Live music returns to Glen Ellen

Two weeks back, there was live music at the Jack London Saloon for the first time in 40 years. Decades ago, a live band played at the other end of the polished oak bar near where the big screen is now. But Wednesday, T-Luke & the Tight Suits rocked their New Orleans-style Cajun/zydeco tunes in the pool room, the ideal location for a little swing dancing. The “fresh, bluesy, soulful, down-home sound” of Lucas Domingue on guitar and accordion, was reminiscent of Gator Beat, led by Lucas’s dad Richie Domingue. Around Glen Ellen for a couple generations, the Domingue family have heavy Louisiana roots that resonate in their music. Other local musicians sitting in and rocking the rafters that night included Beau Bradbury from the California Honey Drops, Jake Bradbury on guitar, Sean Carscadden, Bruce Gordan and others.

The new owner of the Saloon, Mehul Patel, has added some tasteful signage and replaced a door or two. Word on the street is there may be regular Wednesday night live music soon – stay tuned.

Also new this winter: On Mondays, there is an unusually mouth-watering pop-up bar menu by Justine Horn. Mondays only, noon to 9 p.m., like no “bar food” you have ever had.

This is the finest little tavern west of the Mississippi with a long and noteworthy past. It is housed in the red-brick Chauvet Building built in 1905 by Joshua Chauvet, out of common bricks from the California Brick and Pottery Company Brickyard nearby. Bob Glotzbach, in “Childhood Memories of Glen Ellen,” says it was occupied originally by Cobbs Grocery. A few years later in 1917, Theodora Meglen “opened up a store in the Chauvet Building, the brick building next to the cannon” which also housed the post pffice before it moved across the street to the Poppe Building.

Next door, where the Wolf House restaurant (and recently Umbria) was located, was the renowned Buck’s Place in the 1950s, with the slogan “The Buck Stops Here.” During Prohibition, according to Milo Shepard in “Childhood Memories,” Buck’s Place had an ice cream parlor façade. There were panels behind it that opened up where he kept the booze. “One time when the Feds came to talk to Henry (Buck), the wine was seeping out and down the back of the bar so they arrested him.”

In the late 1970s, two guys drinking in the Rustic Inn across the road were daring each other to perform increasing dangerous stunts, as the drinks kept coming. At some point, one agreed to go to his private plane, and proceeded to buzz the Rustic in his bi-plane, landing nose first in Cecilia Muller’s house at the south edge of the Brickyard circle (now Robertson Road) next to the Lodge, and not living to tell the tale. Or so the story was told to me.