Ty Pearce grew up working at his parents’ Bay Area restaurant. He went to culinary school before traveling and living throughout Europe. When he returned to the States, he opened his own spot in Capitola. Pearce describes Busy Bees—part caterer, part café—as “elevated comfort food.”
The “grandma’s kitchen” vibe cinnamon roll, served hot, is an instant classic. Another customer favorite is the biscuit sandwich with eggs, cheddar cheese—with bacon, sausage or greens—and sweet honey or spicy chipotle sauce. The benedict burrito, stuffed with pan-fried potatoes, eggs, ham, spinach and hollandaise. The vegan breakfast bowl is another hit, with masala tofu, winter vegetables, greens and a cashew coconut curry sauce.
After the catering side’s success, Pearce recently opened the café on Saturdays and Sundays, 8am-2pm, with plans to expand the menu and hours. There’s also a new patio area. GT caught up with Pearce to learn more about the business and his motivation.
What inspires you about cooking?
TY PEARCE: I love when I can tell someone is enjoying the food I’ve prepared—not just the taste, but also how it makes them feel. I want to cook food that I would feed my own family, that nourishes and is sourced locally. Produce is a big thing for us, and we also care about customer service and experience. Everyone that works in our “colony” naturally shares this vision.
How do the business’ two parts complement each other?
The catering and café sides work together well. We are involved in all aspects of the community. We will cater a wedding, feed them breakfast the next day at the café and then cater their baby shower in the future. It keeps us relevant, accessible and allows us to serve everything from a large corporate event to a casual breakfast for two.
Santa Cruz County is considering making a disaster declaration in the wake of the massive rainstorm that brought flooding to several parts of the county, according to Santa Cruz County spokesman Jason Hoppin.
The county is still waiting on responses from State and federal officials.
“Yesterday outperformed all expectations,” he said. “Everybody predicted this was going to be a normal winter storm.”
On Sunday morning, Crews assessed the damage to 43 roads in the unincorporated parts of the county that were impacted by the rains, including a sinkhole on Glen Haven Road and a culvert that collapsed on China Grade.
In South County, there was flooding on numerous streets, including College and Holohan roads.
While the Pajaro River is not expected to reach flood stage, Corralitos Creek in Watsonville went significantly over its banks, sending water into surrounding neighborhoods.
The county relocated and housed 27 people from a farm worker camp in Freedom with help from the American Red Cross, Hoppin said.
Watsonville briefly opened a shelter, which closed soon after that for lack of use, Hoppin said
Soquel Creek rose more than two feet in less than two hours, surprising officials investigating the cause.
“We are trying to get a handle on what went on there,” Hoppin said. “That is a lot in a very short amount of time, and it makes us wonder whether there was a blockage upstream that released or something like that.”
The rains led to widespread flooding, road closures, evacuations, power outages and toppled power and communication lines, and scores of people trapped in their homes.
By late afternoon Saturday, Corralitos and Salsipuedes creeks bulged with built-up rainwater as intersections such as Holohan Road at Green Valley Road and Holohan at College Road, and Riverside Drive at Bridge and Blackburn streets began to flood. Some vehicles started to float in several spots and collide with one another or through fences and landscaping.
Tuttle Street and surrounding Bay and Pajaro villages turned into flowing rivers of dark brown water by 8pm.
Watsonville firefighters evacuated numerous residents along Delta Way into the night after flood waters began to seep into their homes.
“We had no warning at all; my friend told me I had to get out,” said Robert Carrancho, who lives at the corner of Atri Court and Delta Way. “That’s when I noticed my parked car was filling up with water. The water didn’t get into my house. But my car is gone; it’s a total loss.”
Hoppin said that the county issued flood advisories in advance of the flooding and sent out reverse 911 calls to the residents who were at risk. A wider alert, he added, is used only during serious emergencies.
Watsonville City Councilwoman Ari Parker, whose District 7 includes the flooded areas, said communication measures fell short of promptly alerting the community.
She said the reverse 911 calls came after the floodwaters had arrived. While police officers and firefighters were staged at either end of the affected neighborhoods—fire officials warned people to shelter in place—nobody was coming to offer help.
Parker said the water flowing down Bridge Street “was like a rushing river” as it continued onto nearby streets, knocked over a retaining wall at Vista Montana, and entered garages and homes.
“The water was everywhere,” she said. “It was on Delta; it was on Bronte. It was everywhere in the senior villages.”
The floods also affected Argo Circle, she said.
Parker said that the floods came despite the city’s measures—such as a pump station at Vista Montana and an overflow pond at Pajaro Vista.
Instead, Parker said the water came from a swollen Corralitos Creek, under Santa Cruz County’s purview.
“They could have kept a better watch on Corralitos Creek. No place in the City of Watsonville flooded like we did, and it all came from County water. They should have been on top of that.”
Watsonville City Manager Rene Mendez said that the city is looking into what went wrong and when.
