In my younger days I spent many happy hours in a dive bar on the Arcata Plaza called The Boot Club, where the No. 1 favorite on the jukebox was a tune by Freddy Fender, "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights." While the leader of Dave Gleason’s Wasted Days was still in elementary school when the […]
Bob Doran
Freelance photographer and writer, Arts and Entertainment editor from 1997 to 2013.
Posted inEat + Drink
Love Times Three
Somewhere in this space a few weeks ago I mentioned that a new restaurant, 3 Foods Café, had finally opened behind the Arcata Co-op. I had not yet eaten there, and as I noted, I had no idea what the three foods in the name might be. At this point I’ve been there three times […]
Posted inMusic
Whose Blues?
The blues. Who’s the audience for it in this day and age? Who are the players? At a time when plenty of young musicians are sawing on fiddles and picking up and picking on mandolins and banjos old timey style, a scant few seem interested in playing the blues, and if they do, it’s more […]
Posted inMusic
Trouble in Sunny Fortuna
Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in the Friendly City! With a capital "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool, that stands for pool. We’ve surely got trouble! Right here in the Friendly City. Gotta figger out a way to keep the young ones moral after school! Trouble, trouble, trouble, […]
Posted inNews
Reggae River Rising
The battle over the future of the multi-million dollar Reggae on the River music festival down Southern Humboldt way rages on. After devolving into a nasty war of words in the blogosphere, with commenters taking pot shots under the cloak of anonymity, flames rose high last week with a pair of announcements that came almost […]
Posted inEat + Drink
In the Night Kitchen
It’s hard to miss the Community Kitchen at the new Eureka Co-op – just look at the back of the store for the giant capital letters spelling KITCHEN, and the slightly smaller "cooking demonstrations." So far the room has mostly been used for meetings, everything from dental hygienists and Boy Scouts to the Co-op board […]
Posted inMusic
Feel the Pulse
Bob Marley was born on February 6, 1945 at Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica. Legend that he is in the world of reggae, his birthday is still commemorated long after his death, and most years the Bob Marley celebrations stretch through the entire month. The Ragga Muffins Tour is one such Marley-esque congregation, a string […]
Posted inMusic
The Never Ending Stack
The CDs arrive in an unending stream. The mailman sticks them in the slot in my front door; FedEx and UPS drivers block the street in front of my house to drop them off; promoters leave them on my porch or mail them to the Journal office; bandmembers slip them to me at shows. I […]
Posted inNews
Fighting Demons
The guitar player is dressed head to toe in black. Flanked by a drummer and a key-board player at a Eureka coffee-house on a Saturday night, he rips into a set of music he describes as “zombie surf rock.” He starts with a number called “Zombie Songs” and works his way through “Haunt This World” […]
Posted inMusic
The Wolves Return
Not long after Los Lobos’ Louie Perez called me last week, we got to talking about our kids. He has several, and spoke of his oldest son who, when he graduated from high school, announced that he was moving out of the house. His plan was to spend a couple of years "concentrating on the […]
Posted inMusic
Talking to a Friend
It’s a Sunday morning and Hello Stranger is off the road for a change. Lead singer/keytar player Juliette Commagere is supposed to be finishing up a new song for band practice that afternoon, but, admitting she’s a procrastinator, she’s more than willing to put the task off to chat. She’s at home in West L.A. […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Eat food.
It’s Tuesday morning, deadline day. My wife Amy just left for work; before she took off she saw me staring out the window and asked what I was thinking about. I admitted I was not sure what to write about for this week’s food column. There was the Art of Wine tasting we went to […]