Forty years feels like a long time. Steve Carell didn’t become a household name until he was 43 years old and starred in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Lucille Ball was 40 when I Love Lucy premiered in 1951. Yes, 40 years is a while, but compared to some SLO County players, it’s small potatoes, baby!
Western swinger
Come October, Western swing, country, and yodeling artist Monte Mills will celebrate 50 years of playing music in SLO County, beating New Times’ tenure by nearly a decade. A farrier by trade with a love of calf roping, Mills arrived on the Central Coast in 1972 and was playing music by 1976.
Raised in Colorado “on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in a little town called Olathe,” Mills did a three-year stint in the military as a Seabee during the Vietnam era and used the G.I. Bill to attend the Porterville Horseshoeing School Inc., a school internationally renowned for producing expert farriers.
Listening to Mills reminisce about SLO’s “old days” is like taking an encyclopedic trip through the venues of yore.
“Laguna Village Inn was coming in as the hot spot on the corner of LOVR and Madonna Road,” Mills recalled. “It was really popular. It later became kind of a gay bar.”
The Motel Inn, Madonna Inn, F. McLintocks in downtown SLO, Tortilla Flats, The Spindle, the Cigar Factory, 1865, the Anderson Hotel, Sebastian’s, The Spirit, the Dark Room, This Old House, Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, the Olde Port Inn near Avila Beach, even Camozzi’s in Cambria, which Mills recalled had a “real warped floor you could barely stand on”—he remembers all these long-forgotten places where thousands of people listened to music and danced and celebrated over the last 50 years.
Some of his earliest SLO memories are of an ongoing Wednesday night calf roping event at the Madonna Inn. It was one of many reasons he decided to settle in SLO County.
“It was made enticing with all the college kids around, as I was around that age,” he said. “I’d always enjoyed music a lot, and when I was in college, I learned that auctioneer song, and I used to sit in with bands around different places.”
Starting in 1974, he had the horseshoeing concession with Los Rancheros Vistadores, a group of equestrians that meets annually for a 60-mile ride on Santa Barbara ranchland northward. At one of those camps, an attendee heard him sing “The Auctioneer Song.”
“He said, ‘God, you ought to record that.’ Of course, he was one that was gonna set it up and make money off of it,” Mills laughed. “So, we went down and recorded a whole album of stuff down there in Hollywood.”
He’s not sure of the studio’s name, but he remembers a couple of the players hired for the session, including Roy Lanham from the Sons of the Pioneers on lead guitar, and a “guy who’d been with Artie Shaw’s band on drums.”
‘Yeah, that was a pretty magical time back in those days. People were more inclined to dance than they are now, that’s for sure. Especially swing dance. And that was before cellphones, where you had people’s undivided attention. I think cellphones made a huge difference in how people tune in. That’s the big thing that I see.’
—Monte Mills, Monte Mills & The Lucky Horseshoe Band
“I was as green as I could be, but we did it, and then I had an album out, and I went out and started playing,” Mills said. “We got a gig down there at McLintocks Saloon, playing for the college kids. And that got fairly popular, and we ended up doing that for 27 years.”
Mills’ McLintocks-era shows were legendary. The place would be packed, and college girls would line up to compete in a wet T-shirt contest to get a Monte Mills & The Lucky Horseshoe Band shirt.
“Yeah, that was a pretty magical time back in those days,” Mills said. “People were more inclined to dance than they are now, that’s for sure. Especially swing dance. And that was before cellphones, where you had people’s undivided attention. I think cellphones made a huge difference in how people tune in. That’s the big thing that I see.”
Mills, now 80, booked about 25 shows in 2026, and he’s still got a few more to play, including a couple of free ones on Wednesday, Aug. 19, for the Templeton Concert series in the downtown park from 6 to 8 p.m.; and the Avila Beach Farmers Market on Friday, Aug. 21, from 4 to 8 p.m.
