Music Picks July 20—26

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Music Picks July 20—26

 

WEDNESDAY 7/20

COUNTRY

TREVOR MCSPADDEN

Texas-born singer-songwriter Trevor McSpadden is a country crooner whose throwback sound blends his Lone Star dancehall roots with the grit of time spent in Chicago’s nightclubs and the newfound West Coast perspective. The result is a sound that is smooth, weathered and heartfelt, as McSpadden winds tales of home, broken hearts and lover’s arms down a well-worn musical path made familiar by honky-tonk and classic country greats. Also on the bill: local singer-songwriter McCoy Tyler. CAT JOHNSON
INFO: 9 p.m. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $8. 429-6994.
 

THURSDAY 7/21

TRADITIONAL BALKAN

EVA SALINA & PETER STAN     

Eva Salina is a renowned singer and teacher of traditional Balkan music. Her accordion accompanist Peter Stan is from Romania, but the two musicians cut their teeth in the Balkan diaspora of New York City’s Roma communities. Their performances offer a range of emotion, from mournful ballads to lively and sensual compositions that seamlessly weave Eva’s rich voice with Peter’s playful and intuitive improvisations, staying true to the intricate expression inherent to traditional Eastern European music. KATIE SMALL
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $12/adv, $15/door. 335-2800.
 

FRIDAY 7/22

POST-PUNK

PSYCHEDELIC FURS AND THE CHURCH

Anyone looking for their fix of ’80s dreary college rock nostalgia would be hard-pressed to find a better touring package this year. Most folks know the Psychedelic Furs from their song “Pretty in Pink,” both as inspiration for and the most famous song from the John Hughes movie of the same name. But the Furs were responsible for one of the best albums of the ’80s, Forever Now, a melding of post-punk, goth lyrics and British pop. Australia’s the Church pulled from a similar pool of influences, but experimented more with psychedelic soundscapes. Their hit in the U.S. was 1988’s “Under the Milky Way.” AARON CARNES
INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $35/adv, $38/door. 429-4135.

FOLK

CHUCK BRODSKY

Modern-day troubadour Chuck Brodsky has been a quiet favorite of the contemporary folk scene for decades. With warmth, wit, unusual melodies and tight guitar chops, he tells stories of everyday people, political leaders and, one of his favorite and recurring themes, baseball. Joining the Philadelphia-born Brodsky are local standouts singer-songwriter Sherry Austin and lap steel virtuoso Patti Maxine. CJ
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/gen, $32/gold. 427-2227.
 

SATURDAY 7/23

LATIN-ROCK

LA SANTA CECILIA

Right now, the most exciting thing happening musically in Los Angeles is the new wave of American Latin-rock bands. These are groups playing punk, ska, alt-rock, goth, everything—and La Santa Cecilia is one of the best. The band’s sound is rooted in traditional Latin rhythms—Bolero, cumbia, Ranchera—along with soul and rock ’n’ roll. But what makes La Santa Cecilia so great is the sheer joy emanating from the music. It grooves while staying mellow, and it just makes you feel good with every listen, whether you’re dancing or sipping on a glass of whiskey. AC
INFO: 9 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $18/adv, $22/door. 479-1854.

COUNTRY ROCK

THE JAYHAWKS

The Jayhawks emerged from the Minneapolis music scene in 1985; the band has weathered more than one lineup change since, but their original alt-country sound remains. Also on the bill for the night is Fernando Viciconte, a Portland-based roots rocker with a 20-year catalog of music ranging from hard rock to country folk. Viciconte’s most recent album, Radio, combines psychedelic electric sitar, 12-string guitars, and mandolin. REM’s Peter Buck played guitar on eight of the album’s 11 tracks; Buck also produced the Jayhawks’ most recent album, Paging Mr. Proust. KS
INFO: 8 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $25/adv, $30/door. 335-2800.
 

