Inside Napa's "First Friday" Celebration

The “Make Tacos Not War: Artists’ Response to War” gallery opening at Thea Witsil’s Loft May 6 seemed much more like an event one would find in Berkeley or San Francisco than downtown Napa. But there we were, a hometown band, playing the party as part of downtown Napa’s “” arts celebration.

We knew this gig would be different when we saw the show poster. The design, showing an F-16 dropping tacos, promoted a sentiment shared by many, particularly coming so soon after the daring and successful elimination of the reason for the longest-waged war in U.S. history.

Art likes music and the band I play in, the Mean Time Playboys, gladly agreed to play the show for tacos and to support our friend Thea. 

Located on the second floor of on First St, the Wildcat Loft is tiny, and the low ceiling above the stage would require us to all sit while playing. It is not easy to get six musical cowboys – even without hats -- plus instruments and amps on a 5-by-8-foot stage, but we did it.

We lugged the amps, drums and PA gear through the racks of colorful vintage clothes in the store and up the back stairs to the loft where Lawrence El Colacion, the curator for the show, was finishing up hanging the anti-war artwork.

No Kinkade-esque landscapes of rolling vineyards and mustard flowers and wine barrels here. The art on display was intensely political and hard-hitting.

I recognized a piece by Winston Smith, who created artwork for Dead Kennedys albums, that had also been postered on the wall of a vacant building on Third and Soscol earlier in the week.

(You can see more photos of the art at: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150246383670011.369430.188939015010)

After the Mean Time Playboys’ first set, student Julio Soriano performed his acoustic “,” railing against Exxon and BP and reminding the crowd of the virtues of bicycle transportation.

Downstairs, in front of the store, Napa chef Frank Hernandez and Thea’s husband Bruce Wilson were cranking out close to 300 free pork and veggie tacos for the hungry crowd of art-loving pacifists that stretched around the corner.

We played another set while people danced and checked out the art, and by 9:45 we had lugged the gear back downstairs and were comfortably seated down the street at with a well-earned beer, watching the Giants pull off a ninth-inning victory.

More than 250 people came through the shop and the loft gallery that night, according to Thea, who was thrilled at the turnout and response.

“People loved it,” she said. “The show was well-received in every aspect: People were ripe for exposure to this art.”

She said the show had helped people “reconnect with their feeling about politics and war … Expressing feelings through art is a way to grieve and process.

The , June 3 from 6 to 9 p.m. with a fashon show and music jam session, is again part of the monthly First Friday celebration.