Personal History
The Ballad of Bob Stane
What a legendary impresario taught a novice string band about the difference between playing music and putting on a show.
“In 1960, Randy Sparks played my coffee-house showroom, the Upper Cellar, in San Diego. It was an exhibit of such skill and showmanship that it guided me through the next sixty years, encouraging musicians to be real entertainers and not just singers of songs.” — Bob Stane
The Ballad of Bob Stane
The Storytellers · Lyrics by Lynn Shipley Sokolow
The Storytellers were a novice string band. We had learned a handful of songs we felt good about, but we were having trouble booking gigs, and so we hit on the idea of renting a venue and shooting some live videos. One place – a dive bar in one of L.A.’s rustic canyons – had a homely-looking stage for rent and offered us a couple of hours’ use for eight hundred dollars. Out of pure desperation, we took the deal. The owner got the money, and we got videos that were only slightly more helpful than no videos at all.
We needed something better – something with a little class, something that captured the folky, acoustic nature of our instruments and our music.
Searching online for stages to rent, I came across a venue in Altadena called the Coffee Gallery Backstage. My excitement didn’t last long. In the photographs on Google, the stage was perfect: browns and greens, earth tones, hand-painted murals wrapping the walls with the interior of a wood-made Latin American coffee warehouse. If a cheap-looking bar stage had set us back eight hundred dollars, why waste our time inquiring about a place like this?
But I like wasting time. I picked up the phone and dialed. A man answered, in a voice I’ve come to love: “Hello. This is Bob Stane.”
I was then deep into a long era of listening centered on the American folk revival – the music made in New York and Los Angeles. You can’t get far into that history without running across the name Bob Stane. I knew he had been active in the West Coast folk and comedy scene as early as the late nineteen-fifties. Could he possibly still be in the business, sixty years later?
“The Bob Stane?” I spoke.
He chuckled. “How can I help you?”
I told him what we wanted: a few early hours on a Sunday to shoot videos at his venue, using his lights and sound system. What would he charge?
“I would have to get up early and open the place after running a Saturday-night show, and turn on the sound and lights,” he said. “What you’re renting is my time and effort. And the electricity.”
Oh, no, I thought. He was preparing me for a number so large it had to be broken into line items. Waking up early: five hundred dollars. Time: another five hundred. Effort: a thousand. Being famous: five thousand. I braced myself.
“How about fifty dollars for the morning?”
I knew that Stane had owned the Ice House, the comedy club in Pasadena, and that he was as renowned for discovering and developing comedians as he was musicians. I figured he was keeping his comedic chops up.
He wasn’t. He meant fifty dollars. After some discussion, he offered us the stage “all day” – nine to five – and offered to show us how to run his lights and sound, so long as he didn’t have to stay. “I will have to go home and go back to bed,” he said. “I have physical and mental limits.”
We reserved a Sunday in April. The cost: three hundred dollars – less than half of what we’d paid for the ugly bar stage, for the entire day. I had hoped the rate would be affordable, or at least reasonable; we had been prepared to pay him what we’d paid the bar owner, and his generosity so astonished me that I confessed as much. “We could pay you eight hundred,” I told him. “We’re prepared to do that. We want to.”
“Just so you know how things work,” Bob said, “your reservation keeps me from having to stage a regular Sunday matinée. Your rent replaces my share of the income from the show. We just have to make sure we all show up. Three hundred is all I need to make.”
That was my introduction to Bob Stane.
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Sometimes we cross divides in our lives that are visible only in retrospect, but I somehow understood that this day – the day we played for Bob Stane – would be not just memorable but important.
The band rehearsed passionately. I explained to the others who the venue’s owner was: the Bob Stane, whose name ran through the stories of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Steve Martin, the New Christy Minstrels, the Association, and the Dillards. Though Bob had made clear that he wouldn’t stay for the shoot, I figured he’d be curious enough to listen for a while, if only to determine whether we were good enough to book for one of his ticketed shows.
It’s worth pausing on what the Coffee Gallery Backstage was: a rare listening room, fifty seats arranged for the focused, uninterrupted enjoyment of music. The acoustics were superb. There was no bar, no television, no talking from the audience. The room permitted only the highest order of acts.
