At the Fillmore in January 1997, where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers made their historic 20-night stand to reclaim their musical soul—and leave an indelible impression on their audience.
In January 1997, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 20-show run at the Fillmore fostered a village, a sense of communion, and something even rarer in the hyper-connected 21st century—organic, word-of-mouth buzz and street chatter. For me, it was a sort of homecoming, too. By ’97, I was a voracious musical omnivore, feasting with the maniacal vigor only a 20-something can muster. But though I was weaned on the stuff, very little of my intake in those days could be filed under classic rock. Still, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were dear to me. An older sister made me a fan, and the songs lived marrow-deep in my bones. When the band announced a run at the Fillmore, I pledged to go.
With Petty as host, the Fillmore show attendees were treated to a tour of American roots music, psychedelia, foundational rock ’n’ roll, and Heartbreakers’ hits and obscurities, plus guest appearances by Roger McGuinn, Carl Perks, and John Lee Hooker.
Photo by Steve Minor
Tickets disappeared fast, but my sister scored a few for a show early on in the run, and when the day came, we set up camp on Geary Boulevard sometime around mid-morning in hopes of a shot at the front row. We weren’t alone. Our day in line was hilarious in a beautiful, old San Francisco kind of way, which is to say full of randomness, bacchanalia, and various brands of benevolent psychosis. The new friends we met were capital “C” characters. The air was fragrant. And for several hours we partied together, ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes from the KFC down the block, traded concert stories, and talked about record collections. Standing in line, I noticed something else. If you could be bothered to be at the Fillmore preposterously early and spend hours of your life sitting on cold concrete at great risk of terrible disappointment, you had a shot at the 10-20 tickets the Fillmore kept in reserve. I took note, and thought that if the show was good I might give it a try another day.
I guess I wouldn’t be writing this now if that first show wasn’t pure joy. We did make it up to the front—well the second row, anyway. And for a few hours I stood right there at Tom and Mike Campbell’s feet. I had expected a special show, and that I would have a blast. But I went home that night buzzing. I felt the same the next day. And by the time the 20-show run was done, I’d seen four of them.
“Our day in line was hilarious in a beautiful, old San Francisco kind of way, which is to say full of randomness, bacchanalia, and various brands of benevolent psychosis.”
There is an inexplicable warmth and magic about the Fillmore. There are grander and prettier venues in the world. But few are as rich with ghosts and aura. It may look like a simple old dance hall, but the grand chandeliers, psychedelic posters, and red velvet always lend a sense of sanctuary. And when you imagine the figures that stood on that stage, and feel the weight of that history, it feels even more enveloping and spiritual. Up on stage, the Heartbreaker’s mountain of old equipment seemed at home amid the Fillmore’s gold and crimson glow. Tom and Mike’s blonde Fender Bassmans looked dusty and earthy. And if you squinted, the scene looked a little like the barn shot on the back of Neil Young’s Harvest recreated in a Victorian bordello.
One of the Heartbreaker’s motivations for the Fillmore was a desire to shed their showbiz sheen for a minute. Certainly, the Heartbreakers machine had taken on a kind of predictability in the years leading up to the Fillmore run. But whether they considered it or not, the Heartbreakers were also taking part in a great tradition of cultural dynamism and exchange—dating back decades to the migrations of the Byrds, CSNY, and, in a way, the Beats before them—that of shaking off the shackles and glitter fix of Hollywood and heading to the North Country to get loose. Not coincidentally, the atmosphere around the Fillmore shows had the uncanny feel of a Grateful Dead show. The environment was intensely positive and contagious, and the Fillmore hummed with the energy of a fantastic party, well before the Heartbreakers even took the stage.
The exterior of the Fillmore, with Geary Boulevard in front.
Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons
At each of the four shows I attended (each spent rapt, leaning on the stage at the feet of Mike Campbell), the band kicked off with a three-punch flurry of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (in the fashion of the Stones version), the 1987 nugget “Jammin’ Me,” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” which was traditionally a set closer. It takes a very confident band, sitting on a mighty cache of tunes, to come out swinging that hard. And as the band got cooking over the course of those first three tunes, you felt a giddy momentum and sense of movement gather in the crowd. From there, each show took its own shape, and on most nights the sense of anticipation and surprise pivoted around the set switch-ups and the covers the band threw in so effortlessly: JJ Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze and “Crazy Mama,” Mike Campbell taking solo turns on Ventures tunes and the Goldfinger theme, a beautiful, moody take on Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” the Zombies electric 12-string lament “I Want You Back Again,” and, in a nod to the creative conduit between L.A. and the Bay, the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil”
“The Fillmore hummed with the energy of a fantastic party, well before the Heartbreakers even took the stage.”