“We’re assessing that,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out what we could have done better.”
Mendez said that all the city’s pump stations, and other infrastructure worked but did not assign a cause.
“I can tell you that we were all on call and monitoring that,” he said. “Something happened that we weren’t expecting, but we’re trying to figure out how we can improve that.”
As the waters receded on Sunday, County officials were preparing for a rainstorm on Wednesday night that is expected to bring at least as much rain as Saturday’s.
The county is also planning on putting up a disaster recovery web page for businesses and homeowners impacted by the floods, Hoppin said.
On Bronte Way near Village Way, large swaths of the ground were carved away by flood waters, allowing powerful water streams to infiltrate Pajaro Vista’s neighborhood and into Pajaro Village.
“The water was gushing high into the air, and mud and rocks were streaming into my street,” said a woman who only gave the name Nan. “It was terrifying. The water came right up to our property but not into my house.” Nan said she’d lived at the home since 2012 and had never seen anything close to the New Year’s eve flooding.
Andy Gonzalez said the water reached four inches inside his home and stayed there until 11pm.
“I’ve been here 12 years, and I’ve never seen it like this,” he said.
Wedding photographer and planner Hayne Benick said she was helping people with the New Year’s wedding when she got trapped in her Toyota minivan on Atri Court. After her car died, Benick said she ran barefoot through waist-deep water carrying two dogs until a kayak man rescued her.
The kayak proved too unstable, she said, and she stayed put.
“It was the most terrifying night of my life,” she said.
Throughout the day, Sunday residents and others pitched in to clear mud and debris in front of their homes, driveways and sidewalks. Heavy mud carpeted numerous streets, and several barricades were still in place along College Road, where water continued to gush onto the pavement from Salsipuedes and Corralitos creeks.
Bay Village resident Woody Rehanek said he’s lived in his home for 18 years and has never seen anything close to Saturday night’s flooding.
Mendez said that the city is preparing for the next storm on Wednesday and will open a second sandbag station at Ramsay Park in addition to Fire Station 1 at 115 Second St.
The best thing residents can do to protect themselves is to stay informed, Hoppin said.
“That’s one thing we want people to do is maintain weather awareness, especially into this next storm,” he said. “Turn on the news. Follow authoritative social media accounts, whether national weather service, the City of Watsonville, County sites, or CHP.”
Parker also said that the information available during the flooding was inaccurate, including the website aware.zonehaven.com, which showed that the flood risk for Parker’s neighborhood was “normal” despite having already been flooded.
“They never changed that the entire night,” she said. “If there had been a better response from the county, there would have been better communication.
“It was a very distressing New Year’s Eve for almost all of the senior village,” she said.
As steady, hard rain continues to fall throughout Santa Cruz County, officials didn’t waste any time issuing evacuation warnings on Saturday morning for residents in the Felton Grove neighborhood (FEL–E008) and Paradise Park in Santa Cruz (CRZ–E081).
The warnings come after heavy overnight rain and wind drenched the county, toppling trees and power lines and causing mudslides in some areas.
County spokesman Jason Hoppin said the flood advisory is being issued before possible evacuations. Residents should prepare to leave should an evacuation alert be issued.
The County Emergency Operations Center has been activated to monitor other impacts from the storm, including localized flooding and road impacts.
The rains are expected to continue throughout Saturday, with some clearing on Sunday before returning later in the week.
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors reached a milestone Thursday by swearing in Justin Cummings, the first Black person to serve on the board in its 172-year-long history, to the District 3 seat before a large audience that packed the chambers.
During the same ceremony, Felipe Hernandez became the second Latino to serve on the Board.
Justin Cummings said his ascension to the position is noteworthy for several reasons.
“This is significant because African Americans have made significant contributions to the country and the community,” Cummings said after being sworn in by Gary Patton, who held the District 3 seat from 1975-1995. “Yet we continue to struggle to overcome poverty and oppression and to have a voice in the decision-making process.”
Cummings said his new position is also significant because people in the U.S. are still treated differently based on the color of their skin.
“But when we include the voices and perspectives of oppressed people in the decision-making process and create more inclusive policies that help alleviate oppression, everyone benefits,” he said.
Cummings said he plans to work on affordable housing issues and on helping the community continue to recover from the CZU fires. He also wants to improve the infrastructure along the North Coast, combat climate change and increase food security.
In addition, he hopes to reduce homelessness, expand mental health programs and support the rail-trail project.
Hernandez, sworn in by Congressman Jimmy Panetta, acknowledged his mother, who he said was instrumental during his campaign.
His mother was a former cannery worker who was part of the strikes during the 1980s, and Hernandez recalled looking up to her as a leader and a role model who shaped his political aspirations.
He witnessed how agriculture and cannery workers were, and continue to be, underrepresented, as has South County as a whole.
He said he plans to focus on affordable housing and farmworker housing, as well as a “viable, equitable transportation system.”