The day came. We were ready for our closeup – dressed well, we thought, and sounding good, with a video crew and a sound engineer in tow. The venue looked even more soulful in person than in the photographs. (When Bob first quoted fifty dollars, and even after he quoted three hundred, part of me feared we were renting not the stage in the Google photos but something lesser.)
Bob arrived on the minute. He was kind and sharp and helpful, teaching us the equipment. “Are you sure you’re going to remember all of this?” he asked. We said yes. He said he was leaving and would return later.
We got to work, some songs requiring several takes to get the look and sound we wanted. True to his word, Bob returned at two o’clock and settled into a reclining chair, and I watched him watch the band. Twice, I thought I heard him mutter “Oh, my” under his breath. A few times he made suggestions about the lighting – kill those bright ones; tilt your hats so the lights don’t wash out your faces – always careful, I noticed, never to interrupt a take. He had done this before. A professional.
We performed well enough, felt good about it, and left with more than enough footage and photos to make the day worth its three hundred dollars.
As we loaded out, John York, formerly of the Byrds, was loading in for that night’s concert – a fact that should have told me exactly how far our band was from a booking at the Coffee Gallery Backstage. Denial, after all, isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Bob was sitting at one of the Backstage’s small tables. I owed him money. “What did you think, Mr. Stane?” I asked, handing him the three hundred dollars.
“I’m informal. Call me Bob.”
“What did you think, Bob?”
“I don’t have much time to talk right now,” he said. “But if you want some general impressions, I can share them – if you really want to know.”
If I really wanted to know. What I wanted, at that moment, was to run. “Oh, my,” he had said – twice. If what he was thinking were good, he would simply have stated it. Instead of running, I heard myself say, “Of course, Mr. Stane. We’d love to know your impressions. We’d really appreciate hearing from an expert.”
Lance, the band’s vocalist and founding bassist, was standing beside me. Bob invited us to sit.
“You have a lot of work to do if you want to be something other than a bar band,” he began. “Everything needs to be tighter, but that comes with practice and time. But your band just isn’t entertaining. There’s no spark. That’s a problem. There’s no interaction between the band members. The band lacks a personality, and it lacks a unity. The songs are too long and too loud, and there are too many songs in the same key and register. If you continue in the direction you’re going, being a bar band is the best you can hope for. I would never be able to book you here.”
The darkness of truth. Then, a ray: “The good news is you all sing very sweetly together. Very good harmony singing.”
We thanked him and asked whether we might contact him again. “You know where I am,” he said.
Outside, Lance said, “At least he was brutally honest.”
“No,” I said. “Not brutal. Just honest.”
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Slideshow: Lunchly Lessons with Bob
If we are fortunate, we encounter one person who changes our life’s trajectory for the better. For us, that person was Bob Stane. He was honest and he was direct, but he was extraordinarily kind as he spoke. He has kind, caring eyes.
Driving home, Lance and I relayed Bob’s verdict to Scott, our founding guitarist. “Oh,” Scott said. “Well, that was nice of him to tell us all that.” I agreed. You have to care about something, or someone, to be that honest.
A few days later, I wrote Bob an e-mail thanking him for the rental and for the feedback. “You’re welcome,” he replied. “I could tell you’re not sensitive to criticism. I’ve offered the same feedback to many others over my career, and I rarely see them again.”
We were overwhelmed by what he’d given us, particularly the business about keys of the songs. (“They all sound the same,” he had said.) It took us several months to make the adjustments. The plan was to improve the arrangements and the performance before asking him to listen again.
Before that could happen, Bob called me. “There’s a concert here at the Backstage on Wednesday by a band you should see if you want to understand where you want to be. Come, and bring the band. Don’t worry about tickets – it’s my treat. Just get here early.”
I brought Lance and Scott to see the Salty Suites, a three-piece folkgrass band that performed regularly at the venue. We arrived early; so had Bob. We helped him reset the room from the previous night’s sold-out show while he briefed us. “What you’re looking for tonight is this band’s connection to the audience. Watch them closely. Listen to their banter – they’re very funny. Listen for how often the audience laughs. Listen to the mix: instruments low, voices high.”
That was our first official lesson. The Salty Suites were first-class performers; their banter was easy and funny; the audience had a wonderful time. “This is one of my favorite bands,” Bob said. “Your group can be this good if you work at it. Let me know when you think you’re ready, and I’ll give you another look.”
