Identifying ground zero for the advent of Dengue Fever can be tricky, but careful research has identified Aquarius Records in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District as the primary origin of the infectiously melodic band.
In the late 1990s, guitarist Zac Holtzman was a member of Dieselhed, a rootsy rock band that was part of the scene’s creative fringe with groups like Mr. Bungle and Fantasy. As a Mission denizen he frequented Aquarius Records, where a friend who worked in the shop handed him “Cambodia Rocks,” a compilation of psychedelic and garage rock tracks from the late 1960s and ‘70s by groups decimated and scattered during the Khmer Rouge’s genocide.
“He’d always steer me in the right direction, and this compilation he turned me on to had this amazing music,” Holtzman recalled. Moving back to Los Angeles in 2000, he discovered that his brother, keyboardist Ethan Holtzman, had collected cassettes by many of the bands represented on “Cambodia Rocks” while traveling in Thailand.
“He was like, ‘How do you have this compilation?,’” Zac Holtzman said, identifying the moment when they started plotting to launch a new band. A quarter century later, Dengue Fever returns to ground zero, or four blocks east on Valencia Street, with two shows at The Chapel Dec. 30-31. The six-piece group still revolves around Cambodian-born vocalist Chhom Nimol, who had recently moved from Phnom Penh, where she’d won a national singing competition, to Long Beach’s Little Phnom Penh neighborhood.
“We think of Nimol as the icing on the cake, the songbird that goes where she wants and leads the way,” Holtzman said, using Chhom’s given name rather than her surname, which by Cambodian custom goes first.
“We’re there to support whatever direction. When she sits out, we can go faster. There’s freedom and we can take it in different directions. But when she’s singing she’s flying around and the sweet thing on top that’s the focal point. You’ve got to follow your singer.”
It’s been an extraordinary journey by any measure. In 2017, the band spent a big chunk of the year on the road as the opening act for Tinariwen, the storied Tuareg rockers from Mali. They experience changed the way that Dengue Fever interacts with audiences as they realized “we could move the crowd in other ways, deploying peaks and valleys with dynamics,” he said.
“We got braver slowing it down, leaning into the psychedelia, knowing we could keep everyone into it. We don’t have to be going 90 miles an hour.”
The following year, Dengue Fever played a central role in creating the score for Lauren Yee’s Horton Foote Prize-winning play “Cambodian Rock Band,” which went through development at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor program and returned to the Rep for a successful run in 2023. The plot, which follows a Cambodian-American attorney returning to Phnom Penh, where her rock musician father was forced to flee, echoes many aspects of Chhom’s life (like her return to Cambodia documented on John Pirozzi’s 2007 documentary “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong”).
The band has sought to pay its creative debt to Cambodia on several fronts, like “Electric Cambodia” (Minky Records), a CD featuring 14 vintage Cambodian pop tunes culled from the Holtzmans’ precious stash of cassettes. The album’s proceeds go to Cambodian Living Arts, an organization dedicated to reviving Cambodian traditional art forms and supporting contemporary artistic expression.
With all of the band members’ activities, it’s not Dengue Fever went nearly a decade between albums, following up 2015’s “The Deepest Lake” with 2023’s “Ting Mong” (which means Scarecrow in Khmer). Filled with memorable tunes, it toggles between songs featuring Chhom’s mesmerizing vocals and woozy pieces featuring Zac Holtzman vocals, like “Great On Paper.”
“We went out to the desert stayed in this cabin and built a studio near Joshua Tree, Pioneertown actually,” he said. “We were having fun, coming up with ideas together. There was this cave my brother and I would go to early with my flute and a Casio keyboard and play off of the natural reverb.”
While always based in Los Angeles, Dengue Fever has maintained ties to the Mission. The band has become a regular presence at The Chapel, and performed at Union Square in September as part of the inaugural Cambodia Day Music + Culture Festival. “The only wedding we ever played was in the Mission, at the Make Out Room,” Holtzman said.
“Some musicians who were getting hitched asked us and we said, sure.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
DENGUE FEVER
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 30, 8:30 p.m. Dec. 31
Where: The Chapel, 177 Valencia St., San Francisco
Tickets: $32-$45; thechapelsf.com