SUNDAY 7/24

REGGAE-ROCK

KANEKOA

Playing a feel-good, soul-shaking style of music that’s described as “ukulele-powered Hawaiian reggae folk rock,” Kanekoa is one of the most beloved musical acts from the islands—a long-running favorite of locals and visitors, alike. With a strong focus on the beauty and strength of the natural world, Kanekoa lets the music lead the way as they stretch out into long-form jams and inspired improvisations. As Bill Kreutzmann, drummer for the Grateful Dead said, “Kanekoa is the Hawaiian Grateful Dead.” CJ
INFO: 8 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $8/adv, $12/door. 479-1854.
 

MONDAY 7/25

BLUES

MARCIA BALL BAND

Like whiskey, Michael Caine and Birkenstocks, Marcia Ball just seems to get better with age. At 67, she’s a guiding spirit on the Austin scene, a trenchant songwriter, rollicking pianist and captivating singer equally effective on aching ballads and earthy barrelhouse rave-ups. Her last album came out a couple of years ago, Tattooed Lady & The Alligator Man, but she’s never relied on a new release for set list. Ball returns to town with a killer band featuring bassist Don Bennett, drummer Corey Keller, tenor saxophonist Eric Bernhardt, and guitarist Mighty Mike Schermer, the former Santa Cruzan who returns to Kuumbwa on Aug. 18 for a gig celebrating his 50th birthday. ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 427-2227.
 

TUESDAY 7/26

DANCE-PUNK

MOVING UNITS

Dance-punk was all the rage a decade ago, an era that yielded groups like Franz Ferdinand, the Rapture, and Interpol. Of course dance-punk is just a clever way of saying, “influenced by Joy Division.” One of the lesser-known early adopters of the dance-punk revival was L.A.’s Moving Units, a band that started all the way back in 2001. It didn’t get the album sales or the critical praise some of the other groups got, but it has stayed true to sound, and continue to release music. Appropriately, they are currently doing a Joy Division tribute tour, which comes to Santa Cruz on Tuesday. Anyone that loves first wave and/or second wave Joy Division should definitely come out. AC
INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $10/adv, $14/door. 429-4135.

IN THE QUEUE

DAYNA STEPHENS

Standout jazz saxophonist and composer. Wednesday at Kuumbwa

VAUGHN BENJAMIN & AKAE BEKA

Reformation of St. Croix reggae band Midnite. Friday at Moe’s Alley

BELANOVA

Grammy-winning Mexican pop outfit. Sunday at Catalyst

HOT CLUB OF BALTIMORE

World-class early-jazz ensemble. Sunday at Don Quixote’s

STEEL PULSE

Legendary reggae band. Monday at Catalyst

Be Our Guest: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

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Be Our Guest: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

 
Shakespeare’s beloved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells the tale of four young Athenians caught in a love quadrangle. One of the Bard’s most popular works, the play is full of magic, fairies, misunderstanding, thespians, and, of course, love. If it’s been awhile since your last encounter with Shakespeare, this is a fantastic, family-friendly production to reintroduce yourself and to support a centerpiece of Santa Cruz community theater. Now in its third year as an independent nonprofit and with more than $1 million raised for a new outdoor theater, the future for Santa Cruz Shakespeare looks bright, indeed.
Read our review here.

INFO: Through Aug. 28. Grove at DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz. $16-$52. 460-6399. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Thursday, July 28 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the play.

Love Your Local Band: Dickless Juli

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Love Your Local Band: Dickless Juli