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Over the following months, we worked hard, taking every piece of Bob’s advice seriously. During that time, I offered to build him a new website, gratis. I had worked in online marketing for two decades and built hundreds of professional sites, and the Coffee Gallery Backstage’s needed replacing. I had recognized the value of what Bob was giving the band, and I was astonished by his attention. For whatever reason, he cared, and I wanted to reciprocate.
“Don’t offer to do something like this if you’re not going to follow through,” he said. “I’m not asking you for anything, and you don’t have to give me anything. But if you say you’re going to do it and you don’t, you’re going to break my heart!” He laughed, clutching his chest theatrically. “Lots of people offer to do things for me. They rarely follow through.”
Gathering the photos and the marketing copy, the passwords and the technical particulars, meant working closely with Bob, and it was easy to see why he had succeeded. He is witty and charming, and, beyond that, he has a command of language, written and spoken. The copy he supplied for the new site was informative, warm, strong, professional. When it went live, he pronounced himself proud of it. “You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “But I could tell you wanted to, and I didn’t want to stop you and disappoint you.”
Around the time the site was finished, the band was ready to show Bob our progress, and we asked how we might perform for him again. “O.K., I know you’re a serious person,” he said. “If you say you’ve made improvements, I’m willing to book your band for a matinée.”
And so he did – a Sunday matinée, a few months out, our concert duly added to Bob’s fancy new website.
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The show, on St. Patrick’s Day, was a double bill with a local bluegrass band called the Rattlesnakes. We played a strong set. The Snakes’ front man was handsome, energetic, charismatic – a real showman.
Afterward, Bob said, “Your band did much better than last time. The other band was more entertaining, but you were a close second, and that’s saying a lot. Let me know when you’re ready for the next show.”
A close second – out of two bands. Much of Bob’s conversation ran on humor like this: subtle, often self-deprecating, always funny.
By then, we had come to know him fairly well, and it struck me that there weren’t nearly enough interviews with him on record. He had told us a few stories; we knew what he carried. I proposed a video: Bob on the Coffee Gallery stage, under low light, answering questions from an unseen interviewer. “That could be fun,” he said.
We set a date. On the appointed day, three of us arrived with cameras and microphones. The people in the shop opened the Gallery, and we began setting up. Everything went smoothly, except for one issue: no Bob. That was not like him. After thirty minutes, we called. “Oh, I didn’t think you really meant it,” he said. “All that work! You’re there now? You want to do it?”
We did. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes,” he said, and arrived in nineteen.
I had offered him the questions in advance; he’d declined. He didn’t need them. Every question, personal or professional, he hit out of the park. The man was a stupendous storyteller.
We had set up two video cameras, plus an iPhone off to the side, mainly to capture sound. In the low light, both cameras, it turned out, produced blurry, unusable footage. Thankfully, Scott had thought to record video on the iPhone, too, and its sidelong angle made for a compelling, oddly artistic record.
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Bob under the lights, mid-story. Both video cameras failed that night; an iPhone did not. Video by Real Diehl Productions.
By the time we were ready to perform for Bob again, we were managing the Backstage’s website, designing its graphics, and running its social-media accounts. We were also, by then, aware of how hard Bob worked. Musicians who played the venue did little to promote their shows, and, beyond a newsletter, neither did Bob. The Backstage had always been a word-of-mouth affair and even shows featuring some of the most fabulous musicians in the region didn’t always sell out. We changed that.
We would take Bob to lunch now and then, to talk about the band and to coax out more insights – five or six such lunches. The plan was always to collect him at the Gallery at noon; he’d pull up on the minute and get into our car. “You guys don’t be disappointed if I don’t eat much, because I’m not very hungry!” he’d announce, before eating with a good appetite at whichever plant-based restaurant we’d chosen. Once, he came to our home in Shadow Hills for a homemade lunch.
By then, Bob wasn’t teaching by directive. He would talk about the Dillards, or Randy Sparks, or John Stewart, and what made them great. “They were in the entertainment industry, not the music industry,” he liked to say. “People want to be entertained.”
Sometimes the teaching was direct. “Whenever you hear something really funny, write it down and see if you can use it in your act,” he said. An act. Not a band, not a group, not an ensemble. An act.
