Tag archives: songwriter
On January 9, 2018, Ken Grand went through the kind of hell most of us could never even imagine. That was the night that a torrential downpour resulted in the infamous Montecito mudslides and debris flow that killed 23 people. Among the casualties was Grand’s wife, Rebecca Riskin, the popular professional ballerina turned realtor whose […]
Venues and artists throughout the world are struggling with how to thrive or even survive during the extended pandemic. For Marjorie Luke board president Rod Lathim, joining the zeitgeist of endless Zoom performances proved completely unpalatable. Instead, the Luke – which only a year or so ago started producing its own events rather than simply […]
Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall was all set to make her Santa Barbara debut at the Lobero Theatre on January 8, back when COVID-19 barely had a name, just the novel coronavirus that seemed to be contained in China. Then illness forced the show to be postponed and rescheduled for October. But the coronavirus crisis has […]
From performing as a solo artist on the Ojai-Ventura music scene, to opening for Ronnie Spector in Los Angeles and the English Beat in Ojai, to gigs with her band on the main stage at the NAMM show and L.A., one thing sings out clearly: Jade Hendrix is a phenomenal female artist. The thirty-something singer-songwriter […]
What if they threw a concert and nobody came? That’s a situation famed Santa Barbara singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins will face when he performs at the venerable Lobero Theatre on Sunday, June 28 – with absolutely no one in the audience. Of course, the only reason the show wouldn’t fill the historic theater’s 600 seats is […]
It was exactly one week since George Floyd died in custody of the Minneapolis Police when Glen Phillips and I talked earlier this week over the phone. The issue of institutional racism and police brutality was weighing heavily on his mind, and would show up six hours later in that Monday night’s solo Zoom show, […]
Veteran local singer-songwriter and educator Nicola Gordon has been hosting showcases at MichaelKate Interiors for years. But with the showroom shuttered during the pandemic, the music has migrated over to Zoom. The third showcase in her now twice-a-month series takes place on April 29, during the usual on-site date of the last Wednesday of the […]
Among the other area artists who are performing frequently via Facebook Live, Instagram or Zoom are the great Glen Phillips, the frontman for Santa Barbara-born pop band Toad the Wet Sprocket and a significant solo singer-songwriter. Phillips, who lived for more than two decades in Montecito, has been playing live acoustic living room sessions several […]
San Marcos High sophomore and Santa Barbara Teen Star Sofia Schuster really is a golden girl! The 16-year-old singer traveled down to Los Angeles to an audition for the latest series of the popular ABC TV series American Idol in front of local warbler Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, and received the golden […]
Santa Barbara singer-songwriter Noell Grace’s evenings of original chants and simple songs have returned to her hearth and home for monthly gatherings. The events were originally private satsangs that morphed into Spirit Sings held at her home before expanding into fully public events at Yoga Soup a few years back. The gatherings came to a […]
Fifteen-year veteran singer-songwriter Joshua Radin, who counts more than 1,500 placements of his music on TV shows, movies, commercials and other soundtracks dating back to his first song, comes to the Lobero Theatre on February 22 for a special acoustic show with friends Ben Kweller and William Fitzsimmons. We checked in over the phone earlier […]
Animal Liberation Orchestra guitarist/singer-songwriter Dan Lebowitz was thrilled to be interviewed by someone with the same last name, albeit spelled differently, for the first time in his two-decades long career. Perhaps even more than talking about the music itself – we learned that both of us can trace our roots through Ellis Island, pronounce our […]
Way back in the spring of 2016, we wrote about the upcoming release of Songs in the Key of Double Bass, an exciting album debut from local singer-songwriter Danny Briere’s new acoustic project featuring two brilliant bassists who call Santa Barbara home: the decades-long veteran James Connolly, who has had a hand in innumerable musical […]
Although the project was 10 years in the making, director Paul Lamont remembers exactly why he wanted to make The Songpoet, his nearly two-hour exploration of the conflicts of career, family, ego, relationships, and sheer talent vs. achievement that have propelled the great American singer-songwriter Eric Andersen through his half-century-plus career. It was a moment […]
Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall scored with her first album back in 2004, which earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and spawned a worldwide hit with “Suddenly I See.” But the last half decade has seen a sea change for the already critically acclaimed artist who relocated in 2014 to Venice Beach and […]
Where were you when you first heard Bob Dylan? Arguably one of the greatest poets and musical artists of our generation, Bob Dylan has been covered and worshiped by fans and artists of all walks of life. Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, the musician has been in the game for sixty years, […]
Despite the fact that she is Kenny Loggins’ youngest daughter, and half-sister to Crosby Loggins, once a stalwart on the Santa Barbara music scene who was the winner of MTV’s Rock the Cradle back in 2008, it wasn’t pre-ordained that Hana Aluna would become a professional musician. Sure, Kenny wrote and recorded the lullaby with […]
When Kenny Loggins composed the music that would become “Footloose” back in 1983, the singer-songwriter didn’t even give it a second thought. With “I’m Alright” from Caddyshack from a couple of years earlier his lone movie song smash, Loggins had yet to become the “King of the Movie Soundtrack,” so he stuck it on the […]
The following comes directly from songwriter and Emmy nominee Molly-Ann Leikin, who informs us that she has written the official English lyric to Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem. The melody was adapted by composer Bedrich Smetana from a Lithuanian Folk song. In 1886, a transliteration was written by poet Naftali Herz Imber, but it was […]
When Robinson Eikenberry passed away suddenly at age 47 on July 4, 2017, the Santa Barbara community lost one of its most influential musicians, although very few outside of his circle ever heard him perform. That’s because Eikenberry didn’t crave the spotlight, preferring instead to stay behind the scenes as a producer, engineer, songwriter and, […]
