Twelve years ago, Dennis Owens thought he was closing the book on the Good Foot, the monthly ‘60s-thru-‘80s soul/funk/dash-of-Latin/sprig-of-Afrobeat club he’d been helming since Bill Clinton was president. “Thirteen years is a lot for a club,” he said back then, “and rather than fizzle out, I’d like to go out like a champ.”
But this Friday the Good Foot celebrates its silver anniversary. So how the hell did we get here?
In July 1998, their band having just broken up, Rodi Delgadillo took Owens to a Santa Monica club called Science, where the spell woven by the DJs was unlike anything Owens had experienced.
“Even just waiting in line for a drink, everyone was vibing,” he recalls. “By the time you got to the dance floor, people had just lost themselves in the music. It didn’t matter what you did, how you did it; it was a complete cross-section of people, of all cultures, just going off.”
Owens was inspired to take his extensive vinyl collection and do a DJ set somewhere (“I’d been behind a pair of turntables maybe once”), but Delgadillo had a bolder idea: start their own club.
“We wanted to spin soul, and there wasn’t really a scene for that,” Owens says. “[And] we wanted to create a safe haven, a place where you got no attitude. […] Everybody shows up, nobody’s trippin’, everyone’s there to have a good time, everybody’s cool with each other, know what I mean?”
Immediately after putting out feelers, the pair found themselves referred to Que Sera. And a mere three months after that night in Santa Monica, the Good Foot took its first steps, finding its stride in its rookie year largely due to the pair’s DIY work ethic.
“Rodi and I went crazy with the fliers: hip-hop shows, raves, mod clubs, soul clubs; we’d go to Cal State Long Beach at lunchtime and pass out fliers,” Owens says. “[…] We had a pretty good turnout for the first [Good Foot]. The next month was a little bit better. […] By the one-year anniversary, it was a madhouse.”
In March 2005 Delgadillo moved on, but Owens stayed put despite numerous opportunities to do otherwise. “I’ve always had a big sense of civic pride,” he says. “When Good Foot started doing really well, I had offers to move it to L.A., but I wouldn’t do it, because this club is for Long Beach. This is my town, these are my people.”
But since 2004 Owens had been playing bass for grooving trip-hop combo Free Moral Agents, and touring commitments caused him to miss ever more Good Feet. “My heart was telling me I had to end it at some point,” Owens reflected in 2011, “and I want[ed] to go out on a good note, while my enthusiasm was still high.”
That supposed swansong sounded on September 9, 2011, although during the next two years Owens revived the Good Foot for one-offs such as the Christmas Night events that had become a tradition at Alex’s Bar. But Delgadillo got in Owens’s ear about starting it back up as a monthly, as did the community, who continually let him know how much they missed it. The pair approached Alex Hernandez, who told them to pick a night, and since September 2013 every third Friday at Alex’s Bar has been the Good Foot.
Well, not every third Friday. COVID fucked things up for a while — although on September 19, 2020, the Good Foot celebrated its 22nd anniversary by bringing the funk for a strictly limited number of socially-distanced, fully masked groovies, an event that was live-streamed for those who couldn’t/wouldn’t be there. In June 2021 the Good Foot resumed its regular schedule (masking required). Although the crowds were sparse at first, it was clear the Good Foot would emerge intact.
“At that point people were very picky about how many times they were going to go out per month,” Owens recalls. “People have to go to the supermarket; they didn’t have to go to Good Foot. I was just thankful that we had a fairly decent number of people who decided that this was their night out.”
One change since COVID: no cover charge except the rare occasions that a live band is on the bill. “When we first started up again, I made it free to get in because everyone was broke,” Owens says, “and we just decided to keep it that way.”
Today’s Good Foot crew runs four deep. Scott Weaver, a DJ since the late-‘80s night when the teenager found himself behind the turntables at an “underground” (read: illegal) club in Fullerton, in 1998 he was handed a flier shaped like a 45 with James Brown’s face on it for what turned out to be the inaugural Good Foot. (“Fifty people showed up, and I was blown away by what I heard.”) Shortly he was helping Owens and Delgadillo with promotion, then wormed his way into guest DJing on occasion. Weaver’s opportunities increased with Delgadillo’s departure, and eventually he became Owens’s #2 (“like Spock on Star Trek”). Once Delgadillo returned and the move was made to Alex’s, Weaver was a frequent guest DJ before again becoming a resident in 2016.
Lili de la Mora’s (a.k.a. DJ Lili Bird) relationship with Owens goes back to the mid ‘90s. As a young mom she didn’t get out much in the Good Foot’s early days, but when she did, “It was always my go-to the dancing place.” She began DJing in the mid ‘00s, and in August 2018 Owens invited her to spin at a Long Beach Museum of Art shindig. Afterward she couldn’t believe her ears when he asked her to be a resident Good Foot DJ. (“I don’t think I told anybody for the first month. I wasn’t sure if it was real.”)
The baby of the bunch is Nick Aguilar (a.k.a. DJ Nick At Nite), who was a 1-year-old when the Good Foot was born and came on board after becoming an instant fan the first time he crossed the threshold of Alex’s Bar just days after turning 21.
“I was sort of familiar with the Good Foot because it’s such a staple of Long Beach, but I didn’t know what it really was until [that night],” he says. “I’ll never forget walking in. It was packed to the brim; everyone was sweaty as hell but no-one seemed to care. You could feel the floor shaking. I wasn’t really familiar with soul music, but right then and there I knew I wanted to be.”
A short time later Aguilar was working for Alex’s as a doorman and talent-buyer, and a couple of Good Foot anniversary CD compilations (another Good Food tradition) Owens gave him solidified his love for the music — to the point that when he started DJing on his own in 2020, this was his jam.
“I can’t thank Dennis and the rest of the crew enough for giving me the bug,” he says. “[…] The fact that I’m a part of the team now is pretty mind-blowing. […] Having a dedicated space once a month to spin my favorite records is an incredible feeling, euphoric even. I’m a drummer first and foremost, and I’ve always loved getting a crowd going physically playing live, so spinning records gives me just the same satisfaction. [And] it makes me really happy to see that there is still a market for people to come out and dance to this kind of music.”
As much as Weaver and de la Mora love the music, they concur that, more than anything, the Good Foot is about community.
“Every month I get recharged from all the positive energy,” says de la Mora. “It helps me keep my joy alive.”
“The music is a big part of it,” says Weaver, “but my favorite time of the night is when we turn on the lights and call out ‘last song.’ Seeing a big huddle of people who stayed until closing, hugging and getting one last dance in before it all ends…. It’s borderline magical to see how dedicated the crowd is, even after all these years. I don’t know where they hear about Good Foot, but they keep coming. I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. Where did the time go?”
Twelve years after calling it quits, Owens says there’s no end in sight for the Good Foot. “Bottom line: I still enjoy doing it. And as long as I continue to enjoy doing it, why stop?”
For all of us who like to get out on the floor where it’s all love, that’s good news for both body and soul.
The Good Foot 25th Anniversary gets to stepping at 8 p.m. on Friday, September 15 at Alex’s Bar (2913 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach). Find Good Foot on your socials — or hell, just show up at Alex’s every third Friday. They’ll be there.