The unique Blues Americana rock band Dirty Cello has played in unusual venues across the globe, from a vacant fish factory to an American-themed festival in Iceland, the bottom of a cave and a nudist resort. Now, they’re coming to Sebastopol to play at HopMonk on March 11 and 12 in celebration of their new album, “Dirty Cello Smokes the 60s.”
“We have toured all over the world, China twice, Israel, the bottom of a cave, to Iceland and we perform a very high-energy and fun mix of music,” said Rebecca Roudman, the band lead and lead cellist. “The HopMonk Sebastopol is one of our favorite places to play. It’s great because there’s seating, but there’s also room to dance if you want to. There’s easy parking, it’s comfortable and you can have dinner beforehand.”
The new album features cover songs of classic rock tunes from music icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Rolling Stones.
“Our album release is going to be a crazy fun experience. We are going to be playing songs from the 60s as loud and as fun as you can imagine. When we put on a concert, we like to think of it more as an experience, so we step on stage with basically a bunch of songs in our repertoire. Then we start rocking and we see what the audience likes, so there’s not really a pre-planned set of music,” Roudman said.
For instance, if the audience wants to hear Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, they’ll start playing Clapton and Hendrix songs. The band is also unusual in that the cello is the lead instrument. According to Roudman, the cello doesn’t sound like your average cello — it sounds like a rocking guitar.
Roudman, who’s from Marin County, said over the years the band has frequently performed in Sonoma County.
“It’s always a warm audience and it’s always fun and you never know what to expect,” Roudman said of Sonoma County crowds. “And, the HopMonk is one of those places where everybody is ready to have a good time. They’re ready to go see a good show and that’s why we love Sonoma. They’re ready to get out there and hear great music.”
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the band has been able to continue to tour and share their music with the world, although they did have to get a bit creative in thinking where they could safely play.
“We were the first band back to Iceland after quarantine, the first American band, and all the concerts we had there were pretty unique and unusual and there was this one place that decided to hold an American cowboy festival in our honor,” Roudman said.
Festival goers dressed up in what they thought the average American wears: camouflage and cowboy hats.
“They gave us what they thought an American meal would be, so we had a baked bean barbeque and a beer drinking contest. It ended up being an amazingly weird and fun show. One of the other concerts in Iceland we found ourselves playing at was an old fish processing plant,” she said.
Roudman said the venue still had a faint odor of processed herring.
“Except for three weeks, we’ve been performing the last couple of years, but we’ve had to get really creative about the concerts. We had to play in safe locations, so we play at buffalo ranches, we play at apple orchards,” she said.
In the early days of COVID during the lockdowns, they even once played for the animals at the Oakland Zoo. Roudman read that animals in zoos were missing the company of visitors during the lockdowns and so she called the Oakland Zoo and asked if they could come play.
“The elephants were not interested. We did end up playing with this little parrot named Broc, short for Broccoli, and we started playing the blues and he perfectly sang along,” Roudman said.
During the COVID-related closures, one place that didn’t close were nudist resorts, according to Roudman, and so they ended up playing at such a resort. During their show at the resort, the attendees were wearing masks — so technically they weren’t entirely nude. She said it still made an impression though.
“Our clothes were firmly on and at the resort their masks were on. It was a very fun experience. We learned that maybe playing fast Bluegrass wasn’t the way to go — it kicked everything up a notch because they were out there dancing and then they brought out the hoola-hoops and that is just something you cannot unsee,” Roudman said between bouts of laughter.
Origins of Dirty Cello
Roudman is a classically trained cellist and performs with the Santa Rosa Symphony and the Oakland Symphony. Her interest in playing the cello with more of a rock feel started in college when she would play in people’s rock bands and with singer/songwriters.
“I was always kind of playing these long boring notes and I was kind of jealous of seeing everybody up there — the lead performers singing and having a great time or seeing a guitar player shredding — and I thought, ‘I want to do that,’” Roudman said.
So, she tried it out with her partner and husband Jason, who’s the band’s guitar player.
“We started off just the two of us playing in cafes where we’d get paid in pastries and eventually we started getting a fanbase and our popularity grew and we had to add more members to the band because we were getting bigger theaters to play in and now we’re a touring band and having a lot of fun touring these different places all over the world,” she said.
The band has now been together for 11 years. She said now that the world is in a better place with COVID, she hopes people will come out and party with them at the HopMonk Sebastopol.
“We’ll give them a great time,” Roudman said.
Tickets for the HopMonk show can be purchased on the Dirty Cello website or on the HopMonk Sebastopol website.