He also plans to support Watsonville Community Hospital as it grows under the local ownership and leadership of the Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust.
“Those are the things I want to make sure that we address,” Hernandez said. “I want to assure you that I will work hard for the county, but I really want to make sure that the County works for South County.”
The Stuart Camenson Memorial Endowed Scholarship aims to support those studying within Cabrillo’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) department, where he was deeply involved. Stuart took studio and performing arts classes and became close with many students and instructors.
“It was important for me to do this,” Stuart’s mother, Lori Camenson, said. “[Stuart] loved the school so much, and they returned that love in education tenfold. I just want to keep that going at Cabrillo and help someone who wants to continue their personal growth and education.”
VAPA instructors, staff and students helped organize a Celebration of Life for Camenson on Oct. 16, which was held at Cabrillo’s Aptos campus. They also set up a memorial display at VAPA with photos, pieces of Stuart’s art and notes of sympathy.
The Camenson family then approached Cabrillo College Foundation executive director Eileen Hill to help create the scholarship, which will be given to students annually, in perpetuity. While the exact amount has not been set, Lori said the family plans to match up to $8,000 in donations. All donations of $100 or more will automatically be matched.
Lori expressed her appreciation for the college’s support.
“Part of our hearts will always be in the Cabrillo [and] Santa Cruz area,” she said, “as that is where Stuart called home and where we found so many caring, compassionate individuals. I would like members of that community to know how important they are to us.”
To donate, visit foundation.cabrillo.edu/donate-2 and enter “Stuart Camenson Scholarship” in the special instructions or notes field); checks payable to the “Cabrillo College Foundation” (state “Stuart Camenson Scholarship” in the memo); or call directly 831-479-6338.
CHINA CATS NEW YEAR’S EVE EXTRAVAGANZA The Grateful Dead put on some of the most brilliant New Year’s Eve shows. With three-four-hour—sometimes more—shows and all of the pre and post-performance hoopla, fans always knew they would be in for something extra special. One year, famed promoter Bill Graham appeared at midnight as “Father Time”—he hovered high above the audience, riding a glowing Godzilla-sized joint. Then, Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Keith, Mickey and Billy returned for their third set—spanning over an hour—and a three-song encore. While the Veterans Memorial Building wouldn’t be able to accommodate a recreation of any of Graham’s “Father Time” spectacles, the China Cats have proven their ability to carry on the legacy of the Dead’s monster repertoire with an infectious energy that inspires nonstop dancing. Matt Hartle (lead guitar and vocals), Scott Cooper (rhythm guitar and vocals), Steve Sofranko (keys and vocals), Rockin’ Roger (bass and vocals) and Michael Owens (drums) might not be the Grateful Dead. Still, they’re dedicated to the band’s music and aware of the coveted New Year’s Eve shows. Who knows what they’ll bring to their Santa Cruz New Year’s Eve Extravaganza? One thing is guaranteed: It will be one hell of a night. $45/$50. 8pm. Veterans Memorial Building, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz. thechinacats.com.
GATHERING IN GRATITUDE Originally called the Santa Cruz Dance Gallery, The 418 Project—a nonprofit “movement arts center”—was founded in 1993 by modern dancer Rita Rivera shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Rivera began sharing the space with Samba, Capoeira and African dance communities to keep the center open, leading to its organic metamorphosis into downtown Santa Cruz’s avant-garde melting pot. As 418 turns 30, party people are invited to celebrate ground zero for artistic fusion. Enjoy cocktails, vegan eats and hot cacao elixirs while a massive Origami mobile—made of thousands of hand-folded paper birds—suspended overhead blows your mind. Get your boogie on as Latin bass and afro beats carry you through the night with the assistance of a dazzling disco ball and big-screen video expedition. The event was concocted to represent a metaphor for the nonprofit’s diverse artistic offerings. So, the versatility of entertainment will be endless and unexpected. There’s a little bit of everything from roller dance, poetry and Samba pop-up performances to visual theater, spoken word, musical sets and a set from hip-hop group Mic Drop. The best part is that ticket sales benefit Santa Cruz working artists. $36-250. 8pm. The 418 Project, 155 S. River St., Santa Cruz. the418project.org.
GIMME GIMME DISCO: A DANCE PARTY INSPIRED BY ABBA “I don’t know much about dancin’, that’s why I got this song/ One of my legs is shorter than the other, and both my feet’s too long.” Don’t worry. Even those who fit the description of a “Dancin’ Fool”—Frank Zappa’s acid-tongued homage to the disco era—the Scandinavian pop outfit’s cherished hits will drown out all of your dance jitters. From the softly lit harmonies of “Knowing Me, Knowing You” to the anthemic disco ball spinner “Dancing Queen,” a soundtrack laden with the tunes that put Sweden on the disco map will echo throughout downtown Santa Cruz. Leisure suit onesies, nine-inch platform boots and abundant exposed chest hair are encouraged. $20-75 plus fees. 9pm. The Catalyst, 1101 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. catalystclub.com.
