 I'd like to welcome Boots to the Inuxbury video on history projects. Yes, I see you. My name is Rebecca Nichols and I'll be moderating this tape with you. Boots, long time resident of San Francisco, but where was your early beginnings? Where were you born? I was born in Brittany, California. Oh. And I moved up here when I was five. What were your parents' names? Roland Houston and Elizabeth Burto. I think you brought a photo of your father? Yeah. I haven't seen him for a long time. He passed away about ten years ago. Oh, well, there's the soul. You're lucky. Wonderful. It looks like Errol Flynn. Yeah, he was his double for four or five pictures. Amazing. What year is this now? It's like the thirties. It looks like the thirties, yeah. It's a wonderful photo. Wonderful photo. And then you have a photo of your mother? Yeah. The mother was also, she was a model in LA at the time. So she's just the one version. Maybe you can point to your mother. She's someone in there. Let's see. She's right. Close that. What was your mother's name? Her stage name is Beebe Hughes. Wow. Her stage name is Elizabeth Burto. So that kind of says why they were living in Burbank and why you were living in LA. Yeah, yeah. They were definitely in the film. Then you moved, then the family moved to the Bay Area? To San Francisco. Right off the Panhandle. What street? Well, I lived off of Broadway, but I think, I'm not sure exactly where the house was because I was so small at the time. I don't remember. Sure. But it was, I used to go to the Panhandle almost every day. You remember being a child walking through the park in the Haydashburg? Yeah. My mother's a little Chinese store down at the bottom of the house we used to live in. Again, that's my first experience with being told not to take things off the shelves. So yeah, that's one of my first memories. And how old were you about then? About five. About five or six. Later on in your life, you became quite musical. Yeah. What instrument did you play? I'm a saxophone player. What inspired you to get into saxophone? At the time, you see, when I was, I guess, seven or eight or something, my father, you know, I had a stepfather too. My stepfather was a jazz musician who played with Art Pecker. So, you know, I used to listen to him play all the time. And so when I became about seven or eight years old, I really wanted to play saxophone. Wow. And so they started me on trumpet, of course, in school. And then I finally got my parents to get me a saxophone. From that point on, I took private lessons and kept playing. Super. Yeah. You went to high school. Yeah, I went to Galileo High School. In 72. In 72, yeah. And when do you remember first walking down Haight Street in its heyday, the Strait Theater, the Drug Store Cafe, the Boot Hook, all these things? Yeah. In the 65, 64, we used to buy matchboxes from a corner liquor store. And that was around the hit over there, Haten Cole. Matchboxes? Like cars? No. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Matchbox. Okay. There's reason to come here. Yeah, that was our reason to come today. I lived in North Beach at the time. I went over to high school. So we used to drive out here and score. And then from that point on, I moved here down Broadway Street. I lived in Broadway from 1965. Between 65 and 66, until I think early 70. Wow. 71. So you were right here? Yeah, I was right through the pile of it. So what was it like to walk down the street? It was great, man. People were friendly. At first, nobody had long hair. Right. I mean, this image of everybody had long hair. We looked straight. But the people here were cool people that were straight. But none of them were becoming cool. And it's kind of interesting because I remember the whole transition. Everybody's hair started growing. It was interesting. It's a big change. Yeah, there were so many of us. There was thousands and thousands. Now you see kids get out of high school when it's just a couple thousand here and there. Sure. Graduating class was 1,500. My graduating class was 5,000. Right. 4,500 and it had three terms. Right. It's a one school year. Wow. That's how big our graduating class was. Wow. The hate was just packed. Packed. Yeah. It was unbelievable. Come out here and whatever it was at your age, you know. Sure. So we all hung out, partying. You go to Golden Gate Park. Oh, yeah. I went to Hippie Hill. I used to hang out there. Come to play. I finally got some of my first jobs and I started playing professionally. You know, I played with a couple of guys on Broadway Street. Got some work. Then I got a job with a continue to turn and Van Morrison. I played. We do a studio musician. Yeah. Yeah. Super. I wouldn't call it a studio musician because the term used to mean that nine to five in LA and you got called to do specific things. Right. It wasn't like that. It was like Marty Bell needed a saxophone player so I would come and play three or four songs right now. Exactly. Or Van Morrison was just in town. I wanted a saxophone player so I played two horns for him at the same time. Sure. Wow. And I did that for two or three years. There was a band called Aum that Bill Graham was really into at the time. So they, my band was breaking up at the time which was called Woom. So I took my band with Aum and Tobias and they still called it Aum. And then Bill Graham basically managed and promoted the band for years. So I went through all over the country with them. Did they change their name or did they stay? Aum stayed. No, Aum stayed as Aum. They were like the same period of time as Santana came up. Right. When they first got signed that's the same period of time. Right. Right. So when, when, Like the second wave. The second wave. That's what they used to call it. Right. You know, the