Santa Cruz Good Times

Tuesday
Jun 18th
Text size
  • Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size

Music

bud1



Love Your Local Band

Head Casket

Head Casket

For the three members of local horror-punk group Head Casket, there's nothing to fear about zombies. In fact, singer and guitarist Rick Deschamp, bassist Brendan Brose, and drummer Nicole Hatchet all seem pretty comfortable with the idea of hanging out with the undead. "Zombies aren't scary," Deschamp says. "They're awesome." Elaborating on why he and his bandmates are drawn to the reanimated, the singer explains, "It's one of those things in pop culture that really never goes away. Zombies have been around for years—no matter what, they'll always be a part of our culture."

Read more...
Features

The Best Medicine

The Best Medicine

Arts community gives back to Marty Collins with second benefit concert

Shortly before he suffered the internal injury that nearly ended his life, Marty Collins made a promise.

"I made him promise me that he would make it through this," his wife Ginny Mitchell says, thinking back to the day Collins checked into the hospital last summer for what doctors anticipated would be a routine procedure: the insertion of a feeding tube. Though he doesn't remember the 49 days he spent in the intensive care unit after suffering a dangerous and rare complication—a perforated bowel—Collins can still recall making that vow.

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

Sista Monica

Sista Monica

For two decades, Santa Cruz soul, blues and gospel singer Sista Monica Parker has drawn musical inspiration from her experiences in love and lust, and the pains of leaving and letting go. Those are hard facts of life that passionate people can always relate to, Parker admits with a laugh. “And that's the kind of music that always seems to feed my soul,” she says. To celebrate her 20 years of performing, Parker will sing at a concert called “Acoustic Honey” on Saturday, along with a four-piece band at Kuumbwa Jazz.

Read more...
Features

Unmatched

Unmatched

Legendary finger-style master Tommy Emmanuel talks childhood and the power of music

For more than half a century, Tommy Emmanuel has traveled the globe, touring relentlessly and gaining widespread recognition for his peerless technical skill, passion for music, and his heartwarming personality.

Like many who have found their true calling in life, Emmanuel discovered his passion at a young age—a very young age.

“I’ve been playing guitar since I was 4,” says Emmanuel, “but I didn’t turn professional till I was 6,” he adds, with a laugh. “All I knew when I was a kid was that I wanted to play, and that it was exciting to play with my family. I’m one of six kids; four of us played music and we all played together, and it was great making music as a family.”

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

Amee Chapman & The Velvet Tumbleweeds

Amee Chapman & The Velvet Tumbleweeds

Raising a family, working multiple jobs and making music isn't an easy lifestyle—some days it has Amee Chapman feeling worn down. But expressing that struggle in her music helps her pull everything back to center. On the title track of her new album, Grace is Hell to Keep, which she recorded with her band, The Velvet Tumbleweeds, Chapman conveys some of those feelings through a slow ballad about a musician who tries to present a positive, manicured appearance, but actually feels torn to pieces. “It tells the story of how you can push through something and try to be polished all the time, but it's just not possible,” she says.

Read more...
Features

The Best Part Of Breaking Up

The Best Part Of Breaking Up

While working on a breakup record, Binki Shapiro finds a match made in heaven 

What’s the reward for being brave all the time?” Binki Shapiro sweetly sings with a lingering and captivating languor. As listeners, we aren’t certain what the answer is, and perhaps never will be, since the question posed at the beginning of “What’s The Reward” is addressed to a former lover, just like the other tracks on Adam Green & Binki Shapiro. 

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

Pure Roots

Pure Roots

With a booming three-piece horn section and positive vibes, Santa Cruz-based roots reggae outfit Pure Roots strives to bring audiences to higher levels of positive consciousness and to the dance floor. Though the band formed in 2007, 23-year-old founder Jeff Allgrove admits that 2012 was a breakthrough year for Pure Roots. Over the course of the year, the band completed a seven-city tour with Daniel "Bambaata" Marley—the grandson of Bob Marley—and shared the stage with artists such as Black Uhuru and Don Carlos, in addition to performing at the annual Monterey Bay Reggaefest.