“Don’t ever go on stage wearing shorts or blue jeans – especially a band like yours, with lots of long hair. Dress sharp. Not identical, but complementary. There are people in my audience who will take one look at you, get scared, and leave.” He was joking about his audience, but he was serious about “looking good while playing good.”
Soon, everything we discussed with Bob existed in a frame larger than music. It was connection with one another; connection with the audience; dressing “like Glen Campbell”; telling stories and jokes that made people laugh. It was recognizing how much the audience in front of us mattered – talking with them, not to them; playing for them, not at them; making sure they felt respected and seen and appreciated.
It was, in a word, entertainment.
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We implemented all of it. We spent a bundle at Boot Barn on shirts and hats. Lance, a trained actor, prepared stories and jokes and delivered them naturally and effectively. I remember a bluegrass festival in Northern California where we performed with Peter Rowan. During Rowan’s solo set, he did a lot of storytelling – he’s a master, one funny line after another. (“A bluegrass player is the only musician who will travel five hundred miles to hear himself play.”) I looked over at Lance, who was intently thumbing notes into his phone. The next time we played the Coffee Gallery, Bob said, “The audience had a great time.”
Around this time, we booked a premium gig in Solvang – four hundred seats, a posh garden fund-raiser. “Don’t talk too much today,” I suggested to Lance. “There are just too many people here. They probably won’t care about our stories.” It was one thing to address fifty people in an intimate listening room. Four hundred, outdoors?
Lance ignored me. He spun stories. He dropped jokes and punch lines like love bombs. The audience laughed and enjoyed themselves tremendously. Afterward, the director who had booked us said, “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I have never seen a band connect with an audience like that. I’ve never seen an audience drawn into the experience the way your front man drew them in today.”
Right again, Bob. The venue booked us the next two summers.
The jokes and the stories continued no matter the size of the crowd, including the six thousand at our headlining show at the Prescott Bluegrass Festival. The humor was always what Bob called “clean comedy”: no profanity, no sex, nothing controversial. And no politics.
In January of 2020, Bob sent us a story from the Times about Lily Tomlin, who recalled honing her act at the Ice House and marveled at how much comedy’s standards had changed. She remembered a performance in which she joked that her dance partner had “sprung a boner,” causing Bob to “hit the ceiling” and threaten to ban her from the club. Bob was greatly tickled by the story. “Comedy has changed, but I haven’t,” he said. “It’s easy to be funny and lewd. Why do what is easy?” He guarded the Backstage’s image as strictly as he had the Ice House’s.
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Slideshow: The Storytellers on Bob’s Stage
Early on, I had asked Bob if I could photograph him for the new website. He showed up in his usual extraordinary good mood, wearing a white button-down and blue jeans. The shirt bore a large stain near the buttons. “Bob,” I said, “your shirt has a big stain on it.”
He deadpanned: “Why do you think they call me Bob Stane?”
I offered him the black button-down I was wearing – I had an undershirt – along with a fedora I’d brought. “O.K., sure, let’s do this!” he said at once. He was not a man to refuse a shirt. He was there to further the cause of entertainment.
If asked, Bob would regale us with stories of the old days at the Upper Cellar and the Ice House, but he never raised the past on his own. He remained so purposeful, so busy, that he was rooted entirely in the present: the Backstage, his acts, his audience. When we responded to anecdotes about Leno or Letterman or Carlin by telling him, “Bob, you are one cool dude,” he denied it. Him? Cool? The musicians and comedians he’d made famous were cool – certainly not him. He was consistent on this point across the years. He was just some average guy; he never understood why people made such a fuss. I used to think, this is why he’s so humble and lovable. He has no idea. He really doesn’t know.
Then, the moment the stage and lights were set for the photos, Bob – unprompted, undirected—began arranging himself in a series of stylish and creative poses, as though he’d spent a career modeling for GQ. I kept shooting. Ten minutes later, we were finished, and all I could think was: He most certainly does know.
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In the year leading up to May of 2023, The Storytellers played two sold-out shows at the Coffee Gallery Backstage. Bob kept offering feedback. At our last lunch together, he said, “O.K., the music is tight, the singing is tight, and you’re producing the right energy on stage. Your audiences are pleased. I think you’re ready to take your act up one more notch. I recommend you work with a choreographer, to get more movement on stage. Think about it.”
