ON Culture | The Bowl, Buttigieg, Britain’s Famous Ukes, and a Museum Free-for-All

This edition of ON Culture was originally emailed to subscribers on March 14, 2025. To receive Leslie Dinaberg’s arts newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

ON the Stage

Santa Barbara Bowl time will be here before we know it, with The Avett Brothers opening the season on April 11, followed by more great acts, including the recently announced Ryan Bingham and The Texas Gentlemen (June 14), St. Paul & The Broken Bones and The Wood Brothers (June 21), Father John Misty (July 24), My Morning Jacket (Aug. 20), Shakey Graves and Trampled by Turtles (Aug. 22), Mt. Joy (Aug. 24), Darius Rucker (Sept. 7), and Gregory Alan Isakov (Sept. 12). With the previously announced lineup including James Taylor (May 13-14), Jack White (May 15), Khurangbin (May 21-22), Justice (May 23), Lake Street Dive (June 28), Alison Krauss & Union Station (July 15), Japanese Breakfast (Aug. 23), and Goo Goo Dolls (Sept. 6) all now on sale here, by my calculation, we’re about halfway (19) to the allowed number of shows per season (37). I can’t wait to see what else Moss Jacobs and the Goldenvoice team have cooking. So far, they’re certainly off to an eclectic and fun start!

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Also coming up soon, April 25-27, is Stagecoach Festival. After a historic and sold-out 2024, California’s country music festival in Indio is set for another groundbreaking weekend with headliners Zach Bryan (Friday), Jelly Roll (Saturday) and Luke Combs (Sunday). Click here for tickets and here to read Shannon Brooks’s great tips on “How to Stagecoach.”

If you like to shake your booty disco-style — if you don’t, you should try it sometime — KC and The Sunshine Band are bringing their Doin’ It World Tour to the Chumash Casino Resort’s Samala Showroom at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 28. Well-known for hits such as “Get Down Tonight,” “That’s the Way (I Like It),” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty,” KC and The Sunshine Band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Tickets are available here.

Tour poster for KC and the Sunshine Band | Photo: Courtesy

The pipes will trill, the fiddles zing, and the whistles tweet, while the harp, the guitars, and other instruments will fill the rooms with lilting sounds as the luck of the Irish smiles on us through the weekend with the Folk Orchestra of Santa Barbara’s beloved annual salute to Celtic music, March 14-16 at three locations: Friday, March 14, at 7 p.m. at Live Oak Unitarian Hall in Goleta; Saturday, March 15, at 7 p.m. at downtown Santa Barbara’s Presidio Chapel; and Sunday, March 16, at 4:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley Church in Los Olivos.

The Folk Orchestra of Santa Barbara’s Adam Phillips welcoming the audience in Santa Ynez | Photo: Courtesy

Along with familiar tunes like “Rattlin’ Bog,” “Brian Boru’s March,” and “On Raglan Road,” concertgoers will hear some of the results of the Folk Orchestra’s founder and musical director Adam Phillip’s continuous research into world folk music. “This is always one of our favorite and most popular events,” he said. “We’ll have something for everyone, whether you have Celtic blood or not. And we’ll expect everyone to sing, too!”

See folkorchestrasb.com or email adam@folkorchestrasb.com.

Popular Santa Barbara band Doublewide Kings’ “Exile on Carpinteria Avenue” weekend at the Alcazar Theatre next weekend sold out so quickly on Friday and Saturday nights that they’ve added a matinee show to their “Rolling Stones Residency” on Sunday, March 23, at 4:30 p.m. (doors open at 4). Click here for tickets.

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain | Photo: Courtesy

The charmingly quirky Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is back in town on April 1, with a UCSB Arts & Lectures show at Campbell Hall. Four decades (and 400 million plucks) since its founding, this unique orchestra continues to thrill audiences with off-beat humor and four-stringed virtuosity. Click here for tickets and more info.

ON the Podium

Pete Buttigieg comes to Santa Barbara on April 22. | Photo: Courtesy

Need some guidance on making sense of the 2020s politically? Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg unpacks the defining challenges of the 2020s on April 22 at the Arlington Theatre in a recently announced lecture from UCSB Arts & Lectures. Click here for tickets.

ON the Calendar

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History | Photo: Courtesy

The annual Museums Free-for-All is this Sunday, March 16, with more than 30 museums throughout the region offering free general admission. Local participants include Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (reservations are recommended, at sbma.net and sbnature.org, respectively), as well as larger institutions like the Getty Center, The Broad, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and the Grammy Museum, among others. For the complete list of participants, see socalmuseums.org/annual-free-for-all-2025.

For a complete calendar of events this week and beyond, visit independent.com/events/.