weekly Napa Chefs Market celebrations; next year, they hope to play the main stage at Dwight Murray Plaza.

St. Laurent and Regan’s original group, with singer Mark Tate of Napa and drummer Danny Cantrell of Benicia, reunited last year after a decade-long hiatus.
Following its packed performance at the Napa Bowl lounge early this year, St. Laurent has gone on to open for Motley Crüe and Def Leppard, among scores of other gigs at clubs and arenas around the Bay Area.

“It’s getting exciting now,” said St. Laurent. “We didn’t expect it – not to hit like this.”

At Copia, the band will present a retrospective of the past 20 years, he continued, but fans of the hard-rock sound will have to be patient: Most of the concert will be “unplugged.”

“We’ll play the first three-quarters of the show acoustic, and then warn everybody and bring it on,” said Regan, who also performs with the St. John’s Lutheran Church Worship Band in Napa.

“We’ll showcase the music first, and then we’ll hit it hard for the last 25 percent, for those who need us to crank it up.”

St. Laurent will offer a free preview of the show when the band performs live on Kellie Fuller’s morning radio show, simultaneously broadcast on KVON-AM and KVYN-FM, Nov. 11 at 7:40 a.m.

Next stop Hawaii,

then London?

Regan and St. Laurent may go international next month: On Nov. 18, the Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics will learn whether they have won an online video contest to play the “after-party” for a concert in London that will feature the reunited Led Zeppelin (details at www.ziddio.com).

Their video — shot at San Francisco’s Brainwash lounge and laundromat — is a dizzying thrill-ride through the Deadlies’ riptide of surf rhythm.

Regan’s guitar twangs as St. Laurent and drummer Jeff Craft power through a medley of high-energy instrumentals that have made the clip one of the most-viewed on the ziddio.com site, a YouTube competitor backed by Comcast.

The video is also online on YouTube and the band’s MySpace page, and it impressed Hawaiian surf group the Take-Offs enough that they invited the Deadlies to open for them on Kaua’i later this month, after a return engagement at Brainwash Nov. 18.

Closer to home, the Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics will be riding in the Calistoga Tractor Parade Dec. 1, and St. Laurent and Regan have also scored what the guitarist calls “the trifecta” of gigs: On New Year’s Eve, Urban Slack will open for the Deadlies before St. Laurent takes the stage as headliner at the Silicon Valley location of W Hotels, one of the band’s many sponsors.

But none of these shows will offer the intimacy of the Copia performance space, which seats fewer than 300. St. Laurent promises that on Nov. 15, the band will bring out some favorite Led Zeppelin songs and other rock classics, “so people can sing along.”

To sample some of the bands’ own music, visit their Web sites: www.myspace.com/stlaurentband, www.myspace.com/thedeadlysurfinatics and www.myspace.com/urbanslack.

St. Laurent

Nov. 15, 8 p.m.

Copia

500 First Street, Napa

$20, $18 Copia members

707-259-1600

www.copia.org
- Napa Register

James Patrick Regan is a Bay Area guitarist who has been leaving his musical fingerprints on the local music scene since his first band, St. Laurent, first got big back in the eighties. Currently, he’s got good gigs going with his low key band, Urban Slack, and is also having a lot of fun with his new surf punk band, The Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics. But his work with St. Laurent isn’t all in the past; the band has recently come back together and recorded a new CD which James says is reminiscent of the sounds of San Francisco from about a decade ago. In this interview, James tells SFV about his experiences in the different bands, his homes away from home here in the city and how happy he is just doing what he’s doing.

What can you tell us about the basics of your musical history? I started on trumpet when I was knee high to a grasshopper. I switched to guitar when I was in middle school. In high school, I started playing in local bands all over the Bay Area. I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston and then flew as far away from there as I could to study with Keola Beamer and John Keawe in Hawai’i.

You play in several different bands – how does working in each of them differ from the others? Well, the Urban Slack stuff is chill music and it has the biggest reception. I play at least two gigs a week with it and it pays! The Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics is the newest thing I’m doing; it’s a blast. We’re playing instrumental surf tunes from the 50’s and 60’s and “punking” them up. People love it! St. Laurent is the band I cut my teeth with. We were big in the early eighties at the beginning of the “Glam” rock scene. We all kind of went our separate ways in different bands and a year and a half ago we put it back together and we sound much better than then. We’re much more entertaining to the audience as well.

What can you tell us about St. Laurent’s most recent CD? The new CD captures us in our best form. We have a couple of new songs, a couple of old favorites we never recorded and a couple we redid from the old days. I think it’s very reminiscent of bands like Head On, Benny and the Jets, SVT and Tyrant … bands that didn’t record a lot but were the San Francisco sound a decade or so ago. That being said, it’s new, it’s fresh and it ROCKS.

Who are some other musicians in the Bay Area that you like to go out and support? The Aquamarines, Social Unrest, Pollo Del Mar and Slacktone - not from the Bay Area but definitely worth the effort.

Do you have a favorite SF venue? By far… Brainwash is home. Brainwash is what the Fab Mab, the Rock on Broadway or the Stone were just a few years ago, those people are family to me. And they have Great Food!

Which spots in the city can you be found in when you’re just out and about? Well I love the XYZ bar at the W, as matter of fact I love the W period. Again, Brainwash is home. SNOB wine bar on Bush is a favorite. For neoghborhoods, you can’t beat the Castro or SOMA. But you’ll most likely find me at OB.

Where do you want to be (musically) a year from now? If I’m able just to keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll be happy.

If there was anything that you could make sure your fans knew, what would it be? How much I appreciate them all coming out to the shows. There are so many options these days for entertainment and to make the effort to go see live music…. I love them.

If you want to go see James perform live, your next opportunity is this Saturday, June 30th, when The Deadly (or potentially harmful) Surfinatics will be doing there thing at Brainwash Cafe. For other opportunities to catch his performances, check out any of the above links.
- San Francisco Voice