The first time I met Tevya "Wisdom" Jones, years ago, he was selling T-shirts along the road into Reggae. I bought one emblazoned with his logo — a red, green, gold and black pyramid/eye inside a flaming circle. The next year, stickers with the logo showed up on outhouses all over the concert grounds. A […]
Bob Doran
Freelance photographer and writer, Arts and Entertainment editor from 1997 to 2013.
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Humboldt speaks
The day of discussion on health care reform was billed as an experiment in “deliberative democracy.” On Saturday, around 4,500 randomly selected Californians participated statewide in a high-tech teleconference with sites in eight cities facilitated by a group called CaliforniaSpeaks. Humboldt State University’s West Gym was the local site. There were around 470 attendees from […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Disorientation Week — Your student guide to housing, transit, surfing and weed
Everyone’s so cool, and one dude’s brought his drum and they’re all just layin’ around in this way cool grove in the forest. Ferns are tickling, the sun’s out — what rain? — like some kind of benevolent blanket of warm glowing pizza dough just soft all over everything, and the grass … the grass. […]
Posted inMusic
Down Home
College is almost back in session, the students are back in town and it’s time for another CenterArts season. The local concert juggernaut kicks off a stellar ’07-’08 season on Sunday, Aug. 19, with a show at the Van Duzer featuring what is likely the most successful old-timey band working today, Old Crow Medicine Show […]
Posted inMusic
Gainfully employed
UB40 Back in the days when my main income came from restaurant work, the sound system of choice in the kitchen was a food-encrusted boombox, typically with auto-reverse so the music would play on when things got going and the stoned dishwasher’s attention was elsewhere. I turned one such dishy into a reggae fan starting […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The image collector — Kim Sallaway’s perfect moments
SoHum photographer Kim Sallaway is one of those people who carries a camera at all times — just in case. He always wants to be ready should some image present itself, some magic moment that cries out for capture. For the last couple of months he’s been sorting through thousands of images he’s collected over […]
Posted inMusic
It’s just Reggae (a river runs through it)
The first weekend in August is upon us. Here in Humboldt, that means just one thing: Yes, it’s time for Wildwood Days! No, just kidding. It means we batten down the hatches for another Reggae, that massive gathering that’s been bringing thousands of visitors to SoHum from far and wide for 23 years. Most years, […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Peaches and sunshine — Willow Creek summer, in fruit form
Jacques Neukom doesn’t sleep well when there’s thunder and lightning over the mountains. Not in the summer, anyway, when the peach trees in his orchard are laden with sweet, juicy, luscious gems so ripe they would drop from the trees on their own if no one picked them. And he wasn’t exactly having the relaxed, […]
Posted inMusic
Jazzy Matazzy — Guru foresees the future of hip hop
He was half of the duo Gang Starr, but the smooth rapper known as Guru was never a gangsta type, not in his style and definitely not in the socially conscious content of his lyrics. At the end of the ’80s, Gang Starr — Guru and producer/partner DJ Premier — pioneered the use of jazz […]
Posted inMusic
Positive Force
If you dig African music, you probably don’t need to know much more than the fact that saxophonist/bandleader Femi Kuti is the eldest son of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the undisputed Godfather of Afrobeat. If you know that, then you know you want to hear him play on Monday. Femi quit school in 1978 to take […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Living the folk life: Behind the scenes at the Humboldt Folklife Festival
You might see them busking on the street in Old Town, picking and singing in cafés and clubs, at open mic nights, jamming on a back porch, in a garage or a living room or on some festival stage — musicians of a wide range of ages and caliber living the folk life in their […]
Posted inMusic
A Burning Thing
It was one of those parties. A wild one. My friend Gregg was moving out of a ramshackle place in Blue Lake into classier digs elsewhere and had a backyard bash to celebrate. Gregg has definite pyromaniacal tendencies and included a flaming limbo dance as part of the affair, followed by fireworks and a bonfire […]