A 75-foot headphone cord plugged into Aunt June’s stereo system wound through furniture in the living room, across the kitchen floor and down a narrow stairwell into a pair of headphones attached to a 10-year-old Howie Cort. She was focusing on matching the beat of songs, one by one, from her cousin Greg’s record collection. From Strawberry Alarm Clock to The Doors, Aretha Franklin and more, Howie sat in that basement as much as she could, cleaning up her chops for a lifetime powered by music.
Over half a century later, Howie is debuting her premier album, a collection of covers from her favorite soul singers and singer-songwriters called “Aunt June’s Basement.” The band, called Howie’s Persuasion, will play at Giaco’s Valley Roadhouse in San Geronimo on April 6—one year after Howie first christened the restaurant as a venue. The songs were recorded over the course of eight years with the help of more than 20 musicians from the valley and was released on Howie’s website this week.
“I’m calling it an album, but it’s really more of a music project,” Howie said. “It’s the culmination of all my best friends and neighbors—I really have so many people to thank!”
When she left Pittsburgh shortly after finding her passion in percussion, she would visit Aunt June, one of her mom’s seven older siblings, once a summer. Aunt June was always ready to bandage up her fingers, blistered and sore from playing drums, and fix her a glass of iced tea. Though Howie’s music took a momentary pause in high school while she focused on sports, she still obliged partygoers when there was an empty drum kit.
After high school, Howie met her husband, Dave Cort, who was attending Northwestern University while she lived in Chicago. Dave got an internship in Marin County at the California Division of Juvenile Justice, previously called the California Youth Authority. When he graduated in 1978, the two moved to the San Geronimo Valley, where Dave’s friend and co-worker Greg Anton lived. Greg was an avid drummer who went on to play for Bay Area rock band Zero with San Francisco rock icon John Cipollina. He insisted that Howie take his drum kit while he went on vacation and play for his country rock band.
Suddenly, Howie found herself back in the mix, playing gigs and expanding her network of musicians. Over the next 40 years, she drummed for several valley bands. She said a local ethos acted as the battery pack for her new project.
“Me and all these people I’m working with have raised our kids together,” she said. “We’ve done this project together for eight years because we’re all neighbors. For me, this project is about celebrating my family and my community.”
The project was first conceived in 2015 over several glasses of wine shared by Howie and her brother-in-law, David Goldman. The two were talking about her time as a musician but marveled at her lack of recorded work. David offered to pay for Howie to record an album. When Howie secured a recording location at Laughing Tiger Studios in San Rafael, she called David to tell him the good news. “I said, ‘Okay I booked the studio!’ And he said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I guess that red wine was really talking that night,” Howie joked.
When band members showed up to the studio on the first day, they were confused. Around the drum kit were around 10 mics set up to record Howie. Having never seen a kit with so much attention, she just said it was meant to be. Howie’s friend, Woodacre resident Matt Cohen, recorded and engineered the album, pushing the kit and bass up to the font of the mix so Howie’s parts shined.
Howie said that because all the musicians have jobs and kids to raise, the work took a while, and then Covid hit. Now, as her Aunt June is set to turn 96 in June, Howie called in her musical cohort for a final push to finish the album.
“Everything that happens in the valley is kind of a family thing,” said Andrew Giacomini, the owner of Giaco’s and a singer in both Howie’s Persuasion and his own band, the Valley Blues Brothers. “Everyone in that band is just great friends with one another, but also neighbors.”
Howie’s Birthday Palooza at Giaco’s Valley Roadhouse starts at 6 p.m. on April 6. $50 tickets must be bought in advance; proceeds go to the community center. You can listen to the album at www.HowieCortMusic.com.