HARRY AND THE HITMEN AND BOBCAT ROB Harry and the Hitmen’s education in funk, soul, R&B and otherwise runs so deep the local group has recreated entire shows—while employing their own style—down to a complete horn section. One of their greatest and most challenging was a Stax Revue concert from 1967 that featured everyone from Booker T & the MGs to Otis Redding. Until the pandemic, the Hitmen had a New Year’s Eve Crepe Place tradition that had been going on for more than a decade. The blue-eyed soul men will be back and likely have something saucy in store in addition to the countdown and balloon drop. Tickets usually sell out, so get them while they’re out. Also performing, Bobcat Rob and the Nightly Howls is a self-described musical contradiction—“songs that are as uplifting as they are haunting.” And frontman Bobcat Rob’s voice has been likened to “honey drizzled over burning coals.” All good stuff. $30/$40. 8pm. The Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. thecrepeplace.com.
LOS LOBOS AND MATTSON 2 Check out this week’s cover story for everything you wanted to know about Los Lobos and why their Santa Cruz New Year’s Eve show will be exceptional. Openers Mattson 2 come with their own brand of musical magic. San Diego identical twins Jared and Jonathan Mattson have created a world where Dick Dale’s retro reverberated surf rock melds with Horace Silver’s and Art Blakey’s original variation of hard bop delivered by The Jazz Messengers. Mattson 2 is unlike anything you’ve heard before, just like Los Lobos had been when they first arrived on the scene five decades ago. $85.05 plus fees. 9:30pm. Rio Theatre,1205 Soquel Ave. Santa Cruz. folkyeah.com.
MARTY O’REILLY WITH QUINN DEVEAUX: ROARING ’20S NYE PARTY Marty O’Reilly performs every show as if it’s his last; he’s not done performing until he’s sweated every last drop of sweat he has. Trying to categorize O’Reilly’s music is like finding a corner in a round room. Usually, fans who attempt to describe his music sound like they’re struggling to explain a dream in the morning. Meanwhile, Quinn DeVeaux has one of the most powerful voices on the planet. He recently contributed his bluebeat soul vocals to the California Honeydrops’ 2022 tunes “Take You Back” and “Very Best Thang.” There will be a photo booth at the show and a champagne toast at midnight. $30/$35 plus fees. 9pm. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. moesalley.com.
Local musical theater company Cabrillo Stage has entered a new creative phase, naming Andrea L. Hart as artistic director.
Hart was hired following the retirement in September of Jon Nordgren, who served as artistic director of the nonprofit musical theater company, which produces musicals every summer at Cabrillo College, for 17 years. Most recently, he saw the company through difficult times in the pandemic. After Covid canceled its entire 2020 season, Cabrillo Stage moved from its longtime home in the Crocker Theater to the college’s outdoor amphitheater in 2021, putting on five small shows over the course of five weekends.
“We took a huge loss in 2020,” Nordgren said earlier this year. “Last year’s shows were mostly volunteer-led, with very small audiences. It was difficult, but we did it. It turned out great.”
This summer, Cabrillo Stage returned to the Crocker, planning its first full season in the pandemic era. A staging of Grease went off without a hitch in July, earning praise for its excellent cast and direction, but the subsequent Candide—heralded as possibly the company’s most ambitious production ever—was cut short by Covid in August.
Moving Theater Forward
Hart is the first woman to lead Cabrillo Stage in its 40-year history. She moved to Santa Cruz in July after finishing a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in Directing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Before graduate school, she lived in the Berkeley area for 20 years, where she was a co-founder and member of several small theater companies, including 6NewPlays, which focused on producing new plays by Bay Area playwrights. She also taught visual and performing arts and directed musicals and plays in schools all over the Bay Area.
In addition to directing, Hart is also an accomplished playwright and theater maker, having had her work developed at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (GPTC), New Ohio Theatre, Hyde Park Theatre, the University of Texas New Theatre Festival of New Work and more. While working as Director of Education and Public Programs at the Oceanside Museum of Art, she began the first dance residency with dancer Alyssa Junious.
Hart has self-produced multiple shows, and worked for many years producing a Fringe Festival at the GPTC.
“Studying how to make live theater during a pandemic was not what I set out in graduate school to do,” Hart said. “However, I feel incredibly fortunate to have been in school during that time. It served as a crucible to not only my artistic practice, but my thinking on how to keep live performance relevant to our communities as we move forward.”
These are some of the same issues Cabrillo Stage has been focusing on. They arose, for instance, in this summer’s production of Grease, which was directed by Nordgren’s daughter, Cassie Nordgren, with musical direction by Nordgren himself. The pair reworked aspects of Grease to make it both more modern and truer to the original stage production.
