This story aired in the August 19, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Bay Area colleges are starting their fall semesters. Today, SF State is back in session, City College began this week, and so did Berkeley City College. Next week Ohlone Community College starts back up, and if you go there, you may know Dennis Finnegan, one of the college’s librarians.
But, what you may not know is that he is also an award-winning musician, a multi-instrumentalist, a composer, and a songwriter. Fennegan is also a collaborator in local projects like the band called Along Came Jones and an experimental theater group called Book of Jones.
For our series, Bay Area Beats, Dennis let us into his home studio in Oakland. Here he shares about his projects that are as eclectic and diverse as his childhood record collection.
Click the button above to listen.
Music - Mister Bluebird (Along Came Jones)
My name is Dennis Finnegan. I am a composer, guitarist, singer, songwriter.
I grew up in a huge family. There are eight children. I grew up hearing a lot of different kinds of music through my older. brothers.
One was really into blues and listened to like, Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and all those guys. Older brother had a Ravi Shankar record. My other brother was really into Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly and that kind of stuff. And then the other one was really into country music, Hank Williams. They all listen to rock music too, you know, like Beatles and the Stones and Credence.
I went to the library and I got like African drumming records. And I built a little amplifier and then I bought speakers and a turntable so I started stealing my brother's records and buying a lot of my own.
MUSIC - I Never Look Up (Along Came Jones)
LYRICS - I never look up, I just stare at my hands. The sky is fathomless and slippery as quicksand.
I just played through bands all through middle school and high school. I ended up joining a country rock band and right after high school. We played a lot of bars for a couple years and then I got totally sick of playing in bars…. and ended up going eventually to Stony Brook University. I just focused on classical guitar for the next four or five years.
Music - Choro No 1
I went back to school to… a grad program in classical guitar, but I also got to study… I kind of minored unofficially in composition… and I started to think that the world of classical guitar is based on something I wasn't interested. It was winning competitions.
MUSIC - Elegy Mix 2
When I got outta grad school and I had a very unusual repertoire. I could not get a concert. No one was interested.
I wrote a couple of guitar pieces. I wrote a string quartet. I wrote a brass quintet. So I would have an idea and then I would record it… and it was sort of composing using both recording and paper.
MUSIC - Jack of Diamonds (Along Came Jones)
I worked for a guitar shop in San Francisco, they hit hard times and they closed the main shop and they laid us all off. When I did gigs, I was barely making more than I made when I was 17, 18 years old.
So I looked into all kinds of things… and I was going to the music library… at San Francisco public. Ended up chatting it up with the music librarians and I was like. So how is this? And they were like, it's great.
Oh it's a great job for a musician… My coworkers are either musicians or visual artists or writers.. so you're in the atmosphere of that, students and learning. You know, it's the opposite of a corporate job that you feel like is sucking the life outta you.
LYRICS - Oh Jack of Diamonds, calls the queen to bring you good luck. And when she appears then you’ll know, you’ve been struck.
Music - Jack of Diamonds (Along Came Jones)
My musical partner, songwriting partner is a fella named Johnny Blood and we have been working together since 1992. We met at a music festival. And he was the other stage manager and… he played me some stuff that he wrote. He had electric tuba duo. I was like, this is the wildest thing I ever heard in my life with spoken word. And I was like, this, I gotta do something with this guy. So we've been writing together for 25 years.
MUSIC - El Pavón (Along Came Jones)
LYRIC - El Pavón, your tail has a thousand lies that will always hypnotise. It’s such a good disguise.
El Pavón is Peacock, so it's a story about a person who is a show off.
MUSIC - Hard Times (Along Came Jones)
and there's a song called Hard Times. So it's like an electric Appalachian song, you know, and ah…it's a, a political song. The line of, I met a man who said he was the president, but turns out he was just selling vacuum cleaners… and that sort of summed up the spirit of that song.
LYRIC - Hard Times are these, my friends.
MUSIC - On Our Little Raft, Still Life, The Four Sages, Truth Cast
Johnny Blood and I, we’ve always had this idea, combining experimental music with a song structure. He ties in the monologues with the lyrics.
and then he said, I have an idea, but I only have a title. Adam and Eve on a raft. He ended up writing this story.
LYRICS: Once we have lost our home, we have been blown.
Telling a story of this couple who parallels Adam and Eve. They get evicted from their apartment. And that's the exodus from Paradise, and they're kind of traveling around and going to bars.
LYRICS: On the first day of creation, light was made. And on the second day, the waters were separated from the sky. Not water from land, water from sky.
After we did Adam and Eve on a raft at Fringe in 2018, we ended up winning Best of Fringe that year.
MUSIC - Nothing Ahead (Along Came Jones)
I’m a librarian at a community college. In the summer I only work two days a week, so it gives me a lot of time to work on music.
I started a new recording project, that is going to be a concept album you could say, it’s called Cosmic American. And the other thing I really want to do is to start playing live again.
Check out more of Dennis Finnegan's music on his website and bandcamp.
