Detail For Show: Earl Oliver and Friend - Live from LaVals
Earl Oliver & Friends: Live from LaVal's was a one hour musical showcase taped unedited in front of a live audience on the first Sunday of each month initially at a little music club in the basement of LaVal's pizza parlor on the Northside of the University of California Berkeley campus, and later at various locations in Berkeley and San Francisco, from February 1992 until November 1994. The video was produced by Jon Gordon, who was the entertainment manager at the club. The musical program was produced and hosted by Earl Oliver, who also dressed the set. During it's initial 2 1/2 year run, the program showcased some of the finest acoustic music talent available in the greater San Francisco Bay area and was broadcast on 16 Cable Access channels throughout Northern California. The show continued to air in reruns for the next 10 years in many of those markets. In the summer of 2008, Earl converted the 29 hours of unedited SVHS video into MPEG format and edited it into 54 half-hour segments. The best 20 programs will be presented here for broadcast on PEG stations.
CHECK OUT Live from LaVal's Shorts. Individual performances of the artists featured on the Live from LaVal's programs. These short features (from 6 1/2 to a little over 22 minutes in length) include songs and performances not seen in the original 20 video segments. Some of them include footage from different shows featuring the same artists, and one performer, song writer and Bay Area personality, Jo D'anna, who did not originally appear in the current series. A few of them were taped at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley in 1994.
They make great filler material to follow that bird documentary or whatever that only went to 47 minutes...
Late additions to this library include "Blues in the Garden" a contemporary program featuring the current Earl Oliver & Friends line-up, also known as the Groovinators, performing at the 19th Annual Art in the Gardens fund raising event at the North Coast Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, CA on August 7, 2010., and "The Banjo Man at Northspur", a half-hour video featuring Earl Oliver in his guise as the "Walkin' Blues Man", performing at Northspur Station at the half-way point along the Skunk Train railroad.
Notes to Stations About This Show:
The show is San Francisco Bay Area musical history. A number of now famous acts received their first wide exposure on the program, including: Hawaiian Slack-Key guitar master, Patrick Landeza, legendary harmonica player, Will Scarlett from the band, Hot Tuna, bow-hammered cymbalom master and scorer of feature films, Michael Masley, experimental guitarist, Fred LaRose, Bay Area blues legend Deane Juhan, Don Burnham, front man for the western swing ensemble, Lost Weekend, the late ragtime picker, Peter Sanborn, PBS Documentary film composer, Malcolm Brooks, Big Wide Grin lead singer, Elaine Dempsey, guitar wizard Steve Carrillo (aka The Badger), world renowned childrens' entertainers, The Hip Waders, songwriters Pamela Martin, Jo D'anna, Jon Black, Chuck Brodsky, Bonnieanne Boroson, John Fizer and many others.
The production values were very good for this show. Jon Gordon was an experienced television producer/director who built a control booth into the right side of the stage so that he could direct a five camera shoot, including two stationary cameras and three operated cameras. He called the shots and directed the programs on the fly, but these segments have been fully edited into approximately half-hour episodes, thus eliminating the stage waits and other unfortunate occurrences inherent in any live production.
The host, Earl Oliver, now resides on the Mendocino Coast where he is the leader of a popular dance band, the Groovinators, the host of a local Open Mic program, and is probably best known as the guy who plays the banjo on the Skunk Train, an historic excursion railroad.
Earl is also a member of the Production Staff at the local PEG station, Mendocino Coast Television (MCTV) - channels 3, 64 and 65 on ComCast Cable in Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Little River and Cleone.
Type of Show: Multiple episode series
Target Viewing Market: National (US)
State of Production and/or Target State or Province: California
Frequency of Episodes: Approximately every 7 days
Show Producer: Jump City Productions/Mendocino Coast Television
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0001 Live from Lavals-5-2-93.mpg* 
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