On May 11, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services will end the Covid public health emergency. But the bureaucratic behemoth is a slow-footed beast; John Q. Public knows the pandemic ended some time ...

San Diego’s Jared Mattson has a new solo album, Peanut; it represents a bold step away from his work with twin brother Jonathan in Mattson 2. But as Jared testifies, he had to deal with ...

Slack Key Ohana didn’t intend to release a live album. But the mahalo groove (aka the Hawaiian spirit of gratefulness for everything) held sway in the end. The slack key guitar band’s new full-length Live ...

Nefarious Creatures — a band of four San Diego-bred horror-lovin’ fiends — had the will, the music, and the over-arching deep concept for their debut EP Fables For the Wicked. What they didn’t quite have ...

Some bands can count their lineup shifts on one finger, like ZZ Top or R.E.M. (one each). Then there’s San Diego skamaniacs The Amalgamated. “About ten years ago,” explains guitarist/singer Reggie Costa, “I made a ...

Musicians worry about money. They worry about gear. They worry about the van. They don’t usually worry about the horn player falling over a cliff. But to hear it from Ryan Hughes of Crucial Blend, ...

You might never expect a Ph.D, in anything to discover a passion for outdoor sidewalk busking. But for Dr. Bruce L. Thiessen — Dr BLT to the music world — it’s all part of the ...

Dante Loaiza, late of Agua Dulce and currently of Maracuya, knows both sides of the border, and he allows that weirdness can break out on either side. “In Tijuana, we had one [gig] where some ...

Guitarist/singer/songwriter Hugh Noble came to San Diego from the UK in 2014. Over the past eight years of gigging with his band Slum Summer (new album Living in Milk out now), he’s delineated the highs, ...

Performing Hawaiian slack key guitar music takes dedication, focus, respect, and of course, only the best Hawaiian shirt patterns. “I really like our white-and-red rayon and beach-green shirts with outrigger canoes,” enthuses Kamaka Mullen, co-founder ...

For each successive rockin’ out generation, the search for a band name grows tougher, as scourers claim all the common nouns. Hometown fellows Z Matrix were no exception. “It’s very difficult to come up with ...

“I have lived full-time in my van since 2015,” says singer/songwriter Tim Rose, who frequently plays Mission Bay Resort and Estancia La Jolla. “I first lived in a little Nissan NV200 on Oahu for about ...

Hummingbird tries to perch on two crossed branches *** Traffic lights play catch with yellow one block apart *** Tap away at her eyes long enough/// hit winter streams *** Arm unswept, stillborn shout... crows ...

Normally, musicians are drilled in the art of capturing an audience’s attention. And if that’s your training, then performing where people don’t pay attention — and aren’t even meant to — can be a challenge. ...

Lyrical Groove’s Kendrick Dial, a Dallas native, came to San Diego in 2000 with the Navy. Since then, he’s called Chula Vista, Spring Valley, Downtown, and North Park home, and noted how each district boasts ...

California measures approximately 163,696 square miles, and it’s home to more than 39.5 million souls. Total number of places to see music? Search me. But I’m betting a thousand would just be a start. And ...

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a music writer isn’t going to get rich plying his trade, but at least he’ll get free stuff: albums, concert tickets, swag, perhaps even the occasional backstage pass. ...

“Blueberry Satin,” a new online single from singer Renee Marie, starts in a fog of minor chords and then, depending on which YouTube version you click on, moves to either an organ-and-drums riff or unadorned ...

Asked for his most colorful stories about gigging around town, singer-songwriter BJ Jezbera gives the impression that he knows just a little bit more than he’s telling. “I feel like a question like this,” he ...

New arrivals to San Diego, musicians included, often compare and contrast where they’ve been to where they’ve landed. But Jakvoich Skolnick, who plays guitar and a few other things for Quel Bordel, has more in ...

If it looks, walks, and quacks like a certain common North American waterfowl, it’s probably just what you think it is. But when Matt Delvecchio named the brewery he co-founded Duck Foot, he was thinking ...

A man who’ll throw an annual 50th Birthday Bash for himself clearly boasts a robust sense of humor. And San Diego fixture Steve Poltz, who’s observing that cracked anniversary (he’s actually turning 62) at the ...

“Happy Together,” performed by the Turtles, came out on Valentine’s Day 1967, and hit number one on the Billboard charts on March 25. Though it’s often covered and enshrined in film, nobody seems to notice ...

Donna Larsen knows singing, songwriting, producing, and promotion. But when it came to making music (and eventually books) for kids, she fell back on the most reliable test market she could find: her own children. ...

