Quick Take
He fronts a 14-piece R&B/soul band, but Tom Ralston is perhaps best known as the man behind one of the Santa Cruz area’s most high-profile construction companies and the artist behind many local concrete artworks. Ralston reluctantly took on his family’s longtime business, but it has defined his life and his standing in the community.
If you’re paying attention closely enough, you can see Tom Ralston’s name everywhere in Santa Cruz County. It’s at the base of decorative art pieces, walls, steps, driveways, skate parks. It’s right there embedded in the sidewalk in many places.
That’s because Ralston and his family have, for generations, played a central role in constructing the built environment around Santa Cruz. Tom Ralston Concrete, which Ralston has been running for more than 30 years, is a legacy company in Santa Cruz. He is, in fact, the third generation of concrete contractors locally.
But the story of Ralston’s life is that he took the springboard of a family business in pouring concrete to become an artist. There is even such a thing as the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame, and Tom Ralston is in it.
That’s why it’s no surprise that Ralston is also a musician. He is, in fact, an artist who runs both a small company — Tom Ralston Concrete employs 15 people — and a big band, which consists of 14 players. “And it feels like running another company,” said Ralston of The Tom Ralston Band, which will perform live at the Rio Theatre on Saturday in a benefit concert for Second Harvest Food Bank.
Ralston’s band has more players than a football team because his original music, which contains elements of pop, rock, soul and R&B, employs both a horn section and a string section. “It allows me to have a large sonic canvas,” he said, “that I can do a lot of different things with.”
Among the prominent names in the band are bassist Daniel Vee Lewis, saxman Gary Regina, percussionist Gary Kehoe and guitarist Bob von Elgg, all of whom are familiar to fans of Santa Cruz’s music scene going back decades. Lisa Taylor shares vocal duty with Ralston, who also plays piano and keyboards. Paul Tarantino plays flute and sax and does the horn arrangements, which also include Brian Moore and Brian Stock. Joe Wedlake mans the drums. And the string section features cellist Kristin Garbeff, harpist Jennifer Cass and violinists Samantha Bounkeua and Shannon D’Antonio.
On the band’s set list is at least one song that articulates Ralston’s viewpoint on how his life has turned out: “Sweet Santa Cruz.”
“It’s medicinal too,” Ralston, 73, said of his musical side life. “We all have our stresses from our work lives and our family lives. But I can come home after the most stressful 14-hour day, get on my piano, and the musicians come in and start playing. And I’m like, well, grounded.”
It’s a remarkable landing spot for a guy who at one time wanted nothing to do with concrete.
A fourth-generation Santa Cruzan, Ralston was born in the teeth of the postwar baby boom, and attended school from childhood to adulthood in Santa Cruz, from Holy Cross School, then to Branciforte Middle School, Santa Cruz High, Cabrillo College and UC Santa Cruz (he got to participate in UCSC’s formal graduation ceremony this year, on the 50th anniversary of his original graduation). Growing up, Ralston was an avid surfer and party boy, calling himself a “great R&D [research and development] guy for drugs and alcohol.”
After graduation, he moved to Hawaii, where the bars stayed open until 4 a.m. and where he spent his time surfing, drinking and flirting with tourists. In his mid-30s, he returned to Santa Cruz “beat up,” he said. “My addictions had gotten the best of me, and I didn’t know what to do. And my dad says, ‘I’m retiring from concrete.’ And I really, at that point, just took it on as a way to make a living.”
His father’s business was strong, but didn’t stray too far from the practical uses of concrete in construction. When Tom began to pick up where his father left off, “I just got bit by the thought that you could do so much with this malleable substance, and really turn it into a piece of art,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t think I was an artist at that time. I always attached artistry to people who could paint and draw. And it wasn’t until I was in the concrete that my instincts kept taking me to this decorative concrete direction. I didn’t even know why, it was just happening.”
“My addictions had gotten the best of me, and I didn’t know what to do. And my dad says, ‘I’m retiring from concrete.’ And I really, at that point, just took it on as a way to make a living.”
Tom Ralston on his decision to quit drinking and take on his father’s business in the 1980s
From that point, Ralston embraced concrete as an artistic medium, designing and building sculptural elements in private homes and in the public sphere. His work began to appear on magazine covers, and he wrote illustrated books on decorative concrete.
But mostly, from the 1990s to today, Tom Ralston has put his signature on his hometown through high-profile projects that hundreds of locals interact with every day — the Chinatown Bridge Dragon Gate monument, the stairway to the Indicators surf break on West Cliff Drive, the plaque honoring the famed “Three Princes” who introduced surfing to the mainland U.S., the restoration of the whale at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, the playing dolphins at the roundabout at the Santa Cruz Wharf and Santa Cruz Skate Park, as well as several buildings across the county. He’s currently at work in building a memorial to slain Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiler at Willowbrook Park in Aptos.
The concrete world can be stressful. He manages jobs not just in Santa Cruz County, but throughout the South Bay and the Peninsula. And every job has its own challenges and demands. “You have to have so many ducks in a row,” said Ralston. “You have a three- or four-hour window of opportunity to get everything perfect on pour day. And to get that to happen, you need weeks and sometimes months of preparation to get everything right.” That means he’s looking for an exit strategy. He said that he’s looking at the spring of 2026 as the right moment to retire.
Pushing him on toward that date when he can retire from concrete is his music. “I don’t always want to do this,” he said in reference to his concrete work. “But I do always want to do music.”
Like many in his generation, he grew up adoring the music of Motown and has always been energized by the big brassy sounds of bands like Tower of Power and Chicago. “And when the art comes out, either in music or in concrete, there’s this vibration or feeling that just kind of goes off within me,” he said.
In December, Ralston will mark his 36th year of sobriety. He legitimately feels that concrete – and music – saved his life.
“I went down a real dark slope. My parents were just beside themselves, and I put them through a lot of pain before they passed. Fortunately, they got to see me pull myself out of that, and I got a chance to make them proud.”
The Tom Ralston Band performs live at the Rio Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 2, in a benefit show for Second Harvest Food Bank. Showtime is 7 p.m.