“To anyone obsessed with live music, Tony Bedard is a San Francisco treasure.” - KQED Arts

Named after an obscure reference from The Larry Sanders Show, TALENT MOAT is a hybrid combo of live music & comedy events promoter and boutique booking agency run by Tony Bedard, current talent buyer of Oakland’s Stork Club, formerly of San Francisoco’s Hemlock Tavern.

During his 25 years at the debris-strewn intersection of the music and comedy undergrounds, Tony’s booked [napkin math alert!] over 6,000 shows and 16,000 emerging local/national/international bands and comedians across a spectrum of genres, subgenres, scenes, and microscenes. He’s also worked a talent buyer for the Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Starline Social Club, Ivy Room and as a guest curator for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and a co-producer of events in conjunction with the Noise Pop, SF Sketchfest, and Litquake festivals. Tony was once named “Best Live Music Booker” by the SF Weekly and his music programming has garnered other “Best Of” awards from now-defunct SF Bay Guardian including “Best Intimate Venue”, “Best Rock Bar”, “Best Place to Take A Chance on a Band You’ve Never Heard Of”, and the subject of a KQED Arts' profile in their Backstage Heroes series.

An advocate for independent music venues, after the Hemlock was razed to make way for condos in 2018, Talent Moat was launched and Tony began putting on shows at Bay Area venues including Great American Music Hall, Rickshaw Stop, Bottom of the Hill, Kilowatt, Ivy Room, The Knockout, Make-Out Room, Verdi Club.

In 2022, Talent Moat expanded into regional and national tour booking for bands including Lewsberg, Optic Sink, Snooper, Retail Simps, Emily Robb, Aquarian Blood, En Attendant Ana, The Hobknobs, and Michael Beach.

In addition to his live music endeavors, Tony’s CLUB CHUCKLES comedy series has helped launch standup comedy talent including locals Ali Wong, Brent Weinbach, Chris Garcia, and Sheng Wang. Club Chuckles hosted San Francisco debut shows by Reggie Watts, Kate Berlant, Sarah Sherman, James Austin Johnson and Whitmer Thomas, and put on the first-ever On Cinema Live with Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington.

"Tony Bedard’s Club Chuckles: a pivotal force in giving comedians opportunities to reach new audiences - people who regularly go to rock shows but rarely step into established comedy venues such as the Punch Line or Cobb's." - SF Chronicle

A lifelong musician who once performed at Disney World’s Tomorrowland Terrace as a teen, Tony has gone on to play drums and guitar in decidedly less wholesome bands such as Icky Boyfriends, Hank IV (the Siltbreeze band, no relation to the Hank Williams clan), The Leather Uppers, Resineators, The Roofies, Bride of Ozzy, Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, feedtime, Wounded Lion, Bill Orcutt’s The Four Louies Band, and Replica Watch. Tony also wrote the theme song for Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show on WMFU and toured with Theme Weavers LLC as the house band leader for Scharpling & Wurster Live!