It’s an unlikely location for one of the best music venues in America: a converted quonset hut in the middle of a design district populated largely by high-end furniture stores, beauty salons, and art galleries. But Solana Beach nightclub Belly Up Tavern has proven its value simply through longevity: This September, the 600-capacity room celebrates its 50th anniversary.
The list of acts who’ve played the Belly Up is impressive—everyone from rock icons the Rolling Stones to blues legends such as Etta James and hometown stars like Blink-182. But while secret shows and high-dollar fundraisers by the Killers, Jimmy Buffett, and others have drawn headlines, what makes the Belly Up work is consistently strong bookings of mid-level touring and local acts across a broad spectrum of musical genres.
That’s exactly what you’ll find among the 50 shows planned for the club’s summerlong anniversary series. From hip-hop adventurists Michael Franti & Spearhead (July 24) and indie-rock heroes Spoon (Aug. 4–5) to reggae masters Steel Pulse (Aug. 31) and “ethnotronica” outfit Beats Antique (Sept. 14), there’s something for just about everyone in this three-month run.
“The Belly Up is a little engine that could,” says Chris Goldsmith, who’s been overseeing music at the club since 2006 and was named its president in 2017. Across five decades, Goldsmith estimates that “there’s half a million people who have been to the club, and many of them have had very special memories there. So we really wanted to be as inclusive as possible.”
Founder Dave Hodges, who still owns the building, had much more modest goals when he and Greg Gilholm opened the Belly Up on September 28, 1974. A historical timeline recently added to its website covers lots of details about the early days, including the first live-music event (Feb. 18, 1976, with bluegrassers Squatters Last Rights) and the 1977 addition of a papier-mâché shark that still hangs over the bar.
Goldsmith cites the late Mac Falk, who began as the club’s sound engineer before becoming its talent buyer, for helping the Belly Up expand beyond Hodges’ beloved blues artists to reggae, soul, and other genres in the 1980s. Not long after Steve Goldberg and Phil Berkovitz bought the club from Hodges in 2003, they brought in Goldsmith, a renowned producer who’s won Grammys for his work with Ben Harper, Charlie Musselwhite (who plays the anniversary series on Aug. 22), and Blind Boys of Alabama.
Still, Goldsmith is hardly the longest-tenured employee at the club. Bar manager Claudia Garrity has been there 40 years, and at least a half-dozen others have cleared three decades.
Many musicians say that one reason for the club’s success is how well the staff treats performers. “They just took such good care of us,” Encinitas resident Cindy Lee Berryhill recalls of the first time she played the club 30 years ago. When, a few weeks ago, folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott had to cancel a show that Berryhill was scheduled to open, talent buyer Chad Waldorf allowed her to host a songwriters circle in its place.
Singer-songwriters Molly Jenson and Rheanna Downey, who recently formed duo Shhhhh played the Belly Up in May as part of an all-local triple bill, both say they were inspired by seeing some of their favorite artists play the club. Jenson recalls watching the Mother Hips there a few decades ago and thinking, “If I were to ever make music, I want to play here.”
“It was the same thing for me,” Downey says. “As I was developing as a musician, I was like, ‘That’s where I want to play. That’s the goal.’”
Jenson appeared with Poway country upstart Sam Outlaw in a 2018 performance that was filmed for Live at the Belly Up, an hour-long music program that begins its eighth season on local public-TV station KPBS this fall. Then there’s Belly Up Live, a digital-only record label that began as a download outlet for live recordings from the club and has since transitioned to streaming.
But it’s the concerts themselves that remain the Belly Up’s focus. As the 50th anniversary series got rolling in mid-July, locals packed the place for the 13th annual Beat Farmers Hootenanny, followed by a transcendent performance the next night from Texas musician Alejandro Escovedo. After playing the Belly Up in the 1980s with cowpunk pioneers Rank and File and roots-rock band True Believers, Escovedo returned for his own shows in the 1990s and beyond.
“I’ve always said clubs are just buildings until someone inhabits them and makes them warm and welcoming,” Escovido said after his July 14 performance. “Musicians travel all over the country to play, often not making a whole lot of money. But the beauty of a night like tonight carries you through all kinds of stuff. And that’s all because of what they’ve done to support this kind of music.”
