Local rockabilly buddies, Bonneville Phantoms open the show at 8pm. Playing an amalgam of roots rock, country-rock, blues, rockabilly, folk-rock, and just plain rock & roll, the Beat Farmers were a band with a genius for silliness that also happened to feature a handful of excellent musicians, and wrote songs that were honest, heartfelt, and sometimes poignant when they could be bothered to put down their beer for a moment. Hailing from San Diego, they honed their talents playing countless bar gigs before a hipper audience in Los Angeles caught wind of them, and the bar band ethos stayed with them to the end of their days — they were eager to entertain, determined to give the audience a memorable show, and brooked no jive while doing it. The Beat Farmers were at their best when they were at their most unfiltered, and their no-frills debut album, 1985’s Tales of the New West, remains their most satisfying record. 1986’s Van Go was more polished but caught the group in fine form with a set of great songs, 1987’s The Pursuit of Happiness was their most focused and hardest-rocking effort, and 1990’s Loud and Plowed and…LIVE! was a concert recording that caught them in their natural environment with a crowd clearly having as much fan as the band.