Read more...
Features

Deep Cuts

Deep Cuts

Amidst adversity Tristan Prettyman reconnects with music and soars

After nearly eight years of recording and touring, singer/songwriter Tristan Prettyman found herself in a terrible position: She no longer had any interest in music. “I got really burnt out and I just took a break from music all together,” she says. “It was supposed to be just like a year or six months that ended up turning into almost four years.”

Luckily for fans, all of Prettyman’s disinterest in music evaporated the morning she went into surgery to remove the polyps from her vocal cords that threatened her career.

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

Something Collective

Something Collective

Strip away the religious ramifications of reggae music and it comes down to love and respect for all things. This is the starting block for Luke Kinney, guitarist, lead vocalist and founder of Something Collective, a 10-piece roots reggae band, featuring three horns, keyboards, percussionists, a drummer, bassist and guitarists, that has been performing since 2011. “We have multiple musicians if somebody cannot make a show; I have people on standby that know all the songs,” Kinney exclaims.

Read more...
Features

Examining Exhibitionism

Examining Exhibitionism

San Francesca turns off the computer, flips on the synths, takes a look in the mirror 

Examining the cover of San Francesca’s latest release, you might observe that the nine, evenly spaced square images—which, in turn, form a larger square—were taken using the popular photo-sharing application Instagram. You’d be wrong.

“None of us own a smart phone,” shrugs Cody Rhodes, drummer for the San Jose-based alt-rock trio, as he sits behind his kit in the band’s Campbell rehearsal space. San Francesca is practicing for a short string of upcoming shows in San Francisco, Las Vegas and at The Crepe Place on Jan. 13, with Moon Eater and E V Kain (members of Hella, Cigar and Broken Bells).

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

Rushad Eggleston

Rushad Eggleston

Like many classically trained musicians, Rushad Eggleston started playing music at a young age, picking up the violin at 3 and moving to the cello at age 8. But unlike many classical musicians, he straps his instrument to his body like an enormous guitar, and occasionally hangs from the ceiling—if the situation calls for it. “It was a huge deal,” says Eggleston, remembering the first time he played the cello with a strap while standing. “I mean can you imagine? I guess it’s like a bird realizing it had wings.” Following Eggleston’s epiphany, it didn’t take long for him to bring his new technique to the stage, first with his rock band, Tornado Rider, and then solo.

Read more...
Love Your Local Band

The Ghost of Wrights

The Ghost of Wrights

Straight out of the Santa Cruz Mountains, The Ghost of Wrights are a manifestation of the spirits of a time and place forgotten by many. “We tend to write about the late 1800s—we’re big storytellers,” says Nate Nauseda, vocalist and guitarist for the band. “We both live a stone’s throw away from Wrights Station, which is an old train depot in the Santa Cruz mountains,” adds banjo and dulcimer player Cody Franks. “Some of those people—and their ghosts—are still around ... we are trying to embody the spirit of [that] area.” Informed by a wide range of influences, The Ghost of Wrights balance the twang of plucked banjo against Andrew Martin’s thumping, jazzy bass and the mellow driving drums of Brandon Otto.

Read more...
 
Page 3 of 36

Share this on your social networks

Bookmark and Share

Share this

Bookmark and Share

 

CYNDI

On the eve of Cyndi Lauper’s Mountain Winery gig, we dissect the woman, the icon, the creative beast. Plus: Her thoughts on the music industry, equal rights and those sparkling ‘Kinky Boots’ Few performers possess the kind of fierce, she-bopping tenacity Cyndi Lauper has become famous for. Equal parts free spirit, civil rights activist and Grammy-winner, Lauper is one of the few creative artists able to successfully marry her cutting-edge verve with a heart-of-gold panache. It certainly has helped fuel the remarkable career resurgence she has been experiencing lately.

