Bill Lewis, Owner of Muddy Waters Cafe, Brings Eclectic Live Music to Santa Barbara
Megan Sullivan
Last year I meant to sit down with Bill Lewis -- the owner of Santa Barbara's Muddy Waters Café and music venue -- and talk about music. Bill and I never had the conversation I'd hoped for before I moved north to San Francisco (Bill called me a sell-out when I told him I was leaving), but luckily, Dave Mount of Awesome Stuff That Rules was fortunate enough talk candidly with Bill as I would have liked to. Dave moved to Santa Barbara from Boston in September 2008, and he started his blog Awesome Stuff That Rules to familiarize himself with the Santa Barbara music scene. It's not quite as accessible as Boston's, he learned, but he's been excited to find some great music in unexpected places.
Meghan Lehman’s Story: Catching Up With Our First One Night Music Artist
Ian Andersen
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Nearly a year ago, on February 1st 2009, we launched our very first session at One Night Music, showcasing the lovely Meghan Lehman, an incredibly talented singer-songwriter based out of our original home base of Santa Barbara, CA. The low lighting, small space, and uncertainty of what we were doing created a fun, intimate session and set the stage for what One Night Music would become in 2009.
I decided to catch up with Meghan Lehman to see where her music has taken her since recording with One Night Music. Turns out she released her first album, A Stranger Here (available on iTunes, CD Baby, and Rhapsody), in August 2009. On the album you will find four of the six songs that Meghan recorded for her One Night Music session and a number of new standouts that make this album one that shouldn't be passed up. The album is unforgiving in its intimacy and rawness. It's an unrelenting, sometimes painful journey through Meghan's own life and travels, full of gorgeous vocals and storytelling. The standouts on this album are "A Stranger Here", "Pearl", "More Than Me", and "Mary".
Love at Muddy Waters: Rey Villalobos and Blind Pilot
Megan Sullivan
Scroll through the full post to see 4 videos from Blind Pilot
A dear friend of mine back in Santa Barbara recently wrote an essay on love and was kind enough to share it with me. It was poignant, drifty, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever read. Loving your friends, loving your lover, everything, everyone — people you'd never have and the ones you probably could. I laughed so hard, I cried, and I realized: I am just like Candice. I am falling in love just about all the time.
Blind Pilot - Things I Cannot Recall (Download the MP3 audio from this video)
In August, I fell in love twice in the same night. I came solo to Muddy Waters Café in downtown Santa Barbara with a field mic and a pocket camcorder to record Rey Villalobos (formerly of The Coral Sea) for One Night Music. Oh Rey, number one: I can't say I wasn't expecting it. I’d met Rey a few nights earlier, and he was as charming as they come. We decided I’d come to the Blind Pilot show (Rey was opening) and record his set, but — lighting not so good — we switched gears, set up at the end of the night in Muddy Waters’ storage closet for the most intimate One Night Music recording session I’d experienced yet.
Alexandra Adams Brings Kindermusik to Santa Barbara with Yellowbird Music
Megan Sullivan
Alexandra Adams sings "Small Town"
If you peek into Yellowbird Music while passing its large-windowed storefront on De La Vina Street in Santa Barbara, CA, you'll find something cute enough to disrupt your adult thoughts and make you smile, or laugh, or at the very least remind you that life's not so serious: here, eight toddlers are discovering dance, jerking streamers up and down and side to side; babies with broad smiles are bouncing on parents' laps or being paraded ‘round the room on scooter-boards; and excited preschoolers are leaping down a giant inflatable "log" or learning to perform musical "solos" for their friends on a pretend stage with tiny, squeaky violins.
Alexandra Adams sings "The Samba"
Yellowbird Music is a musical space designed for children, but it's also a place where adults can rediscover the magic of childhood. The single-room studio looks just like any kid-friendly place should. Its walls are canary yellow with stenciled ladybugs creeping around mirrors and cabinets. A party of painted birds -- an owl here, a blue jay there, seagulls, pelicans, parrots and acorn woodpeckers -- borders the top edge of the studio walls. Hidden in all those cabinets -- the ones which lend a crisp order to a room that would otherwise overflow with goodies -- are accordions, harmonicas, hand drums, puppets, recorders, scarves, pinwheels, bubbles, ropes, art supplies, story books, bells and shakers, xylophones and glockenspiels, and tons of non-Western percussion instruments gathered from owner Alexandra Adams' world travels. When you're two years old, this place is paradise.