first wave was, you know, the dead and the airplane and stuff like that. Quake, silver. Yeah. And the second wave was Santana. Right. So it was that period of time. Right. It was the San Francisco sound, the early 60s that moved into the second wave. Yes. Did you, were you ever in a band that you played all the time that you had a name? Like, yeah. Were you in a band? I played in a band in Morrison for four years. And we're, when you, I know a story where you were at the Strict Theater that used to be on cool. Yeah. And a lot of the times the streets were closed. Yeah. And music would happen on a flatbed truck. Yeah. Do you remember any of these days? Yeah. Very well. First thing is, Kaysan used to promote most of the free shows. So before Kaysan, it was just the flatbed truck and the Grateful Dead occasion used to roll out of the band handle and play on a Sunday. Permits were easy to get at the time. You know, the amplification was very poor. There wasn't these huge stacks of speakers. Right. And it was mostly just a bunch of guys playing on a fatbed and all of a sudden three, four hundred and a thousand and fifteen or two thousand people. It was just because people would hear it. And it came, it wasn't because they knew that there was a huge event going on. Right. So they could hear it from miles away and so they started coming around. And then a straight, one interesting time was, I don't know if you remember, you remember when they had the riots? Yes. And the police came down and, hey, well what happened was they shot tear gas into the street and we were in the street theater with Helen Reznor. Yes. And we were playing that night. Supposed to be. I never had it. But anyway, you know, it was pretty bizarre. You know, everybody hit the ground. Then everybody ran outside and then the cops ran back inside. You know, it's like, it's like a yo-yo. They know which way to go. It was pretty wild. I remember myself being on the street and it getting crazy. And then the only place I could run was the straight theater. I mean, the doors are wide open and you run in and you go safe. Yeah. This seems like, you know, either way you couldn't win here. No, you couldn't. Because if you went out, you got busted. Right. They were sweeping pretty bad. They had patty wagons everywhere. So did you actually end up playing on the street? Oh, yeah. I played there four or five times. Not to see. Three or four times. You know the story of them not being able to get their dance bookkeepers permit. Oh, yeah. That they became a dance school. Yeah. And so basically when the public came in, they didn't buy a concert ticket. They bought, they got a dance card. Yeah. And sometimes it would have people teach some steps. And then the band playing was the music for the evening. That's how they got around it. I remember it. Yeah, I remember a lot of that. But what usually happened for us was when we played there, we played with Mother Earth. Oh, yes. And we also played with, oh, it's a different Texas, from Texas. And they had one. They played a lot for the chat a lot. I can't remember his name. Anyway, he slips my mind. But then it was Mother Earth played there, too. We played in that show. Stefan Wolfe, too. We played with Stefan Wolfe there. And usually we opened up. Right. And that's how it usually was. We'd be there with all the people. I was okay. I would step to the left. I would step to the right. It was like kind of a really corny. Okay. I said, okay. Do whatever you want to do. This is a school of hippiness. Right. I mean, they were just dancing all around. That was it. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Do you remember, like, you know, you were going to be playing at the straight. You're grabbing your sax and your home in your house. The whole, to tell someone watching this tape in the future, here you are, a musician. You go into the straight theater. It's a place where people get together in the community. You're going to see your friends. But you're also going to get to play some music. What kind of feeling was this in the air? What kind of... It was very different than it is now. Everybody was excited. All the time. I mean, no matter where you went, it was fresh and new and felt good. There was no speed in the area. Right. There was no hard drive at the time. Right. Basically just pot. You know, and it was cool. It was a real nice, kind of comfortable thing. Right. When speed and all the stuff came in the community, kind of ruined it for everybody. But in any way, for me, I lived on Roderick, and so if I was playing that night, we usually would go there early and do sound checks. So we'd get in early, probably two o'clock, three o'clock. So I would usually walk from Roderick to the straight. And I didn't like walking with my horns because it was kind of advertising myself as I'm walking. Right. Especially in Roderick Street, the time was a little bit... Harry. Yeah. So I used to have my buddies take my horns and I just usually would walk, or I'd leave it with the cooking manager. And then we'd get to the straight on two and do sound check. Usually a guitar player used to like to play like by himself. So I would come half an hour or so later so I had to deal with it. Right. You know. More time to chill. Yeah. And then I'd just hang out with everybody and we'd just sit up in the balcony and talk in BS. You know, it was like everything was happening. So I mentioned here about the K-San show about what happened in the park. You know, there's a piece of march that's going to be next weekend. You know, all these people were like continually talking about other events and things were going on. And it was just percolating. The whole area was percolating. And it seemed like almost everybody knew everybody. Right. Even though there were thousands of people. