“No one ever ages quite like they envision.” This is the fitting opening to Your Friend’s mysterious “Gumption,” a song that, like much of the band’s material, weaves and stumbles with eerie melodies and hypnotic rhythms. The video is similarly surreal. Slow-motion shots of sole member Taryn Miller walking through a snowy field, only to find a wrecked car and a body tossed aside—and the body is her. The music is simultaneously minimalistic and somehow washed out and layered all at the same time. It’s slow, dark music that gets under your skin. AARON CARNES INFO: 9 p.m. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $10. 429-6994.
JAZZ
CHICO FREEMAN’S PLUS-TET
Before there was Joshua Redman, there was Chico Freeman. The son of revered Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman, Chico was one of the most celebrated and prolific young tenor saxophonists of the late 1970s and ’80s, a player with one foot in the avant-garde and one foot in the post-bop continuum. After recording a steady stream of bracing albums under his own name and backing masters such as Jack DeJohnette, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, he seemed to drop off the scene, and has been rarely heard in the U.S. for most of the 21st century. Turns out he’s been living and working in Europe, and he’s roaring back into action stateside with a new album, Spoken Into Existence, and a new band featuring pianist Luke Carlos O’Reilly, bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Michael Baker. ANDREW GILBERT INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 427-2227.
FRIDAY 8/12
ROOTS
MARTY O’REILLY
Formed in Santa Cruz, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra has, in a few short years, established its presence on the national roots scene, picking up a nod from NPR, mentions in international roots publications, and inspiring a directive to “serious roots connoisseurs” from the Portland Tribune that the band should be on the top of their lists. Aside from all that, however, is the music. O’Reilly and the gang play honest, soulful, heart-wrenching music that digs deep into the blues, folk, and shadow places that hide the raw materials for great art. CAT JOHNSON INFO: 8:30 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $12/adv, $15/door. 479-1854.
HIP-HOP
LIL UZI VERT
Philly rapper Lil Uzi Vert says his unusual sing-song delivery was a result of listening to a lot of emo and hard rock as a kid. He’s also noted for having bleached blonde dreadlocks, a surfer image, and elaborate animated album covers—all pretty major departures from the standard hip-hop tropes. His beats, though, are pulsing trap bangers that any fan of real hip-hop will crank up on their stereo with eager delight. However atypical or traditional Uzi comes across, he’s quickly becoming one of 2016’s hip-hop breakout stars, and is likely an indicator of where the genre is heading. AC INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $33/adv, $35/door. 429-4135.
SATURDAY 8/13
REGGAE
PREZIDENT BROWN
Born Fitz Cotterell in Clarendon, Jamaica, Prezident Brown’s style is frequently likened to that of Tony Rebel’s. Brown was featured on Steel Pulse’s Rage and Fury album, and has built a large fan base since the mid-’90s. A champion of the new roots and reality consciousness reggae movement, Brown entertains, informs and inspires. His fourth and most popular album, To Jah Only, was intended to serve as a “vessel of healing.” Addis Pablo opens the night, each singer will be backed by a live band. KATIE SMALL INFO: 9 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $15/adv, $20/door. 479-1854.
FUNK/NEW ORLEANS
GALACTIC
For 20 years, Galactic has been holding down the funk and pushing the boundaries of New Orleans music. Hailing from the Crescent City, the band, which leans heavily on collaboration and creative exploration, blends soul, jazz, classic funk, hip-hop, electronica, world music and more to create an ever-evolving sound that challenges easy description. Regardless of which musical direction the band takes things in, you can rest assured that it’s going to be tight, forward-thinking and danceable. Also on the bill is celebrated Bay Area rapper and producer Lyrics Born. CJ INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 423-1338.
ROCK ’N’ ROLL
BEGGAR KINGS
The Beggar Kings are a Rolling Stones cover band with legit ties to ’70s-era rock. The group is made up of a rotating cast of 14 players, including former members of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Doobie Brothers, Moby Grape and more. The Beggar Kings forgo the eyeliner and theatrics and pay tribute through their realistic recreation of the Stone’s hits. Formed in the summer of 2015, their first shows strictly featured RS albums Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. At Saturday’s performance they’ll break into new territory with the Beggars Banquet LP & Let It Bleed, performed “in their original order, instrumentation, nuance and detail.” KS INFO: 8 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $20/gen, $30/gold. 423-8209.
JAM/ROCK
JERRY CELEBRATION BAND
There’s a lot of love for Jerry Garcia and the Dead in Santa Cruz, and no shortage of cover bands. UCSC is home to the Grateful Dead Archive, we have regular tributes and performances that bring together local Deadheads, and, if you stick around Pacific Avenue long enough, you’re bound to hear a busker plucking out “Friend of the Devil” or “Ripple.” On Saturday, an all-star cast of Bay Area artists, including members of Slugs & Roses, the China Cats, Front Street, Mars Hotel, Cryptical, Live Dead, Workingman’s Ed and many more bring the love to Felton for an acoustic and electric tribute. CJ INFO: 8 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $15. 335-2800.
SUNDAY 8/14
FRENCH
SONOMUSETTE
What an exciting, romantic time mid-20th century Paris was. Just close your eyes and picture sipping coffee, working on your next fantastic idea for that surrealist film you’ve been imagining and listening to accordion-fueled gypsy jazz in the background. OK, this may all be some bizarre fantasy, but the music is alive and well. SonoMusette brings to the stage what sounds like a time capsule of this music, inspired by Django Reinhardt, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and other masters from this period. The group is a small ensemble with guitar, piano, upright bass, accordion, drums, and the splendid French vocals of Mimi Pirad. La musique est la vie.AC INFO: 7 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $15. 335-2800.
