Singer’s Turf in San Clemente Hosts a Grass-Roots Series for Folk Music

When Dennis Roger Reed slings on his acoustic guitar Sunday and opens a free folk music concert in a San Clemente park, he will bring new meaning to the idea of playing on familiar turf.

Reed certainly knows the terrain at Max Berg Plaza Park, the scene of the late-afternoon show. As park maintenance supervisor for the city of San Clemente, it is his job to see that the large rectangle of grass, palm trees, walkways and playground equipment is kept mown and litter-free.

When he isn’t overseeing the upkeep of about 80 acres of city parkland, Reed moonlights as a country-bluegrass singer and songwriter who has made a good impression locally with clever lyrics and a humorous performing style.

As prime mover behind San Clemente’s new “Summer Concerts in the Park” series, Reed has merged his vocation as a picker of bluegrass with his career as a groundskeeper.

Reed said he first got the idea for a city-sponsored folk music series last winter while watching his friends in the local traditional British folk band, Blackthorn, play a concert at the Old Dana Point Cafe. Reed watched as some children, fascinated by the group’s acoustic instruments, went to the bandstand during a break to ask questions and learn something about traditional music.

‘I figured, ‘This is a nice thing that’s being passed on here,’ ” recalled Reed, a tall, deep-voiced man who wears his hair in a style far more typical of musicians than public servants--spiky and short on top, over the shoulders in back. “You don’t get that on MTV or hear it on the radio dial,” Reed said. “I thought we might try to bring people to the park for a different kind of music than they normally would listen to.”

Reed soon found a way to apply his idea. He was enrolled at the time in a special management training program for San Clemente city workers. Putting together the concert series was his way of fulfilling the program’s required project.

City officials backed up the folk-concert idea with a small budget that, according to Reed, is less than $1,000 for the three shows. Rather than do anything fancy with the concert site, Reed decided to put most of the money toward paying the performers he recruited.

When the first show came about last month, Reed said, the day’s headliner, bluegrass bandleader Andy Rau wasn’t thrilled at the accommodations: for a stage, a flat-bed trailer borrowed from the city street department, and for a dressing room, the park’s concrete-walled public lavatory.

“He said, ‘This is the stage? This is the dressing room?’ I said, ‘Would you rather have the money in your pocket?’ He said, ‘That’s fine.’ ”

About 250 people turned out for that first Sunday afternoon show, Reed said. Partly as a favor to him, he said, the acts this year are playing for less than their usual rate. Reed is playing for free as opening act for Granuaile, a Celtic folk trio whose members play regularly at Disneyland.

Reed’s early exposure to country and bluegrass music came while he was a small boy growing up in Buena Park and Fullerton. His father, who came from Arkansas, would take him to see country and bluegrass bands.

“One of my earliest memories is being held by those performers,” Reed said.

By the time he was in junior high school, Reed was playing guitar, but his inspiration came from the Beatles, rather than bluegrass bands. “At 12, the Beatles came over and I was embarrassed to be watching guys in cowboy hats,” he said. But by the late ‘60s, bands such as Buffalo Springfield and Poco had shown Reed and everybody else that there was common ground between rock and country music.

Reed, who settled in San Clemente 12 years ago, fronted a rock band until a few years ago, when he became disillusioned with the rock-club circuit. Then he began making contacts at the Shade Tree, a stringed-instrument shop that is a south county grapevine for folk musicians. At a seminar there he met Steve Gillette, a veteran songwriter and recording artist who encouraged Reed to start shopping his songs in country music circles. So far, Reed said, his publisher has gotten his work heard by the likes of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dwight Yoakam and New Grass Revival. For now, Reed is still awaiting his first “cut”--a recording of one of his songs by an established performer.

Meanwhile, he and his band, which includes his brother, Don, on lead guitar, have been emerging with shows at the Shade Tree and area folk festivals and bluegrass contests. The group, which recently changed names from the Old Bohemians to the Dennis Roger Reed Band, is a fixture at the Tuesday night bluegrass soirees at the Old Dana Point Cafe.

“My vacations are almost always musical vacations,” Reed said of his double-life in bluegrass and bureaucracy. “And I’m learning that I can survive some times on less sleep than I should.”

Dennis Roger Reed and Granuaile play Sunday at 5:30 p.m. at Max Berg Plaza Park, at the end of El Portal Street in San Clemente. Admission: free. Information: (714) 361-8264.