i'm slim critchlow and i'm interviewing ronnie cato from the red victorian who's the host there and he's got a tremendous thing going on every friday well why don't you tell us about it i mean basically it's it's called the red brick sessions it's a friday night weekly friday night music showcase five to six artists a night they play roughly you know half an hour to forty minutes  are original or covers is fine usually it's a free show there's no cover to doing it for about five years now that's a lot it's been going pretty well i still enjoy it and we have some really local great local talent coming through there so it's been a really enjoyable spirit yeah well i remember when i started you know filming these open my ex and i was looking for other places in san francisco and i just kind started following the the artists from the utah and then they said oh well come check out the cafe international so i went there and then i did a little bit more searching around and i found out that they all kind of seem to end up playing the red vic because well you know in an open mike you got a song maybe two in the red vic you have like your whole half hour it's like you're feature set you have like you know five or six people doing feature sets so any every time i wanted to go and really find someone who who played and didn't deliberate little bit more in depth about what their music was i just go to their the red vic and it's very nice environment they're a very nice place and how did you start that just i played as as wanting to play there i wasn't even thinking about hosting anything so when i and i never been to there at that before that so i said when i went to check it out i noticed the big space they had in there in there in the front there and and it was closed off and no lights were on and it was dark and it is this no one ever uses that space so so i thought ok that's very strange you thought i'm where i hope i'm here on haight street right and with all the people walking by for you know the whole sixty's thing in you know there used to be a place to play it so i thought ok well this is a great room i have a sort of you know i built a network of friends that i had met through different open mics and playing in different venues and while i was in a band in the ninety's and so i thought ok i'll i'll take this on in a i'll do it once a month i said i'll try to once a month and see how it works so my first show i played the show i had scott robertson play the show james  oore james moore play the show and so we did sort of the first couple shows together just to see what it was going to be like and now everyone's yeah levering to come down and then out or months basically the word  got out hotel utah crowd sort of a lot of those artists sort of finding out about it so i started getting a lot of emails requesting people to play and then i decided ok well i'm going to switch this to a weekly event and so far it's worked out very well we've been able to you know i have some repeat performers but generally we have path and have been able to still bring in a lot of new people while maintaining the local you know the local scene so you know yeah well it's a great great place for someone who's coming up and even established artists to play because you know on a friday night in the city playing with you know several other people there you get to play thirty thirty five minutes maybe forty minutes right of all your stuff talk about your background or your you're a musician had when you were young when did you decide that you were going to do music or you i mean everybody kind of says oh yeah well i really really liked it when i was like of blues out way my mom as well she studied piano in school in her in her younger years and so they always they didn't push me to play music but music was always around the house always playing music we always had music well that's always the best way the most incredible musicians i know their parents were involved in music and because a lot of parents are like get a job you know we don't want you we don't want you doing that there's were there i mean they definitely they didn't they didn't discourage me they didn't exist exactly encourage me i mean they still assumed i would get a job being a doctor a church or a lawyer or as a computer tech or something like that something that that was a guaranteed money maker right but it turned out you know about you know elementary school i started playing music i picked up a clarinet i played clarinet all through that was your first instrument was my first instrument i actually didn't pick up a guitar until i was in college my first year of college i started playing guitar just because my progression just built from there are just the more chords or learn the more songs i can play and i could start to write songs that had those chords and sure just grew out of that speaking of writing when did you first what was your first song or or when you when did you feel that you because i mean i wrote some stuff and i was like yeah sixth grade or something but i wouldn't really say oh yeah that was my first well i mean i lived in hayward during that during the early part of the ninety's i was in college at the time in a few my roommates were were all musicians like we all played in high school and things like that and we decided ok let's let's form a band so we'll start writing you know we were going to play right away because we had to figure out how to do that but we just start writing songs in just experimenting with that and we would practice at home because we all live there so we could just you know had a drummer and bass player and a guitar so we had mikes and everything so we'd sit there and just work out some songs we did for about a year actually for young people he never played out like officially played we played like in the house what was everybody in the house in the band a music professional right now and that i mean you're an instructor your teacher right when did you decide well i'm going to make this my life's work well sort of it was a minor szell decision i always had the belief that you know you really can't teach music it to be convincing as a teacher you sort have to have some experience or nearby oh so you know what you're talking about and so you know you can actually say what really is happening versus what you learned in the book right so you know i had the opportunity to work  brother he's actually a teacher in the district as well and he is he went straight into music instruction and he taught at a high school and i started helping with his program so i did that for a couple of years working with high school kids while you were in college was in college and the experience was great i mean that's when i realized ok this is something i can actually do because i always doubted whether i could actually just do it but i didn't feel like i was qualified even though i'd been playing music you know for that long i just i just thought teaching was all i mean you gotta love it you know you got to want to do it obviously to do it is worth you know if you really want to build a fanbase because that i think for musician that's the hardest thing especially if you're a solo musician if you're in a band you have more people involved so you can draw upon more you have more fingers to reach different people and bring them all the one place if you're one single musician you have to cover the same ground if you want all those people to show up their shows plus if it's like my space i mean every time you send out in something there it's just like everybody else has been everybody else is playing that night how could they possibly come to your gigs so you really have to press upon face to face i mean even with all the technology around is still really matters that you go out to other people shows you walk up to them and talk to them after the show you make contact with them so they feel that you you know there's a bond so you think you're saying that if you're trying to get other people to come to your shows you need to go to their shows make them feel bad well or are something you know are able to get or make them feel like oh well they came to my show and i should return the favor because they're in the same boat as you and they if they if they truly appreciate that you took the time to come out to their show to support them it's just a supporting thing so it's building in a vironment or a community where people support that's sort of what we try to try to create there relaxed environment where you can feel comfortable to try out things don't feel a lot of pressure but you get a limited amount time you can buy a bunch of friends there you know it's more like just it's almost like a house it's like a cross between a house concert and a cross between an open mike just like combining the two yeah that's really the the bible try to go for iranian i want to thank you for all the people who get to come to the red victoria and you know get to play their stuff and you have a nice place in san francisco in brighton invite all their friends out and thanks for the interview thank you to all right you heard it here ronnie cato read victorian if you ever see him or hear hear him pla