IN THE QUEUE
LP
New York-based singer-songwriter Laura Pergolizzi. Wednesday at Moe’s Alley
KURT VILE
Indie rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Thursday at Catalyst
THE DAN RYAN
Psychedelic folk-rock outfit opens for Your Friend. Thursday at Crepe Place
TROUT FARM FAMILY FUNDRAISER
Benefit featuring Mofongo, Cruz Control and Wild Stallions. Friday at Don Quixote’s
HAROLD LOPEZ-NUSSA TRIO
Standout Latin jazz pianist from Cuba. Monday at Kuumbwa
Mark O’Connor has always been tricky to classify. A classically trained violinist, he’s also one of the finest roots fiddlers around, breezing easily through traditional bluegrass, swing, pop, folk, Americana and progressive bluegrass, which is rooted firmly in traditional techniques and styles, but expands from there into uncharted territory. As the Los Angeles Times put it, his music has “crossed so many boundaries that his style is purely personal.” Joining O’Connor are a few of his family members, as well as National Flatpick Guitar Champion Joe Smart.
INFO: 7 p.m. & 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 427-2227. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 19 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.
The Swingin’ Utters are one of the biggest punk bands to come out of Santa Cruz, and one thing fans have always loved about them is their eclectic approach. So fans may be surprised that lead singer Darius Koski released a folk-country solo record last year. But what they might not realize is that this kind of music was his first love. “I’ve always written a bunch of country tunes, from day one. I’ve been writing that type of material pretty much ever since I’ve been writing, before my band even,” Koski says. “It’s been a long time coming. I’ve just really procrastinated for so long. I was really happy to get this record out, finally.” The album, Sisu, was released on Fat Wreck Chords. Koski sent the demos to every label he could think of, but Fat Wreck owner Fat Mike was the only one to respond. In fact, even he didn’t like it at first, until Koski reworked some of the songs. The result is a great punky country record from an artist with roots in both genres. Now that Koski has finally released his debut solo album after all these years, he wants to keep going. “At this point I just need to book some studio time and it’ll get me going. I have a lot of ideas and songs all over the place, so it’s really hard to organize them. I really need to purge is how I look at it,” Koski says.
INFO: 8 p.m. Thursday, August 11. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 429-4135
“The 19th amendment, the right for women to vote.”
Mike Jones
Happy Valley
Gas Purveyor
“Improvements in the medical profession. The leaps and bounds we have seen in the last few years have been phenomenal, from cancer research to spinal injuries.”
Terry McCarthy
Santa Cruz
Safety Professional
“Desegregation.”
Alfred “Tree Hugger†Blan
Santa Cruz
Chef
“Obamacare. I wasn’t for it, then I was hit by a drunk driver. Fourteen broken bones, eight days in a coma, and here I am. I was walking nine months later.”
Seamus Wilson
Santa Cruz
Bartender
“Going to the moon is the only thing I can come up with.”
“Rehab is not a spin cycle, where you go in dirty and come out clean,” says director Tess Sweet, eyes unblinking and full of intent behind thick rectangular frames. “What ultimately does work is not what the counselors say to you, it’s your roommates in rehab that are going through the same thing.” That’s what Sweet hopes to bring to light with Cleaner Daze, the web dramedy she’s currently filming that’s based on real-life stories of addiction from young people in Santa Cruz. Set in a youth rehabilitation center, the show aims to capture the camaraderie, kinship, forgotten innocence and sometimes dark hilarity of rehab: “It’s not a PSA for helping kids get off drugs, it’s about opening and looking at the phenomenon of addiction,” she says. Sweet, a self-proclaimed “group-hug kind of director,” wants to remove the stigma and get people talking about why young people are driven to drugs and alcohol in the first place. Much like Orange is the New Black did with life in prison and Transparent has done with coming out as transgender, Cleaner Daze is about bringing the experience of recovery out from the shadows. “When I first started going to 12-step meetings, what helped me was the laughter,” says Sweet. “It’s like survivors of a shipwreck—we share a common bond. We all survived something, and let’s laugh about it because you can’t cry about it anymore.” The TV shows about addiction currently on the air put it all into a neat and pretty package, says Sweet, where celebrities battle for a few episodes and by the finale they’re clean. Real-life recovery is more complex than that, she says. SET THE SCENE Cleaner Daze director Tess Sweet (center) talks to local actors Abigail Reno (left) and Kemi O’Connor (right). PHOTO: COURTESY OF TESS SWEET She herself started using drugs in high school, realizing in adulthood that she had been self-medicating depression. “I was raped at gunpoint. I had some horrific things happen in my life to where I didn’t really care what happened,” she says. After one failed attempt at rehab and one successful one, Sweet kicked her addiction to heroin and cocaine when she was 29. She took a computer course at a community college (“My whole twenties were a blur. This is just when email was starting, and I was like, ‘What’s email? Where am I?’”), and worked her way up to the competitive MFA program in production and film directing at UCLA. After moving to Santa Cruz, Sweet sought to help young people who are in the same cycle she was once in, by volunteering at the Y.E.S. School, an adolescent sobriety and recovery program. For her, fostering empathy for those young people with Cleaner Daze is a logical next step. And who better to do that than actors who have real-life experience with addiction? Five cast members from Cleaner Daze’s young ensemble shared with GT their stories of rehab, recovery and the road to redemption. Abigail Reno, 27 It’s easy to see why Sweet says that Reno, who plays Jasmine on Cleaner Daze, has got “it”—a presence that lights up a scene and could lead to a real shot at making acting a career. Her penetrating light-green eyes under long lashes add a thoughtfulness to the careful way in which she describes how alcohol became her Band-Aid for social anxiety and depression as a teenager. After “enough shitty things happening,” she got clean on her own when she was 21. “It was the most miserable nine months in my life,” she says with a laugh. “I was so angry, hated everything, hated everyone. I was completely unable to function socially, and became really reclusive. One of my friends drove me to an AA meeting, and it wasn’t until I started talking to people in AA and hearing their stories that I made a 180.” Reno’s alcoholism was fed by her surroundings, she says; growing up in Santa Cruz and living with people in their 20s when she was still in her teens, it was considered normal —and so easy—to drink. It’s hard to tell a teenager to not partake in what “everyone is doing,” says Reno. “I think a big part of it is not talking to kids like they’re dumb, like they don’t understand. Being real with them and straightforward and on their level,” says Reno. “Teens these days aren’t sheltered. Treat them like adults, because at that age you want to be an adult.”