Santa Barbara Spring Living Room Concert: Justin Ratowsky and Drew Bruchs (2 videos)
Ryan Andersen
My friend Scott Bull throws legendary house parties in Santa Barbara. It's not the drinks that elevate these parties to the status of unforgettable, nor is it the inevitable late night dance parties - these are in fact simply ornaments on the night. What makes these parties so great is that, without fail, they always bring together good friendly Santa Barbara locals. These are the locals that define Santa Barbara as an easy-going, laidback community of young professionals that carve a niche for themselves between sunny days at the beach and rigorous hikes in the mountainous backcountry.
Santa Barbara Open Mic Documentary
Jenny David
Editor's Note: One Night Music will never forget its roots. We started in Santa Barbara and we love the artistic community and culture that the locals in Santa Barbara have created. This is the first in a series of blogs about the Santa Barbara music and poetry scene through the eyes of Free Culture Arts.
Santa Barbara Open Mic is a space for our local musicians, poets, spoken word artists, and writers to freely express themselves in a safe and positive environment. When I first moved to Santa Barbara in the winter of 2008 I soon experienced the need for a "gathering spot" of local talent and a regular space for free expression. Through this vision and some hard work the open mic was started in October of 2008. With the overwhelming response from the community, in only three months we grew from a monthly to weekly event. It was clear that the Santa Barbara music community could utilize and appreciate a consistent opportunity to display their work.
Ode to a Country Band: Or, Darn It, Holdfast Rifle Company!
Megan Sullivan
The Holdfast Rifle Company is slowly but surely winning over the hearts of Santa Barbara musicophiles, and rightly so. But who knew country music could be this cool?
Years ago, I sure didn't. I grew up in the foothills of Northern California, where each town has a smaller and more hillbilly neighboring town to make fun of. Growing up, you could always be happy that you didn't have to live there; as such I carefully avoided all things country, from music to cowboy boots to camping, wary of being identified with anything remotely hick-ish. As a teenager, I took great interest in folk music, and later even alt-country, but I always steered clear of country western.
This, then, is the story of my evolution. This is the story of me falling hard in love with someone from one of those littler hick towns.
Live Electronic Laptop Music from Ted Nava of So Simple Records
Ryan Andersen
Back in February we invited folks from the So Simple Records crew to peform some live electronic music for One Night Music. Ted Nava, WMX, Harro, and Hate Parade made their way to the One Night Music studio in downtown Santa Barbara joined by a group of supporters and fans. That night we had nearly 20 people packed into the tiny bedroom studio for an intimate session of music that is normally played at lively parties. The contrast between the energetic music and the laid back environment made for a unique experience.
My previous blog post featured WMX from this same night playing 8-bit music on his Game Boy. The video below features Ted Nava performing a nearly 20 minute long song on his laptop. The software he's using is Ableton Live.
Audio Track of this Song (Click to play, right click and "save as" to download)
Live Electronic 8-Bit Game Boy Music: So Simple Records’ WMX from Isla Vista, Santa Barbara
Ryan Andersen
So Simple Records is a collective of electronic music artists based out of Isla Vista, California - a bi-polar sleepy beach-side town by day, crazy college party town by night. Many of the members of So Simple Records are students at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) who spend many-a-night performing live electronic music to eager college co-eds.
Download the audio of this song (Right click and choose "save link as...")
Read the full blog to see all 7 videos and download all the audio tracks.
Lucky Dragons at College of Creative Studies (UCSB)
Elia Vargas
Update: Watch the January 2010 Lucky Dragons session with One Night Music
Lucky Dragons is Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara. Luke likes toys. A step aside from his shows (he played at Biko Garage on November 12, 2008), he visited UCSB to give a workshop in the class "Image and Sound" in the College of Creative Studies on April 16th, 2009. Lucky Dragons makes participatory electronic shaman beats. Dancy sometimes? - yes, very much so. A small group of people gathered around an odd assortment of rocks, dried bean pods, drift wood, wires, circuit distributors, a PA and a projector and silently Luke began shaking things, adjusting knobs and distributing objects to members of the circle. Soon the projector was flickering odd images of textured goop and flowers while rocks were reverberating soundscape modulated by the distance from the circuit systems. A truly sonic space of cooperative random participation of touching, stoning, and shaking had evolved.
Following the performance/collaboration there was a Q & A, and discussion, consisting of Inuit Throat singing YouTube videos and 90s participatory artists. Luke described the construction of his music making system, both physical and digital elements. He uses Max MSP to define the environment and tune the sound input from the external concoction of stuffs and music objects. Lucky Dragons is not an empty spectacle either. The long time evolution of the project is rooted in a desire to create interactive, social, and cooperative art that is nothing short of fun. It is about aesthetics, as the way in which things should or ought to be, versus politics, as the way in which things are. It is cultural collaboration, it is ritual, it is sonic and breaks down artist-audience barriers of participation and performance, and did I mention that it is fun?
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