Then there were the guests. Roger McGuinn grinning as the band of assassins behind him summoned the amphetamine drive of “Eight Miles High” once again. Carl Perkins grinning even wider and devilishly, in real blue suede shoes, as he dazzled Campbell with his own very underrated and deadly picking. Guest turns can feel terribly contrived on big stages—just another showbiz move to get a few wows. But like so many other little moments at the Fillmore, these were peppered with spontaneity. I distinctly remember Mike Campbell laughingly waving away the clouds of pot smoke as Perkins, a classy gent and one of rock ‘n’ roll’s elder statesman, took the stage. And at one point during the McGuinn guest set, Campbell took the black Squier Telecaster he’d just used for “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and gifted it to one of the regulars from the line out on Geary. She hadn’t yet missed a show, another front-row lunatic told me. I suspect he hadn’t missed many himself.
If I am honest, when I listen to the Fillmore performances as they appear on the new release, they seem much smoother and more polished than anything I remember hearing on those four nights. Up in the front row, I was taking more than a little heat from Campbell’s Bassman and Kustom amps, not to mention a whole lot of drums and cymbal splash. It all sounded so incredibly raw and rambunctious. So, I can’t help but think about how cool it would be to have a go at that mix—to coax all the rowdy grit I heard from this weird Southern hippie amalgam of the Stones, Byrds, and Dead turned into a monster tavern cover band that growled, roared, laughed, and drove 1,300 souls to beaming happiness for 20 nights. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a feeling my old buddies from that line outside the Fillmore would really love it.
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Combining a ferocious fuzz circuit with remarkably powerful pitch-shifting capabilities, Keeley’s new Octa Psi pedal makes it easy to blow your mind … and have a ton of fun in the process.
It’s capable of creating pleasing and/or demented intervals, subtle harmonizing, expansive octaves up and down, and swooping pitch changes—all turbocharged by one of the gnarliest fuzzes this side of Armageddon.
Simply Psychoactive ... By Intent
If you’ve ever craved a user-friendly freakout, this is it. With just five knobs, two 3-way toggle switches, and a pair of footswitches—as well as an expression pedal input—the Octa Psi presents a comfortable, inviting portal to a universe of crazy sonic exploration.
That’s exactly what Robert Keeley intended from the moment he started designing the Octa Psi.
“The finished pedal is true to the original idea that I had in November 2021,” Keeley says. “I wanted it to have a high-gain vintage Muff, all-analog and all-transistor, going into an octave pitch shifter—something in the neighborhood of a Pitch Fork or POG. And then when I added the expression pedal function, it could resemble a whammy.”
Ah yes, the expression pedal input. Linking the Octa Psi with a standard expression pedal opens the door to a whole new dimension of pitch shifting mayhem. Rest assured, you don’t have to use an expression pedal to derive crazy fun from the Octa Psi. But it sure helps.
With all of the pedal’s deep functionality, Keeley felt that simplicity would be a key factor in broadening its appeal, starting with this elemental item: “From the get-go I wanted it to have order switching, allowing the fuzz feeding the pitch shifter or vice versa, because it gives you two distinctly different sounds if you have pitch going before or after the fuzz. And it had to be pretty effortless for the player to switch the order on the fly. And I wanted it to be easy to switch between using it either as a harmonizer or as an all-wet octave-down thing.” That desire for ease-of-use, even in the middle of a live gig, drove the design of the pedal’s controls and functions.
“I wanted to come up with something that Jack White, Steve Vai, or Frank Zappa would have fun with.”
It Ain't Easy to Create Easiness
The Octa Psi exemplifies an old adage: Sometimes a simple solution can be the most difficult to achieve. “I knew this was going to be a challenging project,” Keeley admits. “It’s very tough to combine a high-gain, full-analog distortion with a DSP [digital signal processing] section in one box. It took a long time to get the switching just right. It was particularly difficult because the Octa Psi’s analog and DSP sections are so intimately entwined. You can’t have gaps in the audio when you’re switching back and forth. Those kinds of complications drove us crazy.