Olivia Orea, 19
Olivia Orea Orea is still chewing a bite of her half-eaten sandwich when she walks into the room, plopping down and putting both hands, ringed fingers splayed, on the table. Lighter and darker chestnut swivels of hair move with her as she laughs—and she laughs freely, even when the topic of conversation is her meth addiction. Orea was 13 or 14 when she started doing heroin with her neighbor in San Clemente. It was a short span of time from life as an honor-roll middle schooler to getting kicked out of four different high schools, getting arrested twice and living in a car, doing drugs. The worst part, says Orea, is that she started meth as a pre-teen to “get skinny.” “In middle school I started doing Adderall and Vyvanse, because that’s what my friends had. They were like ‘Hey it makes it so you don’t eat.’ A lot of girls who I’ve talked to who started meth just wanted to be skinny—you know how sad that is?” says Orea, picking at her cuticles, laughing a little. “As I got a little more into the drug world, I was like, ‘Oh, ADD meds are like a legal version of meth. What’s meth? That’s cool.’” Her bottom, as it’s called in the recovery world, came when she was babysitting her 2-year-old brother. “I was sitting in my room doing drugs and heard him call my name, and was like ‘Hold on, hold on,’” says Orea. “I was like ‘Wow, I’m a piece of shit. I’m doing drugs in the other room while you’re watching cartoons.’” Orea was one of the few people in the Santa Ana county-subsidized rehab who wanted to get clean. Because of that, she received special responsibilities, her own room, computer privileges. Even though that led to instances where other patients would ask her to hold drugs for them—and she did—she didn’t do drugs in rehab. Not that things were all that easy when she got out: her uncle almost immediately offered her meth, but it was still a few months before she relapsed with her “sober buddy” from Narcotics Anonymous. Orea has been clean since then. She finished high school with multiple honors in veterinary science and presented her research on ocean acidification at the Ocean Institute in San Clemente. “I really want to help the world, and I know that I can because of all that effort that I was putting into doing drugs. If I can apply that to now, if I work hard enough, I can make a difference,” she says. Looking back on how her rehab experience compares to what’s depicted on Cleaner Daze, Orea says she’s thankful to Sweet for reminding people that kids in rehab are still just kids. “Being in there, they want us to be these adults, but we are not only children, we are the most immature children. A lot of us have been in more adult situations than some adults, but there’s an element of innocence that needs to come to light with troubled youth.”
Nick McCollum, 21
Nick McCollum What bursts through the phone when “Nick, the white rapper” answers is that he’s a no-holds-barred kind of guy, with an almost-cornball charm that makes his resiliency approachable. It’s that attitude that has led the 21-year-old to choose a drug-free lifestyle, despite going to school in Chico. “Chico is a party town. The roommates I lived with for two years in the dorms—I lived with five roommates—I couldn’t find a passion in them other than partying. They were doing cocaine, drinking, smoking. I would occasionally drink and smoke, but I ended up leaving that house and living in a solo because the partying was too much,” says McCollum. “In all honesty, I haven’t talked to them since, because they were connecting with each other through the drugs and partying. Since I wasn’t a part of that, I didn’t connect with them in that way.” That’s the problem with college towns, says McCollum—binge-drinking is the way of life. McCollum watched a friend at school go from a promising athlete on the pro-lacrosse track to becoming dependent on Xanax and eventually doing heroin in McCollum’s bathroom. “I still go out and have a good time with people,” says McCollum. “But I don’t feel that you need all that stuff to have a good time. I’m an ambitious guy and I always want more from life. I feel like once you start with drugs you’re just chopping days off your life.” Nick McCollum, “The White Rapper,” is going to school in Chico, a “party town,” he calls it. But that doesn’t stop him from dedicating his energy to staying clean and building his craft. https://soundcloud.com/ightweightiterate/work-only-lightmix
Brandon Martin, 19
Brandon Martin For those who do make it through the utter agony of getting sober, though, there’s a huge community of young people waiting on the other side, says Brandon Martin.Martin’s turquoise top knot is visible at the GT office before the rest of him is, peeking out above the rows of cubicle dividers. He’s friendly, cautious, but when he talks about the annual convention for the California Young People of Alcoholics Anonymous, he lights up. “For a weekend, 30,000-plus young people storm into a hotel, wreak havoc and have a bunch of fun and sobriety,” he says. Martin started drinking alcohol and dabbling in weed and opiates during his sophomore year of high school. Raised in a single-parent household steeped in AA and NA philosophy, Martin says that it was precisely their taboo status that made substances so attractive. “I’m one of those people who, if you say ‘Don’t do this,’ I’m going to say ‘Fuck you, watch me,’” he says. Martin started out smoking weed at the train tracks next to his school and quickly ended up homeless. He was arrested for threatening to stab someone and was forcibly sent to Youth Services Tyler House in Watsonville for a four-month program—which he stayed in for eight months. “I threw a table at someone, I snuck a phone in and I snuck drugs in,” he sigh-laughs. “I wasn’t necessarily the best person in rehab.” For Martin, it was the support network after rehab which kept him clean, specifically the Y.E.S. School. “There is just a magic of that school that only someone who has gone there can describe,” he says. “When I first went there I was like ‘Feelings are gross, I don’t want to talk about them.’ But it helps, getting it out there, getting feedback on what you can do.” When he and Reno describe how easy it was to get drugs and alcohol growing up, they’re not exaggerating. In 1997 the Office of National Drug Control Policy designated Santa Cruz County, among others, a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. According to the 2014-2015 California Healthy Kids Survey report, 12 percent of seventh graders had tried alcohol, 9 percent had tried marijuana, and 4 percent had tried inhalants. Among juvenile probationers, 16 percent were involved with methamphetamine; and among juveniles who were facing non-drug charges in court, defense attorneys estimated that methamphetamine was a contributing factor in 24 percent, according to the 2013 Report on Collaboration of Substance Abuse Treatment and Intervention Services. Among children with open Child Welfare Service cases, 49 percent were cases in which parental methamphetamine use was alleged or confirmed. In other words, the hard part isn’t getting drugs, says Martin, it’s getting clean and staying clean. “Getting sober was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but continuing to stay sober has opened a lot of doors for me. I got my first job, I got my first car, I have been able to graduate high school,” says Martin. “I’ve had friends work their asses off and graduate university, but I’ve also seen friends pass away—one of my friends relapsed on a Monday and was dead by Wednesday. I get to stay sober through it.”
Kemi O’Connor, 27
Kemi O’Connor was adopted by a middle-class white family in upstate New York when she was 5 years old. She was the only black child out of nine in the family—and, by her account, the only one in town. “I was a really good kid, got good grades. I actually graduated valedictorian of my school. I was like yearbook club advisor, the star of every sports team I was on. I was student council vice president,” says O’Connor, “But my adoptive parents were just really emotionally and physically abusive. I was the one that always stuck up for my brothers and sisters; they just saw me as a problem that needed to go.” Kemi O’Connor They sent her to the closest city, where she lived in a group home and couldn’t make friends at the new school because there she was “too white.” Only the skaters and the stoners let her in. “I just wanted to be cool, so I smoked weed with them. I didn’t even like it back then.” After high school, she joined the Marine Corps. Her unit had a “really big problem with sexual assault,” and after her fiancée, who had broken up with her because of her drinking, was jailed, and O’Connor was dishonorably discharged for being gay (before the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” repeal), her house was burned down by a jealous ex. “It broke my heart so bad. I was just so broken from losing my career, my house, the whole sexual assault thing, losing the person I was in love with and just … I was just broken,” says O’Connor, trailing off. “I spiraled out of control.” Fast forward a few years: O’Connor settled in Santa Cruz, but she couldn’t afford rehab, and the county wouldn’t grant her Medi-Cal. She tried going to AA, even tried going to rehab back in Schenectady, New York, and tried the one free bed from Santa Cruz County. But she couldn’t stay clean (she did “everything” to stay numb, but ecstasy ended up as her drug of choice). The free center had six women to a room, which proved too overwhelming—and her PTSD was so severe that she couldn’t hold a job for longer than 30 days, let alone stay sober. She tried again last year when a close friend died from an overdose, but around the same time she met her birth mother, who has schizophrenia, and her birth father, who was dying. She lasted three months that time. Throughout the whole six years, O’Connor was homeless. “The drugs weren’t my problem, they were my solution to my problem,” says O’Connor. Since they booted her out as a teen, O’Connor’s adoptive parents have cut her off completely, and if any of her adoptive siblings are caught talking to her, they risk the same, emotionally and financially, she says. “They just don’t understand, even though they’re alcoholics themselves. They don’t see themselves as alcoholics because they’re really high-functioning middle class—so they just look down on me like ‘You have a problem and you’re going to ruin the rest of the family,’” says O’Connor. That stigma keeps addicts from seeking help, says O’Connor. “People always imagine an addict or an alcoholic as someone that’s carrying a brown paper bag laying on the street,” she says. “It’s hard for them to be compassionate because they don’t see it as an illness, they see it as ‘You’re a problem.’” In many cases, there’s a monied part to recovery as well—most people who stay sober do so because they have a support network on the other end, says O’Connor, which people from lower socioeconomic means are less likely to have. “It makes it 10 times harder when you don’t. I’m a huge advocate for having places to go for therapy, affordable therapy and affordable rehab, because to be honest that was the thing that turned everything around for me,” says O’Connor. “I had fought for years and was denied. I had tried to get sober at 21 and if I had had those things at 21, I honestly think I could’ve stayed sober back then.” Last year, O’Connor finally received medication and therapy from the county. She’s now nine months clean. Her character in Cleaner Daze, Squirt,has a backstory eerily similar—she finally goes to rehab because her girlfriend ODs and dies. At the time of casting callbacks, O’Connor’s then-girlfriend had OD’d and was still in the hospital after she had died and been resuscitated. Playing Squirt has brought up a lot for O’Connor: “I remembered showing up to rehab for my first time and wanting to change—wanting a better life, but not thinking that I was going to be able to do it,” she says. “I just want people to see the humanity of addicts and the struggle. It’s not just the decision of, like, I wake up and ‘l’m going to change now.’” Kemi O’Connor’s real-life experiences are eerily close to those of her character on Cleaner Daze. Now nine months clean, O’Connor channels her energy into creating poetry, like her “Goodbye Letter to Drugs” which she reads for the Loud & Clean Youtube Channel.