“Theater is changing quickly,” said Jon Nordgren. “There has been a huge turn towards diversity and ‘cancelation’ of a lot of older shows that are too hurtful to some people. There’s a much more open look at what you can do with theater now.”
The show also brought in more diversity with its casting. Corey Jones, a Black actor and singer who uses a wheelchair, was chosen for the iconic role of the Teen Angel. (Due to health reasons, his role was played by Jennifer Taylor Daniels, a Black woman.) Ella Currie played Sonny, a T-Bird who is usually male.
Currie said it was the director’s idea to change the character’s gender. During cast callbacks, she pulled her aside to ask if she’d be interested in the role.
“I was worried at first,” Currie said. “Given some of the lines Sonny has, how’s he’s usually played … I didn’t want to perpetuate stereotypes of the queer community. I wanted to avoid that.”
Currie praised Cassie Nordgren for her openness and respectfulness in creating the new version of the character.
“Cassie has been absolutely wonderful,” she told GT before Grease opened. “She’s so open to my ideas, we’re always on the same page. I love how we’re taking an opportunity to display the queer experience, especially in an era that was not as accepting.”
John Graulty, Cabrillo College’s dean of Visual, Applied and Performing Arts, is excited to see Hart’s vision for the company unfold.
“Our national search for a new artistic director landed us a bright, young, articulate star in the theater firmament,” he said. “Andrea has the passion and talent to work collaboratively with the Cabrillo Stage team to take the company to even greater levels of success and service to our musical theater-loving community. We are thrilled to welcome her aboard.”
Hart says she hopes to continue growing and developing Cabrillo Stage’s community connections and importance.
“Theatre, by its very nature, is a local endeavor,” she said. “It exists in a particular place and time and it speaks to those who see it in that moment. I want Cabrillo Stage to represent the Monterey Bay community in all of its fullness and to be a place our audiences call home.”
Over eight years of heading up GT, I have written somewhere around 400 of these editor’s notes. That’s more than 80,000 words—the length of a short novel. That means some of you have read a whole book’s worth of whatever I was thinking about as we finished each week’s paper, which blows my mind. I feel like at this point I’ve told you so many stories about my life living in and covering Santa Cruz—from UCSC to the Pajaronian to Metro Santa Cruz to Santa Cruz Weekly to here—that I’m not sure how many more I even have!
Well, I have one more—and it’ll be my last, as I’m leaving Good Times at the end of the year for a new opportunity on the other side of the hill. This time, I want to tell you what bringing you the paper every week for almost a decade has meant to me.
In short, everything. When I came back here to be editor of Santa Cruz Weekly, after seven years of not covering this area, it was the start of a real creative rebirth for me. When we merged with Good Times a couple of years later, some people were skeptical, because GT really is a beloved local institution. But others were looking forward to what we would bring to it—including local ownership for the first time in decades—and I remember thinking, “Well, we’ll see what people think in a year.” But long before that, I started hearing encouraging feedback.
I think both our news and cultural coverage got better every year—and then the pandemic hit. By the fall of 2020, there were two emergencies to cover, Covid and the CZU fire, as well as an important social movement in Black Lives Matter. We were liveblogging news about all three nonstop, doing more news coverage than at any time in the paper’s history. But there was so much to cover, nonstop, that for the first time I really had no idea whether we were doing an adequate job or not. So when we were subsequently named the best weekly newspaper in the state by the California Newspaper Publishers Association for the second year in a row, I was stunned, and even more grateful for our staff’s incredible dedication through the toughest of times.
We’re now at three years in a row for that award, and I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished. I’m thankful to all of the amazing people I’ve had the chance to work with, both at GT and in the community. And I’m thankful for you, for picking us up, clicking to us online, and reading us. You’re the reason we do it, and the reason I’ve kept coming back to cover Santa Cruz County again and again in my career. There’s no other place quite like this one, and I’ll miss you.
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
TIDINGS OF JOY Speaking of King Tides (see Good Idea, this page), this was the scene on Christmas Eve during one of the King Tides’ famous extreme low tides. Photograph by Linda Weyers.
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GOOD IDEA
ALL HAIL THE KING TIDES
It might be wet and gloomy outside, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a beach day. Strangely enough, it’s one of the best times to explore the seaside, because the California King Tides are coming to our shores. That means high tides and powerful waves, but also dramatic low tides expose rarely seen tide pools. Mark your calendars for Jan. 21 and 22, when the King Tides return.
GOOD WORK
BIG NEWS
More trails and roads in Big Basin Redwoods reopened last Friday, a total of four miles that includes the newly renovated Meteor Trail, a one-mile segment of Skyline to the Sea Trail, and dog-friendly access along the first mile of North Escape Road. The first mile of Sunset Trail is finishing reconstruction, and is expected to open sometime next month. Since Big Basin reopened to the public on July 22, over 16,000 people have visited the park. You still need to make a reservation, which you can do at: parks.ca.gov.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“You can get excited about the future. The past won’t mind.”
