“Now some of us are weak, and some endure And some people live their lives, with a violence that’s pure and clean But I saw a man cry once, down on his knees, in the corner of a darkened cell And his pain meant nothing to me. But I was younger then, and young men […]
Canary and the Vamp
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Music Tonight: Saturday, May 11
John Ludington is generally known in the area as one of our more versatile bassists and singers, providing rhythm and back-up for Canary and the Vamp, or holding it down as one quarter of Absynth Quartet, our beloved oddball jam act, so you know right from the jump here he’s got chops. However, what you […]
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Music Tonight: Thursday, May 9
A.J. Lee & Blues Summit is fronted by singer, songwriter and mandolinist A.J. Lee, who was considered something of a teenage prodigy when she started her career a decade ago in her hometown of Santa Cruz. The intervening years have built her and her group a reputation as masterful modern bluegrass players capable of putting […]
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Pomp and Circumstance
It’s graduation time again at Cal Poly Humboldt and due to the circumstances of our times, as well as the stupid pomposity of the University’s president and his enablers, grads will be walking just about everywhere around the county except for on the campus. I don’t have much to say about that beyond what I […]
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Music Tonight: Sunday, June 25
Fieldbrook Winery has kicked off its summer concert schedule with Thursday’s 5:30 p.m. show by Canary and the Vamp. Today at 1:30 p.m., you can enjoy the music of The Country Pretenders, which, I am told, has a dusky and smooth vintage twang. All performances are free to those with food and table reservations.
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Good Rituals
Summer is finally here, in the technical sense. I inaugurated the season last weekend by working on Saturday, then spending all day Sunday at the first iteration of Fernstock, serving as the emcee and one of the judges. And while I have plenty of experience with the former, I have a different experience with the […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, April 21
Two good shows tonight, so let’s not dawdle. At 7:30 p.m. at the Trinidad Town Hall, you can listen to the exotic-yet-dis-tinctly-comforting tunes of Canary and the Vamp, as the band whirls and twirls through the various Tin Pan Alleys of the Naked City in the geography of the Great American Songbook ($10-$20 sliding scale). […]
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Color Wheel
Well friends, it’s the beginning of flower season again and I could not be more pleased. I’m talking calendulas, daffodils, trilliums, California poppies (not the band, but they are fine, too). I have an abstract relationship with flowers, in that I encounter them as a cheerful addition to my daily life without choosing to become […]
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Music Tonight: Saturday, Feb. 18
I’m going to toss three shows at you, all with different vibes and styles, and let you decide where the wind should carry you. At 6 p.m. over at Wrangletown Cider, Humboldt’s special early jazz age delights Canary and the Vamp will be playing a free two-hour set full of tin pan treasures and gold […]
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Happy Happy, Joy Joy
Well, here it is, the first Setlist of winter and the last one whose dates are entirely booked within the year 2022. This has been a rough year for a lot of us. I certainly haven’t enjoyed it much and I look forward to the future as always, thinking about that quote I like to […]
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Night Riders
It’s Virgo season, which, for an astrology heretic like myself, basically means “smokey summer/early fall.” Last weekend was also my baby brother’s b-day, so many happy returns, dear Tyler. This is a time of year when I like to take long evening drives out to nowhere, playing music loudly, with the windows open because, for […]
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Hot, Hot, Heat
I’m firing this one off straight from the hip, so no frills, $20 words or political invective. It’s a dang scorcher today, even on the coast, and I don’t intend on spending the daylight looking at a screen, tapping away at a slowly heating keyboard, while the busy sounds of the landscaping industry hums and […]