Phil Beaumont’s music draws from a lifetime of zigzagging across multiple borders.
The musician has been belting out tunes since he was a kid living in England back in the '70s. After he landed in Southern California for high school and college, he eventually made his way south, crossing into Tijuana to see concerts at the legendary music venue Iguanas.
Over time, Beaumont found himself crossing the border a lot, spending hours writing poetry and lyrics at his favorite bar, Dandy Del Sur. He also forged several artistic and creative relationships with artists south of the border.
“I think there's a grit to Tijuana that isn't here in San Diego,” Beaumont says. “Life is a bit more visceral down there.”
From KPBS and PRX, “Port of Entry'' continues its recurring “Moved by Music” series with a musical tour of Beaumont’s cross-border life. We tap into the ’70s rock records he and his brothers listened to as kids, and the punk, two-tone and dub reggae he caught on the John Peel show on BBC radio. Then we dive deep into Beaumont’s relationship with Tijuana over the years, and how his love of living in a border city led to past cross-border projects and a big, new cross-border collaboration between his current band, The Color Forty Nine, world-famous Mexican musician Rubén Albarrán of Café Tacvba and Tijuana artist Hugo Crosthwaite.
The Color Forty Nine will play a record release show at The Casbah in San Diego at 8 p.m. Friday, July 23.