 

Field to Vase

Open house provides opportunity for residents to meet their local flower growers Valentine’s Day is a high point of the year for those in the cut flower business. So when, one year in the late ’90s, the bouquet-riddled holiday failed to deliver for Kitayama Brothers Farms, the family behind the decades-old rose-growing business knew something was wrong.  “It was the writing on the wall,” recalls Stuart Kitayama, operations manager for the Watsonville-based company. “Those of us who had been hoping things would just get better finally said ‘it’s time to change.’”

 

The Price of Safety

The city's proposed budget addresses public safety needs The City of Santa Cruz’s pocketbook has come a long way since 2009, when an $8 million shortfall loomed. According to City Manager Martin Bernal, the proposed general fund budget for 2013-2014 is healthier than it has been since the beginning of The Great Recession in 2008. Armed with this returning stability, the proposal puts one of the community's top concerns—public safety—front and center.

 

Mark Twang

Mark Twang plays a little bit of everything—rock, roots, jazz and bluegrass for starters—but so far they haven’t played much in public as evidenced by the fact that their upcoming show at Don Quixote’s will only be their second gig. But there’s a reason why the band isn’t performing a lot right now. “We have plans [to make an album],” says drummer Jeff Wilson. “We’re trying to do some things differently though and not just come out full-steam ahead and start playing all these shows.

 

Peace in the Middle East

New dance-concert explores Palestinian-Israeli conflict Inspired by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, local choreographer Karl Schaffer’s “Mosaic” is a dance-concert featuring Jewish Diaspora and Arab music from the women’s choral group Zambra, singer Fattah Abbou and a troupe of local dancers. In between rehearsals for the show, which runs June 21-22 at Motion Pacific, Schaffer shared the story behind its creation.

 

Muscle-Bound

Valiant cast battles loud, ugly action for the soul of 'Man of Steel' Early in Man of Steel, fourth-grader Clark, the boy who will be Superman, is cowering in a broom closet at school, eyes screwed shut, hands clapped over his ears. He can't control his super powers: his X-ray vision shows him the skulls and skeletons under everyone's flesh; unfiltered noise—dogs, traffic, heartbeats—assault him from all sides. Rushing to school, his mom kneels outside the door and asks what's wrong.

 

The Plug Bug & Corbin Dunn

Mechanic, programmer, acrobat, builder, tinkerer. Corbin Dunn's 1969 Volkswagen Beetle is a fully electric vehicle. It has an electric motor powered by 48 stacked squares of Lithium-ion battery cells under the hood in place of the 50 horsepower gas engine that it was built with. He calls it, affectionately, “the Plug Bug.” Dunn, who was born in Hawaii, raised in Corralitos, and now lives in a large, old A-frame house near the summit in the Santa Cruz Mountains, is a 35-year-old programmer for Apple in Cupertino, where he helped develop the iPhone and works on the framework for the Macintosh operating system. But his aptitude for intricate technical work is not limited to computers. Dunn is a tinkerer.

 

Making the Grade

The quest to identify sources of high levels of bacteria at Cowell Beach continues With straight As on Heal the Bay’s annual “beach report card” for 10 out of 13 Santa Cruz County beaches—Main Beach, Seabright, and even Cowell Beach at the Stairs, to name a few—it would seem that Santa Cruz boasts a high coastal GPA. But in recent years, one Santa Cruz beach just can’t seem to pass: Cowell Beach west of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

 

Flag Day, Father’s Day and Chiron

Another week of complex planetary energies falling to Earth. Mars interacts with Pluto (inconjunct), Uranus (sextile) and Chiron (square, challenge, ouch!). We won’t know how to comprise, we’ll want to be friends but our hurts will challenge that desire.

 

To Arm or Disarm?