LEARN MORE
Cleaner Daze is a web dramedy about what it’s like to be a young person in rehab fighting to get clean, get a feel for director Tess Sweet’s vision for the project here: http://www.cleanerdaze.com/the-pitch.html Check out more information about how Cleaner Daze will integrate Virtual Reality technology into their webisodes in the online version of this article (Goodtimes.sc) and keep an eye out for their Seed & Spark campaign soon available on their website: cleanerdaze.com/donate.html. Cleaner Daze will release updates on the pilot episode this fall on their Facebook page: facebook.com/CleanerDazeSeries.
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne way that the show will be able to inspire empathy, is through Virtual Reality 360 (VR), says Sweet’s partner and co-writer Dan Gambelin and producer Cheryl Isaacson of Lincoln St. Studios. It’s a medium that they’re dying to build up with supporters to secure an ongoing series (“Especially in Silicon Valley—hello, hello, hello” ) and one that until now, hasn’t really been used in narrative works. In Cleaner Daze the VR option will pop up during the episode as a link where the viewer can leave the episode and dive into the realistic 360-degree view of a scene which they can move themselves to decide what to look at, maybe someone stealing Sharpies during an art-therapy round table while the counselor is talking. “What you mostly see with VR right now is outdoor sports, extreme things, so you can feel like you’re sky diving or in the the barrel of a wave, which is awesome,” says Gambelin, pulling out a small, black cylinder that looks more like the Men in Black neuralizer than a camera. “We really feel like we’ve cracked the code for narrative VR.” Isaacson says that the potential for building a connection between viewer and character goes deeper than snazzy new technology. “If you’re a person that’s struggling you can literally sit in a group: is there the potential for the virtual experience of sitting in recovery to have an impact outside of that experience? I think there is,” says Isaacson. “Sometimes you have to see it to be it.”
As officer-involved shootings routinely make headlines, protesters around the country have responded by shutting down highways, clogging city streets and filling up Twitter feeds with frustrated hashtags. It was in this atmosphere that Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart told a community meeting, “In my 27 years in law enforcement, I have never seen this level of public concern about police integrity.” That same afternoon seven months ago, Hart announced efforts to partner more closely with groups and individuals outside the department. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has since become the first agency in California to implement all 79 of President Barack Obama’s 21st Century Policing recommendations. Hart also assigned two 20-person task forces—one internal team and another of community members—to identify the most effective ways for the sheriff’s department to increase trust and transparency. The six-month process wrapped up in June, and Deputy Chief Craig Wilson says the findings all boil down to a “culture change.” The sheriff’s department report will be released at an event on Wednesday, Aug. 17 at the sheriff’s office community room on Soquel Drive. It’s split into six pillars, like “Building Trust and Legitimacy,” “Technology and Social Media,” and “Officer Wellness and Safety.” A list of 18 proposed changes—some of which are already in effect—includes taking in more performance feedback, creating a use-of-force review panel and having deputies interact with young people in parks to create a safe and comfortable space. It also includes the decision to introduce an exciting, but sometimes controversial new technology: body cameras. The technology has been hailed by some for the transparency it offers, and castigated by others for potential privacy issues. Before making their decision, sheriff officials met with the district attorney and public defender, as well as members of both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to ensure they are doing “what’s best for the community,” Wilson says. National ACLU members began questioning the pros and cons of body cameras two years ago after Obama’s announcements in support of body cameras, which the president followed with various funding proposals. Sure, the technology could better shine a light on police brutality, but ACLU leaders worried that cameras could end up as just another tool for government surveillance. The civil rights organization has decided in 2016 that the benefits outweigh the risks. “Primarily, body cameras should be used as tools for accountability, transparency, and building trust in communities, which we think is clearly not there,” says Tessa D’Arcangelew, a Northern California ACLU spokesperson. Generally speaking, cameras, which sheriff deputies expect to start wearing in January, could provide more clarity in use-of-force situations, like shootings. “They’re going to give the community more of a reference point,” says Deputy Sheriff Daniel Cruz, who served on the sheriff’s task force. “Instead of a ‘he/she said, I said’ situation, there’s going to be a capturing of the moment.” So far this year, there have been 564 documented instances of people being killed by police in the U.S.; in 151 of those, the deceased was unarmed, according to a Washington Post database. Since 2010, the sheriff’s department has had two fatal officer-involved shootings, the latest being last year, when a mentally ill high schooler reportedly walked out of his house pointing a rifle at a deputy. The body cameras won’t record constantly. There are specific instances when officers will turn them on, including whenever deputies anticipate they’ll