Abigail Washburn never dreamed that she would become a professional banjo player. Her plan was to become a lawyer. Ironically, it was her love for China—she lived there, visits regularly and has a deep connection to the Chinese people—that inspired her to pick up the banjo.
Articles by Cat Johnson
Utah Phillips Tribute A Classic Folkie Affair
Duncan Phillips never wanted to play the guitar, at least not as a kid. In his young mind it was the thing that kept his father, legendary folk singer/activist/storyteller Bruce “Utah” Phillips, away from him. “It’s hard to say what I thought at the time,” says Phillips. “I just knew he was a singer out on the road, out there somewhere doing what he was doing.”
The Blind Boys In Santa Cruz
A legendary group in its own time, the Blind Boys of Alabama are a globetrotting gospel ensemble that has won numerous awards, from Grammys and lifetime achievement recognition to an Obie and induction into the Gospel Hall of Fame. But back in 1939 at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in Talladega, Al., the idea of being career musicians was a notion that was just starting to simmer in the minds of a few young boys.
Last-Minute Gift Guide: The Cheat Sheat
For holiday shoppers who are out of time, patience or ideas, we present our handy-dandy, cut-to-the-chase, Very Busy Person’s Last-Minute Gift Guide, a collection of suggested gifts with broad appeal (with the possible exception of the disc golf driver) compiled by actual former and present gift recipients with reasoned opinions, fine instincts and excellent taste.
Interview: Stacie Willoughby
A conversation with the Santa Cruz poster artist whose work has become synonymous with (((folkYEAH))) and other Bay Area shows.
Stacie Willoughby’s Fresh Prints
If you’ve been in or around the Bay Area psych/rock/neo-folk/noise music scene anytime in the last decade, you have almost certainly encountered Stacie Willoughby’s work. In a time of minimal, computer-generated fliers, her posters stand apart as hand-drawn, wildly detailed and imaginative treasures.
Silko Heads for Santa Cruz
In 1977, just a few months after the publication of her bestselling novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko found herself alone in a hospital bed in New Mexico, face-to-face with her own mortality. She was about to undergo emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a procedure that was risky but without which she would certainly die. The possibility of death helped her, as the saying goes, to focus.
Homeless Garden Turns 20
Conceived in 1990 as a catalyst to help people get off the streets and turn their lives around, the Homeless Garden Project has, over the last 20 years, given hundreds of people a foothold on a better life.
Santa Cruz Fall Arts: Kuumbwa At 35
In 1975 a group of young music lovers, inspired by the local talent and undeterred by their collective inexperience, set about establishing a jazz society. “Ultimately, we wanted to have a home for jazz in Santa Cruz,” says Tim Jackson, one of the society’s founding members. “But we had no money or experience; just had some half-baked ideas.”
Old-Time Music Revival Hits Santa Cruz
In 2005, three young musicians with a fascination for African-American folk music attended the Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina, drawn in part by the promise of seeing fiddler Joe Thompson in action. Then in his mid-eighties, Thompson figured among the last remaining links to the originators of the long-dormant black string band tradition. Having picked up the fiddle in the 1920s, at the peak of string band popularity, Thompson had spent the better part of a century learning and playing foot-stomping rhythms, short and scratchy fiddle licks and plucky banjo lines in a just-about-any-instrument-will-do down-home style.
