Guerneville’s Safeway parking lot at dusk on Wednesday was filled with unexpected echoes from a pre-pandemic era that evoked tie-dye visions, sweet marijuana smoke, wah-wah reverb and psychedelic flashbacks. Invisible waves of electric wails, riffs and runs drifted over the parked cars, masked shoppers, taco truck patrons and the curious. The scene was an unexpected and intoxicating break from the lengthening months of our coronavirus shutdown and separated existence.
What was happening was another musical pop-up by the west county’s Inyan Kin, a collective of musicians who offer “rock n’ roll medicine” to all-comers. The group — this week a trio of Joe Willis (Vox Spitfire electric guitar), Geena Rae (viola) and Ethan Marenco (drums) — is now playing street jams every Wednesday in Guerneville and also on Fridays at dusk in Occidental. Sometimes the group expands to five or six players and has ventured elsewhere to Santa Rosa and farther (virtually.) The musicians often travel in their Sacred Source Bus, a re-purposed school bus painted in psychedelic colors and patterns that evoke the Grateful Dead and Merry Pranksters. As the open fiddle case fills with tossed in dollar bills, the music goes on until dark.
