To liven up the shop, and to keep ourselves amused, we listen to music at Oakland Yard. By my calculations, we’ve thrown down more than 8,000 hours of the stuff since we opened, in 2014, and while you may not like all of what we play here – I’m often unpleasantly surprised by my own selections - my hope is that you’ll hear something new, something different, something that moves you, or makes you think.

Whoever is closest to the stereo when the music stops becomes the default DJ, and there are few rules about what can pass through our stately KLHs. Unless you’re playing B- sides and deep cuts, rule number one is no Hall & Oates. I don’t think it’s in the employee handbook, but it might as well be. Compilations of radio-friendly hits, like Bob Marley’s Legend, are also discouraged, as are the staples of dining in the nineties: The Buena Vista Social Club and the Gypsy Kings. To be clear, I don’t hate this music, but I’m always looking for something less tired, like Ronnie Foster, Nicolas Jaar, or Lulu Be.

We often play records in the shop, not because they are hip and cool, but because we’re anachronistic, and we sometimes lose internet service, and many of these old LPs are not available on Apple Music. Funk genius, Hamilton Bohannon, is grossly underrepresented online, but our forty-year-old wax brings it all back home, albeit a little scratchily. We’ve discovered that while Bohannon’s A-sides deliver red-hot, funky disco grooves, his B- sides are decidedly different; they are a series of dreamy, slow dances that can only lead straight to bed. Deliberately deployed, these B-sides have wrapped up countless nights in the tasting bar, with the interminable and gentle rocking two-chord vamp signaling that the night has come to a close.

Join us this week for some wine and music; hopefully you’ll taste and hear something new, something different, something inspiring, and if you stick around too long, you may fall prey the irresistibly soporific effects, the Siren-like call to bed, the Goodnight, Moon, of Bohannon’s Side B.

TONIGHT: Thursday Night Flights!: Italian reds and Spanish whites. Frappato, Aglianico, Montepulciano, Hondarrabi Zuri, Albillo & Verdejo. Flights $12 from 5-9 and wines by the glass until 9pm.




SATURDAY 6/15: LOIRE VALLEY Tasting Flights – All new Red, White, & Rosé from one of our very favorite regions. Flights $15 from 2-6 and wines by the glass until 9pm.


SUNDAY 6/16: SOUTHERN FRENCH ROSÉ Flights: All Dry and delicious, pink wines from Provence and the Ventoux. $15 tasting flights from 2-6 and wines by the glass until 8pm.


Cheers,

Max