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Upcoming Events in Santa Cruz
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Trombone Shorty
at Catalyst; $15 adv/$19 door; 9pm
Troy Andrews, a.k.a. Trombone Shorty, enjoys an unusually high profile for a contemporary jazz player. That may be partially because of his story: Andrews dropped out of the same music school that brought us Branford Marsalis and released his debut album roughly around the same time he became legal to drive. Andrews' original genre description, "Supafunkrock," gives you a sense of what he's getting at: a high-energy amalgam of funk, jazz and rock. It's a sensibility that has earned him respect in jazz circles even as he hits the stage with the likes of U2, Green Day and Lenny Kravitz. Purists might recoil in horror, but there's no denying that Andrews is passionate about blazing a path for jazz in the new millennium.
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J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science
at Moe’s Alley; $10. 9pm
Over radio waves and through dance halls across the globe, soulful mix master J-Boogie has been innovating music as we know it for the past 15 years. No stranger to the Bay Area’s music scene, and with a reputation as today’s hardest working DJ and producer, he was among the first to fuse live vocals and instrumentals with electronic dubs, creating a style that defies categorizing and showcases multi-lingual talents. His band “Dubtronic Science” features a horn section, MC’s and Latin percussionists that mix funky dub vibes with hip-hop, reggae, bhangra and disco to create a soul music of the future.
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An-Ten-Nae
at Catalyst; $12 adv/$16 door; 8pm
Urbandictionary.com defines the term “acid crunk” as mixing “SyFy channel and BET channel sound effects… by a drunk white dude while playing Xbox Live.” Though San Francisco DJ/producer Adam Ohana, a.k.a. An-Ten-Nae, is a Caucasian male known to put away the cocktails, he has his own definition of acid crunk and uses a lot more equipment than an Xbox to deliver its bass-heavy dubstep and breakbeat bliss. But whether you get your literary designations from an online pop culture dictionary or not, when it comes to booty-shaking electro goodness, Ohana comes correct.
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Sourgrass
at Moe's Alley; $10 adv/$13 door; 9pm
Having been away from Santa Cruz for the last several months, the homespun four-piece Sourgrass is set to get Moe's Alley rocking with its mashup of rock, dirty funk and "slow-as-molasses blues." The band’s new set, which includes a handful of brand new songs, is guaranteed to leave you "drenched in sweat and tears and begging for more," or so we’re told, and we have no reason to doubt it. Sharing the bill are the Brothers Comatose, the old-timey, shout-along, drink-along foot-stompers from San Francisco.
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John Scofield New Jazz Quartet
at Kuumbwa; 7pm & 9pm; 7pm: $25 adv/$28 door, 9pm: $20 adv/$23 door
John Scofield’s collaboration résumé reads like a pamphlet for the Jazz Hall of Fame. Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Medeski Martin & Wood and George Duke are just a few of the folks who have shared a stage or a recording studio with the Ohioan guitar whiz most fans know simply as “Sco’.” To Kuumbwa, Scofield brings Mulgrew Miller, Ben Street and Kendrick Scott to form the New Jazz Quartet, promising one of the most polished lineups he’s ever attached to his bill. Jumping from cool, experimental jazz to funky blues, back to rock and on to gospel and bebop, Sco’s rep is that of an artist with each finger in a different and delicious musical pie.
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Tater Famine
at Crepe Place; $7; 9pm
Don't let the mandolin fool you. Tater Famine is an energetic, Hank-meets-Bad Religion hybrid mixing punk rock substance with country sensibilities. The Santa Cruz trio of acoustic guitar, stand-up bass and mandolin found its sound in 2006, when the auditory restraints of the members’ apartment complex forced them to take a punk-unplugged approach, replacing their electric instruments with acoustic ones and developing an old-meets-new punkabilly style. Since then, Tater Famine’s toured the country, released a debut cd and played around the Bay Area and West Coast extensively.
