FST's 'The Music of Laurel Canyon' is a rhapsodic time trip

Game-changing artistic movements often spring from artists’ hangouts. Laurel Canyon was one of them. Back in the 1960s, it was a low-rent refuge for low-paid musicians in the Hollywood Hills outside Los Angeles. 

Its residents included David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn, Michelle Phillips, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Don Henley. These beautiful neighbors made beautiful music together. And spawned the folk rock-movement without even trying. “The Music of Laurel Canyon” offers a smattering of their songs on the FST cabaret stage.

Buffalo Rome is the band behind that music. Their lineup sometimes shifts. On the night of my review, Miles Aubrey is the light-fingered lead guitarist, Mark Schaffel is on electric keyboard and Michael Visconti plays the heartstrings of rhythm guitar. There’s no lead singer; they’re all great singers. The trio’s a solid band — a real band, not an ad hoc ensemble.

Their music kicks in with The Byrds' “Turn, Turn, Turn,” Roger McGuinn’s dream of freedom from 1965. Next up, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” (1966) is a nightmare of counterculture paranoia. Stephen Stills penned that panegyric after LA cops busted adolescent heads in the curfew riots outside Pandora’s Box nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. 

Frank Zappa’s “Plastic People” (1967) gives that skull-cracking incident a nod. Zappa lived in Laurel Canyon, too — though you won’t hear his music here. You will hear heaping helpings of Neil Young — including “Cinnamon Girl” (1970) and “Heart of Gold” (1972). 

Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” (1970) is an effervescent, love-me-don’t-leave-me song. Stills wrote the sweet suite; Judy Collins was the blue-eyed lady in question. She’d threatened to leave him; Stills’ tune was a musical plea to make her stay. (It didn’t work. Collins left.) 

Breakups aside, the lush vocals of CSN and CSNY (after Young joined the band) found a sweet spot between The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The Laurel Canyon band’s intricate, heavy-duty harmonies are easy on the ears, but tough to duplicate. (One wrong note makes you sound like a lousy barbershop quartet.) But Buffalo Rome has the vocal chops to get it right. Their first act ends on that note. It’s a tough act to follow.

Laurel Canyon’s folk-rock tunes still bubble with joy in Act Two. But there’s a subtext of sadness beneath their joyful surface. Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes” (1972) is a lament for seeing the world with open eyes. 

On the bright side, Stills’ “Love the One You’re With” is a happy tune with zero subtext. But it does have a not-so-subtle message. It’s basically the anthem of every sleazy pickup artist ever born. (No wonder Judy Collins split.) On the sad side, Stills’ “Monday, Monday” is an anthem of permanently lost love. (Instant karma, perhaps.) 

On the other side of Laurel Canyon, Don Henley and Glenn Frey penned a bevy of ballads for this band called The Eagles. Buffalo Rome’s selections include “Take it Easy” (1972),“Desperado” (1973) and “Take it to the Limit” (1975). 

Fun fact! Henley evidently stole CSNY’s recipe for harmonic honey. He studied the band, reverse-engineered their sound and then hooked up with Frey to duplicate it — with a Nashville twist. 

Thanks to their genre alchemy, folk rock begat country rock. And CSNY begat the Eagles. (The sonic similarity is obvious, though I’d never noticed it before.) The band thinks that lineage a good thing, but I don’t. I’d tell you why, but Eagles fans might throw me in the trunk of a bright red Ford and drive me off to nowhere. So let’s skip that part.

Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” (1970) is the show’s penultimate number. It sounds happy, but it’s really a cocktail of regret — a fitting elegy to hippie paradise lost. Charlie Manson and the Hell’s Angels had killed the counterculture’s dreams of freedom the year before. The hip crowd knew the Age of Aquarius wasn’t coming. No revolution, only parking lots and pollution. Bummer.

Happily, there are no bummer notes in this show — it’s upbeat from start to finish. Laurel Canyon’s folk-rock tunes had plenty of downer lyrics. When Buffalo Rome plays them, even the sad songs will make you smile.

But forget the musical mood. Remember the musicians.

Buffalo Rome is a damn good band. And they deliver a damn good show. Their folk-rock tunes aren’t good because they’re old. They’re just plain good. They know it, and that’s the way they play it. That’s why their show’s so good.

It’s a musical time trip to the folk-rock echoes of Laurel Canyon. And a shot of 200-proof nostalgia for boomers who grew up with those songs. You’ll have a blast if you heard them on your crappy car radio in 1970. You’ll still have a blast if your aging hippie parents dragged you to FST — and you’re hearing them for the first time in 2024.

Peace, baby.