The Jamaicans are coming! You’re thinking, what’s new about that? Humboldt is a dread zone, a reggae magnet, and Caribbean musicians come through constantly. But this contingent is a bit larger than most with almost two dozen guys from Kingston, JA, coming in for two shows. In SoHum Friday, July 6, at the Mateel, there’s […]
Bob Doran
Freelance photographer and writer, Arts and Entertainment editor from 1997 to 2013.
Posted inMusic
Clear, Clean and Strong
Lila Nelson was asking for requests on her KHUM radio show “Meet Me in the Morning.” Mine was for anything from the new album she’d been talking about earlier, Good Night Darling , by Huckleberry Flint. She picked the opening track on the disc, “Carpenter,” a mellow number about building a home penned by guitarist […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Grocers and lifestyles
H umboldt County is a “natural” sort of place. And we’re not just talking forests, rivers, seashores and mountains — when it comes to food, we’re ahead of the curve on the suddenly hip natural trend. We have fruit and vegetable farmers who have been completely organic for decades, dairies and cattle ranchers producing grass-fed […]
Posted inMusic
Whild in the Streets
Whild Peach guitarist David Whild wasn’t quite sure what the band was doing in Bozeman, Mont. "We’re further and further from home everyday," he said when I called him at a Bozeman motel. Home is Atlanta, Ga., and has been since Whild and his musical partner Peach moved there from Dallas in 1994. "The thing […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Golden fish — Trinidad Fish Festival turns 50
The town may be stretching things just a little bit by calling its big event Sunday "Trinidad’s 50th Annual Fish Festival," but we’ll forgive it. It was 1957, 50 years ago, when the little port town began celebrating its ties with the fishing and seafood business with an annual event, but it was not called […]
Posted inMusic
Not from here
It may be obvious if you follow this music column, I’m a sucker for Gypsy-ish violins, accordions, café music, retro-Euro stuff and for mixers and mergers who leapfrog genres.That said, I love Portland’s who touch all of the above to craft a sound that defies categorization. From the title of the band’s most recent album, […]
Posted inMusic
Peace and Love from Comoros
Unless your knowledge of geography is far greater than mine, it’s likely you have no idea where the Comoros Islands are, and thus would also have no clue what it means when the singer Nawal is described as "the voice of Comoros." First the geography: The Union of the Comoros is a collection of islands […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
Summer Festival Guide 2007
Online story updated from published version. Summer may not arrive officially until June 21, but here in Humboldt the season begins Memorial Day weekend, when the noon whistle on the Arcata Plaza marks the launch of the Kinetic Race. It’s the first in a series of big events where thousands gather for communion and fun […]
Posted inMusic
Sonic Shamanistic Alchemy
There’s a scene somewhere near the end of The Matrix trilogy where the motley rebel force in Zion celebrates victory with wild revelry in a cavern deep underground. It would be easy to imagine Heavyweight Dub Champion providing the soundtrack to such a party. That’s what came to mind at last summer’s Reggae, when the […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Chefs Go Wild
I’ve cooked a fair amount of salmon in my day. In the years when I worked as a chef at one place or another I became fairly proficient at filleting whole fish or cutting them into steaks. I learned various methods of preparation, but most of the time I’d chargrill the salmon and present it […]
Posted inMusic
East Nashville
I’d never really heard of East Nashville before reading something on songwriter Amelia White’s webpage about one of her songs showing up on a double-disc compilation called The Other Side: Music from East Nashville . Amelia is not strictly from Nashville — she moved there from Boston a few years back to make her way […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Mother, Africa, Fuel and Wine, Wine, Wine
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. If your mom is somewhere far away, you just might still have time to send her a card. If your mother is nearby and you’re planning on honoring or pampering her (or perhaps the mother of your children) by taking her out to dinner, I’d advise getting on the phone […]