Live at the Belly Up: Aviator Stash (Peaks and Valleys Productions, Belly Up Productions, San Diego State University, KPBS, 2024)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

I kept on KPBS and watched the first of a new run of episodes of the local TV show Live at the Belly Up, after the live-music venue in Solana Beach that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The band was Aviator Stash, a local group of people who went to Carlsbad High School together but didn’t actually start playing with each other until they formed the band in 2017 when they were already in their 20’s. Aviator Stash consists of Greg Kellogg (lead vocals), Sal Russo (lead guitar), Drew Lang (keyboards), bassist Eric Schneider (identified only as “Diz” on the Web site) and drummer Tyler Pinto. According to the band’s own Web site, “Aviator Stash is a genre-hopping powerhouse of indie-rock energy and party culture vibes. When listening to their music, you can find many influences ranging from funk, 2000's-era rock, and various electronic styles. The band gained local attention when their debut single ‘Lazy Summer Days’ received regular play as the ‘Local Break’ from the legendary San Diego radio station 91X in 2018.” Greg Kellogg was the band’s designated spokesperson on the interstitial interview segments, and they named a wide variety of influences, though at first I thought they sounded like a lot of local San Francisco Bay Area bands I remembered hearing in the mid-1970’s. They have a real gift for infectious dance grooves; though the Belly Up Tavern really is too small a venue for dancing, a lot of people in the audience were essentially dancing in place, bobbing up and down to the band’s rhythms.

They began their 13-song set (I’ve learned to judge Live at the Belly Up shows largely by the number of songs the band performs; if they play 15 or 16 songs they’re performing carefully crafted pop material, while eight or nine songs means they’re doing a lot of jamming) with a great dance-pop groove song called “Funky Tongue.” I was convinced this was going to be an instrumental until Kellogg took the mike and started singing midway through! After that they did a song called “She’s Money” that had a lower-tempo but still infectious groove. Their next songs, “Elevator” and “Tyler the Beat” (an obvious tribute to their drummer), blended into each other. Then they played “This Time of Year,” “Lotus” (a nicely moving romantic ballad) and “Lefty,” before doing an edgier song called “99 Days” with a guest artist, an African-American rapper called “Dr. Savvy.” Then they played “Shot Song,” which they dedicated to the Belly Up bartenders (Kellogg urged the audience members to tip them generously), “Prescribed Television” (which led my husband Charles to joke, “Does that mean TV you have to watch?”) and “Hype,” an anti-drug song. After a quite good performance of that prize-winning single “Lazy Summer Days,” Aviator Stash closed the show with what was essentially a pro-drug song, “TJ,” which advised their listeners to get good and high on American drugs before crossing the border on the ground that Mexican drugs aren’t as good. I was gratified that the copyright date on this program was 2024 – before that Live at the Belly Up had been doing mostly reruns from pre-COVID days, often a decade or more old and featuring performers like local blues queen Candye Kane who have since died. They’ve announced a season of 50 shows to commemorate the venue’s 50th anniversary, and I can hardly wait – especially if all of them are going to be as much fun as this one!