Big Brother as a four man ensemble was a featured band at some of the first acid-fueled, dance-concerts like the Trips Festival and the Tribal Stomp and though they already had many fans and were headlining they wanted something else to complete their sound: a strong female lead singer.

They auditioned several singers but it wasn’t until Chet Helms convinced fellow Texan, Janis Joplin to come out to San Francisco that the band was complete.

For most of 1966 and 1967 they played at venues all over California and the West Coast. They also spent a month in Chicago playing at the club ‘Mother Blues.” During this time they lived together communally and rehearsed every day. As in many great rock bands they thought of themselves not only as a band but as individual artists and collaborators. They all recognized that Janis was a great singer and had the potential to be a star, but they also knew that each member brought something to the table.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, like many of the great bands of the era (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones) were about something; it had had its own ‘persona’. For the followers of the music scene, the people who danced and listened at the Fillmore and the Avalon, Big Brother and the Holding Co were greater than the sum of its parts.

The Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967 was the first great international rock festival and it was the moment when Big Brother and its lead singer Janis Joplin blew open the collective mind of the audience and rose to the top of the Rock music hierarchy. It was also the moment in which that same audience discovered Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and several other artists that were destined to take rock music to the next level.

In 1968 Big Brother signed with Columbia Records and Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, etc) became their manager. They went into the recording studio and produced the album that many consider their masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time: ‘Cheap Thrills”. Come out and see them Live.

Tickets are $20 in advance online and $25 the day of the show.

Doors at 6pm & Music from 7-9pm