“The thing we are struggling to overcome and correct is that we are owned by Bob Weir,” Hoppe said with frustration one afternoon last week in a backstage office at the music hall. “It’s not a joke. I get angry sometimes. We still get these snide remarks on Facebook when we put a call for people to join us and become a member of Sweetwater. People say, ‘Why do you need that? Why can’t Bob just pay for it?’”
Hoppe and Sweetwater’s board of directors have been trying to correct that misconception since Sweetwater became a nonprofit in 2021, and especially now as they launch their fall fundraising drive.
“We are not a music venue. We are not a bar. We’re not a restaurant,” she said. “We operate all those things as part of our mission. But we are a true nonprofit arts organization. We’re presenting the arts.”
And because Sweetwater is independent, meaning it isn’t owned by Live Nation, Another Planet or any of the other large entertainment companies, Hoppe points out, “We have the freedom to present artists that normally won’t get a show in this area. Maybe they don’t have a ton of streams on Spotify, but they are still worthy of being given the opportunity to perform and express what they do.”
A perfect example of that is a show at Sweetwater from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Called “Tunes from Our Backyard,” it celebrates the music of California’s immigrant communities. Presented by the UC Berkeley-founded nonprofit the Living New Deal, it features Mae Powell and Karla Rivera Lozada performing Depression-era folk songs recorded between 1938 and 1940 as part of the Work Project Administration’s California Folk Music Project. To make this show happen, Hoppe gave the organization a discounted price that was within its budget.
“When I talked to her about it, she said, ‘Well this is in keeping with what our board wants us to be doing,’” said Susan Ives, Living New Deal’s director of communications. “She made it possible for us to do this.” More information and tickets ($32.60) at sweetwatermusichall.org.
Last spring, Sweetwater turned over its stage for a recital by the nonprofit Enriching Lives Through Music (ELM), a music education program for underserved youth in San Rafael’s mostly Latino Canal neighborhood.
“It was a good experience,” said Jane Kramer, ELM’s founder and executive director. “It was a nice place to do it. It was a perfect size stage for the kind of work we were doing.”
In 2022, a fundraising live auction during Sweetwater’s 50th anniversary gala earmarked some of the money for ELM’s scholarship and tuition programs.
In addition to twice-monthly open mics, Sweetwater gives its stage for free to the California Bluegrass Association and the Golden Gate Blues Society to host open jams one Sunday a month, paying a small fee to the session’s organizer.
Rich musical legacy
Sweetwater’s walls and halls are adorned with photos of many of the famous musicians who have played there: Jerry Garcia; Carlos Santana; Elvis Costello; John Lee Hooker; Clarence Clemons; Ry Cooder; Bonnie Raitt; Huey Lewis; Van Morrison; and Sammy Hagar. It’s a long and distinguished list of local and international stars. Most of Sweetwater’s legacy was built in the 1980s and ’90s under the tenure of the late Jeanie Patterson, Sweetwater’s beloved patron saint. A large photo of her by the late IJ photographer Bob Tong hangs in Hoppe’s office.
The original Sweetwater on Throckmorton Avenue closed in 2007, reopening in 2012 at its current Corte Madera Avenue location thanks to the largesse of a wealthy coterie of Mill Valley music patrons, several of whom still sit on the board of directors. Some critics have derided the club as a personal playpen for the rich white guys on the board. But the truth is that Sweetwater wouldn’t exist today without the millions of dollars of their own money that they pumped into the place to build it out and open it again. During the pandemic, they kept the club afloat, learning the painful fact that it cost $40,000 a month just to keep the place closed. When the club reopened as a nonprofit, the partners relinquished whatever financial stake they had in the venture, taking a loss.
“We had to put in a bunch of money to keep the place going, but that gets old,” said Chris Moscone, board vice president and chief financial officer. “Not that we can’t afford it, but let’s get some buy-in from other people and spread it out a little bit.”
To that end, Sweetwater has formed a new seven-person advisory board chaired by 46-year-old Bill Getty, an investment manager on hiatus who lives in Mill Valley with his wife and three children. All of the advisory board members are in their 40s and 50s and give Sweetwater an infusion of new blood and a younger perspective, a kind of passing of the torch as the nonprofit goes forward. Getty floated the idea for an advisory board after realizing that music fans of his generation felt disengaged from Sweetwater and were unaware of its mission as a nonprofit arts organization.
“We want to make sure that Sweetwater not only survives but that it grows and thrives,” he said. “So how do we as an advisory committee get our demographic more connected to Sweetwater?”
One way he suggested is to make Sweetwater’s annual benefit concert — this year a pricey ticket for a sold-out show by singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff on Nov. 14 — less formal and more inclusive.
“One thing we’re working on and that we think is doable and we’re very optimistic about is a similar fundraiser but with a very different energy and vibe to it,” he said. “It will be a more upbeat band. It won’t be tables and chairs and a seated dinner. It will be more of a party.”
He’d also like to see a music calendar that appealed more to him and his Gen X peers, “making sure that we’ve got the next generation of folks really excited to go to Sweetwater on a regular basis,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Following up on that, Hoppe and the board are working with booker Chris Porter, a respected professional who also books Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, to bring bigger-name acts to Mill Valley several times a year.
“Even if we lose money, we’ll get more people in,” Moscone said. “It’s a balance.”
‘Something for the whole community’
While the Trump administration tries to make diversity a dirty word, Sweetwater is all about presenting a diverse selection of music from different ethnicities, histories and cultures. They’re trying to steer away from a steady stream of tribute acts and Grateful Dead-inspired jam bands that draw crowds and make money but limit the variety of music that Sweetwater feels that it’s obligated to offer its audiences.
“As a nonprofit, we have to have something for the whole community,” Hoppe said. “We can’t just be a jam band venue. We can’t just be a rock venue or a cover band venue. We actually have a firm rule that we can’t have more than three tribute bands a month.”
Over the past four years, Sweetwater has steadily worked to establish itself as a legitimate entity in the nonprofit arts community. In a major accomplishment, it earned a $50,000 annual grant from San Francisco’s prestigious Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, which supports local working artists and the organizations that help and support them. It has also been accepted into the group of Grateful Dead family charities. And in September, Sweetwater raised $80,000 in supporter memberships, which are offered in four levels that range from $150 to $10,000 and more, offering benefits such as complimentary tickets, access to member-only events, meet-and-greet opportunities and other perks.
Last year, Sweetwater hosted or produced an array of free community events, including exhibits and receptions during Mill Valley’s First Tuesday Artwalk; meetings, classes and play readings for seniors through Marin Villages; DJ dances, trivia and film nights; Mill Valley Public Library shows for kids and the Trombone Shorty Academy, among other activities.
Altogether, according to Sweetwater, the 300-capacity venue produced, supported or sponsored 115 events in 2024 for youth, older people and the community as a whole, serving an estimated 15,000 people.
Sweetwater barely breaks even as a venue, bar and restaurant. It has limited the hours of its restaurant, Rock & Rye, to show nights and weekends. But because it’s a nonprofit with other revenue streams, it prides itself on being able to pay its bands and artists an appropriate wage, whether they draw 30 people or 300.
“It’s even our duty to do that,” Moscone said. “What we’re really about is honoring the music and musicians.”
Four years into this new model as a nonprofit, Hoppe and Sweetwater’s board feel that they’re right on track, making steady progress year by year to redefine themselves as an independent presenter of music and the arts.
“Everything has gone step by step as a new version of this organization,” Moscone said. “Sweetwater 2.0.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net
