Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the new-green-shoots B9:
➤ Those of us who remember the late folk singer Kate Wolf get that her achingly beautiful songs were as deeply rooted in the spirit and essence of Northern California as a redwood tree. We here in Santa Cruz are lucky enough to have in our midst a musician who carries more than a little of Wolf’s artistic DNA. He’s Keith Greeninger, whose name in these parts is a synonym for soulfulness, and a direct echo to the kind of grown-from-this-earth appeal of Kate Wolf. On Saturday at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Greeninger teams up with his longtime collaborator Nina Gerber (a brilliant guitarist with a direct association with Wolf), and will share the stage with a duo made up of members from the local mountain band Wolf Jett. Greeninger, who has also collaborated with the Coffis Brothers, promises to reveal some new material that he’s planning to release as a new album in the fall. At 63, he’s no longer a young pup but more a carrier of a Santa Cruz tradition that his younger collaborators are eager to tap into. “I’m still trying to find that balance,” he told me about his songwriting style these days, “between not overthinking it, but also knowing that you have to speak about not only what you’re learning as a human being, but what we’re experiencing as a community or population or nation, whatever the case may be. I’m just trying to stay in touch with that innocence that I used to write with.”
➤ Texas country singer Joshua Ray Walker tickles the fancy of those who love honky tonk music, and with significant health and life struggles, he’s earned his honky tonk stripes. He comes to Moe’s Alley next week in the wake of a big cancer fight, and with a compelling new acoustic album in hand. You can bet the country pathos will be genuine.
➤ In her new book, writer and evolutionary scientist Cat Bohannon is applying anthropological and biological ideas to a new meditation on the human female body. “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution” grapples with questions we’ve all wondered about: Why do women generally live longer than men? Why are girls better than boys at academics? And, why menopause? She explains herself Monday at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
➤ One of Santa Cruz County’s genuine artistic blessings is the group of dancers and musicians who make up Watsonville’s Esperanza del Valle, a folklorico dance troupe that studiously but joyously keeps alive the dance traditions of Mexico. For three big performances at the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College, the group and its dizzying swirl of color celebrate “El Espiritu de Mexico” with guest performers from Veracruz, Friday and Saturday night, and again Sunday afternoon, all to celebrate its 45th anniversary.
➤ With Miles and Dizzy both dead and gone, the mantle of jazz’s greatest living trumpeter falls heads or tails to either of New Orleans’ favorite sons, Wynton Marsalis or Terence Blanchard. If Spike Lee had a vote, we know where he’d fall. Blanchard, and his distinctively fiery trumpet, has long been associated with Spike Lee joints, but he’s built a mighty and ambitious career as a composer of opera and a ton of Grammys. And, astoundingly, he’s playing the intimate space of the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Wednesday.
➤ Know what? No one’s going to judge you for indulging in a bit of ABBA from time to time. Quite probably the English-speaking world’s greatest guilty pleasure, the globe’s four most famous Swedes have inspired countless tribute acts, not the least of which is the Vancouver-based ABRA Cadabra bringing all the sugary spangles you’d expect from ABBA to the Rio Theatre next Thursday, April 10. They just better get “SOS” right, ’sall I’m sayin’.
➤ For more than 20 years, beginning in the late 1990s, the Santa Cruz Sentinel featured an annual celebration of local artists called the Gail Rich Awards, featuring the photos of the great Sentinel photographer Shmuel Thaler. Those portraits of artists, musicians, performers and arts supporters of all kinds are part of a new exhibit looking back at the tradition, called “The Creatives Among Us.” It opens at the Porter Building gallery at Pajaro Valley Arts in Watsonville with a reception Saturday afternoon.
➤ The name Benmont Tench might not ring a lot of bells for most people — wait, isn’t that a protagonist in an Ayn Rand novel? — but I’ll bet you know the man’s work. One of the stalwarts in Tom Petty’s great band the Heartbreakers, that’s Tench on the awesome Hammond organ fill in “Refugee.” But there’s a whole world of bluesy rock from Tench’s long career yet to discover. Luckily, he plays live at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Friday.
➤ Named for a train wreck from 120 years ago, the Texas band the Old 97’s were one of the belles of the ball back in the 1990s when the “No Depression” neo-folk scene emerged. Fronted by the talented Rhett Miller, the 97’s are still in search of that sweet spot between twangy barstool country and jangly Byrds-like power pop. They play Felton Music Hall on Saturday.
