Running a restaurant in San Francisco doesn’t leave much time for enjoying the city’s nightlife. For the music-loving proprietors of the pizza joint Shuggie’s Trash Pie & Natural Wine, Kayla Abe and David Murphy, a solution presented itself via the nonprofit Jazz In the Neighborhood, an organization that advocates for musicians’ fair wages.
Rather than going out to hear music, Abe and Murphy have turned their stylish eatery into one of the Mission’s hippest jazz spots. Since the beginning of the year, with the support of JItN, Shuggie’s has presented some of the Bay Area’s top improvisers on Tuesday and Sunday evenings.
“As a couple, we love going out to see live music … and we thought, maybe we can bring that music to us,” says Abe, adding that Murphy’s Austin upbringing imbued a passion for easy access to music. “Working with Jazz In the Neighborhood, we’re supporting musicians, creating a more exciting scene and offering something to our guests.”
On a recent blustery Tuesday, Shuggie’s front room was packed with people and suffused with a warm yellow glow. On a tiny stage set in a window box with a vintage motorcycle, one of the region’s most widely admired saxophonists, Kasey Knudsen, delivered a duo set with guitarist Eric Vogler, a consummate accompanist with a sleek tone.
Music fans at the counter paid close attention as Knudsen deconstructed “All the Things You Are” while a couple of convivial parties at tables paused to applaud as the duo concluded a ravishing reharmonization of Jerome Kern’s soaring melody.
“We’ve been lucky to have a good reach, but there are always pockets that you haven’t touched,” says Abe, describing how word has spread around the scene. “The jazz community feels really tight-knit. People follow their artists. We feel so lucky to be part of it.”
Saxophonist Smith Dobson, scion of an eminent Bay Area jazz clan, plays Shuggie’s Tuesday, Feb. 18. Bassist Giulio Xavier Cetto, a ubiquitous presence in the Bay Area music scene, leads a combo Sunday, Feb. 23, and rising guitarist Kai Lyons plays Tuesday, Feb. 25.
Throughout Knudsen and Vogler’s set, Leela Paymai, a bassist and band leader who works with JItN, was keeping an eye on the proceedings, as she does most jazz nights at Shuggie’s. She’s worked with the organization since 2021, and runs the guaranteed wage subsidy program, which helps the restaurant pay musicians a reasonable minimum fee ($150 a player).
JItN has also been sponsoring performances at Keys Jazz Bistro in North Beach and Bird and Beckett Books & Records in Glen Park, but Paymai says Shuggie’s is at the vanguard of the organization’s experiment that focuses on venues rather than musicians.
“We’re piloting a new way of doing the guaranteed wage program,” says Paymai, who’s premiering her Persian jazz project Zheniia at San Jose Jazz’s Break Room on Friday. “Instead of musicians applying, we’re having guaranteed fair wage venues where we’re subsidizing a set amount on specific nights. I love how it’s helped change the way a lot of the musicians on the scene think about how they should be getting paid and treated.”
A grand experiment
Shuggie’s opened in 2022, taking over a space from Velvet Cantina, a longtime Mission watering hole. Murphy and Abe, the latter a fourth-generation San Franciscan, worked for years in the sustainable food realm; together, the couple ran the upcycling company Ugly Pickle, which closed during the pandemic.
Murphy is a chef who had long wanted his own place. They launched Shuggie’s with a commitment to, as the restaurant’s mission statement says, “rescuing a huge variety of ingredients that would otherwise go to waste — irregular or surplus produce, byproducts from food manufacturing, lower-on-the-food-chain seafood, and offcuts from the meat industry (aka the actual best cuts) — and making them the stars of our menu.” The restaurant quickly earned notice from media outlets like Bon Appetit and The New York Times.
Just as this iteration of the guaranteed wage fund is a pilot program for JItN, adding music into the mix is something of an experiment for Shuggie’s, too. But Abe says nearly everything in the restaurant business requires experimentation.
“You need to do so much more than just serve food nowadays,” she says. “People want special events, and we thought, how cool would it be to bring live music?” They built a tiny stage, just enough for a trio. Though, “We had a group of six once, which was crazy.”
Shuggie’s idiosyncratic geography and decor only add to the music nights’ charm. Adjacent to the counter and open kitchen, the stage is in the front room, which has a capacity of about 20. A small hallway leads to a much larger space, with booths and a bar, saturated in sea green that makes the room feel like a spacious aquarium.
“We wanted to keep the kitsch,” Abe says. “We kept the booths, and we worked with the layout we had, stepping away from all the minimalist beige spaces around and into something dynamic and vibrant. We landed on two different monochrome rooms.”
The couple live about three blocks from the restaurant, which adds a whole other level of personal investment in the neighborhood. Abe and Murphy have been dismayed as neighboring venues have closed, like the lamented Revolution Café.
They decided Shuggie’s should pick up the slack, starting with jazz on Tuesdays and Sundays because, they say, those nights tended to be slower; live music might give people more of a reason to go out. So far, they’ve been pleased with the uptick in patronage, and thrilled with the performances.
“We’re blown away every night,” Abe says. “These musicians are so talented, but we would not have been able to find them ourselves. I think they enjoy being in this intimate, casual setting, hanging out, grabbing a drink and getting dinner afterwards, talking to guests.”
Will the boogie experiment continue at Shuggie’s? A restaurant is always evolving, say Abe and Murphy, and they’re still in talks with JItN about how to make it all sustainable, but their hope is to serve live music alongside the pizza for years to come.
Shuggie’s Trash Pie and Natural Wine is located at 3349 23rd St. To learn about upcoming shows, visit Jazz In the Neighborhood’s website here.
Great piece by Andy Gilbert. We at Jazz in the Neighborhood appreciate this opportunity and look forward to more collaborative efforts in communities all over the Bay Area. Please support Shuggie’s and our efforts to pay a fair guarantee wage to jazz musicians at http://www.jazzintheneighborhood.org