While gun sales soar nationally, a group of musicians fundraise for a local gun buy-back In the wake of high-profile incidents of gun violence—from the Sandy Hook school shooting last December to the fatal shooting of two Santa Cruz police officers three months ago—the debate over gun ownership in America centers on one question as it rages on: Do guns make us safer or do they make our lives more dangerous?
Sign up for Tomorrow's Good Times Today
Upcoming arts & events

Latest Comments

 

Good Morning Maui

Goodness, righteousness, virtuousness and fairness are some of the four-score English words that attempt to describe the Hawaiian essence of pono, whose use in the state motto translates to “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”

 

The Power of Conversation

Local author Cecile Andrews emphasizes importance of community engagement in newest book Cecile Andrews, author of the new book “Living Room Revolution: A Handbook for Conversation, Community and the Common Good,” probably wouldn’t get along too well with Larry David’s character from HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, known for hiding his face and avoiding communication with anyone he runs into on the street. Andrews is a longstanding part-time Santa Cruz (part-time Seattle) resident who says something that’s struck her about this town over the years is people's willingness to participate in a practice she’s dubbed the “Stop and Chat”—which is exactly what it sounds like.

 

Is Edward Snowden a patriot or a traitor?

He's a patriot. Anyone who stands up for the rights that we stand for as a country, that is real democracy. That would be in my book—somebody who is a patriot. Leah WeissSanta Cruz | Therapist

 

Best of Santa Cruz County

The 2013 Santa Cruz County Readers' Poll and Critics’ Picks It’s our biggest issue of the year, and in it, your votes—more than 6,500 of them—determined the winners of The Best of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll. New to the long list of local restaurants, shops and other notables that captured your interest: Best Beer Selection, Best Locally Owned Business, Best Customer Service and Best Marijuana Dispensary. In the meantime, many readers were ever so chatty online about potential new categories. Some of the suggestions that stood out: Best Teen Program and Best Web Design/Designer. But what about: Dog Park, Church, Hotel, Local Farm, Therapist (I second that!) or Sports Bar—not to be confused with Bra. Our favorite suggestion: Best Act of Kindness—one reader noted Café Gratitude and the free meals it offered to the Santa Cruz Police Department in the aftermath of recent crimes. Perhaps some of these can be woven into next year’s ballot, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the following pages and take note of our Critics’ Picks, too, beginning on page 91. A big thanks for voting—and for reading—and an even bigger congratulations to all of the winners. Enjoy.  -Greg Archer, EditorBest of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll INDEX | Shops | Food & Drink | Arts & Entertainment | Health & Fitness | Professionals | The Rest |

 

Dancing Creek Winery

At the Pinot Paradise event back in March, I tasted some very good Pinots from the Santa Cruz Mountains, and Dancing Creek Winery’s 2009 Pinot ($27) was one of them. This plummy dark brew, made from grapes grown in Corralitos, has delicious flavors of pomegranate, prosciutto, dried cherries, and mint julep.

 

Stranger than Fiction

Memphis singer-songwriter, Amy LaVere, finds joy and humor in painful situations Producer Craig Silvey likely saved singer-songwriter Amy LaVere’s life a few years back. Before recording 2011’s Stranger Me, LaVere had endured a breakup with her longtime boyfriend and was in the midst of one of those I-need-to-find-out-who-I-am phases. She knew the content for the album was going to be incredibly dark and moody, but Silvey did something which changed the course of the recording sessions entirely.

 

A Very Fine House

Adjacent to the front door, the long, clean wooden bar is surrounded by pumpkin-colored stools. At the entrance to the dining rooms, there is a new low-slung cafe door hung in the wood-covered arch. Where there once was a stage, stocky wooden tables are neatly arranged perpendicularly on a new tile floor, each set with square white plates and burnt orange cloth napkins.

 

Exposed

David Cay Johnston’s new book explains how big companies rob us blind In his late teens David Cay Johnston started to ask questions. “Why do we have these guys in uniforms with guns driving around in cars all day?” “Why is the Santa Cruz County Courthouse being built in such an unusual shape?” He wrote an article, while still living in his hometown of Santa Cruz, proving that the off-kilter courthouse building, which officials had promised would save money, actually cost more than a conventional building.

 

What’s your secret to avoiding the summer swarms?