If the name offends you, don’t worry—the music will, too.
‘Fallopian Dudes’ was the only runner-up band name for ska/surf/punk trio Dickless Juli. Their song titles and lyrical content are equally cheeky: “Reptar Stomp,” “Questions My Mom Asks Me,” “Indo Bored,” and “Nike Don’t Surf” are just a few.
Both UCSC grads, Tyler Engel and Joey Parks grew up together in San Pedro; they met Juliana Mireles in 2013, while working at a bourgie country-club restaurant. “She told me that she loved metal music and only played drums with a double-bass pedal,” Engel recalled. “I laughed in her face. Like, I actually laughed, in her face.”
Dickless Juli shows are energetic, unpredictable and cathartic. The band celebrated Pride 2015 in Dolores Park, where they dragged all of their equipment, including a generator, to play a three-hour set to a crowd of 200 people. Audience members joined them onstage to sing Jimi Hendrix covers.
A photo taken during a house show on Bay Street is the cover for their debut album, H.A.R.D. (as in, “Has A Real Dick”). “At the end of that show I was dripping sweat,”
Juli says. “It was so hot in there. People were moshing, all the doors and windows were closed ’cause they didn’t want the cops to get called. We started late after Joey locked my keys in my car; I had set up my drums, but hadn’t gotten my sticks out. He got a friend to jimmy the window, but I was so mad at him. I was so mad, and Joey and Tyler discovered that Juli plays better drums when she’s pissed! After that they started picking fights with me before every show.” 

INFO: 9 p.m. Monday, July 25. Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, $5. 423-7117.
 

How Shrubs are Transforming Summer Cocktails

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How Shrubs are Transforming Summer Cocktails

I am part of a tribe of people who uses an apothecarian collection of vinegars for more than just dressing greens or making pickles. We drink it. It may seem unappealing at first, but the mildly sweet, tangy jolt is addictive. A healthy glug of amber apple cider vinegar in a glass of water in the afternoon is crazy refreshing—like instant grown-up lemonade without all the sugar.
But if that seems a little intense, don’t worry—I still think the best way to enjoy an invigorating kick of acid is in shrub form. These oddly named drinking vinegars have a long history, though they fell out of favor in the modern era. Now, they’re enjoying a revival among bartenders, farmers and all of their patrons and friends. The concentrated mixers are made by pulling the juice from fresh fruit and citrus with sugar, and cooking it in vinegar, which cuts the sweetness of the fruit and preserves the cordial. Take this concoction, pour it over ice and top it with soda water for the most elegant summer cooler you can imagine.
Shrubs are still a little hard to come by unless you’re making them yourself, so I was thrilled to discover several versions at the Serendipity Organic Farms booth at the Live Oak farmers market. Owner Jamie Collins provides her organic fruit and herbs to field-to-glass cocktail queen Katie Blandin Shea of Bar Cart Cocktail Co. to create delicious botanical elixirs, like my favorite: a blueberry shrub with white sage, lime zest and white wine vinegar ($12 for an eight-ounce bottle). This lapis lazuli-colored shrub is not too sweet, its creamy berry flavor offset by delicate earthy sage. It pairs perfectly with equal parts Venus Spirits’ Gin Blend No. 1, soda and late-afternoon sunshine. A strawberry, chamomile and orange zest version with apple cider vinegar is also available, and Collins revealed that she and Blandin Shea will continue to collaborate on different combinations as the seasons change.
Another exciting opportunity to enter the world of shrubbery (Ni!) is at Mountain Feed & Farm Supply’s Summer Shrub Party, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on Friday, July 22. Emily Han, author of Wild Drinks & Cocktails, will be teaching a free workshop on making shrubs from fresh produce and herbs. Shrub one, shrub all! mountainfeed.com.

Zayante Vineyards’ Estate-Bottled Chardonnay

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Zayante Vineyards’ Estate-Bottled Chardonnay

This estate-bottled Chardonnay 2013 is totally produced by Zayante Vineyards—the grapes are grown on their land, the wine is bottled on the premises—and winery owners Greg Nolten and Kathleen Starkey-Nolton are fastidious about getting everything just right. The luscious flavors of the Chardonnay on the palate are highlighted by toasty oak and a slight flinty complexity from the soil. Beautiful aromas of crisp green apples and pears make this wine very refreshing and drinkable, “reminiscent of a fine French white burgundy.”
“Our exclusively estate-grown wines are produced from naturally farmed grapes,” say the Noltens. “Our philosophy is that only the finest grapes produce the finest wine. We go out of our way to ensure we grow the finest grapes possible.”
So what you’re getting here for about $18 is a delicious Chardonnay from a small family-owned winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains. You can find it all over in liquor stores and supermarkets.
Zayante Vineyards is open by appointment and for the quarterly Passport event (the next dates being Nov. 19 & 20). They can also be found every Tuesday from 2:30-6:30 p.m. May through October at the Felton Farmers Market in the St. John’s parking lot on Hwy. 9, and they will be the featured winery on the Chardonnay II sailing vessel from 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 2. If you have never sailed out on the briny while drinking good wine and eating tasty hors d’oeuvres, then check out chardonnay.com for a full list of wine sails through October.
Zayante Vineyards, 420 Old Mount Road, Felton, 335-7992. zayantevineyards.com.