Mills’ official Golden Gala 50th Anniversary Reunion Party is on Saturday, Oct. 10, at Barrel House Brewery’s amphitheater (5 to 9 p.m.; all ages; free).
“They’ve gone really all out for it,” Mills said. “They’re gonna have a food truck on hand, and stuff for kids to do, roping dummies—they’re making an event out of it. We sure appreciate how well received it is up there.”
Visit Mills’ website at montemills.com to find more shows and marvel at his history. The man’s a legend.
Wild Jalapeño
Louie Ortega has also been a fixture on the scene since the 1970s. He was born in Santa Maria, but his mother remarried when he was 4 and his stepfather moved the family to Salinas.
“My grandparents lived in Santa Maria all that time,” Ortega recalled, “so we would come back and forth and hit the beaches and go to SLO and Paso.”
Ortega later discovered that his birth dad was a guitarist and singer, and as his mother says, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Ortega’s first professional band was Louie and the Lovers in 1969. Doug Sahm of Sir Douglas Quintet and later the Texas Tornados—both bands Ortega would eventually become a part of—helped get him signed to Columbia and Atlantic Records.
By 1970, Ortega was married and in ’72 moved his family to Avila Beach.
“My kids went to that little school before it was a charter school, and it was great,” he said. “There were chickens and cows over the fence.”
One of Ortega’s other early bands was Rio Salinas. His first SLO band was called Salsa Brava, and they played the Cigar Factory, Olde Port, and The Spindle, among other venues.
“That band ran for about 10 years or so,” he explained. “Then I started doing solo shows, and then I started Louie Ortega and the Wild Jalapeños.”
By the early ’80s, Sahm—the guy who had discovered Ortega as a teenager—asked Ortega to play guitar with Sir Douglas Quintet.
“Then we did a lot of European tours. I did a lot of records,” he recalled. “Then in the late ’80s, ’89 maybe, and we were playing a Tex-Mex Christmas party in San Francisco at Boz Skaggs’ place, and the opening act was Flaco Jiménez, and the second act was Freddy Fender, and then Sir Douglas Quintet was closing. It just got nuts, and at the end, Doug asked Flaco and Freddy to come onstage and join us, and the encore ended up being almost an hour.”
About a week later, Sahm called Ortega. “‘Hey, I’m thinking about putting this thing together with Freddy and Flaco. I’m going to call it the Texas Tornados.’ He said, ‘You want the guitar chair?’ And I said, ‘Let me think about it—yeah!’”
Ortega had an 18-year run with them before the original members started dying off, but a form of the band continues to this day with Doug Sahm’s kid Shawn Sahm, Ernie Durawa, and Ortega, often billed as Texas Tornado Traditions. During his tenure with the original Tornados, Ortega won a 1990 Grammy Award for his performance and translation of their song “Soy de San Luis.”
“It was a song Flaco’s father wrote in the ’50s,” Ortega explained. “I did the translation from English into Spanish, and that won us a Grammy on our first record.”
Ortega just turned 75 and continues to perform live. On Saturday, Aug. 15, catch him at Cambria’s The Coastal Tap Room (4 to 5 p.m.; all ages; free). On Friday and Saturday, Aug. 21 and 22, he plays Marisol at The Cliffs Resort (7 to 9 p.m.; all ages; free). Keep up with him at louieortega.net. He’s still spicy!
The musical chameleon
Chet Hogaboom must hold the record for being in the most successful local bands. His introduction to music is a story for the ages. He was from Upstate New York, but his family moved to Fresno when he was 7 or 8, and his dad worked at the athletic department at Fresno City College and was in charge of events at Ratcliffe Stadium.
“My first instrument was the drums,” he explained. “My friends and I used to hustle Cokes at those events, going through the crowd. So, the Rolling Stones and the Byrds were playing at Ratcliffe Stadium in 1965. It was the Stones’ second tour of the States.”
He and his buddies were there to work, so they got in early and for free, but instead of marching up and down the stands selling Coca-Cola, “We just sat in the stands and watched.”
