The Meanest of Times | Born & Bred Records

Moo, You Bloody Choir | Sony BMG

Singer-songwriter Todd Snider headlines memorial benefit for Laura Ellen Hopper

For the mission statement of Para La Gente (PLG), a local band out of Salinas and Watsonville, look no further than its title, which literally translates from the Spanish to mean “for the people.” PLG’s music is, in a word, provocative. It’s hip hop, it’s rock, but first and foremost it’s “100 percent independent DIY guerilla style music.” “Art is a form of information,” says PLG frontman and lyricist, Mike Fernandez, a.k.a. MC Change. “Music is the modern-day pamphlet. We’ll memorize a song before we ever read a book.” Immigration is the focus of PLG’s songs—the angst, fear and poverty that plague America’s Hispanic communities. PLG gives this community a voice, unabashedly tackling issues acutely absent from the public discourse. “This is for Maria who can’t focus on her homework,” sings Fernandez in a song about a 7th grader who worries about la migra (the border patrol) imprisoning her mother while she’s at school. “She’s too busy wondering if her mom will make it back from work.” When asked to ring in on the immigration debate, Fernandez doesn’t mince words. “There’s no debate. This is occupied territory. Who crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean? And we are the ones they call wetbacks? ... It’s all politics, because they really need our labor power and always have. We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” PLG came together at CSU Monterey Bay in 2003, when Fernandez, Zach Stahl, Leon Gomez and Omar Murillo first “recognized that music could and should be used as a vehicle for revolution.” “We represent anyone who wants to make change happen,” says Fernandez. And after four years of performing, Fernandez says the evidence of change is plain to see. “We got the youth rapping our lyrics back to us, and the type of youth that’s going to take that back to our barrios and create their own style of revolutionary music. We are just the seed.”

 

Behind the scenes with music’s Dave Brubeck and local Tim Jackson on the eve of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 50th anniversary

If logic had prevailed, local country singer-songwriter Larry Hosford might never have been a performer; “I’m just pretty introverted to tell you the truth,” says Hosford. Luckily, despite his shyness, Hosford made it his goal early on in life to master self-expression. “I couldn’t just sit around and tell everybody in a normal fashion what I’m feeling and thinking,” says Hosford. “But I could write it down and make it rhyme.” Born in Salinas and raised among “Okies and Mexicans,” Hosford developed a fierce loyalty for his community, learning at a young age to “defend beleaguered homesteaders from land office pole cats.” And it was Mexican co-workers who gave Hosford his cherished nickname “Lorenzo” back when he worked in the lettuce fields in high school. Hosford lists true love as one of his earliest inspirations for songwriting, an affliction which struck when he was only 5 years old in the form of a radiant and enigmatic peer named Charlotte Jayne. “She’s my girl,” says Hosford. “She was when we were 5-years-old, I knew it immediately.” Making good on her mysteriousness, Charlotte would disappear twice from Hosford’s life for 20 years at a time, before returning to stay. In 1980, Hosford moved to Nashville to try and make it as country musician. “I didn’t like it at all,” says Hosford, who compares his touring stint to “peddling biscuit mix.” “It’s just a totally different creative atmosphere. It’s like they’d already learned how to make records. They were into how to merchandize records. Santa Cruz is much better for the guy who just wants to come down and do it the way he does it.” This Friday, Hosford celebrates the release of his new album High On Livin’. Its tracks, originally recorded 20 years ago, feature Hosford’s signature homegrown country, good-natured, easygoing and sincere. The album is an entirely local affair from the lyrics to the guest musicians, right down to the cover picture of Hosford contemplating the ocean from New Brighton Beach. “My girlfriend took that picture,” says a gleeful Hosford of his requited Charlotte. High on livin’ indeed.

Torch rock duo DeatHat approaches music from a different direction

Last September, a last minute cancellation at the Monterey Jazz Festival gave local jazz-funk quintet Catwalk the opportunity of a lifetime. “It was an honor,” writer/guitarist Joe Menichetti says of the band’s festival debut. “We were there playing one stage and at the same time in the arena, Dave Brubeck was playing … We felt really fortunate. There are so many great jazz bands that would die to play there.” But humble though Menichetti may be, the band’s lucky break was most likely less kismet and more merit-based. In lieu of the common clutch of careworn jazz standards, Catwalk offers all original compositions, fundamentally written by Menichetti and evolved in rehearsal by the musical prowess of the band’s other members; Scott McKenna (bass), Doug Rowan (sax), Sid Thompson (drums) and Jay Jackson (piano). In 2002, the five men, all seasoned Bay Area musicians and according to Menichetti, all “old friends,” got together to jam and Catwalk was born. The band’s sonic foundation is built on a deep-set groove that prominently features Rowan’s fierce sax. The compositions are innovative and imaginative, and draw from the members’ diverse musical pedigree, which includes rock, Celtic, funk, Latin and blues. But what makes Catwalk’s music consistently accessible is the frequent inclusion of catchy melodic motifs, a possible consequence, says Menichetti, of his past experience writing “pop-oriented” tunes. “With some of my jazz stuff, you know, there are some hooks there.” On maintaining Catwalk as an all-original project, Menichetti describes the process as challenging, but infinitely more rewarding. “It’s a little bit more risky, as far as getting gigs,” he admits. “It’s not as accepted. If no one’s ever heard the music, it requires an open set of ears.” A challenge, perhaps? Be sure to bring your open ears to the Kuumbwa this Thursday.

Info: The Kuumbwa. When: Thursday, Aug. 30 at 7 p.m. Where: 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. Cost: $10/adv, $13/door. Info: 427-2227.