Roudon-Smith Winery

Al Drewke of Roudon-Smith Winery has closed his tasting room on Hangar Way in Watsonville and is moving to the Stomping Ground—a brand new wine and food concept in Gilroy which is all set to be a happening spot. More on that soon.

Back Nine Adds More Local Wine

The Back Nine Grill & Bar in the Inn at Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz has added more local wines to their list. We can now look for Morgan, Bargetto, Bruzzone, Storrs, Kathryn Kennedy, and J.D. Hurley as well as other California wines. For a full wine list and menu visit backninegrill.com.

Film Review: ‘Captain Fantastic’

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Film Review: ‘Captain Fantastic’

Berkeley-raised writer and director Matt Ross stays true to his roots with Captain Fantastic—which will surely seem a deep movie in that city (and Santa Cruz, as well), thanks to its spirit of political grievance, its mottos, and its fantasy of chucking it all to head for the redwoods. (It’s firs and pines, actually; set in Washington state, the film is shot in Canada.)
In the film’s opening scene, we see a many-pronged buck peeking through a thicket—so peaceful and serene that you know it’s all over for the deer. Hiding, face painted with camouflage, young Bo (short for Bodevan, and played by George MacKay) pops out and stabs it in the throat.
Butchering the out-of-season deer, Bo’s father Ben (Viggo Mortensen) solemnly anoints his eldest son’s forehead with the blood, giving him a tidbit of raw liver to eat: “The boy is gone. In his place is a man.”
The patriarch has been raising his bustling family of six semi-differentiated children in the woods; the kids include a set of blond twin boys, as per a ’60s sitcom. They live off-grid in a jumble of buildings and a schoolbus, playing music around the campfire by night. In the mornings, they’re rousted by “Reveille,” pumped from bagpipes to make it sound worse. They read important books, practice martial arts and climb rocks—it’s a mix of Outward Bound and the Swiss Family Robinson.
What of the woman who mothered these kids—she, who in defiance of the environmentalism flaunted here, added this platoon to an overpopulated world? She has gone to where my own mom of five said we children were sending her: straight to the madhouse. Her timely suicide spurs a road trip to confront the angry in-laws, who are hosting the funeral in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Bo has a secret. Though he was homeschooled, his mail box is stuffed with acceptance letters from every Ivy League college on the Eastern Seaboard.
Captain Fantastic gives the sense of a movie set in the 1970s but updated to the present, for budgetary reasons. Under the Sundance-ian stylings—“Little Miss Sunshine goes prepper!”—there’s a whiff of mold to this script. After adventures on the road, Ben and his clan get a cold welcome from the grandfather, Jack (Frank Langella) who has called in the police to bar Ben and his brood from the funeral.
I’ve been watching Langella with pleasure for a half a century, but he proves the old rule: play Dracula and you won’t come back. Black clad and stern, he’s the counter-cultural nightmare. Seeing Ben in his thrift shop-bought funeral attire, a scarlet polyester number, Jack growls: “A hippie in a clown suit.”
Is Jack wrong? Actor turned director Ross (he’s the Hooli CEO from TV’s Silicon Valley) uses Ben and his pack as a way of flagellating a greedy and obese nation. If only he’d made these Spartan kids less like supermen—made them a little more damaged. Their jam sessions are always in sync; if the script bemoans TV watchers, these musical scenes resemble The Partridge Family.
One actress stands out, aside from Kathryn Hahn, as Ben’s sister in law, an unheeded voice of common sense. At a trailer park, the movie gets a brief spark from the mocking teenage Claire (Erin Moriarty). She brings out the funny side of Bo’s plight—the problem of learning from books. Since Bo is full of the Victorian novels he’s absorbed, he expects that a casual kiss must be followed by a wordy, kneeling marriage proposal.
As for Mortensen—he’s far from the soft-spoken, cowboy-movie intensity he brought to Lord of the Rings. He recalls critic Clive Davis’ description of a certain Shakespearean actor: “He played the part with an intensity that made you wish he hadn’t.” Ross is enthralled with this dictatorial crank, even posing him under a CG waterfall. Both ’60s kook and Chingachgook, Ben is insufferably right all the time. Ross is so adoring of his character’s fantasticness that he practically has the camera up Viggo’s nose.