The band had been open, by and large, to all of Bob’s directions, though there was a little resistance here and there as we forbade blue jeans and T-shirts, baseball caps, sneakers, shirts with messages, music stands, and frowns. Not everyone was thrilled about telling jokes before their songs. But, as the showmanship improved, the audiences responded, and the resistance faded.
We began reaching out to choreographers. We had a show scheduled at the Backstage for Friday, April 21st – announced forty-five days out, sold out in about twenty, our third sellout in a row, with a waiting list of more than a dozen. We wanted to do something special for the occasion – for the audience, and for Bob.
The walls of the Backstage, as most patrons knew, were wrapped in life-size murals of a Latin American coffee bean warehouse, with period lighting, a painted sky, and vintage airplanes hanging from above. When we built the website, Bob had furnished a paragraph explaining why the listening room was called the Coffee Gallery Backstage. (He had once owned the actual coffee shop out front, though not for some time; by our final show, the shop had closed, and there was nowhere to buy coffee and treats before the show or at intermission.) On the website, Bob had written:
You are in a coffee bean warehouse somewhere in Central America. You are comfortably stranded while your cruise ship rides out a storm at the mouth of the river. You, fortunately, are ashore and have stumbled upon this warehouse where a group of musical and witty American expatriates are earning their cups of exotic coffee by entertaining with voice, instrument and humor. The entertainers are overjoyed with this bean storage facility as the audience is hankering for “good” music and comedy and no machinery of any kind makes a sound while they are performing. Grinders are not allowed. Each individual bean is crushed, quietly, by hand by underpaid field workers. What happens next is up to you!
Somehow Bob understood that performing acoustic music in some unfamiliar rustic outpost on the bank of a river is every acoustic musician’s fantasy.
For the April show, we wanted to put that story in front of the audience. We ordered good coffee and a ton of plant-based muffins to offer, free, at the door and at intermission. Lance would open the evening by reciting Bob’s story, transporting the audience, we hoped, to a coffee warehouse in Costa Rica circa 1960. We brought extra help to make and serve the coffee. And we decided not to tell Bob. We wanted it to be a surprise.
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We arrived at the Coffee Gallery to find the door locked and no sign of Bob. That had never happened. We would always arrive before load-in to find him already there, straightening the tables and chairs from the night before, a CD playing while he worked. (Sometimes he’d gift us the CD he played before the show and at intermission. Once, he handed us a John Stewart album and said, “This is as good as anything you’ll ever hear.”)
No Bob. No answer at his home. We waited and worried. Worry turned to fear. Eventually, someone close to Bob arrived and unlocked the door. Bob was sick, he said, and would not be coming. We knew it had to be something serious for Bob to miss a concert. We were still wondering how we – how anyone – could stage a show at the Coffee Gallery Backstage without him.
We set up late, and there was more than usual to set up, with the coffee and the treats. After soundcheck, I huddled the band together. “This is terrible,” I said. “But if we’ve learned anything from Bob, it’s that the show must go on. We have to put on the same show we’d put on if he was here.”
The sold-out audience arrived, took their coffee and muffins, and sat, while the Salty Suites CD played on the house system. At every concert, Bob performed a ceremonial dimming of the lights; I took it upon myself to do it in his absence. From the stage, Lance announced that Bob was not in attendance and that we would carry on as though he were. The lights came down, and Lance delivered Bob’s story of the warehouse on the river. Many in the audience clearly had never heard it.
The show went off without a hitch; the band did an admirable job of putting on a good, joyful show. And it was terribly obvious how much was missing. On a good night, Bob contributed more to a show than the audience knew, whenever the band on stage played off him. We understood that night just how much we had always been performing for him – more than for anyone.
A few days later, I got a call from Beverly Stane, Bob’s wife, who rarely appeared at the shows but was instrumental in ticketing, reservations and, as Bob once told us, generally keeping Bob together. The conversation was short. Bob was ill and hospitalized, and the Coffee Gallery Backstage would be closing permanently.