have to use force during an arrest, when they encounter resistance or when they’re conducting a search. “We’ve struck a good balance between individual privacy and the need to record events of high public interest,” says Wilson. He adds that body cameras will increase public confidence and may deter “poor behavior” by people they encounter. In San Diego, for example, officers saw a 40.5 percent decrease in complaints and a 46.5 percent decrease in use of force after adopting body cameras, according to a 2015 department report. Body cameras are “the way of the future for police departments,” says Watsonville Police Sergeant Tony Magdayao. Both Watsonville and Scotts Valley police plan to implement body cameras within the next two years. Capitola police have had body cameras for a year now, and, according to Lt. Steve Walpole, it’s been “absolutely positive.” Santa Cruz Police Community Relations Specialist Joyce Blaschke says Santa Cruz officers are also “considering” body cameras. Of course, body cameras haven’t increased public confidence everywhere. In Fresno, Californians were outraged to see police-released body camera footage last month of an unarmed 19-year-old being shot multiple times in the back. In Chicago, a police officer was not recording with his body camera when he shot and killed an 18-year-old, who was unarmed—just one of many cases nationwide in which an officer used force on someone with their camera turned off. (Chicago police have stripped the involved officers of their police authority pending an investigation and, more recently, released a different officer’s body camera footage, which shows at least two officers opening fire.) Also, an audio-free video, filmed from someone’s chest, often provides an imperfect picture of what actually happened. At this point, the ACLU’s biggest concern is with the draft policy, which should get a final approval from the sheriff’s office in January. Deputies can review their footage, according to the policy, prior to making an official statement. Some cities, like San Francisco and Richmond, don’t allow that, and D’Arcangelew worries it will only let officers tailor their accounts to whatever evidence is, or isn’t, available. “It’s not the best way to get at the truth of what happened,” said D’Arcangelew. “Body cameras offer one truth of what happened. What happened in the officer’s mind is another view.” Wilson argues that they have encouraged their deputies to review evidence while completing reports “for the purpose of being accurate.” About half the agencies with body-worn cameras allow their officers to view data in preparation of completing reports, he says. Peter Gelblum, chair of the Santa Cruz County ACLU chapter, met with Wilson and Hart about implementing body cameras. “It’s going to add a lot of trust and accountability,” says the Boulder Creek resident who calls the technology an “excellent development.” In late June, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors authorized purchasing the cameras, which come out to $100,000. The sheriff’s department is in price negotiations with VIEVU, a body camera company, after vetting half a dozen suppliers. They currently have a dozen deputies testing the cameras in compliance with California Department of Justice guidelines. Rico Baker, a member of the citizen’s task force and the Veterans for Peace Santa Cruz Chapter, says body cameras are “dicey and complex,” depending on how they’re used, yet he adds that the development will be a positive one if they’re used as promised. “There’s an inherent question,” Baker says, “about the sheriff being someone who takes care of people or someone who just rules over people. Sheriff Hart has shown that he wants to help people and that he doesn’t want to be in that mode of just dealing out punishment.”
Santa Cruz County Sheriff officials will present the “Final Report to the Public: 21st Century Policing Task Force” at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 17, in the sheriff’s office community room at 5200 Soquel Drive, Soquel.
It’s hard for the old-guard left in Santa Cruz and local students to agree on many things, but the local bus agency certainly brought them together this year. A 30 percent cut in bus service infuriated the community when information on how severe the changes would be became public, and the agency began to seek input on vital routes. In their outreach effort, METRO leaders like Barrow Emerson, the agency’s planning and development manager, provided an opportunity for other partners to step forward in the search for new funding sources. Two local colleges eventually did, chipping in more than a combined $1 million. The METRO board has since approved a far-less-than-expected 10 percent service cut—still nothing to celebrate—which goes into effect Thursday, Sept. 8. “This was the most dramatic thing I’ve ever been involved in,” says Emerson, who has worked for 14 agencies across the country during his 38 nomadic years in the transportation field. “Thirty percent was going to be as bad as you would ever have seen at a public transit agency. Ten percent is bad, but it does happen at times at bus companies, because you deal with the ebbs and flows of economies and external funding sources.” Emerson, a self-described “geography geek” sporting a red-white-and-blue Grateful Dead tie, says he plans to finish his career in Santa Cruz over the coming years and retire here. The new funding comes from a few different places. Some dollars will come from Cabrillo College, which is kicking in $944,000 annually to preserve routes like 91X that are crucial to the college, and allow students to take the bus by flashing their student IDs, just as UCSC students do. UCSC, meanwhile, has agreed to put an extra $600,000 a year toward METRO, which was recently looking to