As summer slips away from us, many of us parents are now thankfully transitioning back into school mode where we can unload our kids for five to six hours a day, five days a week. The days of juggling work schedules to get kiddos to camp on time and pleading with family members to look […]
The Setlist
Our picks for the week’s best live music plus interviews and music news.
Posted inMusic
In Defense of Silence
You, like me, are probably someone that truly appreciates time spent listening to music. It’s good for our souls. But as much beauty as we can find in the rhythm and melody of music, we can find just as much insight and care in silence. The two are of course not mutually exclusive — music, […]
Posted inMusic
Get Close
Thursday It’s not often that you can find a free show from the Absynth Quartet but tonight is one of those rare nights. AQ4 will be up at the Mad River Brewing Co. Tap Room doing its polka-dot grass thing at 6 p.m. Bring the kiddos down to groove along. Out of Chicago comes the […]
Posted inMusic
Festivals and More Festivals
Thursday It’s been festival season here on the North Coast for a bit now as we’re well over a month into summer, but the jewel in Humboldt County’s festival crown shines in SoHum starting today. The Mateel Community Center is putting on the 33rd Reggae on the River at French’s Camp right before the Humboldt/Mendocino […]
Posted inMusic
Modern History
The music of Jonathan Richman and/or The Modern Lovers showed up on my radar when he started playing shows in Humboldt semi-recently. He has an earned status and a cult following of those in the know about his place in rock ‘n’ roll history. As the frontman and driving force behind The Modern Lovers in […]
Posted inMusic
Stop and Hear the Roses
It’s not often that I’m impressed with the trajectory of humankind. I wonder if we’ve hit a plateau and just can’t biologically evolve in any significant relation anymore to the technology we’ve created. The quantity of experience, and the quantity of stimuli that surround us in the 21st century is really mind-boggling, if we take […]
Posted inMusic
Folklife and the Trane
Thursday The Humboldt Folklife Festival continues tonight at the Carlo Amphitheatre with “Bluegrass and Beyond” starting at 6 p.m. You’ll hear from locals The Compost Mountain Boys and Clean Livin’ along with the excellent — and formerly local — Jenny Scheinman all playing out in the Blue Lake sunshine. The sun’s been setting about a […]
Posted inMusic
Get the Folk Up
Thursday You might want to start getting comfortable up in Blue Lake in the run up to the Humboldt Folklife Festival. Start off this evening at the Mad River Brewery with folky fiddle tunes from Fingal, which will be starting it up around 6 p.m. and for free. Remember, kids and dogs are welcome, but […]
Posted inMusic
Musical Drag
I wasn’t on top of my game enough to get in a column relevant to the other week’s Unpopular Opinions theme but I thought, even though late, why wouldn’t I want to get some hate mail as well? (See email address below.) What could be more unpopular than me telling you that your taste in […]
Posted inMusic
For Want and for Need
Summertime is here, and we’re all hoping the living will be easy. To make that possibility that much less certain, my wife and I decided to cut our children off from all electronic devices for the summer. While this may sound like a great idea on paper, it’s a pretty insane 21st century move when […]
Posted inMusic
The Kids are All Right
As I wrote this column on Sunday evening in my “office” (a shed in our backyard) a serendipitous moment occurred. Over the occasional sounds of our dogs barking at absolutely nothing, I heard our son and daughter listening to Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” while lying in the hammock and grass (respectively). Perhaps as Father’s […]
Posted inMusic
Kicking Off Summer
Thursday Electric-acoustic “mayhem” are on the bill this evening at the Mad River Brewery Tap room in Blue Lake at 6 p.m. Returning to the outdoor stage is Kaptain Kirk’s Kosmic Koncoction, which will be jamming the eclectic tunes free of charge. Three hours later, David Dondero — whom NPR hailed as one of “the […]