Re: Cannabis Chronicle (GT, 12/21): The Cannabis industry is complaining that their tax rates are too high for them and they can’t afford to make a profit, so they are lobbying to get their taxes lower. And guess what? They are winning. They are getting supported by people, maybe even paying them out, which means less tax revenue for childcare and youth prevention groups. Communities of color and youth are affected by the cannabis tax cut, which means no funding for prevention programs in a community at need. This may result in a rise in substance use, higher incarceration, and less affordable childcare, which is the last thing this community needs.
We strongly oppose these tax reductions because not only us but millions of youths of color that rely on youth prevention groups will be affected. Empower Watsonville is a youth-led group that focuses on expanding youth advocacy to implement more equitable policies. This is sometimes the only guaranteed state funding in communities like mine and with a cut in the tax rates, it’ll all go away.
Communities of color struggle every day to make ends meet. This issue isn’t going away—why are people supporting this? Why would anyone support reducing cannabis taxes where it imposes a threat to communities that will be negatively impacted like mine. We choose to ignore that children living in poverty and youth of color have a higher risk of engaging in using substances. We are way behind in providing stability for vulnerable communities, and we need this funding accessible more than ever. So, if the cannabis tax is reduced, all that money will be used for intense marketing to target youth, these youth who need stability. Affordable childcare is a huge problem, as wages are low and childcare rates are high. That help that is protected, as of now, by the funding that is allocated because of the taxes on cannabis.
Empower Watsonville is not just an ordinary afterschool program. We are learning to inform about policies and laws that affect us to create change within our community. We are staying active and vigilant to ensure that our voices are heard on policies that disrupt all the hard work we have been doing to reduce substance use.
Mia Ruiz, Empower Watsonville Youth Advocate
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A 28-minute mini-documentary from 1975, simply titled Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles—also the band’s original name—opens with six young guys in flannel shirts and jeans performing a traditional Mexican folk song atop a littered hill overlooking East L.A.
The sound and image quality are rough, mainly due to the home video equipment at the time. However, the essence of Los Lobos comes through beautifully. The melodies of the various stringed instruments and vocal harmonies carry you away to another place, another time.
The music continues as the scene cuts to images of everyday life throughout East L.A. neighborhoods—kids ride bikes across abandoned lots, vendors push flower carts and cars speed down Atlantic Boulevard. The music fades, giving way to a voiceover from Los Lobos co-founder Francisco González, who was 21 then.
“About two years ago, we got together—not for business gain or any money—to learn some songs to play for our mothers, to show them we appreciated the music of our culture,” González says.
They learned how to play their instruments by listening to old records and were approached by many, which kept the group going.“Now, we feel it’s an obligation to spread our culture to other people who don’t know about it. We play 15 different instruments from regions all over Mexico.”
González left Los Lobos just two years after the band formed to pursue different interests—he learned Veracruz harp, then became El Teatro Campesino theater group’s musical director.
“We want to make true Chicano music that draws from our past, that is in line with the past, the present and hopefully the future,” González adds.
Upon González’s passing in April 2022 from cancer, the band expressed their gratitude for the former member paving the way for the band to “create a sound that blended all of the styles they love: rock and R&B, surf music and soul, mariachi and música norteña, punk and country.”
For the outfit’s first seven years together—before they shortened their name—they were an all-acoustic, drummerless quartet who stuck to playing traditional Mexican folk tunes like the one in the 48-year-old documentary.
Incidentally, the title of that little movie was also used as the title of the band’s 1977 debut, which was recorded with little-to-no budget (there are a thousand known copies in existence, making it one of the rarest roots-rock vinyl). The record was reissued in 2000 as Just another band from East L.A. with the clinking bottles and background chatter still intact.
Los Lobos, known for concocting their own genre, a mix of conjunto, delta blues, Americana, rockabilly and everything else that inspires them, rings in the New Year at the Rio Theatre. PHOTO: Stephen Port
Though González’s time with the band was brief, his unofficial mission for the group has been a guiding light throughout Los Lobos’ career. It’s noticeable in their 1984 sophomore release, How Will the Wolf Survive? There’s significant genre crossover; everything from blues and country to rockabilly is present, but the Mexican roots of Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles remain intact. “A Matter of Time” and the title track even delve into Mexican immigration issues that are still relevant. In 1989, the record placed No. 30 on Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Albums of the 1980s.
BORN IN EAST L.A.
The multi-instrumental crew—David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano and Louis Pérez Jr.—went from “just another band from East L.A.” performing “barrio parties” and backyard weddings to winning a Grammy for La Pistola y El Corazón, a tribute to Tejano (Tex-Mex music) and mariachi music in less than a decade. Also, within that time frame, Los Lobos’ unique multicultural-crossover sound catapulted them to the forefront of Los Angeles’ most popular bands of the time, which included X and the Blasters. But the group’s participation in the Richie Valens biopic in 1987, namely their upbeat interpretation of the film’s namesake “La Bamba,” brought them the international mainstream success that has yet to subside.