A couple of days later, the groundskeeper, “this old man named Doc brought up Charlie [Watts’] snare drum in a gig bag in my dad’s office. ‘Hey, they left it here.’ They left in a hurry in an armored car because the girls ran at the stage,” Hogaboom laughed.
He asked his parents for drum lessons, and so it began.
He eventually sold the drums but continued to sing, in particular with follow basketball player Harley Ogata, doing Simon and Garfunkel-like harmonies.
His arrival in SLO is a common story: “I moved over here to go to college and never left. You’re gonna laugh, because I lived in the Park Hotel for 50 bucks a month. Shared the bathroom down the hall.”
He traded his brother-in-law a sleeping bag for a nylon-string guitar, got some chord books, and started learning.
“The first time I performed around here was 1974, a little place up by the railroad tracks that’s no longer there called The Outside Inn.”
Later, a Fresno friend moved to SLO and they started Cooncreek, and in 1975 they played their first gig at The Dark Room. Shows at The Network, 1865, and Sebestian’s followed.
At a show “out 227,” they met some horn players who needed singers for an R&B band. Fat and Sassy was born and was hugely popular. When it ended around 1980, Hogaboom formed Chester (his given first name), which was more of a straight-up rock band. Both bands toured a lot.
In the mid-’80s, he’d started a family and wanted to stick closer to home, so he formed an acoustic duo with Tommy Lee Nunes that played regularly at DW Grover’s in Grover Beach and the Hungry Tiger in Morro Bay. This developed into an electric band called Fast Mickey—a hardworking cover band.
Eager to try other genres, he later joined the established soul, rock, jazz-fusion act FATZ in the late ’80s, which became a regular at The Spirit, a hilltop night club that now houses KSBY. It had been through a lot of names: The Breakers, Hob Nob, Yancy McFadden’s, and after The Spirit, Loco Ranchero.
FATZ opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie and the Tide, Junior Walker and the All Stars, and The Greg Kihn Band. From there, Hogaboom formed CT and the Detroit Power, a powerhouse horns and keyboard-driven R&B act that shared the stage with Sha Na Na and The Mamas and the Papas. They were arguably SLO County’s biggest band for years
When two members left, Hogaboom and keyboardist Doug Tomooka formed the duo HeartThieves and put out an amazing debut. They recently released a new album 30-some years later. Hard to believe they’re still at it. Hogaboom’s turning 74 in September.
CT and Tommy Lee and Soulsauce were two other Hogaboom outfits. These days he’s with the Earls of Tuesday. They play covers by The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bruce Cockburn, Cat Stevens, Al Green, various Motown hits, Little Feat, Steely Dan, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, Tim Buckley, CSN&Y, Bob Marley, Taj Mahal, and more.
You can see them on Friday, Aug. 14, at Harmony Cellars Winery (5:15 to 7:15 p.m.). They play Ragged Point on Sunday, Aug. 16 (noon to 3:30 p.m.). On Friday, Aug. 21, they’re at Paso’s Derby Winery from 6 to 9 p.m. On Saturday, Aug. 22, catch them at Cambria Pines Lodge (5:30 to 11 p.m.). Visit chethogoboom.com or earlsoftuesday.com to keep up with Hogaboom.
Americana master
Wally Barnick has been in a bunch of bands, most famously the Cache Valley Drifters. He “was pretty fresh back from Vietnam in late 1969” when he met the woman who became his wife.
“I’m not a native Californian. I’m an Ohioan, but I was determined to live in California once I got done with my military stuff, and just through happenstance, I ran into this young gal down in Costa Mesa. She’s been trying to get rid of me ever since, but I won’t leave,” Barnick quipped. “I couldn’t really tolerate the crowded scene in Orange County. I was pretty claustrophobic after my years of ‘vacation.’ And she said, ‘Well, I know a place that you’d like.”