We were devastated – and we had come to the scene late in the day. It was hard to imagine what the closing would mean to the many dozens of musicians with decades-long ties to Bob and the Backstage. For years, Bob had provided a stage to extremely accomplished roots and folk musicians – many once famous, many who had played in the bands of the famous, many who will undoubtedly become famous – where they could meet their fans, play their songs, and make decent money doing it. Bob provided these artists, and himself, a warm and soulful space in which to grow old together – to remain relevant and useful together.
I waited a week before visiting him at Huntington Hospital, in Pasadena. Physically, he was in bad shape; mentally, he was as sharp as ever. The moment he saw me walk in, he asked, “How was the show?” I described the surprise he’d missed. “Oh, I would have liked to have seen that,” he said. I showed him a video I’d captured on my phone. He looked at me and smiled. “I’m touched. If only I was a sensitive man, I would cry.”
He described the events that had landed him there. Finally, I said, “Beverly says the Coffee Gallery Backstage is done. Is it true?”
He smiled. “Oh, if Beverly says it’s over, it’s over. I’m not in any shape to fight her!” He laughed. “I’m sure I’ll recover from whatever this is. But it’s time to stop.”
We visited for an hour. He mused that the Backstage had remained, after all those years, “a secret hiding in plain sight.” Together, we worked on a statement announcing the closing. I took notes and began drafting – but not right away. I waited, hoping for the miracle in which Bob recovered and the shows went on.
When I got home, I contacted the local papers: Bob was hospitalized and would recover, but the Coffee Gallery Backstage was closing forever. On May 2nd, eleven days after our final show there, this statement was released:
To Our Audience and Artists …
All good things must come to an end. Nothing lasts. Not the dinosaurs. Not even The Beatles. It is with a tinge of sadness that we officially announce the closing of Coffee Gallery Backstage. Bob Stane, having reached the proverbial “fork in the road,” is finally retiring from the music business after more than fifty good years. He will continue to write his memoirs and finally learn to relax. Coffee Gallery Backstage was a special venue. On any given weekend, some of the most sublime, exquisite, and soulful music in the Los Angeles region was being performed on our small stage. Our audience grew mostly by word of mouth. Yet after 25 years, The Gallery remained mostly a secret, hiding in plain sight, known only to those “in the know.” We wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
As we have reached a true end of an era, there are no regrets. As we stated, there is only a tinge of sadness that we are closing, but an enormous amount of joy, satisfaction and pride that we did it at all, let alone did it successfully and passionately.
Thank you to our wonderful and loyal audience. Thank you to all the artists – including the little known, the famous, and soon to be famous – for being a part of our special scene and story.
Join us now as we dim the lights one final time.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
~ Bob & Beverly Stane, The Coffee Gallery Backstage
That was it. No further denial needed. The Coffee Gallery Backstage was no more.
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Slideshow: The Coffee Gallery Backstage
He’s launched a thousand
dreams come true
So take a bow, Bob Stane~ “The Ballad of Bob Stane”
Around the time we filmed the interview and heard Bob’s story whole, we had conceived a desire to write a song about him – a folk song. We hadn’t yet written any originals, so we reached out to Lynn Shipley Sokolow, a local bluegrass musician with a solid reputation as a songwriter. Lynn not only knew Bob; several of her bands had played the Backstage. Like everyone, she loved and appreciated him. We pointed her to the video interview and asked her to write from what Bob had shared. Her draft was nearly spot on; we added a few touches, and the band collectively set the lyrics to music.
When we sent Bob a demo of “The Ballad of Bob Stane,” he said he loved it. One of our great joys was performing the song at the Coffee Gallery Backstage, where the audiences loved it and Bob, abashed as ever by the attention, appreciated the gesture.
We had always meant to record the song properly. We never did – not for lack of wanting. It was an expensive and time-consuming proposition, and we never felt we had found the ideal arrangement. After years of internal disagreement about how best to record it for posterity, the project was shelved.
It was revived in 2025, with the arrival of A.I. music production. We had a song with stellar lyrics that Bob liked, and years of scribbled notes on arrangement, and Scott took to Suno to produce the song the way we had always wanted it produced – without protests or arguments. The result was polished, with the full range of bluegrass instrumentation and voices; for fun, Scott also created a lighthearted video to carry it. After we showed Bob the finished song, “The Ballad of Bob Stane” was released to the public on New Year’s Eve, 2025.
