Santa Cruz easily makes up for the relative lack of touring brand-name acts with an independent scene that is as diverse as it is fiercely loyal. Perhaps no other band better personifies this ethos than Acid Tapestries. An indie rock amalgam, the four-piece ties together strands of the past five decades of rock and alternative music into a driving, melodic ruckus landing somewhere between Pavement and a psyched-out Vampire Weekend. Naturally, it's been very well-received in town. "The Santa Cruz music scene has been great to us," explains Lee Bedrouni, the bespectacled bassist. "We've received a hell of a lot of support from organizations like TINARL and from other local bands like San Narciso, Green Flash and No Jet Left." In return, Bedrouni has nurtured the scene by regularly featuring new local music on KZSC, where he currently hosts a Friday night local music showcase entitled "The Rising Tide."

The Entrance Band has a message behind the mayhem

Last September I previewed the Amazing Baby show at The Crepe Place, and the day of the concert my editor gave me a heads up to get there early and check out the opener—The Entrance Band. Luckily I followed that advice, as the psychedelic threesome turned out to be one of the most energetic live rock acts I’ve come across in a while. Was that Paz Lenchantin (of A Perfect Circle and Zwan fame) on bass?

Dave Rawlings makes sparks fly as bandleader

It would be easy for Dave Rawlings to take a cue from John F. Kennedy’s infamous quote in Paris. I can just hear him quipping at a show: “I am the man who accompanied Gillian Welch to Nashville, and I have enjoyed it.

Since meeting at Berklee College of Music nearly two decades ago, the pair has taken Welch’s sweet-like-honey folk and bluegrass musings to main stages—their endearing performance style and songwriting procuring a timelessness that forbids a listener from passing by without feeling a pinch in the heart, if not more.

This week we’re highlighting the debut of a new workshop aimed at helping your local band—and anyone curious about what it takes to bust out a record. Helmed by Gadgetbox Studios’ Andy Zenczak, in partnership with Santa Cruz Rehearsal Studios, the “Making a Record” roundtable discussion on Thursday, Feb. 11, is presenting the varied expertise and industry experience of local stars Lauren Shera, Naomi Wilder (Naomi & The Courteous Rude Boys), Peter Haworth (Molly’s Revenge), and Brian Gallagher (Wooster). “Major labels are dying a slow death and it’s about time for independent resources to pick up and give artists more exposure,” says Zenczak, a self-described “music-geek and science-geek” who combined his two passions when he first started recording bands in his home 10 years ago.

Success hasn’t spoiled AFI’s Jade Puget yet. And that really pisses off one envious GT scribe.

Oh, I’m not jealous. Not in the least. I don’t mind seeing my rock star dreams being lived out by a bunch of kids I went to high school with. It doesn’t bother me at all when the mere mention of AFI’s name makes a girl cover her heart, roll her eyes and swoon as though Eros himself had just invited her to sail off to cloudland on a freaking giant swan. Hell, I kind of enjoyed it when my old schoolmates in AFI played the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on my birthday—the one I’d long ago picked as the absolute, no-appeals expiration date for my hopes of “making it” in music—and even brought along Tiger Army, another successful band led by one of my peers from high school.

The masked enigma known as The Residents

Active since the late ‘60s, The Residents are a legendary performance collective that’s remained one of the most unknown groups in any subheading of performance art despite being one of the most intensely celebrated. To this day they’re still very much an enigma, falling in the cracks between music and theater, celebrity and mystery.

For newbies to the group, The Residents are a melding of music and visual art, and in live shows typically feature four members wearing eyeball-shaped helmets or other face-obscuring adornments. Throughout its history, the group has kept the identities of its members a tight secret, with the only connection to the outside world through its aptly named management team, The Cryptic Corporation. So while The Residents may be considered outsider musicians with shifty origins—much like the infamously illusive Jandek—likewise the group has had a great influence on modern avant-garde dignitaries such as Animal Collective and Primus. Bringing their latest innovative show to Santa Cruz this week, The Residents perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 23, at the Rio Theatre.