cut as much as $6.5 million from its budget. Emerson and Alex Clifford, the METRO agency’s CEO, also scoured budgets to eliminate inefficiencies, cutting vacant positions and incentivizing early retirement. Lastly, a countywide transportation sales tax measure hits ballots in November that would provide an extra $2.75 million dollars in transportation funding if approved by a two-thirds majority. Still, some of the bus supporters aren’t ready to cheerlead the METRO’s direction. “Little by little, they are reducing services,” says activist Ernestina Saldaña, a member of the Santa Cruz Bus Riders Association. “Last year it was the services of ParaCruz. This year it was the services to some areas. And they are talking already about increasing the fare for next year. So, this problem is not solved.” Saldaña is at the downtown farmers market on a hot Wednesday afternoon, a pale blue “Bernie 2016” sticker plastered to the back of her electric wheelchair. She’s handing out fliers for Santa Cruz City Council candidate Drew Glover, partly because he’s promised a “fully funded” METRO. Saldaña, like Glover, opposes November’s comprehensive transportation measure because she wants to see a more complete bus system, one with expanded service and affordable fares for low-income people. Glover’s plan—and Saldaña’s too—is to create a different measure in a few years that gives no money to the Highway 1 improvements, and prioritizes buses instead. It’s a gamble that would hurt local transportation, at least in the short term, because it’s hard to say when, or even if, county leaders and voters would support such a measure. But Saldaña wants METRO to make a serious overhaul of its system and update its schedules—something it hasn’t done since 1996—making it easier for people to get to places on time and meet connections. “Look around you—how much the city has grown, how much the county has grown. And we’re still using the schedules that were designed for 20 years ago,” she says. “Of course, we need to update that. You get on the 71 thinking it’s going to take you one hour to come to Santa Cruz? In reality it’s one hour and a half, one hour and 45 minutes.” Emerson says that should the agency come across more money, its biggest goal would be to improve service—extending hours of operation and trip frequency. Ideally, that would make it possible for someone working late at a service job to get back home to South County, for instance, he says, an issue Saldaña also worries about. That network, Emerson adds, also makes it more enticing for white-collar workers to ditch their cars and get around on public transit. “Ultimately, it’s just that the person says, ‘The bus system in this county is good enough. I can make all my trips—or the majority, or any amount of my trips—on the bus,’” Emerson says. Transportation experts have other visions farther down the road, as well. METRO just landed a grant, along with Monterey-Salinas Transit, to study bus-on-shoulder transit, which could move forward an idea allowing buses to drive on the shoulder of Highway 1. Other struggles may loom ahead. METRO’s five-year plan predicts a deficit three years from now. Emerson says the agency should be able to weather that through smarter marketing—like more advertising inside and outside of buses and the retail spaces for lease at the bus stations. “We’ll keep looking at how we run the service—nipping and tucking, not this massive thing that we just did,” Clifford says. When looking at November’s ballot measure, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the success or failure of the measure means for the bus agency, which just won two competitive grants to buy new electric buses. According to the METRO board’s minutes, leaders would lay off four drivers if the measure fails in November, meaning route cuts. If it passes, there will be extra money—more than enough to erase the deficit three years from now. The board has not yet signaled how much of that cash would go to operational costs (like restoring service), capital costs (like replacing its aging fleet) or supporting reserves, which are now thinner after the board depleted them to maintain service, while revenues declined through the Great Recession. “This board has always had a high degree of sensitivity toward retaining business on the street,” says Clifford, who’s been with the agency for two years. “That’s the business we’re in. And nobody knew in 2008 that this was going to be the Great Recession.”
For more information, including most recent schedules, visit scmtd.com.
A fire raging in Big Sur prompted the nearby Henry Miller Library to cancel their scheduled rock show Saturday. After weeks of devastation in the Central Coast forest, the development felt like an additional blow to fans of the Georgia-based Futurebirds—at least until promoters decided to improvise. “At that last minute, we decided, because of the cancellation, why don’t we make it a benefit for the fire?” says organizer Stevee Stubblefield. “And thankfully, the Kuumbwa’s open that night.” And so, Stubblefield and members of the Do-It-Ourselves crowd, which puts on a festival by the same name each spring, decided to host a benefit for the Soberanes Fire on Saturday, Aug. 13. The fire, which is within five miles of the library, has burned more than 67,000 acres, and is now 50 percent contained, according to CalFire. It has resulted in one death and three injuries, claimed 57 homes and 11 outbuildings, and 410 more structures are currently threatened. Sky Country, a Big Sur band, and Kelly Koval, a Santa Cruz musician, will open the Kuumbwa show. Stubblefield hopes to have artists in the Kuumbwa courtyard to create a vibrant community atmosphere.
Futurebirds play Kuumbwa Jazz at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 13. Tickets are $15.
