Five years ago, The Devil Himself got its start while playing cards. “We got formed around a poker table,” recalls guitarist/singer Dave Christensen. “We all used to play and it kept coming up in conversation that we all played different instruments. We kept saying we should jam, but our lives wouldn’t allow it. Finally it came together and we haven’t stopped playing since.” Flash forward to today, and the Santa Cruz-based alternative metal band—also featuring guitarist Dan Burnham, drummer Jason Goldberg, and bass guitarist Austin Wilhoit—has just released its fifth album and third full-length, Speak No Evil, on Oct. 8. The record is the final segment in a three-part series, also featuring See No Evil and Hear No Evil, that sounds like a thundering bastard child of Tool, with electric surges and hauntingly heavy vocals that mirror a grittier Chevelle. Frequently packing local venues with head-banging moshers, the band hopes to become the voice of a generation looking for answers to hypocrisy and freedom from despair.

Percussionist Nat Grant talks live looping and the local festival that gives it a voice

If you’re a live music buff, chances are you’ve seen a band or two incorporate a loop pedal. Most of the time it’s used to sustain a rhythm, or just sample some background noise, but who knew there was a whole community of musicians forming around the technology?

If anyone can speak to the beauty of the instrument and the community it has spawned, it’s Nat Grant. The Australian percussionist, who just completed her master’s degree in music performance, is one of the headliners of this year’s Y2KX+1 International Live Looping Festival—one of many annual events in town that has helped put Santa Cruz on the music map—taking place this weekend at Pearl Alley Studios in Santa Cruz.

Ryan Adams invokes the past in his latest effort, ‘Ashes & Fire’

Ryan Adams doesn’t always make it easy to be a Ryan Adams fan. After capturing indie souls with Heartbreaker in 2000, and then the world’s attention with 2001’s Gold, the 36-year-old North Carolina native has been playing Russian roulette with his musical style.

From honky-tonk, to a sci-fi metal concept album, to a few hip-hop tracks released on his website, Adams has wandered far from the alt-country genre he helped establish with his band, Whiskeytown, in the mid- to late-’90s. His prolificacy was legendary, averaging 1.3 albums a year. Then came a few books of poetry, followed by the announcement that he had sworn off touring altogether and was moving to the south of France with his new wife Mandy Moore.

If you’ve visited Severino’s Bar and Grill on a Thursday evening in the last decade, you know that no one pours smooth jazz from the bell of a trumpet quite like Stan Soroken. This month, Soroken joins the long list of esteemed musicians—including Velzoe Brown and Don McCaslin—to receive a Brownie Award by the Santa Cruz Jazz Society for his contributions to the local scene. It’s been a long journey for Soroken, who spent three weeks just trying to produce noise from his horn as an 8-year-old in Salinas. Eventually he found his groove with the help of Spike Jones’ tuba player and a member of the San Francisco Symphony.

Furthur guitarist John Kadlecik talks Deadheads, psychic spaceships, and rocking in the shadow of Jerry Garcia

In the film Rock Star, Mark Wahlberg sings in a tribute band—through happenstance, he eventually takes over the position of lead singer in the genuine band. Although the story is based on heavy metal mavens Judas Priest, it is also the tale of John Kadlecik. After years in Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra, Kadlecik got the tap on the shoulder to replace the empty Jerry Garcia spot in the newly incarnated Dead band, Furthur, featuring original members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh.

Radio Moscow cranks up the fuzz, channels old garage tunes

At times it is difficult to follow what Parker Griggs is saying—and not only because of the patchy cell phone reception he gets at his remote Northern California hideout.

It is entirely possible that Griggs, front man and lead songwriter for garage-psych revivalists Radio Moscow, is extremely baked as he mumbles on, sometimes inaudibly, about The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz—a piping hot batch of overdriven, wah-wah-, and THC-soaked jams that his trio will kick out at the Blue Lagoon on Oct. 14.

The new record, Magnafuzz, which drops Oct. 11 on Alive Naturalsound Records, is Griggs' third such homage to the heavier sounds of the Age of Aquarius.

