![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Spats_2.png\")
Mike Linn at Spats before a show on Friday, April 24, featuring the bands Horrhaus, Cuva Bimo and Some Good Things. The semi-retired pediatrician volunteers his time booking bands for the downtown Berkeley bar. Credit: Eva Edgren<\/p>\nMike Linn at Spats before a show on Friday, April 24, featuring the bands Horrhaus, Cuva Bimo and Some Good Things. The semi-retired pediatrician volunteers his time booking bands for the downtown Berkeley bar. Credit: Eva Edgren<\/p>\n
On a Thursday night in April, a modern rock band plays to a sparse crowd at Spats in downtown Berkeley. A handful of people gather near the stage while others drift between rooms, lingering at the bar, circling the pool table, or taking a spin on the $11 liquor wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness really depends on the crowd the bands can bring in,\u201d says bartender Desiree Jessa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Across Berkeley and the Bay Area, bars and small venues are struggling<\/a> for a range of reasons, including people drinking<\/a> and going out less<\/a> and rising food, fuel, rent and labor costs<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At Spats, a 56-year-old guy is sweating it out on nights and weekends, volunteering his time to keep the dream of live music alive. His name is Mike Linn, and he\u2019s a semi-retired pediatrician.<\/p>\n Linn has spent years helping bands find places to play just for the fun of it. The Berkeley resident answers emails, builds lineups, connects touring acts with local bands and shows up to make sure the night runs smoothly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Linn\u2019s involvement with booking began in 2015 at the Octopus Literary Salon, a small Oakland venue, where he brought in touring bands like Lou Barlow and The Posies and local acts like The Disciples of Markos and Marbled Eye. He also DJs on KALX, UC Berkeley\u2019s radio station, plays keyboards in a band, and each summer, volunteers in the first aid tent at the Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland, where he often runs into patients and their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n Linn has been volunteering at Spats since the bar was renovated last year, with a new kitchen and a stage for live performances. Adachi Hiroyuki, the chef behind the pop-up Aburaya, had begun lunch service at Spats and introduced Linn to the space. Soon after, Linn was booking acts for Jason Beebout, the bar\u2019s owner and vocalist for the Bay Area band Samiam.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe popped in, and we talked,\u201d Beebout said. \u201cI\u2019ll take all the help I can get.\u201d<\/p>\n Linn\u2019s taste runs wide, shaped more by curiosity than genre. At the Octopus and now at Spats, he books a mix of local and touring acts, from punk and garage to country and experimental, often giving space to bands before they\u2019ve built much of a following.\u00a0<\/p>\n As his wife, Karen Meckstroth, put it: \u201cIf a band gets big, he\u2019s usually moved on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Days treating patients in Berkeley, nights setting up for shows and bartending<\/p>\n Music has always been essential for Linn.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, music has been the most important hobby for sanity,\u201d he said. \u201cThe more I read, especially medical<\/a> literature<\/a>, the more I believe music does things other hobbies don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Family vacations with Meckstroth, also a doctor, and their two daughters were planned around music, and the girls grew up singing, playing piano and going to shows. \u201cHis passion for music always exceeded his passion for pediatrics,\u201d Meckstroth said.<\/p>\n For three decades, Linn worked as a pediatrician with Stanford Children\u2019s Health, including 10 years at its Berkeley office, before beginning his retirement in 2024 (he still sees the occasional patient). During many of those years, when his days ended around 5:30 or 6 p.m., his nights were just beginning.<\/p>\n \u201cI would finish at the office, eat dinner, and head over\u201d to the Octopus, he said. \u201cI\u2019d help with set up, sound, door, bartending and clean up. There were weeks where I was there four or five nights a week, sometimes two shows a night.\u201d<\/p>\n Ian Patton, who was part of the small team running the Octopus and oversaw the kitchen, remembers a group of teenage punks who had driven down from Alaska.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were maybe 18 tops,\u201d Patton said. \u201cWe asked them if we could make them anything, and they wanted PB&J.\u201d<\/p>\n Linn treated them with the same attentiveness he would offer any established act.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember Mike being so kind and caring to them, and treating them with the same respect he would if it was Tommy Stinson from the Replacements or another big-name touring band,\u201d Patton said.<\/p>\n Even chaos was handled with a kind of calm improvisation, as at a Stork Club show during a power outage. \u201cWe put candles out. The bar went cash only,\u201d Linn said. \u201cIt was a great show.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018My work in music is payback for what I\u2019ve gotten from it\u2019<\/p>\n Linn has treated the children of musicians he\u2019s worked with and cared for patients who later show up at shows. Most musicians, though, have no idea what he does during the day.<\/p>\n \u201cThose that know seem unaffected by it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What they do notice is his responsiveness.<\/p>\n \u201cMy sense is that most bands don\u2019t even get a response when reaching out to a venue,\u201d Linn said. \u201cSo a quick, kind response seems like a bare minimum.\u201d<\/p>\n Bands without a following often need help building a bill that will bring people in. Linn connects them with local acts, helps shape lineups and encourages promotion on all sides. He does not take a percentage. He does not sign contracts.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can make it easier for bands to connect to local clubs and take some money home, that is reward enough for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For Linn, this work is his way of paying things forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI always felt like my work in music is payback for what I\u2019ve gotten from it,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t say music saved my life, but it\u2019s gotten me through a lot of rough times.\u201d<\/p>\n As a kid, Linn lost his father before his first birthday and later moved from Chicago to the suburbs with his mother and stepfather.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a blue Panasonic tape deck that I carried everywhere, mostly listening to Abbey Road.\u201d<\/p>\n He compared the way he connects with artists to the tact he deploys as a pediatrician when talking to parents.<\/p>\n \u201cFor most artists, their work is like their baby,\u201d Linn said. \u201cI try to be caring, appreciative and transparent. And oftentimes, I tell them how beautiful their baby is.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael James Tapscott is a writer based in the East Bay. Originally from the Midwest, he has lived in the Bay Area for nearly two decades. He previously wrote for\u00a0Nuvo Newsmagazine, and his fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals.\u00a0<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Linn at Spats before a show on Friday, April 24, featuring the bands Horrhaus, Cuva Bimo and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2633,2465,2466,330,143,145,144,76639],"class_list":["post-299531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-downtown-berkeley","tag-home-highlight","tag-home-lead","tag-music","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-spats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0482_Original.jpeg\")
Mike Linn with his daughter Sada at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco in 2009. Courtesy: Mike Linn<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_2742-2560x1920.jpeg\")
Mike Linn at Red Rock Canyon in 2024 with his ever-present Bluetooth speaker. Courtesy: Mike Linn<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Spats_3.png\")
Mike Linn at Spats on April 24, 2026. Credit: Eva Edgren <\/p>\n