ON the Beat | The Gospel According to Gospel

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 21, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

(Soundtrack to this column, Carla’s Christmas Carol, by the incomparable jazz composer-bandleader and maker-keyboardist-wit Carla Bley, who left this mortal plane in 2023, aged 80. One of my favorite, timeless Christmas music chestnuts: Check it out.)

Gospel music, in the pure sense, too rarely lifts its voice in song on Santa Barbara’s live music scene. In a real cultural sense, though, the music is ever present in our lives and ears as a truly foundational bedrock of American popular music, jazz, hip hop, and other music in the everyday. Santa Barbara is also blessed to have access to a solid weekly dose of gospel on the airwaves courtesy of Sista ROZ’s inspiring Thursday afternoon show The Experience on KCSB. Her show offers an illuminating portal into the rich and forward-moving, if also marginalized, world of gospel music, present, and past.

And suddenly, on the live music front, we’ve had a rare bounty of gospel — the good stuff — in a two-week period. It started with the Santa Barbara debut of staggeringly talented jazz chanteuse and Best New Artist Grammy winner Samara Joy at The Granada Theater. The evening, hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures, showcased both her immense gifts as a jazz singer and exposed her fertile roots in a family steeped in gospel music and the professional gospel music orbit, including her bassist-vocalist father Antonio McLendon.

Then, last Sunday afternoon, a packed house at SOhO soaked in the epicurean and musical riches of Miriam Dance’s “Gospel Brunch,” holiday/Christmas style. Dance, who presented a gospel brunch earlier this year and plans the next one on March 3, was the focal point of a fascinating hour-and-change display of gospel, along with family members Lisa Daniels (a powerful singer, like her sister) and keyboardist/music director Christopher Daniels.

The set list kicked up its heels from the outset, with “This Christmas” and moved through a variety of tunes, including the self-defining “Why We Sing,” by famed gospel star Kirk Franklin. Also in the holiday mix were a groove-fueled arrangement of “Silent Night,” “Mary Did you Know?” (sung by Dakari Brown), and a funky-timed “Jesus Is The Reason For The Season.”  

Fleshing out the gospel choir was the long-running Santa Barbara Inner Light Gospel Choir and a solid rhythm section — limber and fluidly genre-hopping musicians: drummer Austin Beede, bassist Santino Tafarella, and guitarist Rob Moreno. The artist known as Vivian Storm, a drag queen, gospel-fired singer, and comic relief supplier, told the crowd “God has blessed me with the gift of illusion. Some might say delusion, but no.” They also told us “if you don’t have a good time at the gospel brunch, it’s your own fault.” They/we did, big time. Dancing and singalongs were on the menu.

Alas, the black church prevails behind and continuously beneath the present surface of American musical culture. Occasionally, that landscape includes the 805.

Gospel Brunch at SOhO | Credit: Leslie Dinaberg

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Jesse Rhodes Busts Out in Song(s)

As Santa Barbara–based and –bred musicians go, Jesse Rhodes is a prominent artist semi-hiding in semi-plain sight. A dynamic and ever-creative music maker of the pop, folk, country, atmospheric sort, and a studio wizard by day, Rhodes has an inviting and unique voice — as singer-songwriter and guitar-wielding conjurer. For a quick study in what Rhodes is all about, proceed to his superb new album Singing to the Storm, one of the best albums I’ve ever heard come out of the 805.

(Full disclosure: I have known Rhodes for a pile of years and we have collaborated on musical and studio grounds. We also keep threatening to start a band together. That said, this is the objective music critic talking now.)

A bit of backstory: Rhodes had his brush with major label action when his excellent and underrated alt rock band Stegosaurus released its 1998 album on Reprise Records (home to Sinatra and Hendrix). Allegedly, part of the problem was a marketing quagmire, with the label miscasting the band as a metal band. Subsequently, Rhodes has made several fine albums over the years, landed music in TV/film soundtrackland, and established his stature as one of Santa Barbara’s finest studio-keeps. Perhaps partly because of his minimal live playing and self-promotional umph, Rhodes remains a talent deserving greater recognition, locally and beyond.

With Singing to the Storm, Rhodes puts his best foot and artistic instincts forward, which means touching on various genres and sonic palettes. His wizardry in the studio and restless search for new sonic blends and the delicate balance of polish and rough stuff comes into play, along with covering a wide spectrum of genres, from the rocking and almost Stegosaurus-ish “Hello Moon” to the art pop sway of “Simple.”

Thematically, love comes this way, in terms of celebration and lost love observation (“Isabel,” “Love Without a Name”), and a sure highlight of the album is his wistful and wary — but infectious — environmental cautionary tale, “Trees 2050.” His guest list has personal dimensions, from his cellist mother Alita Rhodes (who played with the Santa Barbara Symphony for 40 years), drummer Dave Liker, also in Stegosaurus and harmonizing guest shot from friend Glen (Toad the Wet Sprocket) Phillips on the somewhat Toad-ish “Old Souls” (also with singer Cecilia James and drummer Beede). On the country tune “Green Means Go,” he enlists the mighty and artful pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, who he met on a session for a client.

But perhaps the most affecting song on the album is the anomalous micro-suite of an album-opener, “111.” Here, in the artfully welded partitioned piece (in a tune clocking in at just 3:10), Rhodes taps into his love for Pink Floyd and pays poignant homage to the late, great, Santa Barbara studio legend and veritable musical guru Robinson Eikenberry, who passed away — in a hotel room with the number 111. “I let go of this world,” Rhodes sings, “I surrender to the light/ Rejoin in Joy divine.” In some way, a spiritual/gospel theme resonates on the song, and the album as a whole. It’s a gem.

Forever Young in SLO Radioland

Those in the know know that the San Luis Obispo public radio haven of KCBX (90.9 FM in Santa Barbara North or worldwide here) is one of those treasured bastions of musical culture outside the mainstream, with a special tentacle in music of the rootsy and folky/Americana-esque sort. Apparently, flannelled icon Neil Young also knows this, as he popped by Marissa Waddell’s fine Thursday night show The Road Home recently to officially unveil his latest album, Before and After, and chat with the veteran KCBX DJ and torch-keeper. Listen up to that night’s show here.

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Eggnogging and Napping Notice

And now, we shrink into a short but welcome repast of winter’s napping, off the beat. Happy Everything, and see you on the flipside of the year’s turnover.

I leave you with another Christmas song worth loving, year after year: NRBQ’s “Christmas Wish.”