They hitchhiked their way to Big Sur and “got dropped off along the way at a number of places, but one of them was right at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Santa Rosa Street, right across from a place called the Speedy Burger. It’s no longer there, but the building is. Now it’s taco stand. Well, we stood on the corner with our thumbs in the wind and eventually made our way to Big Sur.”
Barnick thought he could live there, but his wife was a college student, so they returned to SLO County to be closer to schools. Barnick got his radio operator license from the FCC and took a job “at a radio station in Santa Maria. KZON. It was an AM daytime country music station, and I had no interest in or knowledge of country music, but after taking that job, I soon became somewhat enamored with it,” he admitted.
There he met two brothers—Doug and Don Ellington—who were afternoon disc jockeys and relatives of Buck Owens, and they had a honky-tonk band in Santa Maria playing at a place called The Beacon Outpost.
“They invited me to come down and sing with them, and that was my lead off to playing,” Barnick explained. “I really wanted to play [an instrument], so the younger brother, Doug, said, ‘Well, I’ll show you a few chords.’”
Barnick was admittedly too impatient to practice and learn.
“I called him up and thanked him for his time—he wasn’t charging me any money—but I said, ‘I’ve got to tell you, Doug, this is taking too long. I want to play right now.’ Doug laughed and said, ‘I’ll show you some stuff on the bass guitar.’ He said, ‘You’ll be able to pick that up a lot faster.’ And he was right. So, within a very short time, I was playing, not very well, but well enough to fool people. That was in ’71.”
One of Barnick’s early gigs was playing at The Rose Garden Ballroom in Pismo for “one of those battle of the bands.” He was approached by Alan Glass, a guitar player, who asked Barnick to join his band, Freeway, that had a Hammond B3 organ player and female singer and covered songs by Yes, Deep Purple, and Stevie Wonder with complex arrangements.
“That was really the first honest to goodness, to the bone, having to play arrangements and know what I was doing, band,” Barnick explained.
In the summer of ’75, he ran into “two fellows who were members of the Cache Valley Drifters, David West and Bill Griffin.”
They were playing The Dark Room, and Barnick introduced himself. The next day West called and soon Barnick joined the Cache Valley Drifters, which became a colossally popular bluegrass and beyond act that did inventive things like adapt Cream’s “White Room” into a bluegrass song.
Well into his music career, Barnick was hired to manage and book a new nightclub, The Spirit. He brought performers like Bonnie Raitt, Dave Brubeck, Maria Muldaur, Dave Mason, and Asleep at the Wheel to town. The club produced its own publication, The Spirit Magazine, because Barnick had approached The Tribune and their weekly entertainment insert, Focus, asking if they’d use his press releases to inform the public about acts coming to The Spirit. The Trib said no, so Barnick took it into his own hands.
Here’s where it ties into the start of New Times.
“I had put the magazine out once a month,” Barnick explained, “and I think I was on the third edition or so.”
Then, there was a knock at his office door, and New Times founders Steve Moss and Bev Johnson walked in looking “forlorn, just dejected,” Barnick recalled. “They’ve got copies of The Spirit Magazine with them, and they said they were planning to start a magazine. A big smile came over my face, and I said, ‘You mean to tell me you guys are gonna put out a magazine like this?’ And they’re going, ‘Well, we don’t know now, because you’re first in line.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. If you guys will put my stuff in your magazine, I’ll stop publishing that thing right now.’”
New Times came to life.
The Spirit eventually closed. But Barnick, 77, never stopped playing. These days you can hear him with The Rockin’ Bs band with violinist and vocalist Julie Beaver and guitar wiz Kenny Blackwell. They’re playing on Saturday, Aug. 14, at Ragged Point with Wes Starr on drums (noon to 4 p.m.). See them again on Saturday, Aug. 29, at Paso’s Pear Valley Winery (1 to 4 p.m.). You can keep up with Barnick at facebook.com/WallyBarnickMusic.
He’s keeping the music alive. ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
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This article appears in 40th anniversary edition.