Los Lobos’ ongoing success can be attributed to adhering to several unsaid rules, starting with refraining from intentionally mixing their music with politics—for the most part.
“Sometimes [politics] get in the way of the music,” multi-instrumentalist Steve Berlin, who joined the band in 1984, says. “People tend to read an agenda into stuff when there really isn’t one. We try to be cautious about what we do, what we say, who we align ourselves with.”
Co-founding multi-instrumentalist Louis Pérez Jr. adds, “All we do is tell the truth. That’s it. It all began with learning a few Mexican songs to play for our moms. We never planned to do more.”
The sum of Los Lobos’ parts didn’t set out to become rock stars. They just wanted to play music. They worked hard and performed their best.
“I tell kids that if you want to be a musician, you have to love it so much that it keeps you up at night because there’s nothing else you could think of,” Pérez says. “But if you want to do it because you want to be a rich rockstar, then you’ll probably be disappointed. It will never let you down if you do it because you love it. It has to feel right.”
Not only does music keep Pérez up at night, but it also wakes him up, usually around 2am. Sometimes, it’s a lyric or a melody, something new that could become the foundation for Los Lobos’ next hit single. Other times, it’s a false alarm. That lyric or melody that Pérez thinks is genius at 2am doesn’t seem as stellar the next day.
“Sometimes, the next morning, I’ll wonder, ‘What the hell was that?’”
“Saint Behind the Glass” represents one of the times that Pérez struck gold during the witching hour. The intimate song, included on Los Lobos’ acclaimed 1992 record Kiko—arguably, one of their top three albums—features one of the rare times Pérez sings lead vocals over gentle finger-picking. It’s a tender breeze cradled by modest, simple, yet descriptive prose that brings you inside the song.
“Coffee in the air, coffee in the air/ Saint behind the glass, smells coffee in the air.
Curtains blowing ’round, curtains blowing ’round/ Saint behind the glass, sees the curtains blowing ’round.”
“It’s the most personal song I’ve ever written,” Pérez says. “That house that I describe is the house I grew up in—we slept in that one-bedroom; my mother, my sister and me. Those are beautiful memories. I wasn’t planning on singing it, but David chased me around the block a few times with the microphone.”
While Pérez wrote about his own experience and what he saw while growing up, it comes out with a universal appeal; the feelings and emotions aren’t provincial.
“I think everybody who puts pen to paper, hands on the keyboard, ultimately writes from an autobiographical place,” he says. “It’s a process: I sit down, try to come up with a title or something, and then I’m off and running. It’s a matter of moving the words around to see what I want to say. For the most part, it’s become intuitive.”
ABOUT A BOY
Pérez says music, art and reading saved his life. His father died when he was eight years old, and he never really had a chance to process the trauma.
“I lived in a very small bubble in East Los Angeles,” Pérez says. “The world could have been flat. Atlantic Boulevard and Third Street could have been the edge of Europe. To go anywhere, I had to use my imagination. And I think I escaped by walking down to the library and sitting on the floor between the rows of books, and I felt safe there.”
He recalls reading Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America. He felt invigorated each time he turned the page.
“It wasn’t just a travelog,” Pérez says. “It was also social commentary. Until I got a bike when I was 12, my neighborhood was the whole world. And these other poor kids [Los Lobos] in East L.A. grew up like I did and felt the same way. Can you imagine when we first went out on tour? We were driving through Iowa cornfields during wintertime. We had a joke: In Southern California, we keep the snowblower and the logs in the mountains.”
A big part of what helped shape Pérez as a musician and subsequently helped guide Los Lobos’ diverse sound stems from his lived era.
“I came up during the transformative ’60s,” he says. “There were so many things going on around us. The Watts riots, Vietnam, the assassination of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.”
When Pérez was 14, he had begged his mother for weeks to let him go to a Jimi Hendrix performance at the Hollywood Bowl. Finally, his mom gave in and arranged for an older neighbor to take him.
“That [concert] completely rearranged all my brain cells,” he says.
GOING BIG
When Los Lobos’ 2021 Native Sons was nominated for a “Best Americana Album” Grammy in 2022, the group quietly didn’t think they had a shot in hell. The competition was steep: Jackson Browne, John Hiatt with the Jerry Douglas Band and Allison Russell. None of the band members expected the win. And they were okay with that. They aren’t greedy; Los Lobos has already racked up 12 Grammy nods throughout their career—they’ve won three—including two for “Best Mexican-American Performance.” The appreciation is much more than they could have imagined when they began.
“I didn’t think we’re the frontrunners, but I appreciated the sentiment,” Berlin told me before the awards. “We already have a few [Grammys], so we’re good. It’s just nice to be in there somewhere.”
