Four anniversaries, one night: Santa Cruz music fixture Rick Walker marks 60 years onstage

Usually when someone celebrates an anniversary, it’s singular. An anniversary.

However, local musician Rick Walker is no ordinary somebody.

That’s why this Saturday, he’s celebrating not one, but four anniversaries with a single solo show at the Cayuga Stage in Santa Cruz’s Seabright neighborhood. The three-hour event will honor his 25 years running the Y2K International Live Looping Festival, 30 years as a live looper in town, 50 years as a professional musician and an astounding 60 years as a professional drummer and percussionist. 

“I have a super addictive personality,” says Walker. “I could be considered a hoarder, but I’ve hoarded style.” 

Which is undeniably true. 

Throughout his career, Walker has immersed himself in all styles of music – new wave, punk, jazz, African, Indian and reggae, to name just a few – and all styles of art. Most recently, he has been going through color phases. For example, playing only purple instruments, wearing purple clothes, dying his hair purple and using the color to inspire his art and music. 

“Right now I’m into bright colors being offset with black,” he says with a smile. 

“The thing I love about Rick is he really is the most creative and open musician I’ve ever met in my life,” says saxophonist Gary Regina. 

The two met playing the local music circuit in the 1980s and later formed the world beat trio Third Wave along with Rick’s brother Bill. Regina and Walker still perform together on occasion, most recently last June, also at the Cayuga Stage. 

“He’s always constantly curious about new sounds, new technology and new music,” Regina says. ”When people get old you think they get crusty and calcified in their taste, but Rick is the exact opposite.“

Along with playing music and live looping, Walker, along with his brother Bill, is also a music and recording teacher. By his estimate, he’s taught over 4,000 people how to play and record music. One of his more recent and famous students was the late Oliver Tree, the beloved local pop star who died tragically earlier this year. 

“He blew through me,” Walker says. “I realized, ‘This is someone on their way,’ so I taught him everything I knew, as fast as I could. And he just sucked everything up, he was so intelligent.” 

The son of an Air Force serviceman, Walker moved with his family to nine different places in nine different years when he was young, including the country of Libya. His family eventually settled in San Jose, and in 1967, he got his first drum kit. Two weeks later, he saw the Jefferson Airplane at the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University before the band’s iconic debut album, “Surrealistic Pillow,” was released. 

“I was just in love with psychedelia and the British Invasion,” he says. 

After graduating high school in 1971, Walker attended UC Santa Cruz because at the time, the school didn’t have grades, opting for a “pass or fail” model. Walker soon became enamored with photography and poetry, reading everything he could by the Beats. He quickly decided to drop out of college to focus on his art – why study when he could be living and creating? The move paid off, and by 1979, Walker was already making waves in the music scene. 

Longtime residents might remember his popular new wave band, Tao Chemical. Originally formed as Mystery Spot, Tao Chemical featured Rob Brezsny – yes, that Rob Brezsny who would later go on to be a famous author and astrologist – Walker on drums, Michael Haumesser (who at the time went by Not Michael) and Jim Rutledge on bass. The band would later include Bill Walker also on guitar, Janet Ring as sound engineer and backing vocals, along with Marina Shoupe as their lighting engineer. 

Tao Chemical was a hit locally and throughout Northern California and often played at The Catalyst alongside other popular Santa Cruz acts like The Humanz. Part of their success stemmed from their endless practicing. Walker says they would stay in their space for hours playing the same thing over and over again until it was absolutely perfect. 

“One time for two hours we played 8th notes on E with a metronome,” he remembers. “We would do 16 bars of crescendo and then drop it on a dime, then repeated it.” 

For those not musically inclined, two hours of this kind of repetition diabolically walks the line between genius and insanity. In 1982, the band cut its only record, a self-titled debut that still floats around the local used-record bins every now and then. Walker says the band was courted by a few labels, but their relentless perfectionism made it so that when they were finally ready to sign, new wave was over. 

So Walker decided to morph Tao Chemical into Tao Rhymical, essentially taking the rhythm section of the first band and expanding into world beat by infusing African, South American and Indian elements into the music. 

It was also around this time that he discovered the art of live looping. This is when a musician plays on stage and records a part like a certain guitar riff. The recording plays on an endless track, so the musician can move to another instrument, record another part and build the song right there, in front of a live audience. Today, loop pedals on guitars are incredibly popular, but back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the only way to do live looping was with analog audiotape. 

Walker was inspired to experiment with live looping after he saw the great jazz guitarist Jaco Pastorius use the technique during a concert with Pastorius’ old band, Weather Report. 

“I remember sitting in the audience thinking, ‘I could rule the f–king world if I could do that,” he says with a laugh. 

That night set Walker on a path that he still continues to this day. In 2001, he founded the local Y2K International Live Looping Festival. It is part of a series of live looping fests around the world in which musicians from across the globe are invited to come, create and play for audiences. To date, people from 34 different countries have played the Santa Cruz festival, and Walker has used his looping music to travel to 20 countries himself. 

It was also during the Tao Chemical days that Walker first met Regina. The two would later form Third Wave with Bill Walker, in which they used live looping technology to expand the definition of what a song could be. 

“One of the things I love about Rick is he will turn me onto stuff,” Regina says. “And he’s not afraid to improvise and just make s–t up live. Most are too afraid or insecure, but Rick will take everything orange in his house and make music out of it at a gig.” 

In the mid-2000s, Walker could be found weekly at Hoffman’s, the now-defunct bakery and restaurant on Pacific Avenue. It happened right when he was getting into his jazz phase and – like everything he does – he went all-in. Along with learning an impossibly long repertoire of songs, he also used the gig to get creative. 

“Hoffman’s is what led me to this whole idea of doing eclectic performance,” he says adding towards the end of his 15-year run, the owners couldn’t pay him anymore. 

While that would be the end of most musicians’ runs, Walker found opportunity. 

“I figured if they’re not paying me, I could take chances,” he says. 

That led him to a personal project he continues today, that he calls “Songs I Love.” The goal is to learn and play every song he has ever loved before he dies. 

“I’ve learned 650 songs now and just learned [The Kinks’] ‘All Day And All Of The Night,’” says Walker. 

To this day, Walker still regularly performs around town and continues to record an arsenal of new albums. What makes this Saturday’s performance so special – besides the venue itself, which is a house on Cayuga Street – is the wide range of music and personal eras he will be drawing from. The night almost guarantees something for everyone. 

“I’ve never just done something for me,” he says about the solo show. “To not be apologetic, or worried that the audience doesn’t like it because I’m mixing genres or doing some really weird stuff.” 

Rick Walker (A Solo Career Retrospective) happens Saturday, Sept. 12, at 4 p.m. at the Cayuga Stage, 429 Cayuga St., Santa Cruz. The suggested minimum donation is $25. Click here to RSVP and for more information.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.