“The Ballad of Bob Stane.” Lyrics by Lynn Shipley Sokolow with The Storytellers. Produced by Scott Diehl. Released December 31st, 2025.
That’s how it all happened. Of all the stories The Storytellers will ever tell, this one is, to us, the most meaningful and profound. Bob’s gentle, honest, generous, and caring mentorship took an aspiring bar band and turned it into a bona-fide musical act. Through all the band’s biggest and most unlikely moments – performing alongside Micky Dolenz and Michelle Phillips at the Love Street Festival, soon after our lessons with Bob began; playing twenty-five bluegrass shows at the Treasure Island Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas; performing on one of NAMM’s two largest stages; sharing a stage with the bluegrass legend Peter Rowan while acting as his backing band at the Brookdale Bluegrass Festival; headlining the prestigious Prescott Bluegrass Festival in front of six thousand people; playing Dodger Stadium this past summer as part of its Fourth of July celebration – it has been impossible not to think of Bob Stane.
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We still communicate with Bob regularly. He writes us the kindest, most encouraging messages, assuring us – as if he had to – that he cares about us and about the band. We share our ongoing successes with him, always hoping he recognizes our triumphs as his own.
This is a story I have wanted to write for years. It is meaningful to us, and I hope it is meaningful to Bob – not because he is being recognized; he is used to that. Because he is being appreciated with the sort of gratitude that can be seen – gratitude that took time and effort, that occupies more space and carries more weight than telling him we feel grateful. There are lessons in this narrative, hiding in plain sight, for aspiring musical acts: not just a few helpful tips but proof that expert advice, put to good use, can change outcomes. Perhaps this long and detailed account will be published somewhere, someday.
We live in a strange culture that waits until someone we love has passed from the Earth to eulogize them – when it is too late. I never understood this. For years, I told myself to wait to pen this account until the band achieved something larger, so that the story would carry more force. Years have now passed since Bob retired, and, no doubt, more accomplishments for the band are on the horizon.
On the day we recorded Bob’s interview, he stated, emphatically, that he expected to live past the hundred-year mark. It was common in his family line. This year, he is ninety-two. I cannot trust that Bob will live to be a centenarian – or that, if he does, he will still be able to read a story that took too long to reach his hands, his eyes and his heart. The hour was getting late, so I took up my pen.
It was time.
Slideshow: Where It All Led
The Ballad of Bob Stane
Lyrics · Lynn Shipley Sokolow with The Storytellers
Never let it be said
A good story went untold
Some men ain’t immortalized
‘til they’re dead
‘til they’re way too old
Some say a man
ain’t worth his salt
If he doesn’t rise to fame
No one gets there by default
Just ask a man named Stane
Born in thirty-nine
On a farm in San Berdoo
Worked the railroad
and the Borax mine
‘Til the age of twenty-two
On sunset he saw a Unicorn
The music he did hear
Struck like a bolt of light
Saw his future bright and clear
He’s the man behind the music
The one we seldom see
The one who shines the limelight
On folks like you and me
He takes his satisfaction
from bringin’ others fame
He’s launched
a thousand dreams come true
So raise a glass, Bob Stane
With his vision at the Unicorn
Five hundred bucks on loan
Opened up the Upper Cellar
Givin’ folky folks a home
Turned up Pasadena way
Ran the Ice House with a friend
Givin’ rising stars a stage to play
Musicians and comedians
At the Coffee Gallery
A golded age Backstage
Magic flowed
Bob was bestowed
A big ol’ fork in the road
He’s the man behind the music
The one we seldom see
The one who shines the limelight
On folks like you and me
He takes his satisfaction
from bringin’ others fame
He’s launched a thousand
dreams come true
This one’s for you Bob Stane
Now Bob, he’s still around
Doing all that he does best
He’ll dim the lights
and run the sound
And for this, we’re all blessed
The stars still fall around him
On their journey to fame
And there’ll never be another
Like the man we call Bob Stane
He’s the man behind the music
The one we seldom see
The one who shines the limelight
On folks like you and me
He takes his satisfaction
from bringin’ others fame
He’s launched a thousand
dreams come true
So here’s to you, Bob Stane
He’s launched a thousand
dreams come true
So take a bow, Bob Stane
The Storytellers · Coffee Gallery Backstage, Altadena