Yes, that really did happen here.

The complaints and rumblings about music in Sacramento have been mounting for years: a perceived disconnect between the local music scene and the community, the glaring lack of consistent all-ages music venues in the downtown area and a debilitating middle child syndrome caused by big name touring acts that often pass the Capitol City over for gigs in the Bay Area.

In the face of the retrospective on local music provided by Downtown Sacramento Partnership’s newest walking tour, it becomes hard to find anything to complain about.

Entitled “Locally Grown, Internationally Known: The history of the Sacramento Music Scene,” this hour-long tour offers not only several nuggets of information on Downtown’s musical past, but a sense of where the Sacramento scene is now, and where it wants to go.

The tours run every Friday afternoon beginning at 4 p.m. The walk begins at Cesar Chavez Plaza at the corner of Ninth and J streets, travels east to 15th and J Street, then back up L Street, ending back at Cesar Chavez Plaza at approximately 5 p.m., right at the beginning of the Friday Night Concerts in the Park, a series that runs through Aug. 13. The cost for the tour is $10. As always, the concerts are free.

“Locally Grown, Internationally Known” is the latest offering in the Downtown Partnership’s stock of themed walking tours, a series that also features tours on early Sacramento history, architecture, public art, kid-friendly spots and more.

According to tour guide Shawn Peter, these specialized tours have been running for about a year and a half, ever since the Partnership decided to break up its large-scale walking tour in favor of shorter, more specifically concentrated jaunts.

“Me being a musician, I pretty much know the history (of the local scene) like the back of my hand,” Peter said. “I’ve been sneaking out and going to shows since about 1990, so that’s 20 years of history.

“Mike has been going to concerts since the late ‘60s. We thought, ‘You know, Mike would be the perfect guy to do the rock and roll tour with me,’” he added, referring to fellow tour guide Mike Becklehimer, who joins Peter in leading this newest tour.

Having been with the organization since 2000, Peter is the Downtown Partnership’s original tour guide and is credited with authoring its Early California History tour, according to the organization’s website.

“There’s so much information between the two of us, so it was like, ‘What are we going to talk about, and what would be the basis of the tour?’” said Peter, who has been game-planning this musical stroll with Becklehimer since January.

The tour embarks on J Street with some snippets about Prohibition-era Sacramento music and a bit of retrospective on topics like the KFBK Radio band, which would back up the likes of Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington when they would roll through town.

Peter and Becklehimer will point out several spots of sonic significance that are now masked by retail facades like FedEx Kinko’s, which was once a booming music store, and McCormick & Schmick’s Restaurant in front of the Elks Lodge, which used to house the “free form rock and roll” of the KZAP 98.5 (now 98 Rock) studios.

The tour provides a heavy dose of history on acts that have come through Memorial Auditorium at 15th and J Streets, where Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards once electrocuted himself (it really should be no surprise that he survived it) in 1965 and Ted Nugent made the ceiling rain chips of plaster in 1977 with the teeth-rattling guitar riffs of “Stranglehold.”

There is even some history at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church across the street, where the Grateful Dead once played an impromptu concert in 1968 after a gig at Memorial was cancelled.

If any well-connected tape traders out there have a recording of that show or know where to get one, the folks at DSP want to hear from you.

Peter and Becklehimer also dish up plenty of info on more recent happenings as the tour moves through the corner of 15th and L, the former home of downtown’s most thriving all-age venue, Capitol Garage.

They can tell you where members of the Cramps used to live, direct you to some postage stamp-sized spots where Cake used to play, tell you about the bands that were getting weird with it at Esquire Grill and even show you some footprints made by Kurt Cobain.

It’s a tour that could easily switch gears from a local history lesson to the kind of rock and roll chat session you’d expect to have at a café table or on a barstool with your concert-going buddies. That’s how well Peter and Becklehimer know their stuff.

Using the tour as an interlude to the current happenings in the Sacramento scene, the two guides can also tell you plenty about the bands that will be tuning up their guitars and warming the amps at Cesar Chavez Plaza when the trek wraps up.

“I like to think that people who take this tour will think, ‘Wow, Sac really is a cool place, and it’s not boring,’” Peter said.

“Maybe we can get people not afraid to go to a nightclub that has a live band,” he added. “You may become that band’s next biggest fan. That’s my own personal energy that I’m trying to get across.

“Here’s some bands at Concert in the Park, and they might be playing down the street in a couple weeks - go enjoy yourself.”

For more information on this and other Downtown walking tours, visit the Downtown Partnership’s website at www.downtownsac.org or call (916) 442-8575.