California Slim: The Music, the Magic, and the Madness

The story begins in 1962 with Andy and his then unknown banjo teacher, a young Jerry Garcia, finger picking in a back room at a music studio in Palo Alto, and ends in 1980 with Andy sharing joints and good times with the Willie Nelson Family. A skinny six-foot-seven-inch Jewish kid (later known as “California Slim”), Andy divided his time between the usual adolescent interests and music, for which he would go on to provide a capital M by promoting and staging concerts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. His Palo Alto nightclub, Homer’s Warehouse, across the street from Stanford University, brought revolutionary musicians to young sensibilities hungry for new driving rhythms.