Unleashed with a fury in these Trump times, the far right likes to position itself as the new counterculture despite relying more on meme magic than music. Through folksy voices like Woody Guthrie, Malvina Reynolds and Buffy Sainte-Marie, protest songs have solidly sided with the left for decades. Josh Hanson of Yellow Red Sparks, one […]
Folk
John Kraus and the Goers’ Sea Shanties are Nautical by Nature
For all of the rockers, rappers, and artists in between who swear they “live” the lifestyle represented in their music, few can make that claim as accurately as John Kraus. A lot of the people who first hear Kraus and his backing band, the Goers, probably aren’t even too familiar with the stories behind the […]
Chris Cruz’s Political Song About Baseball Hits Home at Local Bar Near You
We’re never really prepared to hear a new song that makes our lives feel a lot easier, or at least a little less complex. Sometimes it’s a tune we hear on the radio, or maybe it’s an acoustic jam being strummed at the back of your local bar that sounds like goofy little ditty about […]
The White Buffalo Returns Home to Tug Heartstrings
Free outdoor concerts tend to bring out the part of us that never wants to let the summer go—what summer meant before we spent most of it cooped up indoors at work. However, I began to rethink the reason for the healthy early crowd forming last night, early evening. In our short walk from the […]
Donavon Frankenreiter Brings The Sound of the Beach to OC Parks Summer Concert Series
Donavon Frankenreiter finds importance in giving back to the places he’s called home. Last month, the Mission Viejo-bred solo singer/songwriter helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a benefit concert for the island of Kauai, where he’s lived for the past 11 years. Headlined by popular acoustic surf rock musician Jack Johnson, the show […]
Local Musicians Come Together for Bob Fest to Support OC’s Senior Super Fan
On most nights, it’s easy to find the nearly-80-year-old man Bob Rodman with his long white goatee jamming to some local bands and snapping photos at the Wayfarer in Costa Mesa. And while the man may look like a band member’s grandfather or even great-grandfather, he’s just simply a dedicated music lover at heart. Still, […]
The Spirit of Long Beach Folk Revival Finds Rebirth at the Red Leprechaun
Walking around the 2017 Long Beach Folk Revival Festival was a blissful, if slightly surreal, experience. The craft boutiques that had long since been corporatized at other festivals felt once again local, the stages had an openness to them, and the blankets and folding chairs that dominated Rainbow Lagoon Park indicated a small festival where […]
Coachella 2018 Comes Correct With the Rock, Despite What the Haters Say
Dissonant groans among music fans shriek toward a fever pitch annually, in the earliest days of the year grâce à the unveiling of Coachella’s polarizing line up. Lately though, the complaints have taken on somewhat of a theme; the festivals distance from the “Rock ’N Roll” acts that brought the desert event to prominence from […]
Local Record Review: 'Four Steps in Corsets' by Yellow Red Sparks
Yellow Red Sparks Four Steps in Corsets ORG Musicwww.yellowredsparks.com The pure poetry of singer-songwriter Josh Hanson is accentuated by tightly interwoven arrangements on Four Steps in Corsets, the debut EP from OC's premiere indie folk-rockers Yellow Red Sparks. Released by ORG Music, the reflective, melancholic tone of heartache throughout the album makes for a compelling […]
James Felice of the Felice Brothers: I Drive An Ambulance And Comparisons To Bob Dylan Are Uninsightful
Somewhere on the road between 2009's Yonder is the Clock and Celebration, Florida released this spring, the Felice Brothers took a turn from the browned dusty road they've traveled since 2005 and walked toward the flashing lights of an electric big city. Their new album has keyboards very much in the foreground, as opposed to […]
