Love Your Local Band: Southern Pacific
Michele Murphy and Michael Owens really wanted to start a band together. Murphy had been taking voice lessons at Cabrillo and getting voice coaching outside of class. Owens was connected to the local...
View ArticleMusic Picks: April 24-30
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of April 23, 2019 WEDNESDAY 4/24 REGGAE CONKARAH + ROSIE DELMAH If you’ve been wondering to yourself whether Adele’s “Hello” would make a banger of a...
View ArticleIs ‘Left Field Bass’ The New Dubstep?
The friendship between electronic producers Partywave and Pushloop started out of mutual admiration. A year ago, they both played the underground electronic music festival Untz Festival in Mariposa....
View ArticleMusic Picks: May 1-7
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of May 1, 2019 WEDNESDAY 5/1 INDIE CASEY NEILL & THE NORWAY RATS Featuring members of both the Decemberists and the Eels, Casey Neill and the Norway...
View ArticleLove Your Local Band: The Haywoods
Santa Cruz rockabilly band the Haywoods started out in 1997. Or maybe it was 1995—it’s a little hazy. Let’s just say that the band has been at it a long time, longer than most of the traditional...
View ArticleMusic Picks: May 8-16
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of May 8, 2019 THURSDAY 5/9 REGGAE COCOA TEA Since 1984, Jamaican reggae artist Cocoa Tea has delivered a mix of roots reggae and dancehall to open ears...
View ArticleMusic Picks: May 15-21
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of May 15, 2019 WEDNESDAY 5/15 WORLD FLOR DE TOLOACHE Ingestion of the toloache plant is known to cause euphoria, hallucinations and even spontaneous...
View ArticlePsych-Pop Act Sonny and the Sunsets Get Coiffed on New Album
Sonny Smith has been thinking about hairdressers lately. “They’re out there saving lives,” he tells me. “Hairdressers are like a mix between a psychiatrist and a guru.” Smith (who dates a hairdresser)...
View ArticleLove Your Local Band: Village of Spaces
Local psych-folk band Village of Spaces’ latest album Shaped By Places has a much crisper, more intimate tone to it than the group’s first seven releases, with a sound that is rooted both in...
View ArticleMusic Picks: May 22-28
Santa Cruz live music highlights for the week of May 22, 2019 WEDNESDAY 5/22 PUNK THE DROWNS Punk got old. But that doesn’t mean it can’t still make a difference. Just look at punk rock supergroup the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Millennials’ New Breed of Nostalgia
Three levels into the game “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time,” the evil samurai Shredder makes his first appearance. “My patience is wearing thin,” the caped supervillain announces from...
View ArticleRedwood Mountain Faire’s Decade of Felton Magic
When the Redwood Mountain Faire brought Cracker and Dave Alvin to Roaring Camp as headliners in 2017, it drew a lot of people in Santa Cruz County who hadn’t realized that Felton has been home to a...
View ArticleLove Your Local Band: Sabine Silver
Seven years ago, Sabine Silver took up the harp. She was pregnant at the time, and a poet friend recommended she try the instrument out. “We both agreed that only to play the ancient bardic music of...
View ArticleMusic Picks: June 5-11
Santa Cruz County live music for the week of June, 5, 2019. WEDNESDAY 6/5 PROG-ROCK CHON Chon is nothing if not forward thinking, expanding prog-rock fandom with effects-heavy riff structures and...
View ArticleL.A.’s Inner Wave Doesn’t Mind Not Fitting In
Nearly a decade ago, L.A.-based indie group Inner Wave played an early show at a tire shop in South Central. The other bands on the bill played punk. Inner Wave, on the other hand, brought an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Carlos Santana Calls Himself a ‘Real Hippie’
Though he no longer lives in the Bay Area, Carlos Santana holds fond memories of his time here—including living in Aptos, where he moved with his first wife in the early ’70s. “It was time to start a...
View ArticleAnthkrna Brings ‘Chaotic Bliss’ to Santa Cruz
Drummer Ryan Scott Long has a hard time describing his two-piece band Anthkrna. There’s a lot of Indian musical influence. There’s a jazz aesthetic. It’s got elements of trance and pumped up...
View ArticleQ&A: Inside the Plan for Felton Music Hall
In 2007, recent UCSC grad Thomas Cussins was learning the ropes of concert booking at the Catalyst when he had a breakthrough with Bermuda reggae act Collie Buddz. The artist had been dropped by Sony,...
View ArticleLove Your Local Band: Grand Larson
There’s a lot going on in Grand Larson’s debut EP released last year, simply titled E.P. It’s got dingy funk, bluesy grooves, jazzy licks, and rock ’n’ roll attitude. But what sticks amid all this...
View ArticleMusic Picks: June 26-July 2
Santa Cruz County live music picks for the week of June 26 WEDNESDAY 6/26 FOLK CRYS MATTHEWS AND HEATHER MAE Crys Matthews and Heather Mae are longtime social justice songwriters and friends, and the...
View Article