Captain Fantastic
With Viggo Mortensen, George Mackay, Frank Langella and Erin Moriarty. Written and directed by Matt Ross. Rated R. 118 Mins.

What scares you?

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What scares you?

“Flying. ”

Collin McCann

Santa Cruz
Marketing Intern

“Dangerously ignorant Trump supporters.”

Jesse Peters

Santa Cruz
Animal Care Technician

“The crazy unknown. The election, guns, hatred.”

Kelly Sullivan

Sonoma
Real Estate

“Only my thoughts that are pushed by fear.”

Ron Scott

Santa Cruz
Auto Body Tech

“Myself, because I’m crazy. ”

Nancy French

Santa Cruz
Receptionist

Opinion July 20, 2016

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Opinion July 20, 2016

EDITOR’S NOTE

Looking over 25 years worth of photos of Marin Alsop for this week’s issue got me thinking about why she’s been such a revolutionary figure at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. As Stacey Vreeken documents Alsop’s legacy in advance of the longtime conductor and music director’s final season here, the images say so much about the personality and philosophical approach that have transformed Cabrillo into a world-class festival for contemporary composers.
Her portraits are always classy, but they’re playful, too. She always looks like she has no patience for the pomp and pretension of a typical “classical music” type photo. And sometimes, she gets flat out crazy—I mean, just look at our cover this week. There’s always a twinkle in her eye, like she’s up to something. There’s also a softness to her expressions that stands in sharp contrast to her snappy, perfectly structured sense of style, which makes it not at all surprising to read in the cover story that perhaps the most important part of her legacy is the way she’s brought the music to the people with a defiantly democratic aesthetic.
Stacey and I worked together through much of the ’90s, including her accomplished time as editor of this paper. We’ve looked at a lot of photos of Marin Alsop together over the years, and I get the feeling from her story that she, like I, will miss seeing them.
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR IN CHIEF

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Read the latest letters to the editor here.

Trees Tops
Re: “Stumped” (GT, 7/13): It’s uncanny how often I’ve been thinking about a particular subject, and—voila!—there it is in Good Times. I had just copied these words from Jeff Speck’s excellent book, The Walkable City, in which he sings the praises of trees, saying, “Urban trees, located close to roadways, are 10 times more effective than more distant vegetation at hijacking car exhaust before it hits the stratosphere.” He adds that a study in Leicester, England (where I happened to live for 18 years) found that “above-ground vegetation stores more than 200,000 tons of the city’s carbon, of which 97 percent is stored by trees … even counting those ample British gardens.”
Trees that shade us in the summer, turn colors in the fall and bare their branches in the winter to let the sunshine in make welcome companions for walking or biking. Your article mentioned Catalpa Street, with its tunnel of catalpa trees. Never heard of the street or the tree, but now I’m anxious to find it and walk it. Walnut Avenue is so appealing because of its roadside trees. But what happened to the trees along Maple, Elm, Locust, Laurel, and Chestnut? There’s lovely shade this summer on the east side of Pacific Avenue, where you’ll see more people walking, but please let the cherry trees on the west side branch out more, and don’t replace them with crepe myrtles.
Dana Bagshaw
Santa Cruz