Folk-pop floats along in a spectrum of music, from upbeat tempos to slow dirges, and Bryn Loosley and the Back Pages croon some of the most bittersweet ballads this side of NPR’s darling, David Mead. Santa Cruz teacher and bandleader, Bryn Loosley, is known to take the stage as if he’s walked up from the beach. Barefoot, guitar hung low around his neck, steely determination in his hazel-gray eyes, and then the voice. Gravelly, with the familiar dust kicked up from back country roads, Loosley draws the listener into a world where love is not always returned undamaged. From stints in Chico (Buffalo Creek) to the SAD streets of Portland (The Last Minute), the Northwest’s loss is Santa Cruz’s gain. Back Pages drives the engine of Loosley’s forlorn locomotive. Steve Gear on bass and Marc Stafford on electric guitar are the songwriter’s old friends from Chico, while Pat Blizinski (keys) and Jon Payne (drums) are Craigslist acquisitions.

The Builders and The Butchers cross borders and genres

Portland is a city whose name is practically synonymous with indie music—particularly the alternative folk scene. Conversely, Alaska is synonymous with … Sarah Palin?

In 2003 Ryan Sollee moved from Alaska to Portland with his band at the time, a punk rock outfit known as The Born Losers. With the dissolution of that project, and with the advantage of friendships forged in a cultural music hub, eventually came The Builders and The Butchers, Sollee’s current band coming to The Crepe Place on Sunday, Jan. 17. “I was (in Portland) a few years while my old band was winding down,” says Sollee, “and The Builders and The Butchers started out of that period.”

Robben Ford assembles blues-rock super group for big licks

For those who know him, Robben Ford needs no introduction. The four-time Grammy nominee has been recording since 1972 and his formidable discography reflects the blues guitarist’s work ethic.

Raised in a music-loving family—his father and mother both sang and played various instruments—Ford says he has been in love with music ever since he can remember. He began playing piano at 7, picked up the saxophone at 10 and began teaching himself guitar at 13. He has worked with the likes of Joni Mitchell, George Harrison and Miles Davis.

In Ford’s latest endeavor he teams with three more musical greats—Michael Landau, Jimmy Haslip and Gary Novak—to release the album Trial By Fire. He has worked with Landau, Haslip and Novak in various forms over his eventful career, but heretofore the four have not been able to make the time in their busy schedules to get together in the same room and kick out the jams.

The medium is the message at 1019 Records

Compared to the space age techno-wizardry of the iPod, my Sony Walkman is the portable music equivalent of a Model-T Ford. It's so clunky that it features a belt clasp, as there's no way you're going to fit the plastic behemoth in any reasonably sized pocket. To give you an idea of its approximate value, I received it for free in exchange for donating blood, which my body produces at zero cost to me. Despite all this, Santa Cruz soundsmith Cole Willsea regularly releases and sells new music exclusively on cassette tapes through his label, 1019 Records. And he's not the only one.

"As it turns out, there are a good number of tape labels around these days," Willsea says. "There's one in Canada called Scotch Tapes that puts out hundreds of tapes on a weekly basis, and they often sell out within days. A dude makes his living that way."

Harry and The Hit Men ring in the new year by turning back the clock to Motown

It’s been a big year for Motown. In November, Detroit saw an influx of legends perform for one night as the Motown 50 Golden Gala honored the illustrious record label’s half-century birthday. While Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and The Temptations were a few of the revered guests in the house, there was another surprise speaker, a new guy on the block, who gave a headline-making nod to the genre: Giving a message modernly signed, sealed and delivered via video, President Obama said on the big screen that “Motown music made history and captured a truly American sound.”

The Le Boeuf Brothers return to Santa Cruz to play music as only identical twins can

Every musician should be so lucky as to have a twin sibling. Case in point: former Santa Cruzans Pascal and Remy Le Boeuf, aka The Le Boeuf Brothers, a pair of 23-year-old identical twins currently making a name for themselves in the New York jazz scene.

Pascal, the keyboardist of the duo, explains that he and his brother have a natural musical rapport. Likening music to a conversation, he offers, “If I bring up a certain subject—for example, I might play a mood D minor vamp—then we both might think of the same things to respond to that. Remy might have an idea of what would work over that, and I might have a similar idea.”