ON the Beat | Post-Modern Madhouse Party, Academy Notes Begin

Lobero Live! Earl Minnis Presents: The Crosby Collective featuring Jackson Browne, 6/12/25, The Lobero Theatre | Photo: David Bazemore

More than Just Medley-Fying

I’m still a bit dizzy — in the best way — from the Crosby Collective (CC) zeitgeist experience, last week at the Lobero Theatre. For myself and others I talked to, said CC experience began with a haze of misunderstanding and possibly misapprehension about the very nature of the friendly beast. Some of us overworked culture junkies leapt to the mistaken conclusion that the Crosby Collective would be yet another David Crosby tribute in town.

Alas no. The Crosby ringleader is gifted and slightly crazed keyboardist Jason Crosby, who spent 12 years working with the mighty Phil Lesh and well enough connected that Jackson Browne signed on as a special guest for last week’s two-night stint. (The Jackson connection and show biz cachet no doubt helped sell out the pair of shows.)

Second misunderstanding: A quick read of the band description suggested we’d be hearing medleys of baby boomer favorites, arousing suspicion for those of us not necessarily inclined to appreciate tribute projects or cover bands.

Never mind the preamble. What actually transpired was a deliciously inventive and post-modernistically subversive kaleidoscope of morphing song fragments taken in and out of context. Or words to that effect. In fact, it can be hard to describe in words how very special and strangely entrancing this band is. We end up telling friends, neighbors, spouses, and such “it’s hard to explain — just make sure to be there if and when they return.”

Lobero Live! Earl Minnis Presents: The Crosby Collective featuring Jackson Browne, 6/12/25, The Lobero Theatre | Photo: David Bazemore

This Crosby is talented enough to understand how to stitch together surreal but engaging pieces of well-designed puzzle made up of pieces we know. But he couldn’t do it alone. The Collective is a sharp and ready-for-a-challenge aggregation of players, including such members of Browne’s band as go-to pedal steel player Greg Leisz, the excellent guitarist Tom Guarna, drummer John Kimock, keyboardist Jeremy Jeffers, and vocalists Chavonne Stewart, AnDre Washington, and Alethea Mills.

Crosby himself is a true eclectic marvel, who opened the set with a decently played take on Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” and later dished up a strong jazz solo. But the show’s main focus was on a zig-zagging parade of pop and rock songs, of both the hit and hip/deep cut variety.

Pink Floyd’s “Money” dovetailed into the Grateful Dead’s “Estimated Prophet,” both songs sharing a 7/4 time signature, while the heavy-osity of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” was somehow stirred and shaken with Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and the party-ready Dead song “Shakedown Street,” with only minor listener whiplash along the way. Later in the set, the band gave due crunch and alt rock energy to Nirvana’s “Lithium,” segueing in and out of the Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.”

Late, great legends Brian Wilson and Sly Stone were given respectful nods in a mash-mesh including “God Only Knows,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” as well as a snippet of Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and Led Zep’s “Black Dog.” The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” wriggles in and out of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” and a pinch of the Allman Brothers’ “Blue Sky” guitar riff, and a woozy summertime cheer bubbles up in a new mash-up, with Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” groove laying a bed for “Twist and Shout,” “Can’t Hurry Love,” “Good Lovin’,” and “Walking on Sunshine.”

Interestingly, the straightest songs of the night included a few Browne songs opening the second set, including “My Opening Farewell” and Dave van Ronk’s “Cocaine Blues.” “This is the part of the show where songs don’t turn into other songs,” Browne told the crowd. “Think of it as a palate cleanser.” The evening’s other unbroken song was, touchingly and poignantly, a full reading of the great Lesh song “Unbroken Chain” (from the Dead’s underrated 1974 album From the Mars Hotel), with its tender outer sections framing an odd-time jam section.

The inverted medley impulse returned for a finale of Browne singing his hit “Running on Empty” (with Leisz nimbly channeling David Lindley’s soulful lap steel touch), but taking left turns into the spiritual “Oh Happy Day” and a quick Sly wink of “Everyday People.”

On its sizzling and memory-tickling surface, the Collective’s show was maximum fun, for listeners of a certain age and/or pop cultural memory bank. But it was also deeper and fairly radical in terms of making a statement about the innate nature of pop music, which can cohere into a swirling pool of collective memory, running through our heads and sometimes in confused, overlapping waves.

Pop songs tend to follow a fairly narrow vocabulary of chords, riffs, groove, and lyrical sentiments, making the free associational interweaving of song body parts a doable deed. To that end, Canadian John Oswald’s “Plunderphonics” manically cross-stitched fragments of familiar songs into avant-garde patchwork quilts. Crosby’s grand experiment put the “art” in “party,” without ditching the urge to groove and sing along with the slice-and-diced song celebration at hand, or at least what we think we know. It’s a brainier shindig than it lets on. (See Leslie Dinaberg’s review of the first night’s show here.)

ON the Academy Notes Beat

Classical music audiences are primed and ready for a temptation-filled summer, thanks once again to the Music Academy of the West (MAW) summer festival, running for the next eight weeks. (See season preview story here).

An auspicious one-two punch of an introduction to the dense festival schedule greets us this weekend. In what has become a tradition in recent years, a concert by the renowned — and now half century-deep — Takács String Quartet, at the Lobero Theatre on Friday, June 20, and for a more populist blast of blockbuster-y movie music fare, when the Academy Festival Orchestra plays John Williams’s live score to Spielberg’s Jaws (also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year). See-hear MAW‘s Jaws at the Granada on Saturday, June 21.

Watch this space for updates, previews, reviews, and MAW tidbits as the summer simmers.

To-Doings:

Ryan Bingham at the Santa Barbara Bowl, June 14, 2025 | Photo: Carl Perry

Meanwhile, over at the Santa Barbara Bowl, last Saturday night’s special leaned into the poetic twang and southern-rocking rollick of Ryan Bingham, who was not at all a weary kind with his kicking band. This Saturday, we shift gears into the savory R&B-adjacent sound of the Alabama-based St. Paul and the Broken Bones, in a special double-header bill with the ever-tasty and rootsy fine Wood Brothers — featuring Oliver and Chris (also the W-word in Medeski, Martin, and Wood). Singer-songwriter Cece Coakley opens this epic night at the stroke of 6 p.m.