Don’t Release The Hounds
I was disturbed by the lack of compassion for homeless people in Kara Guzman’s “Saving Lighthouse Field” (GT, 7/6), as well as the absence of any concrete proposals to actually solve the problem by finding homes for the homeless (real homes, not a mat on the floor of a shelter).
Even worse was last week’s letter to the editor on the topic, which seemed to propose off-leash dog harassment of the homeless. I don’t know if that person has been watching too much Game of Thrones, but the fact is that any decent human being (especially anyone proud of Santa Cruz’s traditions of peace, love, human rights, and compassion for all) should be ashamed of themselves for being so selfish and cold-hearted as to deny essential human rights and dignity to the most vulnerable among us.
Everyone deserves respect, and everyone deserves a home and a livelihood. To debase people who are already suffering debases our society as a whole. The solution to homelessness is housing, along with social services and funding for substance abuse and mental health counseling. It’s wrong to use the police to harass the homeless to simply chase people from one spot to another. I assume no one is yet supporting a “final solution” to homelessness (will have to check with the Trump campaign on that), but the increasing hatred for the homeless is indeed disturbing. We will have these problems with us for a long time until we get serious about finding people the homes and services they need.
Michael Donnelly
Santa Cruz

LUNAFEST SUCCESS
Friends of WomenCARE – LUNAFEST would like to give a huge shout out to the community and our sponsors for supporting the LUNAFEST, a traveling festival of films by, for, and about Women. Thanks to local wineries, New Leaf and The Buttery for donating food and wine for our pre-party. This year, thanks to our paid sponsors and those attending the festival, we raised over $10,000 for WomenCARE and the Breast Cancer Fund. Special thanks to the staff at the Del Mar and to Good Times, santacruz.com and the Sentinel for getting the word out about this amazing event.
Kathy Ferraro, Laura Gleason-Fernandez, Lore James, Eva Brunner, Lesley Harris | Friends of WomenCARE – LUNAFEST

PHOTO CONTEST WINNER

Submit to ph****@go*******.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.

GOOD IDEA

CLASS ACT
New Leaf Community Markets is asking customers to come downtown on Thursday, July 21, to support local schools. New Leaf will donate 5 percent of the day’s sales at its Pacific Avenue location to the Santa Cruz Education Foundation to benefit Santa Cruz City Schools and students. Meanwhile, the Capitola New Leaf will be donating 5 percent of its sales to the Santa Cruz Cancer Benefit Group.

GOOD WORK

LIVE CULTURE
Senderos, a nonprofit that spreads traditional Mexican culture and arts, announced that it has been awarded a two-year $10,000 grant from the California Arts Council, as part of the Cultural Pathways grant program. The program provides two years of operating support and technical assistance to small organizations like Senderos supporting communities of color and diversity.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