When people get together to co-write a song in country music, they’re usually aiming to come up with a hit. Singer-songwriter Rhett Miller recently started co-writing, but he takes a different approach. The frontman for pioneering alt-country band Old 97’s, Miller co-writes with friends, without undue concern for the outcome. “The co-writing where you’re put together with strangers and the idea is to write a song with commercial appeal has never worked out that well for me,” he says. “Any time you’re calculating how you’re going to make a song more saleable, it kills the beauty and the mystery of songwriting.” Miller prefers to keep the process organic. “We get together and we want to make something that we like,” he says. “If it winds up being successful, as far as something that other people might like—and, God forbid, it makes money—then that’s great.” The sentiment is one that fans of Miller won’t be surprised to hear. A favorite of the No Depression and KPIG crowds, Miller has never had great commercial success as a bandleader or solo artist. He seems to be OK with that, though, explaining that crafting songs to make a record label happy is a quick route to failure. “There’s a sense of desperation that clings to those songs,” he says, “when you’re trying that hard.” For the last 20-plus years, Miller has been crafting songs that speak to him and his collaborators. The result is a catalog of great music and a devoted fan base that appreciates the to-thine-own-self-be-true ethos that runs through his music. When Old 97’s hit the Dallas bar scene in the early ’90s, the band carved a unique niche for itself as a roots-leaning, country-inspired band of rock ’n’ rollers with a touch of punk rock attitude. At the time, this particular hybrid was brand new. But Miller and Old 97’s co-founder and bassist Murry Hammond weren’t trying to break new musical ground. During the grunge era, the two tried to craft the kind of songs they thought would make them successful, but without much luck. They were about to give up on the dream—Miller figured he’d go back to school—when they decided to let go of expectation and just make music they loved. What Miller and company didn’t know was that, along with Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Son Volt and the Drive-by Truckers, they were popularizing what would be dubbed alt-country. Since that time, the band has been a torchbearer for unfiltered Americana that pays tribute to roots traditions, while keeping things raw and fresh enough to pull in new generations of rock fans. When Miller embarked on a solo career in the early 2000s, some Old 97’s fans expressed concern that he was moving away from the band. The opposite proved to be true. Over the years, Old 97’s has released a stream of critically acclaimed (if not commercially successful) records, like 1997’s fan favorite Too Far to Care, and, most recently, 2014’s Most Messed Up. In that time, Miller has released six solo albums, including last year’s The Traveler. For Miller, solo albums are simply a means of sharing the songs the Old 97’s members don’t want. He describes his bandmates as “very opinionated and strong-willed,” and he’s sometimes surprised at the songs they reject. Solo albums let him get those tunes out into the world. For his upcoming solo tour, Miller plans to perform plenty of Old 97’s material. He also has a few songs picked out especially for Santa Cruz, where two of his ex-girlfriends went to school and, apparently, inspired some tunes. Now a family man with a wife and kids at home in New York’s Hudson Valley, Miller says that his songs still grow out of the same emotions as they did when he started. “There’s almost a straight line I can trace from the first song I wrote at 13 to songs I wrote this year,” he says. “It’s definitely like I’m trying to work through the issues with which I struggle the most, which have always been issues of abandonment, feeling alone and fearful, feeling misunderstood. It’s funny to me how much is always the same song.”
Rhett Miller will perform at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 11 in the Catalyst Atrium, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 423-1338.
In 2015, the Museum of Art & History (MAH) hosted two exhibits simultaneously: Dear Jerry, centered around the Grateful Dead, and Princes of Surf, an exhibition about the Hawaiian princes who brought surfing to Santa Cruz. MAH Executive Director Nina Simon thought both exhibits were relevant to the Santa Cruz community, but she was “absolutely blown away” by the community’s powerful, emotional reaction to Princes of Surf. It was, she says, “qualitatively different” than the response to Dear Jerry. That dichotomy set Simon on a quest to find out what makes one project more relevant than another. The result is her new book, The Art of Relevance. An exploration of how to connect people in meaningful ways, the book contains stories of more than 50 organizations and projects, including several from Santa Cruz County. Simon spoke to GT about the challenge of becoming—and remaining—relevant. I’ve never given the word ‘relevance’ as much thought as I have since reading your book. Tell me about the importance of that word to you. NINA SIMON: I felt exactly the same way you did when I started. I give talks at conferences in the arts, but also libraries and national parks. I started hearing that word come up again and again. I thought it was fascinating that, on the one hand, it’s amazing that these entities want to be more meaningfully engaged with their communities, and, on the other hand, it’s a little bizarre that we were hanging our hats on a term that is pretty ill-defined. The book, while geared toward community builders and leaders of organizations, has insights for people in any field. Who’s your intended audience? I think of it as people who have a mission in mind. The largest group is people who work in nonprofits—not necessarily arts and culture nonprofits, but people who are doing mission-driven work, who have a community service component of what they do. That includes churches and businesses. It’s pretty open in that way.
“There are totally legitimate reasons that some people go to rock concerts and some people go to the opera, some people go to tattoo parlors and some people go to CrossFit.” — Nina Simon
You write about keeping the people you want to serve in mind when dealing with pushback from those who don’t want things to change. How has that vision helped you and your team transform the MAH? It was absolutely necessary. The board that hired me said, “We want this to be a thriving community center, and we want you to execute that vision.” We knew that to do that, we needed more people to value the MAH, and we needed people from different generations, ethnicities, backgrounds, interests, to find a place for themselves here. Those people were not necessarily already inside the door, so we had to go out to where they were and say, “What do you value, and how can we change what happens here in a way that’s going to make this place more welcoming to you?” Making an organization such as yours relevant to underserved communities can be an even greater challenge. You offer numerous tips on inviting people in, but if you had to distill it down, what would the key takeaway be? First, listen and honestly believe it when people say that your offering is not relevant to them. I think sometimes we theorize that it’s just because we’re just not open at the right time, or it’s the price. But there are totally legitimate reasons that some people go to rock concerts and some people go to the opera, some people go to tattoo parlors and some people go to CrossFit. We are making choices all the time about what’s relevant to us.Once you embrace that reality, the most important thing to do is to say, ‘Here’s the community I’m interested in engaging, let me go be a guest in their community. Let me go to their events, to their spaces, to their businesses’—not with something to offer, not with something to pitch or to sell, but ready to learn what they value, what they’re passionate about, what they’re great at.If an institution can value, and really understand, how people make meaningful connections … then you can say, I’m going to build on what that person values, I’m going to invite them in for their reasons—not mine—and I’m going to try and form a meaningful connection based on mutual respect for our respective values and expectations.
Nina Simon will read from and discuss her new book ‘The Art of Relevance’ at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 11 at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. Free.
