Dirty Cello at Common Grounds Meeting Hall

From Iceland to Italy, and all over the U.S., San Francisco-based band Dirty Cello brings the world a high energy and unique spin on blues, rock, and Americana. Led by vivacious cross-over cellist, Rebecca Roudman, Dirty Cello is cello like you’ve never heard before. From down-home blues and rock with a wailing cello to virtuosic stompin’ Americana, Dirty Cello is a band that gets your heart thumping and your toes tapping!
“Dirty Cello’s music is all over the map: funky, carnival, romantic, sexy, tangled, electric, fiercely rhythmic, and textured, and only occasionally classical.” Oakland Magazine

Dirty Cello, an eclectic quintet with a worldwide reputation for virtuosic frolicsomeness, headlines Wednesday’s Valhalla’s Boathouse Theatre 25^th Anniversary Celebration. The annual season finale is playing a new date due to the Caldor Fire, a 221,775-acre blaze that threatened and caused the evacuation of the entire city of South Lake Tahoe.

“We are in a weird time right now,” Dirty Cello bandleader Rebecca Roudman told Tahoe Onstage. “We’ve had to cancel various concerts, but were still going to come to Valhalla, one of our favorite venues to play.

“The Dirty Cello Band likes to find ways to play no matter what. We like unique spaces. We’ve played everywhere from a 14th-century church to the bottom of a cave. The more unique the better and that’s certainly what the Valhalla Boathouse is.”

The upcoming hurly-burly will be Dirty Cello’s third-sellout show in the Boathouse Theatre. It also performed before an empty room for a 2020 streamed concert. Audience members’ smiles will be concealed by their required facemasks.

Songwriter Roudman stands and sings and plays cello and an electric violin designed to absorb abuse from the onstage ruckus. The fancy fiddle was constructed by guitarist Jason Eckl, who also built a portable stage the band played upon from Santa Cruz to Oregon during the height of the pandemic. Alex Farrell plays bass, Jeff Wheeler drums, and Mana Contractor sings.

“We don’t just play songs; we like to make our whole show an experience,” Roudman said. “We have about 65 songs memorized, and we don’t have a setlist. Whether the audience knows it or not, they’re actually making the setlist.

“If we do a blues tune, and they’re really digging it, we will do more of that. Or if they like a ‘60s cover or bluegrass, we’ll do more of that. It’s always a fun experience for us because we never know what we’re going to play next, and it always makes it a different experience for the audience.”

Dirty Cello has had success from its inception after a YouTube video of its version of “Purple Haze” went viral. After the initial two-month live-show lockdown in Spring 2020, the band has been booked every weekend. It found gigs at innovative, often animal-themed, venues, including the Oakland Zoo, Ferrari Farms in Reno, and a buffalo ranch.