After years of playing in rock and metal bands, guitarist McCoy Tyler decided to pursue his own sound. “I had a vision in my head of something a little more roots- and acoustic-based,” he says. His new trio, The McCoy Tyler Band, is the realization of that vision. And though the project is extremely young—a mere four months—the band already has a well-developed sound, an EP called What the Mountains Have Seen, a backlog of all new material ready to take on tour, and a definite direction: keep it simple and sweet. To achieve its signature sound, the band incorporates a slightly unusual set of instrumentation for folk: a small drum set, an upright bass, a lone guitar, and subtle use of acoustic amplification. Tyler admits the instrumentation choice was difficult, but worth the challenge, “one thing that was a concern to me, [was] how to incorporate a drum kit into the style of music and songs that I was writing … but a full band has more presence, and to have an upright bass makes us feel more legit.”

When Pipa Piñon hired a temporary bassist for a gig, little did she know that she and Daniel Vee Lewis would end up married and tour together for more than two decades. When asked to describe their sound, Piñon and her husband respond with warm smiles, “avant-garde electric folk jazz.” Much like the community that has nurtured and influenced their sound, the Santa Cruz-based band, Dreambeach, passionately embraces freedom of expression; creating music that is honest, powerful and at times unusual. “We sound like we’re from Santa Cruz,” says lead singer and lyricist Piñon, whose ethereal voice soars, whispers, and sometimes even speaks, over Lewis’ subtle, yet solid bass lines. “Everyone hears this album [and] they say it sounds like water and open ocean,” Lewis adds. Both the comparison, and the band’s moniker hit the nail on the head. Dreambeach’s sound is loose and vaporous, settling in like a chilling mist that casts a contemplative spell over the listener.

UCSC grad Tori Roze makes triumphant return with jazz/R&B outfit The Hot Mess

So far, Tori Roze’s life has been a series of blessings in disguise. The first occurred when the singer/songwriter left The Boston Conservatory for an education that didn’t focus solely on musical theater. After being turned down by several schools, Roze ended up at UC Santa Cruz.

“It turned out to be a good surprise,” says Roze. “I loved going to school in Santa Cruz—I didn’t think I would, but I learned so much and I was exposed to so much.”

After graduating in 2005 with a theater degree, Roze returned home to San Diego. When plans to move to Los Angeles fell through, she met her band mates. “One day I was singing karaoke and some guy came up and asked if I had a band,” she explains. “Being in San Diego was the best mistake ever.”

From rural Jamaica to Santa Cruz, reggae sensation Richie Spice spreads Rasta love

There’s a cool Jamaican breeze blowing through Richie Spice’s Patois-woven conversation as he tends to his garden, which sprawls out to farmland in the hills above Kingston. A farmer, devout Rasta, and singer-songwriter, who is embraced for his distinct voice and roots reggae music, Spice exemplifies the humility and faithfulness rooted in his latest album, Book of Job. Though, his road from the Jamaican countryside to world tours has not been an easy one.

Unlike many of his compatriots in the music scene who were raised in the Kingston capitol, such as Sizzla and Beenie Man, Spice grew up in a rural area called Rock Hall, in St. Andrew Parish, Jamaica. “Life was more of a natural vibration, living on a farm in a family of 11 siblings,” says Spice. “It came with a rhythm less hectic than a city like Kingston.”

River Whyless lugs backroads Americana, DIY savvy, and open minds cross-country

The members of River Whyless may be as nervous as they are excited about their forthcoming—and first—nationwide tour, at least according to drummer Alex McWalters. Fortunately, the quartet from Asheville, N.C. hasn’t had much time to fret. "It's all us,” McWalters explains. “We're doing literally everything this time around.”

McWalters and his band mates are so preoccupied with doing everything a record label and a public relations representative would do for a group—conducting interviews, booking gigs, burning CDs, making T-shirts, designing stickers, and redesigning their website—that they haven’t had much time to stress about the cross-country trek, which will make a stop at Streetlight Records and The Blue Lagoon on Wednesday, Sept. 28.

Maestro John Larry Granger bids a fond farewell to the symphony

The Santa Cruz County Symphony’s 2011/2012 season will be one to remember—and not just for its inclusion of masterful works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. It also happens to be the farewell season for Maestro John Larry Granger, who has served as the Symphony’s conductor and music director for the past two decades.

“It’s been a great joy and privilege to be the music director, but I felt that I wanted to retire like Johnny Carson did, rather than Hosni Mubarak,” the conductor jokes. “I didn’t want to stay too long.”

Though he’s retiring as conductor at the end of the season, Granger will stay on as music director for an additional season to help with auxiliary SCCS programs, such as youth concerts and pop concerts. He also plans to assist with the process of selecting his successor.