Los Lobos’ 2021 ‘Native Sons’—the outfit’s 18th studio release—showcases California-based bands and singer-songwriters who have been influential to their sound, including the Beach Boys, Willie Bobo and War. The title track is the sole original, penned by David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez. PHOTO: Pete Dervin
It was also thrilling to be nominated alongside Jackson Browne, whose song “Jamaica Says You Will” is one of the tunes Los Lobos plays on Native Sons. Still, as Berlin noted, none of the band members expected the win, making it much more exhilarating.
Pérez was driving with his wife when he got a call from his son.
“He said, ‘Dad, where are you?’” Pérez recalls. “I said I was on the 405 Freeway with your mom. He said, ‘You’re not in Vegas?’ No. ‘You’re not at the Grammys?’ No. ‘Well, you just won.’ Then the phone lit up. It was affirmation. Not that we need affirmation, especially as Chicanos living in the United States and growing up here.”
Pérez adds that while the awards are nice, Los Lobos’ drive comes from somewhere much more profound.
“It’s not necessarily the work we did, but the example that comes out of it—inspiring other people who intersect with our life path along the way, on this journey,” he says. “It’s the key to a legacy: someone can take from what we do and do something themselves.”
About a year ago, Los Lobos last performed in Santa Cruz. Rising East L.A. rockers Tropa Magica opened. Los Lobos usually doesn’t have the time to see every band that opens for them. However, the renowned Grammy Award winners made sure they made time to check out their opening act.
“We looked forward to hearing [Tropa Magica] play and meeting the band,” Berlin told me. “I’m a huge fan.”
Tropa Magica founders, brothers David (guitar, vocals) and Rene Pacheco (drums, vocals), have felt a connection to Los Lobos since they first heard them on the La Bamba soundtrack. There is also that East L.A. bond.
“[Opening for Los Lobos] was a milestone marker for us,” David says. “We’ve been fans since we were kids, so it was super awesome to perform with them and meet them. It’s so cool.”
Tropa Magica’s approach to music is quite similar to Los Lobos—they use psych-rock, cumbia, stoner rock, Bossa nova, grunge, surf and even disco elements to create something uniquely their own. They call it “cumbia psychedelic-punk.”
50 YEARS
2023 will mark Los Lobos’ 50th anniversary. And they will be on stage in Santa Cruz when they reach this rare and remarkable milestone.
“Maybe it’s because we don’t want to think about it,” Pérez says. “You don’t want to think about what keeps an airplane in the air when you’re up there at 35,000 feet.”
Pérez thinks the key is that they came together as friends long before they were a band and grew up in the same East L.A. neighborhood.
“If you hang around a barbershop long enough, you’ll eventually get a haircut,” Pérez adds. “So, we were musicians hanging out together as friends who eventually started a band. We’re like brothers—sure, we’ll arm wrestle now and then. It’s natural. But the relationships, especially with David and I, that’s the glue that holds the musical and songwriting relationships together.”
It’s not lost on Pérez just how big of a deal this landmark is for Los Lobos. Aside from the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, there are very few examples of this achievement. It’s even more impressive that all the initial founders are still in the group, except González—Berlin has been with the band for 40 years, and drummer Alfredo Ortiz took over for Enrique “Bugs” Gonzalez, who returned to Mexico a couple years ago.
“Last year, we had all these crazy ideas about doing this and doing that,” Pérez says. “Everybody’s excited about turning 50; then you realize that you just want to take a nap—everything would take so much work. So, we’re going to be diplomatic and see what everyone has in mind, then collectively come up with ideas to celebrate. You’d think this would have all been planned, but it’s typical; we always say that the Los Lobos clock doesn’t have any hands on it. We don’t run on conventional time. We have some ideas of what we want to do, and we will have a great time celebrating.”
Beyond 50? Pérez isn’t sure yet what Los Lobos’ plans are. He does say that touring will have to slow down a bit. After being on the road and performing night after night consistently for five decades, there’s some wear and tear. Pérez references a recent Howard Stern interview he saw with Springsteen.
“[Springsteen] was sitting on a stool with a guitar, and there’s a piano a few feet away,” Pérez begins. “He’s talking about all this stuff; then he plays a song. Then he gets up and walks over to the piano [slowly]. I felt like, ‘wow, I know how that feels.’ All those road miles on his back—you can tell. That just illustrates that we’re looking at time as it evaporates. We’re not getting any younger. We’re going to think hard about how we want to continue [Los Lobos].”
Pérez, who turns 70 in January, aims to have more time to volunteer and serve young people directly. He says it’s just another way for him to express himself creatively—it’s also a way to give back.
Meanwhile, Los Lobos guitarist César Rosas has become known for telling audiences, “Thank you for still liking us.”
It sounds like Rosas will be offering a few more thank yous, at the least, before Los Lobos bids us farewell.
Los Lobos (Mattson 2 opens) performs Saturday, Dec. 31, 9:30pm. $85.05 plus fees. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. folkyeah.com.
