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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Vacation Note: Brother Thelonious And Friends

November 13, 2014 by Doug Ramsey

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On the way south, we spent a couple of nights in Fort Bragg on the northern California coast. In addition to admiring the bird pictured in the post below, we took time to visit Brother Thelonious Alewith Mark Ruedrich and Doug Moody. They are the president and senior vice president of the North Coast Brewery, the biggest—and by far the hippest—employer in that Mendocino County town, population 7,200. Among his other achievements, Brewmaster Ruedrich developed a Belgian ale inspired by a pianist (pictured) known to Rifftides readers.

Ruedrich and Moody installed in the brewery’s restaurant and taproom a jazz club that presents performances by California musicians, many of them national figures. They also founded a record label whose income, in addition to some of the brewery’s, taproom’s and company store’s profits, are earmarked for support of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Many of label’s artists, including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, singer Gretchen Parlato and saxophonist Wayne Escoffery are alumni of the Monk Institute. Considering the brewery’sFort Bragg map other philanthropic contributions in Mendocino, we got the impression of a vital force in the craft brewing field and in a small town that Doug Moody claims with a degree of seriousness hard to gauge, is “in the middle of nowhere.”

This page of the North Coast Brewery website contains a half-hour film that traces the history of Monk’s namesake ale. The mini-documentary, prominently featuring Thelonious’s son T.J. Monk, also outlines the history and processes of craft beer making in the United States. I always wondered what happens to those spent hops.

Cheers.

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Comments

  1. Dan Holm says

    November 14, 2014 at 5:54 am

    Doug, I recently purchased a 4-pack of “Brother Thelonious” and its great. Anyone who enjoys Belgian ale will be impressed. Plus, it is an added benefit to be able to support a business that does so much to support jazz.

  2. Dan Holm says

    November 14, 2014 at 6:29 am

    By the way, you should encourage the owners of North Coast Brewery to make other beers honoring jazz greats. Perhaps a “Prince of Darkness Milk Stout” in honor of Miles Davis. I think it would be a hit.

  3. Bill S says

    November 14, 2014 at 8:11 am

    You needn’t know where the spirit of the music will hit you or when you get religion. A brewery in Northern California…hallelujah I love it so. Brother Thelonious looks upon you with his knowing smile.

  4. Charlton Price says

    November 16, 2014 at 7:07 pm

    This is uniquely splendid from many points of view: brewing mastery, organizational and management development, music, music education, Americana, promotion and advertising, quality of film production and direction…

    Thank you Doug ! Don’t go again to Fort Bragg without us!

  5. Jim Brown says

    November 16, 2014 at 11:25 pm

    Thanks to Hop Leaf, a great family run Belgian pub that was crawling distance from my home in Chicago, I developed a great fondness for both Belgian food and Belgian ales. After moving to Santa Cruz, I first encountered Brother Thelonious at the Monterey festival about five years ago, where it was served on draft. All the Belgians have one thing in common — rich taste, and all distinctively different from each other. Brother Thelonious fits that perfectly.

    For the last 2-3 years, the ale has been available at our local Costco, and there’s always a bottle or two in my fridge. You don’t have to be a jazz fan to dig it.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Blogroll

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Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
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Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
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Bill Evans Web Pages
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Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
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On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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