Quick Take
The California Roots Music & Arts Festival — known universally as Cali Roots — is the celebrated four-day music festival that has been animating the Monterey County Fairgrounds for more than a decade. This year’s Cali Roots opens Thursday, with more than 60 acts on four stages, including such headliners as Wu-Tang Clan, Rebelution, and Michael Franti & Spearhead. And for the first time, one of those acts is Soulwise, the popular Santa Cruz combo famed for their feel-good, danceable, groove-oriented West Coast reggae sound.
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Adrian Jerome DeMar has fashioned a pretty sweet life for himself. In recent years, he’s gotten married and he’s become a homeowner in Portland, Oregon. A former professional baseball pitcher, he currently works for Major League Baseball. And now he and his wife, Kendall, are preparing to welcome their first child.
So why on a Tuesday afternoon is he spending hours in the car enduring the famously monotonous corridor of Interstate 5 in California’s Central Valley?
This trip has nothing to do with baseball or with DeMar’s life in Portland. In addition to his charmed life in the Pacific Northwest, DeMar is living a rather amazing second life as well. In that life, he’s the bassist and co-founder of the Santa Cruz reggae band Soulwise. And Soulwise is headed to Cali Roots.
The California Roots Music & Arts Festival — known universally as Cali Roots — is the celebrated four-day music festival that has been animating the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey for more than a decade. This year’s Cali Roots opens Thursday, with more than 60 acts on four stages, which includes such headliners as Wu-Tang Clan, Rebelution, and Michael Franti & Spearhead. And for the first time, one of those acts is Soulwise, the popular Santa Cruz combo famed for their feel-good, danceable, groove-oriented West Coast reggae sound.
“I went to Cali Roots the year we started the band,” said DeMar, somewhere southbound between Redding and Sacramento, “and I told myself then, this is my goal. I want to play here with Soulwise.”
So in that sense, this weekend marks a climactic moment in the life of the band that dates back to 2015. They take the stage shortly before noon Friday on the festival’s OG Stage.
DeMar describes Soulwise’s music as upbeat and energetic: “We like to have people dancing, but we definitely have some more slow songs that are more of a chill vibe. We’re a chill reggae band. We’re chill, but definitely like to go hard too.”
At the center of the Soulwise story is baseball. DeMar was a star pitcher at San Lorenzo Valley High School, while his buddy Kevin Eichhorn was a star pitcher at rival Aptos High. The two both went on to play professionally — DeMar even had a stint in Japan, and Eichhorn spent seven seasons in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ and Detroit Tigers’ minor league systems. Eichhorn’s father, Mark Eichhorn, had an 11-year career in the big leagues and was part of the World Series-winning Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and ’93. And Mark Eichhorn was DeMar’s high school pitching coach.
While playing baseball, DeMar and Kevin Eichhorn and Kevin’s cousin Sean Eichhorn began to play music together. That trio formed the core of the band, which now can consist of up to nine people, counting occasional sit-in players (a number that includes DeMar’s dad, George, on horns and wife, Kendall, on vocals). The band has put together a consistently loyal following thanks to appearances at Moe’s Alley, Zelda’s on the Beach in Capitola Village, and at Twin Lakes State Beach at the Crow’s Nest’s summer parties. Soulwise has recorded three albums and a number of singles, which includes a new one just released, titled “Higher Feeling.”
The band’s music is often lush, at times dreamy, powered by a hypnotic chonka-chonka reggae beat, often evoking a kind of peak-experience euphoria. It’s the kind of blissful beat that sounds best with sand between your toes.
“That’s how we built our following,” said Del Mar. “We used to play at Zelda’s in the [Capitola] Village and people would be spilling out onto the beach.”
During the pandemic, DeMar relocated to Portland, where he met his future wife and purchased a home. From a base in Seattle, he works as a compliance officer at MLB, preparing baseballs for games and making sure that teams are abiding by the rules. Since moving to Portland, he has made the long drive to Santa Cruz more than half a dozen times and plans on doing so in the future as well.
“I’ve gotten from Portland to Santa Cruz in nine hours before,” he said from the road, somewhere near Willows. “I know [I-5] like the back of my hand.”
Cali Roots takes place at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (except Thursday, when the music starts at 1 p.m.). Tickets are still available.