-Michelle Obama Melania Trump

Vegans Laugh at Themselves

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Vegans Laugh at Themselves

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Five vegan comedians walk into a jazz club. The punchline, though, is that this is no joke. The Kuumbwa Jazz Center will host the Vegan Comedy Showcase on Sunday, July 31, featuring five hilarious—and animal-product-free—comedians. DNA, a 10-year veteran Santa Cruz comic, organized the show after reading about the United Kingdom’s first-ever Vegan Comedy Festival, held earlier in March of this year.
“Vegans do not always have the reputation of being funny,” says Virginia Jones, a comic who became vegetarian 27 years ago because of the Smiths’ song “Meat is Murder.” “So I’m excited about this.”
Vegan comedy has begun to develop a niche, as healthy eaters try to turn the joke around after years of being the punchline, as they were stereotyped as “sensitive” or “weak.” There was even a Los Angeles Vegan Comedy Festival in May, headlined by Eddie Pepitone.
Jones’ inventive and provocatively dark humor draws on her left-leaning politics, being a female in a male-dominated profession, and, of course, veganism. She has a history with Santa Cruz and has performed a number of times at the Crow’s Nest, which she says she enjoys because it fills up with eager comedy fans. “Santa Cruz represents,” says Jones, who loves to stop in at Cafe Gratitude whenever she’s in Santa Cruz.
The traveling vegan comedy squad consists of Jones, Myq Kaplan, Matt Gubser and local comedian Laurie Powell—or as DNA puts it, “the intellectual vegan, the militant vegan, the handsome vegan, the singer/songwriter vegan.”
“And I’m the struggling vegan,” says DNA, who adds that, when flyering for the show, some people have told him they “hate vegans.” He has no idea why, but he doesn’t feel discouraged.
“If you have beef with vegans, bring it!” he says.
Santa Cruzans are no strangers to a meat-free diet, though. Vegetarian and vegan spots like Saturn Cafe and Dharma’s Restaurant have been in town for decades—from 1979 and 1981, respectively. And Santa Cruz’s roots in the lifestyle stretch back so far that a 2013 sfgate.com article recognized the city as “pioneering” the movement as early as the 1960s.
These days, pretty much all restaurants—from five-star destinations to fast food—have at least one meatless option. Meat and dairy-free meals line the grocery aisles in every form, from soy cheese to vegan orange “chicken.” Several surveys on vegetarian and vegan population numbers in the U.S. have been conducted by the Vegetarian Resource Group and Vegetarian Times. Statistics on vegetarians vary, but a 2012 Gallup poll indicated that 5 percent of people identify as vegetarian, and fewer than half of those are vegan. Celebrities like Joaquin Phoenix, Miley Cyrus and Woody Harrelson are all vegans, as well as many politicians like former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Even mega-bodybuilder and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promotes a meatless diet.
But even as the lifestyle spreads to a wider array of folks, people are still making broad generalizations about vegans. “One misconception, I would say, is that people think vegans are a monolith,” comic Kaplan tells GT via email, “all thinking and acting and coming from the same place of motivation and goals.”
For his first show in 2002, Kaplan, who was a finalist on Last Comic Standing, shared the stage with Louis C.K., who was then relatively unknown. Two years ago, he released the live DVD Small, Dork and Handsome, a hilarious hour into the mind of the philosophy and linguistics major that is currently available to stream on Netflix. Kaplan, the showcase’s headliner, will record his new album at a different vegan comedy show on July 27 in San Francisco.
Matt Gubser, or, as DNA calls him, the “handsome vegan,” was born in Salinas and went to high school at Monte Vista Christian School in Watsonville. Gubser has been a practicing vegan for 14 years, the same amount of time as both Kaplan and Jones. They’ve all experienced the same questions, they say, that every other vegan and vegetarian does: What do you eat, and how do you get enough protein?
“I’m 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, so when I tell people I’m vegan, they think I’m joking,” says Gubser, who is careful to eat a balanced diet. “But it’s not complicated.”
While plant-based diets have become more common and even fads—see Portlandia—vegetarianism dates back to the ancient Greeks, according to some historians. First-millennial mathematician Pythagoras—often called the first pure mathematician, and the father of the Pythagorean theorem—favored an all-plant diet, and for centuries after, vegetarianism was called the “Pythagorean Diet.”
In 1683, Englishman Thomas Tryon published The Way to Health and Long Life, promoting a plant-based diet and stirring a new generation of people to question what they eat. Inspired by Tryon, a 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin cut out meat from his meals, later writing in his autobiography that it left him with “greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension.” Though his dedication lasted only a few years, he admitted to “returning occasionally to a vegetable diet” throughout his life.
In 1902, Upton Sinclair’s detailed book on the conditions of American slaughterhouses, The Jungle, spawned a new generation of Americans ditching flesh, along with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration and the Pure Food and Drug Act.
The modern vegan movement dates back to the 1940s. These days, scientific studies have shown that eating no—or at least fewer—animal products is beneficial not only to human health, but also to the planet, because vegetarianism has a smaller carbon footprint. Six years ago, the United Nations urged humans to consume less meat in order to help battle climate change.
“It’s one of the most personal choices people have. We control what we put in our mouths, but most people don’t think about it at all,” says DNA, who now owns the domain vegancomedy.com. “I think it’s important to question where your nutrition comes from.”

