SF Chronicle Datebook's Will Reisman reports:

For roughly two years, singer-songwriter Avi Vinocur made the near-daily drive from his home in the Sunset District to Metallica’s headquarters in San Rafael, perpetually thinking his dream job working for the legendary metal band could end at a moment’s notice.

“I refused to buy a FasTrak for my car to cross the bridge, because I kept telling myself, ‘Nah, I’m not going to need this,’” Vinocur, who started out in 2010 as a studio technician for the band, said in a recent video interview with The Chronicle. “I just thought that it was all going to end at some point.”

He finally capitulated and purchased the transponder. Now, 11 years later, the 37-year-old musician uses it to commute from his new home in Richmond to Metallica HQ, where he’s a member of the band family. In addition to his ongoing gear tech duties, he’s performed backing vocals and played mandolin with Metallica onstage at the Fillmore and the Masonic, at the opening of Chase Center in 2019 - accompanied by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony - and on “The Howard Stern Show,” among other places. (On that last one, an amused Stern introduced the band as “Metallica with Avi.”)

Vinocur has been juggling these responsibilities while at the helm of a very different project: his touring folk-rock band Goodnight, Texas, which is scheduled to perform at the Fillmore on Friday, Dec. 17, as part of Metallica’s San Francisco Takeover, a series of local events curated by the thrash metal icons.

In an instance of Vinocur’s two musical worlds colliding, Goodnight, Texas is slated to open for the Wedding Band, a side project of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo. (The show will take place the same night as Metallica’s arena gig at the Chase Center, so Hammett and Trujillo will be pulling double duty that day.)

“Adding us to the show is definitely going to make for a diverse night of music,” said Vinocur of the bill. But at this point, he’s used to his music career having a bit of a split personality.

Read the full report at SF Chronicle Datebook.