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's Dr. John. You know, there's Phillip. You know, it's like, you know, and then there's the Sandman. There's a guy called Sandman who used to hang out there a lot too. Great. Some of the other people you've played with are Nick Rabinaitis, Tina Turner, Benkald Wum. Yeah. Wum was one of the original bands that was in 1964 and 65. And we didn't really do too much until the very end of like 66, 67, playing the Abilion and the Fillmore. We played the Warfield also later. Wow. But yeah, we played all three of them actually. Do you remember any of the band members' names? Yeah. Greg Young was a guitar player. Ronald Blumaker, we did, she's looking good with Roger Collins. He was the drummer. Chris, Chris the bass player. Chris, I can't remember his last name. It's fine. And then Carol was the singer. Okay. Yeah. And she did pretty well. She went off and did a couple of folk songs. She had a little sign. Super. She was a folk artist. Super. But she didn't really do great, but she got signed on. Super. You've played other, as a musician, played other events, Raggy and the River. Oh yeah. Through the years. Well actually what happened was, you know, I did a lot of playing from 1965, 66, 67 and all the way until about 71 or two when my kids were born. So my son's a boot and dusty, kind of occupied my time. So, you know, I had to figure out where to make money other than just playing saxophone. Because it's hard for those kids to just play it. And also I got tired of the drugs side of it. So I started working as a stage manager too. Sure. So I was a stage manager. So I had stage managed all of these different shows. And then sound stage, Jerry Pfeiffer, originally said to me, hey Bootsman, you should start doing a little more of this. You know, I mean, everybody needs a good stage manager. He's the one that talked me into it. So he told me about the Cinco de Mayo that they were trying to plant it in Berkeley. So I went to the meetings and stuff and so it was really in together. So basically I got together with four or five of the guys. And it's superb. It just formed them. And Tony Mylon actually was part of that. So, you know, I actually hired Tony. And then what happened was we put this show together and it was a huge success. We did eight or nine of them. We did four or five in Berkeley at the Greek Theater. And then we did three or four more in San Jose. There was a real need for this at the time. Oh, it was a huge need. That part of the community totally being represented. Not at all. The whole Latin side was not being represented at all. And then while I was doing that, also we had a camera store. So we wanted to promote it. So we said, oh, why don't we do a free event? So we started North Beach Photographic Art Fair, which was a three-day event. 10,000 people per day came. How many booths? Well, we had 300 or four. It was huge. It was probably the largest event at that time. And then it just grew. Fourteen years we did it. And I just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then finally I got tired of doing it. So I passed it on to Chris Hughes and a couple of other friends. And my home board just went over to, and they called it the North Beach Fair. And so I kind of just bowed out. So that was the beginnings of that fair that happens every year? Yeah. Well, sometimes it's the right time. Yeah, it was the right time. See, in the right behind the river, I mean, myself and Doug Green, who was a promoter in the whole of the time. And Doug and I were really good friends. And basically, he needed somebody to help him put it together up there. So I came up and brought my crew from the city. Doug went all his crazy chainsaw guys. And we built these stages out of, you know, what's now called Frenchies Camp. Right. And so we built this whole area. We did, I said, Doug did like four or five shows as a family fog. And then Reggie and River started. And I went with Carol, so I set the crews up and I also set up the staffing. And so I staffed it all. And then I became production manager for 14 years. Right. So I did that for another 14 years. And then finally, again, I just said, hello, this, why not stir, maritime? That's right. There was, yeah, man, we need that. Well, I did a big benefit for Chad Holmes, who was the promoter for maritime. And raised him some, 90s, some thousand. Because he had just been ill? Yeah, he was very sick, yeah. So then everybody thought, hey, man, you actually used to do this for real, man. So I thought, okay, so let's see what happens. So we did maritime. And we did 2,000 shows in the maritime hall. 2,000 shows all together, not just in maritime. And then they decided the property was worth more than... What happened honestly was a combination of things. Yeah, the union wanted $30,000 a month. I was already paying $25,000 and I wouldn't pay it. That's almost too much. I mean, I said six of that shows, between five and six of that shows a month, which is very good. No, it's great. Yeah. And I'm going to be doing between 20 and 30 shows a month. Sure. And I couldn't make any money. I mean, it's cost me $90,000 just to keep the doors open a month. Just on payment. The property was starting to get more valuable than what you could do in the building. Well, I think they thought... The skywriters. Yeah, dot-comers and all that was going to do great numbers and they were going to get somebody to pay $30,000 a month there. And they found out when I left it, sorry, Charlie, there's nobody there. Plus, I had all the permits. They didn't have any permits. So, you know, it's a good place to entertain them. But so many people have spoke to have such great memories of that place. Oh, we do