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Molly's Revenge
at Don Quixote's; $12; 7:30pm
Molly's Revenge is a lively Celtic band from here in Santa Cruz that nevertheless seems to have one foot firmly on the Emerald Isle. The group blends traditional instrumentation—bagpipes, whistle and fiddle—with that of contemporary acoustic folk music like guitar and mandola. The group has an impressive ability to pen modern compositions that sit comfortably within the Celtic musical tradition, a skill that has garnered Molly’s Revenge attention from NPR and Celtic music fans on both sides of the pond.
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Xiu Xiu
at Crepe Place; $12 adv/$25 door; 9pm
People tend to either love Xiu Xiu or hate Xiu Xiu. As San Jose natives, the group finds plenty of love here on the Central Coast and a devoted following among DIY music fans worldwide. But between the chaotic, synthed-up art pop of its rotating cast of musicians and frontman Jamie Stewart’s flamboyantly depressing lyrics and throaty vibrato, the music admittedly has a bit of a learning curve. But like an old scotch, the band’s complex tunes are better savored than swigged, and watching Stewart live is like watching a dapper Steven Morrissey behave like a mud-caked Trent Reznor.
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Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba
at Rio Theatre; $18 adv/$22 door; 8pm
If he grew up in the American South, perhaps he would have been a banjo player. Instead, Bassekou Kouyate grew up in Mali and plays the ngoni, a small stringed wood-and-animal hide instrument that, with a few tweaks, could easily contest an opposing plucker in a serenade of “dueling banjos.” A peer of the great Béla Fleck and the Björk-endorsed mbira whiz Toumani Diabate, Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba have pushed the traditional instrument to new heights using an intricate hand flourish technique and dabbling in electric guitar effects and feedback in his experimental sound.
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Les Yeux Noirs
at Kuumbwa; $20 adv/$25 door; 7 and 9pm
Formed by the violin-slinging brothers Eric and Olivier Slabiak, Les Yeux Noirs is a French outfit that draws upon Manouche Gypsy jazz, Romani music and klezmer for a sound that’s rooted in tradition but surprisingly contemporary. Credit their willingness to dust their arrangements with slight electronic touches and a freewheeling, global aesthetic that draws in influences from across many borders. There is a simultaneous sense of joy and pathos in the performances of Les Yeux Noirs, making for a lively, ebullient blend with unexpected depth.
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Infamous Stringdusters
at Don Quixote's; $15; 8pm
For award-winning progressive bluegrass band the Infamous Stringdusters, “winter tour” means “annual ski trip.” The Nashville-based ensemble takes off every winter and heads to the Rockies to play music for the bluegrass-loving mountain folk at night and take in the powder during the day. This year's tour, however, took an unexpected turn when vocalist and bass player Travis Book hit a tree and broke his leg, bringing the ski-centric schedule to a grinding halt. Now the Stringdusters are bringing their unique improvisations, instrumental virtuosity and stunning harmonies to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a tradition-meets-today, string-dusting good time here in hiking-biking-surfing country.
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Jug Band Jamboree
at Don Quixote’s; $10 adv/ $10 door; 2pm-9pm
In the right hands, a jug turns into a wind instrument and a discarded guitar neck and pie tin become a banjo. Santa Cruz’s 4th annual Jug Band Jamboree aims to preserve the roots and creative elements of the jug band as it evolved in the Deep South of the 1920s. Modern-day jug bands have been summoned from local hills and far coasts, and they come bearing washboards and jugs as well as banjos, guitars, ukeleles and kazoos. The Club Zayante Jug Stompers are the pride of the locals; they join an array of bands playing ragtime, Delta blues, tin-pan-alley favorites, field and work songs and “hillbilly hokum” with a truly homemade twang.
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Joe Lovano Us Five
at Kuumbwa; $25 adv/$28 door; 7pm
When Joe Lovano blows his sax, the world listens. As one of the premier practitioners of the tenor saxophone and an accomplished clarinetist, flutist and drummer to boot, Lovano is something of a jazz godfather. For his current tour, Lovano has assembled Us Five, a band with more talent in its ranks than some jazz festivals have in their entire lineup. James Weidman mans the keys while the two celebrated drummers Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III play tug-of-war on the skins and hats and no less than the White House-approved bassist Esperanza Spalding hammers home the low frequencies.
