Watsonville’s Music in the Plaza Series Returns July 8
On July 8 Music in the Plaza, an outdoor concert series started in 2019, will return to downtown Watsonville after a year of canceled shows. Presented by the city of Watsonville in partnership with...
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Santa Cruz Musician Ginny Mitchell to Celebrate Storied Career at Michael’s...
If you think too hard about birthdays, they can seem pretty arbitrary—let’s face it, our bawling, wrinkly debut wasn’t anybody’s best day. For adults, the celebration of that date tends to be more of...
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Osees Bring a Gumbo of Psychedelic Jams, Jazz Fusion and Stoner Rock to...
“The more fucked up the world is, the better it is for art,” John Dwyer says. “There’s always plenty of fodder, especially right now—just look at what’s going on in [Ukraine]. A million songs can be...
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Santa Cruz Expat Dan Bern Returns to Kuumbwa
The CZU blazes affected so many people in so many ways, and singer-songwriter Dan Bern is one of them. After moving to Santa Cruz in 2018, he was hit two years later by the ripple effect of the fires’...
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Jake Nielsen Lives With Cerebral Palsy, Creates Award-Winning Music
Jake Nielsen is well aware that there’s no cure and not really any treatment for cerebral palsy. The 32-year-old will likely have to use crutches or a wheelchair for his entire life, since the...
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Santa Cruz Chorale Performs Ukraine Benefit Concert
Christian Grube knows firsthand the terrors of wartime. As the current crisis in Ukraine escalated, it brought back the conductor and artistic director of Santa Cruz Chorale’s childhood memories of...
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Punk Legend Bob Mould Plays Solo at Felton Music Hall
What I love most about Husker Du is how they helped force a huge shift in punk rock that certain hardcore purists had been trying to hold off for years. Although the Ramones had shown the way back in...
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Legendary Indie Rockers Built to Spill Return to the Rio
About 15 years ago, one of my best buddies slipped me a Ziplock baggie with a burnt CD inside— “BTS Perfect From Now On” was scrawled onto the disc in black sharpie. This had been—and still...
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Meet the Real Rev. Billy C. Wirtz
One of my favorite live-music memories is a Rev. Billy C. Wirtz show at the Kuumbwa that I took my little sister to in the mid-’90s. Jessica was in high school at the time, and Wirtz was at the height...
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Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris on Reissues, Santa Cruz Connection
Since the iconic punk band Circle Jerks are re-releasing their classic 1982 album Wild in the Streets on Friday (Feb.18), I should probably be asking lead singer Keith Morris about that. Or about the...
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The Soul Rebels Brings a Slice of New Orleans to Felton Music Hall
How does an eight-piece brass ensemble approach a collaboration with the most popular active metal band on the planet? “That’s the first thing we asked each other when we got the job,” says Erion...
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Santa Cruz Musician Ginny Mitchell to Celebrate Storied Career at Michael’s...
If you think too hard about birthdays, they can seem pretty arbitrary—let’s face it, our bawling, wrinkly debut wasn’t anybody’s best day. For adults, the celebration of that date tends to be more of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Osees Bring a Gumbo of Psychedelic Jams, Jazz Fusion and Stoner Rock to...
“The more fucked up the world is, the better it is for art,” John Dwyer says. “There’s always plenty of fodder, especially right now—just look at what’s going on in [Ukraine]. A million songs can be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Santa Cruz Expat Dan Bern Returns to Kuumbwa
The CZU blazes affected so many people in so many ways, and singer-songwriter Dan Bern is one of them. After moving to Santa Cruz in 2018, he was hit two years later by the ripple effect of the fires’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jake Nielsen Lives With Cerebral Palsy, Creates Award-Winning Music
Jake Nielsen is well aware that there’s no cure and not really any treatment for cerebral palsy. The 32-year-old will likely have to use crutches or a wheelchair for his entire life, since the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rising Country Star Jesse Daniel Headlines the Catalyst
“So, I dipped into his bag of sin, and I had me a hell of a time / I was left with an empty wallet and an over-anxious mind,” croons Jesse Daniel on “Little Devil.” The dobro, fiddle-fueled bluegrass...
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Los Lobos Returns to the Rio Fresh Off Another Grammy Win
A few days before the 2022 Grammy Awards on Sunday, April 3, Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin (keys, sax) might have sealed the band’s fate—in a good way. Even though the group’s 2021 Native Sons was up for...
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The Return of Oganookie at Kuumbwa
In covering an Oganookie reunion show that sold out the Cocoanut Grove in May of 1975, John Selby wrote in Good Times that “George Stavis’ happy, electric banjo is a symbol of the Oganookie...
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Vinyl is Forever
When I was about eight years old and started my collection of audio cassette tapes, beginning with the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and Run-D.M.C.’s King of Rock, my parents’ record collection...
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Pink Mountaintops Plays Felton Music Hall
Stephen McBean speaks loudly whenever he’s on the phone at his Arcadia home; a constant barrage of high-pitched honks, shrill yapping and sharp squawking burst out piercingly in the background like...
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