great, yeah. It's been a good time. And that's always something good to think about is that sometimes you've done something you don't realize hundreds of people have come. You know what's really wonderful? This is the wonderful thing. The wonderful thing is that all these musicians didn't get a chance to play at the established places. Right. We know who they are. Right. BGP and all the rest of them. Sure. They got to play at our place, which was punk, you know, which was hip-hop, which was raves, which was reggae. We basically kind of cornered all the alternative markets. And it was something more affordable sometimes for some of the young people. It was. A place where people could socialize. Yeah. I mean, considering your early days in the 60s and doing the stuff you did then, I think you, beyond production experience, ended up with community experience where you could help in public assemblage and understanding this, keeping people safe and how to promote a show. Well, the thing I do about promoting a show is to treat your audience with respect. Exactly. If you don't treat them with respect, then you're going to have problems. And they don't come back. They don't come back and, you know, you're going to have problems. Right. Like if you have a hip-hop show and you don't respect your audience, you're going to tear a place apart. You know what I mean? So you have some children. Yeah. What are their names? My wife's name was Kathy Houston. Her name was Kathy Tranvala. And then my son was Booth Houston and my other son was Dusty Houston. So does he boot? Your boots and his boot? Yeah. Yeah, his boot. No confusion. And they worked with me all the way through Maritime. Actually, Booth and Dusty are very involved. I think you brought a picture of him. Yeah. Yeah. And your wife, too. And your wife recently passed on and I'm sure she's here with us. But we all love her very much and still do. She's a great lady. A great lady. Let's take a close-up. So the one in the blue there was Dusty and the one on the black shirt is Booth and the one in the middle is my wife, Kathy. Kathy, beautiful shot. Where's that taken? That was a wedding. Okay. Our cousin just got married. Great. Yeah. Super. She actually lived in the Hague for a long time, too. What roundabout years? 66, 67. And they're really... She's one of the barefoot babes. Browns are barefoot babes, too. Did your paths cross ever? Yeah, they cross in strange ways. You know, I picture a picture I can a couple times and I try to pick her up at the back in the film war and she wouldn't go with me. And then I picture a picture I can again a couple years later and from that point on we're together. That's meant to be. Yeah, it was. What are your boys doing now? Dusty's running the 2B1 Records. He's basically taking care of it all. My son, Booth, is doing mixing and editing. He's just sent all the stuff to KRS One. Great. What are you doing in your life right now? I'm basically editing and producing DVDs and CDs. We have a record label. We put out a wish on it. We have a website. 2B1Records.com and it's like our history's got 2B1 history on it, too. Which is pretty interesting. If you get a chance, you should check it out. Yes, I'd love to. You can see all the alternate aspects of the music business. Totally. So some of your ideas in the future. Do you see any dreams that haven't been fulfilled yet? We're rocking, man. There's lots of dreams that haven't been fulfilled. The first thing is, I would like to see musicians get a chance to play. I'm sick and tired of not getting a chance to play. And I'm very tired of the registrations not playing their music. And I can tell you that it shows so badly in our community right now. Because what's going on is these great players that should be getting notified that they're not coming up to rank so we've got no new music. All we've got is this old 60s, 70s, 80s junk. I hate to say it. I consider it to be junk now because it's now 2000. We don't hear it not hearing anybody. We're not hearing any of the people coming up to rank. So basically we have a stale music scene. And it's sad. It's totally sad. What was so great about San Francisco was that the radio stations played local music. They would do it. They would take a chance and do it. Same thing with the TV stations. You could go on to channel 20 or channel 44 and then you could actually get time. They would actually interview you. There was Melba Davis who did all sorts of great interviews on channel 9. What do you think we could do? But now there's none of that. So you wonder why the music business is stale? Well it's because no one's bringing anybody up to ranks. And that's sad. You need a new radio station. You need a community radio station. And that's one of the things we've been doing. Wonderful. We've got a community radio station going on. A bunch of guys doing dance. How could they find you if they were turning their down? They only had 2.5. Until they shut us down. Until they shut you down. So you could get support from the communities saying they want you there. That helps getting you licensed. Yeah, I've actually applied already for the FCC license. And I'm expecting it will probably grant it. But it takes a while. It takes a while. Yeah. It's already been 90 months in the process. And what would you do on your show? We give some of this new talent a chance. Yeah. Our music. The first thing we've been doing is taking my hip hop acts. I'd say, for instance, the earthlings. Everything's underground or a misty journey. Give them a night. So they spend all the stuff that they want to play. Stuff that they like and influence them. And then they talk about their situations and what's going on. And then they play their own music too. And their buddy's music. So what happens is all this new music all of a sudden is being played by the guys that are making it. And it's great. And you can hear what's influencing it. They've got a pretty large crowd of 15,000 or 2,000 people. Wow. Yeah. So we're doing that on Thursday nights. And then on Friday nights we have a rave night kind of. And right now they're doing the German bass. And I don't know if you know who Eric is, but Eric Moda. He's pretty famous in their world. And he's been bringing all these other DJs in to do their own show. So every Friday, Thursday, actually, excuse me, it's actually Saturday night now that we're doing it. I've got Friday nights. Which is tonight. What do you do? I'm doing reggae stuff. I'm doing reggae and jazz. Wonderful. Great. Yeah. So I mix a little bit in between them all. Great. That's great. It's kind of rude music. