Columnist Jerry Fink: Saxman Cash changes with the times on Strip

Friday, Oct. 15, 2004 | 8:39 a.m.

Saxophonist Cash Farrar was, maybe still is, a hippie.

The monster musician's hippie roots go back to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District, the epicenter of the Bay Area's post-beat generation of musicians, poets and free-love advocates.

Farrar, 61, managed a jazz club called Levels in Haight-Ashbury when he got out of the Navy in the mid-'60s.

"I was stationed at Treasure Island when some friends of mine opened the club," Farrar recalled. "Henry Thomas, an heir to the Hunt's food fortune, was the major investor."

Farrar lived off base in San Francisco, performing gigs when he wasn't on duty. His roommate knew Thomas.

"I was doing jazz sessions all over town when they opened the club," Farrar recalled. "It was just about the time I was getting out of the Navy when they decided to go to New York and open another club. They handed me the keys and said, 'Take it.'

"I just did a segue out of the Navy and into the Levels. I threw my seabag into a Dumpster and went straight to the club."

Farrar ran the club for a year, until he got an offer to go to Los Angeles and make a recording.

"I did the same thing with the piano player that my roommate and Thomas did with me -- I just handed him the keys and left."

When the recording deal fell through he and his band, Demon, headed for Las Vegas.

"My drummer had absorbed my girlfriend, so I was ready for a change," Farrar said.

The group arrived in Vegas in '68.

"We were a real hippie San Francisco rock band," Farrar said. "We did some shows at the National Guard Armory."

It may have been the hippie era in San Francisco, but not Vegas.

"I was wearing robes and shades. My hair was long," Farrar recalled. "We were followed by the police all the time."

For a while, the band lived in a stable on property owned by a friend.

"Me, I slept in a tree," Farrar said. "I took an old mattress, threw it across some branches in the tree and slept there."

The group worked fairly steadily at various nightclubs around town.

"I remember being arrested once for yelling at some cops to leave us alone," Farrar said. "They kept me naked all night long in a padded cell. They let me go the next day. They didn't know what to charge me with."

Before the band fell apart they shared billing with Three Dog Night and other well-known groups of the time.

"When the band dissolved, I went back to San Francisco," Farrar said.

He performed with a couple of bands in the Bay Area, went on the road, performed on cruise ships and eventually, in the late '70s until '81, ended up back in Vegas, wearing tuxedos and cutting his hair short.

"I'm sitting in the Musicians Union hall in San Francisco, and some guy comes in and says, 'Are there any sax players who want to go on the road?' " Farrar said. "I was out of the chair in two seconds."

The road took him to the Sahara, where he performed in the Casbar Lounge for six weeks.

He had gigs at the Silver Slipper and other venues before heading for Los Angeles, where he became music director of a cable music show called "Cafe Toast and Jam."

When that gig played out after 52 shows, he returned to the Bay Area, which had been his home since the age of 4. Farrar worked with a lot of jazz and blues bands in and around San Francisco and, occasionally, on the road.

"I really made a name for myself," he said.

Farrar decided to return to Vegas about a year ago.

"I had just about exhausted my opportunities in the Bay Area," he said. "I was booked every weekend, but my weekdays were empty."

Farrar has performed at various venues around town, including Cafe Nicolle, where he may soon have a permanent Friday-night gig as a member of the backup band for Mark Giovi.

And he frequently performs gigs out of town.

Over the years he has worked with some of the greats in the business, including Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Tubes, Huey Lewis and the News and others.

While many local musicians are frustrated and bitter over not being able to find work, Farrar relishes being in Las Vegas.

He's working on a new CD, looking into the possibility of a local cable TV show and taking gigs as they come. He can be reached at saxcash@aol.com.

"It's such a great scene here," he said. "There's such a great supportive thing going on here among a lot of the musicians."

Lounging around

Randy Martin performs a musical tribute to Dean Martin, the "Martinis With Martin Show," at the Joey Bistro & Bar at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. For information please call 325-2164 or 369-5639.

The popular dance band Doo-Wopp.com has moved to Club Tequila at the Fiesta Rancho, and performs from 7 to 11 p.m. Thursdays.

Saxophonist Tommy Thompson is at Napoleon's at Paris Las Vegas 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Mondays and Tuesdays and 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.