By Peter Blackstock • Special for Times of San Diego

Copyright timesofsandiego

“I think I should be in the Hall of Fame of Confusion,” John Reis says with humility and humor as he speaks about his induction on Saturday into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame.

But if Reis routinely wreaks confusion, it’s ultimately a good thing, because it stems from his involvement in a bounty of different projects simultaneously.

Since forming his first band, Coitus Interruptus, as a 10th-grader at San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, Reis has played in more than a dozen local groups — most notably Rocket From the Crypt and Drive Like Jehu, whose hard-charging rock & roll cut a swath across the bountiful 1990s alt-punk landscape and helped define San Diego’s contribution to the era. Then he started a record label, Swami Records, which is still active around 100 releases later. Then came Hot Snakes, a collaboration with his lifelong friend Rick Froberg, which eventually landed on influential indie label Sub Pop.

He’s also produced more than two dozen albums, not only for his own bands but for prominent acts such as Superchunk. Then there was his radio show Swami Sound System, which ran for many years on local FM station KBZT. And he was a co-owner of Bar Pink in North Park, until the pandemic brought its 2020 demise. To add one more layer of confusion, Reis has a bunch of nicknames: Swami John Reis, Speedo (from his Rocket from the Crypt days) and Slasher (from his time with yet another band, early 2000s rockers the Sultans).

Reis is so obviously one of San Diego’s most accomplished musicians that it’s almost surprising it took the Hall of Fame seven years to induct him. The awards show, which began in 2018, has previously honored 37 local luminaries, including Jack Tempchin, Jason Mraz, Lou Curtiss, Candye Kane, the Beat Farmers and Cindy Lee Berryhill. This year’s class features Reis, Rosie Flores, Bart Mendoza, Bog Magnusson, the Dinettes, Kamau Kenyatta, and Eulogio “The Soul Man” Fos. (The ticketed ceremony is at 6 p.m. Saturday at Vision Center for Spiritual Living.

“I am honored, and the other people that are being inducted are very much worthy, in my opinion,” says Reis. “And it’s a good opportunity to be thankful for the people who have really helped me. There’s so many people that I owe so much to.”

San Diego’s music community also owes a huge debt to Reis, a native son who never left town and instead helped build the city’s scene into something in which he clearly takes pride.

That it took the Hall of Fame seven years to honor him “is more a testament to just how much interesting and creative music has taken place here in San Diego,” Reis says. “It’s a good community of people happily living in the shadow of our big brother to the north. Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world; you have an industry there, and it tends to neglect what’s going on here. And that’s what creates a cool petri dish for interesting things to happen.”

Reis says he’s appreciated all the ways he’s been involved in San Diego’s music community, but playing in bands has always been his most gratifying role. “That expression is personal,” he says. “I’m doing something that feels like being who I am. Even more so playing guitar than when I’m singing. When I’m not being a dad and a boyfriend and a friend and a person in the world, the thing that defines me most is my connection with the guitar.

“But they’ve all been fun. The bar thing, I was one of six partners, so I can’t claim that that was all me. But it was a great thing to be a part of. The radio show came at an amazing time, because I wasn’t playing music. I was waiting for my kid to be born, and I was trying to figure out a way to continue to be involved in music.”

One of the keys to his success is his willingness to put in work beyond playing onstage or recording in the studio. “I enjoy all different aspects of playing music,” he says. “I enjoy putting on shows. I enjoy producing records. I enjoy talking to pressing plants and graphic artists and putting the pieces together and making a record. I enjoy talking to distributors, and I enjoy writing music. I enjoy rehearsing just as much as I enjoy performing.”

Reis is as busy now as ever. He has a new album, Time to Let You Down, under the name Swami John Reis that he’ll soon be supporting with a tour. Rocket From the Crypt played earlier this month in Los Angeles and continues to do occasional gigs, including a local Oct. 24 show at House of Blues. He also plays with the band Plosiv, which is working on a new album, and has been touring as a sideman with Me First & the Gimme Gimmes. He runs a recording studio, City of Refuge, and plans to issue six releases on Swami Records this year.

One band that’s no longer active is Hot Snakes, which sadly came to an end when Reis’s childhood pal Froberg died in 2023 of an undiagnosed heart condition.

“There’s no way we could continue as a band. He was such a large part of our collaboration,” Reis says, “When he passed, I lost such a great friend, someone who’s been closer to family than a friend for the last 48 years. But I also lost someone I was really reliant on, in terms of the things that we did together. We made music together that neither one of us could have made without the other person.

“We had a great artistic relationship, and we really agreed on almost everything. There were never creative differences, and he enabled me to explore things on the guitar that I would never have attempted if I knew I had to be responsible for writing words and vocals to it. It was a sense of freedom that I had working with Rick where I could pretty much do whatever, and he would make sense of it and turn it into something that was beautiful.”