“We also addressed a lot of issues that have raised concerns about other products on the market. The Octa Psi is a true-bypass pitch shifter, and it has our killer buffer system as well. There’s nothing else out there like this, so we had to figure it all out for ourselves.“
An essential challenge: voicing the fuzz so that it would sound great as a standalone effect, while also playing nicely with the Octa Psi’s harmonizer functions. “You would think that the fuzz was easy, but it was actually one of the last things we ironed out,” Keeley notes. “I had to ask myself, ‘Do I want this to be a bass-y fuzz?’ Probably not, since the pitch shifter can add octave down. But it’s got to be an amazing sounding fuzz if I want people to consider buying it. It has to sound great when compared to any Big Muff, and it has to effortlessly pair with a DSP section. So, getting the fuzz just right turned out to be the hardest part!”
The pedal design process also encountered some last-minute wrinkles. “The ramping and momentary switching capability was the last big feature that was added. That ramping function is like having an onboard expression pedal. We talked about it in the beginning of the process with Sarah Lipstate [also known as the artist Noveller], when Aaron Pierce [a key member on the Keeley team] was working on the initial concept. Later, Michael Kaye—the guitar tech for Pete Townsend and Trey Anastasio—asked, ‘Does it have momentary switching?’ and I was like, ‘Oh crap, I forgot about that!’” Keeley laughs.
The How-To Guide for Octa Psi's Hidden Features
For all of its readily accessible capabilities, the Octa Psi boasts several essential features that can only be accessed by using more than a single knob or switch. To unlock these features, it helps to have a few simple, specific instructions. For this reason, Keeley has included a brisk, handy primer on the back of each pedal. The Octa Psi’s key “hidden features” include:
- EFFECT ORDER: You can instantly switch the effect order by simultaneously holding the octave and fuzz footswitches.
- WET/DRY SELECTION: Double-click the blend control knob for switching between wet/dry blending or wet-only.
- MOMENTARY/LATCHING OPTION: Press and hold the fuzz footswitch to choose between momentary or latching operation. This is crucial if you plan on using the Octa Psi’s adventurous pitch shift ramping capability: the output signal begins with the initial note(s) you’re playing, and then veers up or down to the effected pitch. The ramp speed—i.e. how quickly this veering effect lasts—is controlled by….
- RAMP SPEED: If you’re using pitch shifting in the momentary mode, you can adjust the ramp speed by pressing and holding the octave footswitch down, then adjusting the blend knob control.
Part of an Ongoing Evolution
The Octa Psi underscores the continuing evolution of Keeley’s product line. In particular, it benefits from a pair of preceding Keeley devices: the I Get Around Rotary Simulator pedal and California Girls Twelve String Simulator—two pedals that were released in summer 2024 as exclusive offerings for the U.S. retailer Sweetwater, timed to coincide with The Beach Boys documentary on Disney+.
“That Beach Boys project did so much to help the DSP side of the Octa Psi,” says Keeley. “I got audio analyzers in so I could study the signals. We found out that we had to make our power supplies better because of the Beach Boys pedals, and that revolutionized our design. Everything that comes out since the Beach Boys pedals is going to sound even better. Plus, it was a lot of fun working with Sweetwater and JHS Pedals.”
Interestingly, for the Octa Psi project, the Keeley design team did not rely on much input from the company’s long list of affiliated artists. “I didn’t really have an artist that is a pitch/fuzz guru, so I had to keep it pretty much to ourselves. I knew that it had to be very musical—as musical as we could get it. And thankfully we have a team that can make this happen.”
The Keeley product development squad includes electrical engineer Craighton Hale, programmer Aaron Tackett, and Aaron Pierce—the “golden ears” member of the design group who helps analyze the sounds. “I’m just one part of the team of engineers that help make the products come to life,” Keeley notes.
Fun for Everyone
In the end, Keeley hopes that the Octa Psi pedal finds new and unconventional uses in the real world. “I wanted to come up with something that Jack White, Steve Vai, or Frank Zappa would have fun with—something that does all the crazy pitch-shifting with a purpose. And I’m hoping that musicians of all types will be attracted to this. People who want to distort their drums or bass or synth, and then start taking advantage of the pitch shifting. It’s almost like you get a great fuzz with the pitch shifter for free. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people use just the pitch shifter, if they’re not a fuzz maniac. You can get a lot of fun out of it without an expression pedal.”