Kyle Mcmillan has lived in San Diego continuously since 1993, and he’s been involved in local music for almost that entire time — as a musician, booker, and manager. Now he’s opening a new all-ages ...

Shooting his new video “Heathrow (Somebody Else)” in black-and-white might seem evocatively logical, judging from the vid’s final look. But here, 22-year-old cultgabe spills the beans: that wasn’t all on purpose. The final look, he ...

Mike “Spike” Muellenberg, aka Hairy Scary Spice, has given San Diego plenty of both music and laughs while out in front of the Spice Pistols: five fellows happy to be not young, not hot, and ...

October: pilot waves to the brakeman... chilly sundown October... jelly jar upside-down by the lettuce Solstice: spinning sun moves on from the model trains One stone on the high bridge--I ponder... pocket it? Forlorn... the ...

Singer/songwriter Gayle Skidmore describes herself as “a San Diego native, an East County girl.” She has long loved Sarita’s and La Posta, and says she basically grew up at the Living Room on El Cajon ...

Brock Scott’s mission was to get those band photos. He had no photo pass and no permission to take a camera inside any given venue (this was years before camera phones). But he had his ...

Poet and performer Noah Lekas, late of Wisconsin, more lately of North Park and Vista, says that the work of combining his poetry with the sound from local musicians just flowed naturally. “I’ve always been ...

Ocean Beach singer-songwriter Paige Koehler kept things in the city when it came to recording her debut EP, Sorry I’m Late. “My EP was recorded at [Kearny Mesa's] Defiant Robot Studios in 2019-2020,” she says. ...

Singer-songwriter Elisia Savoca, currently living in L.A. but raised in San Diego, has no qualms about being known as the “Shower Singer,” a sobriquet bestowed by her beloved father. Everyone has to start somewhere, and ...

When it comes to gigging in San Diego, Chuck Charles, once-and-future doyen of the Bigfellas band, gives due love to the Belly Up, Humphreys, and Anthology. But certain odder moments stick sticky-er in his mind. ...

The men of Tijuana’s punk quartet DFMK — the letters stand for “doing fucking meth kills” on days when they don’t stand for “don’t fuck my kids” — allow that their hometown can get a ...

When it comes to the San Diego/Tijuana community, retired librarian Jorge Francisco Castillo counts himself pretty well settled in. He eats at Tacos el Gordo, plus Ranchos and El Zarape in North Park. He takes ...

When the virus response clamped down on fleshy, sweaty, side-by-side public outings, the local branch of entertainment agency Sound Talent Group had a backup plan ready to go — to cover the local scene with ...

Sharon Katz has gone all over the world promoting peace, love, and unity. She performed for Nelson Mandela. She jumped out of airplanes in South Africa to rock the vote in that country’s first multi-racial ...

Devon E. Levins of Morricone Youth has played just about every kind of rock and roll, and just about everywhere in San Diego’s city limits. “The last night of the old Casbah was memorable in ...

Cheyenne Benton loves the San Diego County Fair. Except when she hates it. “One of my best stories would have to be when I was performing at the 2019 fair,” she recalls. “We got to ...

“One particular gig we did at Tower Bar in Summer of 2019 really sticks out in my mind. We had just finished up recording our debut EP Oxbow and were feeling really great about what ...

“The Thieves About” could suggest a phrase lacking one final noun. But as singer/guitarist J Scott Gavin avows, the name came about from a little boys love for locomotives. “My son was obsessively into trains,” ...

Looking back on the virus, the ones of us who survive will of course, each have a story to tell, starting with the first signs, first erosions. San Diego’s Thousand Below found themselves, with bleak ...

“We like to huff on gas lamps. It’s addictive. No one talks about it.” Amy Nelson’s account of her love for the Gaslamp Quarter, might seem slightly suspicious. But it’s a splendid introduction to the ...

“I was raised in San Diego, and one of my most memorable [memories] is being six, and my Mom taking me to my Auntie’s AA meetings. We sat in a circle and I thought that ...

Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much ...

Consider a life in the time it takes your phone to wink dark *** On the prison camp raining and then not raining *** September... he yawns like a lion with his frosty beard *** ...

River Sultan remembers his arrival in San Diego even more vividly than most folks. “July 19, 2000,” he nails it down. “I was 10 years old. I remember the date because I had a small ...

San Diego musicians don’t often count off their seminal musical influences in terms of musical theater. But La Mesa-raised Morgan Hollingsworth — the son of Grossmont High’s drama teacher — loved musical theater before practically ...

Gary Wilson’s new album is Tormented. Which is not to say that Gary Wilson himself — notorious denizen of San Diego’s weirder side — is necessarily tormented. Although he came reasonably close to going over ...