Entries for July 2020

Summer Session at the UC San Diego Library is when I host some of my favorite signature events. We’ll be presenting virtual versions this season. Later in the school year,  I look forward to resuming song requests on Geisel Library’s rooftop chimes! THE UCSD CAMPUS CARILLON Yes, there really are chimes atop Geisel Library.  (It’s […]

Trading Cards for the Faithful is the latest from Michael Tiernan. The six-track EP is his seventh recorded release since 2004, and this time he draws inspiration from his eventful life, which has seen him survive cancer, travel Europe with his guitar in tow, spend time in a Vatican seminary, and end up in SoCal […]

What do you do for a second act? For Dodie Stevens, the former teen vocalist who originally hit the charts during a golden period for novelty records, the current status report at this juncture is that her career is still very much a work in progress. There’s her resume as an in-demand accompanying vocalist, her […]

Sven-Erik Seaholm is on vacation but will return in August.

As we go to press, covid cases in San Diego continue to rise. The Governor has issued a statewide order that masks are now mandatory except in limited circumstances. County officials indicate we may have to back off from reopening.  Large gatherings, especially indoors, are last on the list of things to reopen. Overall the […]

Electric Moonshine (Tribute to Popcorn Sutton) is the latest album by the Sickstring Outlaws. It is the 2014 follow-up to Johnny Drank Jack, covering much of the same territory: Bakersfield-style country songs about the misadventures of living life on the edge, like predecessors Hank Williams, George Jones, and other outlaw country singers, especially Merle Haggard. […]

Jazz lovers are in for a treat: the Danny Green Trio is established as a solid presence in the San Diego area jazz scene, with five CD releases and well-earned international recognition. Leonard Patton likewise has a considerable cachet as an expressive jazz, gospel, and blues singer, with several of his own solo recordings, and […]

On a moonlit strip of highway in Colorado, the van Astra Kelly was driving hit some black ice. She was finishing up a solo tour that had taken her around the country a few times. In almost two years, she’d logged 85,000 miles on the conversion van that skidded, rolled, and landed upside down on […]