Born and raised in San Francisco, Maurice Tani was too young for the Summer of Love, but was still profoundly influenced by the California culture that gave the world surf guitar, country rock and psychedelic to the singer songwriter types.
Barely into his twenties and hungry for experience, he moved to central Texas to work the hardcore country, blues and rock circuit between Austin and Dallas, playing five sets a night, seven nights a week for months at a time, eventually making connections that led to his moving to New York City just as the punk rock scene of CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City was exploding in Lower Manhattan. By 1977 he was back in San Francisco as punk, power pop and new wave was taking hold in the Bay Area and began a stretch of five years and four critically acclaimed albums with ex-Flamin’ Groovies front man Roy Loney’s band, The Phantom Movers.
Through the rest of the ’80s and ’90s, Maurice was the lead guitarist and a featured vocalist for Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra and BigBang Beat, two large, 12-18 piece dance bands that gained worldwide exposure from a 2 hour PBS New Years Eve tri-mulcast (2 television stations with different views and FM stereo radio audio all broadcasting simultaneously) that was broadcast annually for many years on public TV around the US and Europe.
Tani has spent the past 20 years as an active part of the California alt-country/Americana scene. Fronting his own bands, Calamity &Main, 77 El Deora, he has produced a series of albums for himself and others.Tani has constructed a repertoire of rye humor and darker romantic rumination often described as Oblique Americana and Twang-Noir, Tani calls it “Supercalifornographic”.