Whether you’re a brazen sonic adventurer, or simply looking for a great-sounding dual function fuzz/harmonizer pedal, the Octa Psi offers a galaxy of tones for your arsenal.
B.B. King live, 1971.
Creative Commons: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
But there’s more to the tale. From 1935 to 1965, Nashville was arguably the epicenter of Black American music. Along the 30 blocks straddling Jefferson Street—Nashville’s own “Black Wall Street”—were a host of clubs, including Club Baron, Club Stealaway, the Del Morocco, and the Black Diamond, that showcased live music from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m. every weekend. And the roster of talent included a who’s who of national acts—Count Basie, Ray Charles, Ike & Tina Turner, B.B. King, Otis Redding, Etta James, Little Richard, Hank Crawford, James Brown—and formidable locals like Johnny “Blues Boy” Terrell, Gene Allison, Jimmy Church, Marion James, Charles “Wigg” Walker, Frank Howard, and two highly notable guitarists: Johnny Jones, the big dog of Nashville rhythm & blues guitar, and young upstart Jimi Hendrix.
Lorenzo Washington is the founder, guide, and curator of the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, where he provides a living introduction to the Black-music culture that first defined Music City.
But there’s stillmore to the story. In 1946, Nashville’s WLAC became the first major radio station to play R&B records, defying the city fathers and Jim Crow. Its signal reached 28 states and three Canadian provinces, making WLAC the platform by which Black music was introduced to the mainstream. WLAC’s impact on the sales of the indie labels recording Black artists at the time was tremendous.
Not only that. In 1964, Night Train, filmed at WLAC-TV, became the first syndicated R&B television show. Hosted and programmed by Noble Blackwell (who would eventually have an influential career in radio), and with an all-Black cast, Night Train featured local and national acts, and was the template for Soul Train.
“A host of clubs, including Club Baron, Club Stealaway, the Del Morocco, and the Black Diamond, showcased live music from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m. every weekend.”
After two years, pressure from the owners of the Grand Ole Opry caused WLAC’s owners to cancel Night Train, which the Opry perceived as a threat to ticket sales, according to Blackwell’s widow, Katie, and performers Church and Howard. And the radio station’s new management also pulled the plug on its R&B programming. At the same time, Nashville’s establishment—which had long waged a cultural war against the Black community along Jefferson Street—managed the coup de grâce they’d sought for decades by redlining and constructing Interstate 40 through the heart of Jefferson, where bridge abutments now mark the location of some of these historic clubs.
Today, most of the entertainers, DJs, and entrepreneurs responsible for Nashville’s—and therefore, in part, the nation’s—R&B revolution are dead, although on a lucky night you can still hear Walker, Church, or Howard turn back time onstage. But all of those memories and as much history as you can fit into the ground floor of a small house can be found at the Jefferson Street Sound Museum. For the past 23 years, the Museum at 2004 Jefferson has been the passion project of Lorenzo Washington. He secured the building in 2011 for a studio, but a year later felt a calling to create a temple dedicated to preserving Jefferson Street’s musical legacy—an urgency amplified as the local players who were there expired.
When you go to the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, you’ll find plenty of artifacts, from period-correct guitars to the old WLAC broadcast board, and handbills, posters, autographed photos, and ephemera. But the most important exhibit is Lorenzo. Beginning in the late 1950s, he was on the scene, as a fan and friend to the musicians, and even as a driver for songwriter and producer Ted Jarrett.
At 81, Lorenzo’s memory and storytelling skills are exquisite. Warm-hearted and welcoming, he can talk about Hendrix’s days as a maverick in the world of straight R&B, of the menus served while the musicians entertained, of B.B. King driving dancers to a frenzy, and even about the Nashville Stars, the city’s beloved Negro League baseball team that was bankrolled by Sou Bridgeforth, a numbers operator and the owner of the New Era Club, where Etta James recorded her blazing Rocks the House album in 1963. For his work preserving Music City’s foundational music culture, Lorenzo has been honored by the city with Lorenzo Washington Day and is the subject of a living legends exhibit at the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) in downtown Nashville.
So, if you’re coming to Nashville, you’ll want to visit Broadway, and the big attractions like the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and NMAMM. But if you really want to learn about the roots of Music City, go to 2004 Jefferson Street, and have a conversation with history.
