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On Sunday November 13 the Shelltown Horns will host a benefit concert, their third this year, for a place called the Barrio Station in Logan Heights. Barrio Station, it turns out, is out of money. “All their city funding got cut off,” says trumpet player Carlos Serrano, better known among music circles as Lambchops. “They need the money from these benefits just to keep the place going.” He says Barrio Station’s director, Rachel Ortiz, is still working but is no longer taking a salary.
Called the Logan Heights Reunion Benefit Jump, featured acts include Benny Hollman and the San Diego Chargers Band, the Neighborhood All Stars, Super Trax, Big Slim and the Blues Invaders, and Robert Lanuza and Friends featuring Candi Silva. The Shelltown Horns, says Serrano, will back each group.
Lambchops, on the phone from his Lemon Grove home cannot remember when, exactly, he started the Shelltown Horns, but he knows they go way back to Etta’s Place on University Avenue. For a time, he ran the jam there. “Originally there were three of us,” he says, Sleepy (Gilbert Flores), Albert Cisneros (he is without nickname,) and Serrano. “Three horns.” With a pick-up rhythm section, they frequented Croce’s in the Gaslamp during their heyday as a band with their distinctive Latin Tower of Power sound. Since, they’ve gained members and become a more full-service horn section, backing a variety of groups from Latin jazz and pop oldies to rhythm and blues.
The name Shelltown, says Lambchops, derives from a neighborhood in Southeast San Diego. Bordered by Interstate 5, Highland Avenue, Division Street, and Gamma Way Serrano thinks maybe the neighbors originally called it Shelltown because there were military bunkers stationed in the area during WWll.
“Another story,” he says, “is that there was a Shell gas station down there.” Otherwise, he’s not entirely sure. “It would be interesting,” he says “to figure out the history of that place.”
Barrio Station’s history dates back to 1970. They opened their doors in a part of Southeast San Diego that is more or less underneath the launch pad of the Coronado Bridge, known as Barrio Logan. The Station serves as an after school safe haven for high risk youth from Logan Heights and neighboring communities in San Diego. As such, counselors there provide supervision, tutoring, recreation, counseling and community service to inner city youth free of charge. Housed inside an inauspicious re-purposed commercial building on Newton Avenue, walking distance from Chicano Park, Barrio Station prevails in one of the more perilous of San Diego zip codes, 92113. Year to date, there have been six gang related homicides in the 92113 zip and four more in neighboring 92114.
“They have a ton of programs for kids in the neighborhood,” Lambchops says.
More information can be had at 619.238.0314
On Sunday November 13 the Shelltown Horns will host a benefit concert, their third this year, for a place called the Barrio Station in Logan Heights. Barrio Station, it turns out, is out of money. “All their city funding got cut off,” says trumpet player Carlos Serrano, better known among music circles as Lambchops. “They need the money from these benefits just to keep the place going.” He says Barrio Station’s director, Rachel Ortiz, is still working but is no longer taking a salary.
Called the Logan Heights Reunion Benefit Jump, featured acts include Benny Hollman and the San Diego Chargers Band, the Neighborhood All Stars, Super Trax, Big Slim and the Blues Invaders, and Robert Lanuza and Friends featuring Candi Silva. The Shelltown Horns, says Serrano, will back each group.
Lambchops, on the phone from his Lemon Grove home cannot remember when, exactly, he started the Shelltown Horns, but he knows they go way back to Etta’s Place on University Avenue. For a time, he ran the jam there. “Originally there were three of us,” he says, Sleepy (Gilbert Flores), Albert Cisneros (he is without nickname,) and Serrano. “Three horns.” With a pick-up rhythm section, they frequented Croce’s in the Gaslamp during their heyday as a band with their distinctive Latin Tower of Power sound. Since, they’ve gained members and become a more full-service horn section, backing a variety of groups from Latin jazz and pop oldies to rhythm and blues.
The name Shelltown, says Lambchops, derives from a neighborhood in Southeast San Diego. Bordered by Interstate 5, Highland Avenue, Division Street, and Gamma Way Serrano thinks maybe the neighbors originally called it Shelltown because there were military bunkers stationed in the area during WWll.
“Another story,” he says, “is that there was a Shell gas station down there.” Otherwise, he’s not entirely sure. “It would be interesting,” he says “to figure out the history of that place.”
Barrio Station’s history dates back to 1970. They opened their doors in a part of Southeast San Diego that is more or less underneath the launch pad of the Coronado Bridge, known as Barrio Logan. The Station serves as an after school safe haven for high risk youth from Logan Heights and neighboring communities in San Diego. As such, counselors there provide supervision, tutoring, recreation, counseling and community service to inner city youth free of charge. Housed inside an inauspicious re-purposed commercial building on Newton Avenue, walking distance from Chicano Park, Barrio Station prevails in one of the more perilous of San Diego zip codes, 92113. Year to date, there have been six gang related homicides in the 92113 zip and four more in neighboring 92114.
“They have a ton of programs for kids in the neighborhood,” Lambchops says.
More information can be had at 619.238.0314