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a huge archive of stuff. And we put out some 40 albums and actually 12 DVDs at the moment. We signed 23 new ads. That's super. So I mean we're putting them out. And we have over 2,000 shows archived. So I just go back to the archives, grab the good moments, you know. Right. And then we play the new moments and talk about what's going on. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. If it's quite a lot of energy and I've been doing these interviews and you have the same passion that many people have. It's unique to you. This passion that people have when they're around music and creative things and things that can come into being that touch many people. It's not a small thought. It's a thought that then touches a thousand other thoughts. And I'm wondering this tape will be archived in the San Francisco Library. And I am interested in 50 years from now when this tape is viewed by some young people. Maybe at this point the world would take your advice. What advice? And they would listen. The words are not just being thrown out of the water. Coming through all of this. Coming through your early beginnings. The Hit Ashbury scene. The production scene. The music scene. Dealing with large crowds of people. Focusing on things that, like I say, give people a chance, you know. There's a passion, I feel, a thread in what you're doing and what I see you still doing. What kind of inspiration? What advice would you give to young people? First thing is compassion. I think everybody needs to show compassion. I think they need to show it all the time, continuously. The next thing is I think they should really follow what they believe. And it's hard for a young kid to know what you believe and what you don't. Because you're being molded in all sorts of different elements around you. But you can tell the original and the pure thought from how they feel inside yourself. So if you have a feeling that you like art and you're an artist and you draw and you're doing a math class or you're doing an English class that's pushing your head in those directions, don't forget about your art. Don't forget about your drawing ability. Don't stop and forget about your music capabilities. A lot of people can hear music but just never develop. They don't even play piano. They don't do nothing. Just kind of come see, come saw. That's what it is. I think my advice to anybody listening to this tape would be to take their talent and just manifest it as much as they possibly can. And then the other thing is to keep their heart pure. Because the more that you do in this life, the more you become tainted and twisted and all sorts of outside pressures come down on you. And if you can keep your heart pure and online and straight, then you have a chance to actually make a difference. The light come through? Yeah, yeah. It comes shining forth. And then one of the biggest things that I would like to see everybody really do is stop saying yes to everybody. I think it's time that people start saying no. I think it's time to say no whenever you don't feel it's right. And I think no is a really important word that most of our society's forgot. Right. And when you say yes, minute. Yeah. Well, it's okay when you read a book or somebody says to you, you know, hey, you got to park here. You just say no. Okay, I don't want to park here. I'm not going to park here. And I have a right not to park here. Okay, I won't park here. And instead of saying you have to park here. You don't have to go yes and you say no. So you're saying make your own choices. Yeah. Think about your choices. Yeah. And I'm saying basically it's okay to say no. That's right. Instead of only saying yes all the time. And I think no has, yes has a good thing to it too. But I think no is an important word that our society needs to learn. And needs to remember. Actions happen after you've said something. Yeah, well, if you say yes all the time, then all the things around you that are bad will keep manifesting. Sure. If you say no to it, then all of a sudden, You put power, you stopped it. Yeah, you stopped it. Everything's starting to change right now. Exactly. But then you've got to be careful how hard and how much you say no. That's right. Well, I really want to thank you Boots for being part of this. And you are part of this as I see. So many people contributed and so much energy and you're still doing it and you're continuing to inspire. It's a pleasure talking with you. And we will be calling you back in informally or more things as this library grows and this information is shared with many other libraries. I just want to say thank you so much for being here and sharing your story because what we need is first-hand stories for people who were there, who were part of the scene, made it happen, and are continuing to make it happen. So thank you so very much for being part of this. It was fun.