The Vegan Comedy Showcase starts at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 31 at Kuumbwa Jazz. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.

Former Santa Cruz Mayor at RNC

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Former Santa Cruz Mayor at RNC

It’s funny to think that while most of us watch the Republican National Convention from across the country with morbid curiosity, one of Santa Cruz’s most famously leftist former mayors is in the thick of it.
Chris Krohn is wandering the streets of Cleveland this week covering the convention for the Berkeley Daily Planet. “It just brings a lot of people together that you only see from afar,” Krohn says over the phone from a noisy room. “You figure out what the questions are. Or the answers.”
Krohn, a UCSC internship director who will also write a column for brattononline.com, is at his sixth national convention, and plans to go to the democratic one in Philadelphia this month as well.
He talked to rapper Chuck D., who teamed up with former members of Rage Against the Machine and other artists to create a supergroup called Prophets of Rage. The band brought its “Make America Rage Again” tour to the Cleveland streets this week. He talked with Chris Matthews about President Barack Obama, marijuana legalization and the MSNBC news host’s recent interview with Bill Maher.
Krohn even talked to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson about all the money the feds have put into the event. But Jackson, according to Krohn, doesn’t know how big of a bill the Rock ’n’ Roll Capital of the World will have to pay when all’s said and done. Law enforcement has poured in from 21 states, and California Highway Patrol is even helping out with the beat. Outside the Quicken Loans Arena, Krohn says there were about 2,000 protesters and 3,000 officers.
Most of Monday’s speeches focused on familiar tropes, Krohn explains, like small government and national security. “Every one could have been written 10 years ago,” he says. 

Music Picks July 20—26

  WEDNESDAY 7/20 COUNTRY TREVOR MCSPADDEN Texas-born singer-songwriter Trevor McSpadden is a country crooner whose throwback sound blends his Lone Star dancehall roots with the grit of time spent in Chicago’s nightclubs and the newfound West Coast perspective. The result is a sound that is smooth, weathered and heartfelt, as McSpadden winds tales of home, broken hearts and lover’s arms down a well-worn...
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Be Our Guest: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Win tickets to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on SantaCruz.com.
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Love Your Local Band: Dickless Juli

Dickless Juli play Monday, July 25 at the Blue Lagoon.
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How Shrubs are Transforming Summer Cocktails

vinegar fruit shrubs
Drinking vinegars make a modern resurgence for field-to-glass cocktails
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Zayante Vineyards’ Estate-Bottled Chardonnay

This estate-bottled Chardonnay 2013 is totally produced by Zayante Vineyards—the grapes are grown on their land, the wine is bottled on the premises—and winery owners Greg Nolten and Kathleen Starkey-Nolton are fastidious about getting everything just right. The luscious flavors of the Chardonnay on the palate are highlighted by toasty oak and a slight flinty complexity from the soil....
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Film Review: ‘Captain Fantastic’

Berkeley-raised writer and director Matt Ross stays true to his roots with Captain Fantastic—which will surely seem a deep movie in that city (and Santa Cruz, as well), thanks to its spirit of political grievance, its mottos, and its fantasy of chucking it all to head for the redwoods. (It’s firs and pines, actually; set in Washington state, the...
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What scares you?

“Flying. ” Collin McCann Santa Cruz Marketing Intern “Dangerously ignorant Trump supporters.” Jesse Peters Santa Cruz Animal Care Technician “The crazy unknown. The election, guns, hatred.” Kelly Sullivan Sonoma Real Estate “Only my thoughts that are pushed by fear.” Ron...
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Opinion July 20, 2016

Plus Letters to the Editor
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Vegans Laugh at Themselves

Santa Cruz hops on what could be a growing trend of vegan comedy
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Former Santa Cruz Mayor at RNC

Chris Krohn updates us from the frontlines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland
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