Valley Queen at The Chapel (San Francisco, CA)

Valley Queen takes the leading role at The Chapel on Sunday, 23 April 2023.

Madeline Kenney warms up the former funeral home.

Hump Day News goes West to San Francisco.

Hump Day News landed in foggy San Francisco to cover a short spate of shows. Can we shake off our East Coast bias and hear with fresh ears what sound sounds like on the other side of the continent?

It’s indie music in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, not gamelans in Gambia. Not a problem. Musicians and clubs hit the same beats in San Francisco as they do in Boston: social media promotion (“ticket link in bio!”), bored door guys, too many IPAs on the beer list, peeved sound techs, friends and family who leave right after Jenny or Johnny or Josie performs.

Still, there’s a hint of something different in the air blowing through the bones of Alcatraz. Even with all the bloody carnage wrought within the city limits by Silicon Valley bozos, there’s a space for San Francisco bohos. Hump Day News broke out the notepad and knocked back a few beers to find out…

Names can be deceiving. You wouldn’t know from the name of the venue that The Chapel was a former funeral home.

Sure, funeral homes often have chapel-like rooms or alcoves to allow the bereaved space to mourn.

But we’re missing the forest for the trees, calling the venue after one of its parts, rather than a name more relevant to its larger purpose. Namely, storing dead people.

Alternate names for the music venue located in the former haunt of Gantner-Maison-Domergue Funeral Home?

Ghosts n Guitars?
Moogs n Maggots?
Six Feet Thunderroad?

We’re running on fumes here…

Madeline Kenney

Frontwoman Madeline Kenney rolled up on stage five-deep, complemented by a band that ran the gamut from saxophone to sampler. Later in the set she revealed that keys were her first love, and that’s how she started the show: a moody solo number on the ivories. When the full band kicked in, the sound was somewhere between Stevie Wonder and New Age prog, with a healthy jazz chaser. The crowd was treated to a new song (“Reality Mind”?) and a Dire Straits cover that pandered to someone’s dad. Maybe Madeline Kenney’s dad?

Valley Queen

Valley Queen may only have two albums to their name (‘sophomore’ means ‘second,’ dummy!), but they’ve already self-diagnosed as a “career support act.” All in good fun. The Los Angeles-based five-piece has supported some choice acts, but this tour they were the Pied Piper leading the pack.

Not a problem!

Shades of Joan Jett fronting My Morning Jacket. A real rock n roll soul beats at the heart of this band. And a penchant for alt tunings; frontwoman Natalie Carol remarked that the band had rocketed through “four tunings in an hour set,” which explains the serious amount of hardware on stage for only two acts. Guitar after guitar after guitar, and the band played on.

The band played plenty of tracks from their newly-released, full-length LP Chord of Sympathy. Maybe all that between-song string-wrangling was a settling-in period for playing out new material on the new album?

Extra points for the door guy who ditched his post to watch some (all?) of the Valley Queen set. Gushing afterwards, he proclaimed: “I’m a Valley Queen!” Higher praise, I do not know.