ON the Beat | Belonging Revisited, à la Marsalis

Branford Marsalis Quartet | Photo: Zach Smith

Marsalis Brood in Town, Continuing

Santa Barbara has, thankfully, been pretty welcoming to live performances of the Marsalis brothers for decades. Wynton stops here with great regularity, thanks to his long relationship with UCSB Arts & Lectures and more, and now finally pays a welcome visit to the Lobero Theatre, bringing his septet there on July 16 (link). The Lobero will also be the proper welcoming site for brother Branford, next Thursday, June 18 (link).

This Marsalis, long a prominent tenor saxophonist in the jazz world, is making his third appearance in Santa Barbara, debuting with his crackling fine quartet at Campbell Hall in 2004 and then at the Lobero in 2014. Next week’s concert, one of the hot spots on this year’s local jazz concert calendar, comes amid the quartet’s critically acclaimed tribute project honoring Keith Jarrett’s classic album Belonging (hear here).

On a side note, any description of Branford’s broad-channeling style has to include nods to the Great, and now late, Sonny Rollins, whose recent death has deprived jazz history of one of the true titans in the living artist category.

Now comes the time to dive back into Sonny’s verdant musical garden, still thriving in the recorded legacy space (hear here).

Light, Camera… Tube Action

Jack Johnson at the Lobero | Photo Josef Woodard

Jack Johnson, the chill gentleman surfer/pop star known and loved around the world, tends to pop up in various locales in his semi-hometown of Santa Barbara (his other home being his birthplace, Hawaii). Last fall, he graced the Arlington Theater with a surf film and music campout, with surfer legend friends and preview snippets of his now-completed — and wonderful — SURFILMUSIC.

Two weeks ago, Johnson popped by Roy, a seminal venue in his musical life back in the ‘90s, for his first musical appearance there in 30 years. He dropped in to play a few songs during Zach Madden’s Thursday night songwriter showcase, borrowing Madden’s guitar.

And last Wednesday, Johnson showed up in the intimate Lobero Theatre for a special show for “family and friends” — and lucky raffle winners — a screening of his completed new film, plus a Q&A with director Emmett Malloy and his pivotally involved wife Kim, all topped off with an hour-plus performance by his long time band, with keyboardist Zach Gill, drummer Adam Topol, and bassist Melo Podlewski. The last time this band graced the Lobero stage, a power outage forced them to go unplugged and un-mic’ed, which they did bravely and uncomplainingly.

Next stop in town: a return to the Santa Barbara Bowl on October 3, another show guaranteed to be SRO.

Johnson may be a categorical superstar, but he remains the kindly and philanthropic surfer-next-door, and his unusual path to life in the spotlight and on waves around the world is beautifully chronicled in his new film. Thumbnail film review: SURFILMUSIC is one of the finest music-surfer films on the block, and with the most apt portmanteau title of the year.

See you back on the block after your summer globetrotting, Jack.

Lobero Notes from All Over

Sam Grisman Project at the Lobero | Photo Josef Woodard

Now that I’m old and in the way myself, I can act as a “been there, still doing that” witness to the long cycling nature of musical influences. Take, for example, the similarities and parallels between the Sam Grisman Project (SGP) and the unplugged side project Old and In the Way, which featured Sam’s father, mandolinist David, and Jerry Garcia on banjo.

Lest the link be hidden, the band includes Dead material such as “Ramble On Rose,” the opening track of their latest album. And at SGP’s debut show at the Lobero last week, they made such dips into the Dead book as “Bird Song” and “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.” They also leaned into his father’s “dawg music” book on the Garcia-Grisman tune “Grateful Dawg” and Grisman’s seminal tune “Cedar Hill,” this one with a double mandolin spotlight.

Grisman the Younger also paid respects to his list of favorites, calling up in-house renditions of songs by Tim O’Brien, Bruce Cockburn, Gillian Welch, Leon Russell, and Bobby Dylan. There were hot licks and sweet solos aplenty, but mostly a tasty, all-for-one collective vibe in the house. These folks are young and clearly not in the way.

On Sunday night, John C. Reilly, a k a “Mr. Romantic,” was singing, schtick-ing, and looking for love in all the wrong places. Specifically, the Lobero Theatre, where he stopped by to perform with his lovely, quirky, and shamelessly neo-retro vaudevillian show.

The evening began with the four-piece band, in bowler hats and thrift store suits, drifting down the aisle onstage. The actor-musician-good-vibe-supplier suddenly popped out of a large trunk, in his own raggedy suit and exploding hair, explaining that when he’s released from the enclosure, he has to do a show, and that his liberation from said trunk could only happen after finding a forever kind of love.

In between crooning such gold oldies as “My Funny Valentine,” “Mona Lisa,” and the Ink Spots classic “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me),” he filtered into the crowd and courted the likes of Diane, Jim, Mark, and the potential threesome of Caitlin and her beau, all to no avail. Their final answer: “nope!”

At the show’s end, it was back in the crate he went. But the memory of a strange, good time lingered in the house.

TO-DOINGS:

As some resident Ojai Music Festival (OMF) aficionados (present company very much included) have noted, the festival may qualify as the 805 event with the greatest international cred and profile, albeit in its own specialized, contemporary music niche. The festival is routinely covered by The New York Times and The New Yorker, and it generates buzz in the music world at large. This year’s edition, starting tonight, June 11, and running densely through the weekend, is extra-special, as the milestone 80th birthday and the eagerly-awaited return of the great composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director, whose music will be liberally strewn throughout the program. (See Independent story here). Info here.

In other festival news, this Father’s Day weekend reliably brings around the Live Oak Festival, with its panorama of Americana, roots music, and other sounds you’re likely to hear on the public airwaves of KCBX, the public airwave beacon of hop out of San Luis Obispo, which hosts this festival as a fundraiser. For most of its 37-year run, the festival was held at the Live Oak Camp, up by Lake Cachuma, but logistical constraints forced a northward move to the El Chorro Regional Park in S.L.O., another ripe and campable locale.

The thick roster of artists this year includes Charlie Musselwhite with GA-20, Las Cafeteras, Neal Francis, The Brothers Comatose, and more. Bring ears, family, camping gear, and appetite for rootsy regalia. And a good time.

The sound of live choral music continues this weekend, as the Santa Barbara Master Chorale closes out its season, with the final concert directed by David Torres. Next season, the new director will be William Cutler. This weekend’s program goes by the title “Limitless, the Sound of Becoming,” and features music of Haydn, Vivaldi, Dan Forrest, and Elaine Hagenberg.

Also on tap on this busy musical weekend: western swingers Asleep at the Wheel at the Lobero on June 13, John Jorgensen (with Gabe Witcher and Herb Pedersen) in the SBAcoustic show at SOhO on Saturday, and at the Santa Barbara Bowl this week, the Black Keys on Saturday, and a wallop of a double-bill on Tuesday night, grumpy sage Bob Dylan and the mighty Lucinda Williams.

For something completely different up Ojai way — well, different, but not incompatible from the OMF — check out the fiery “punk jazz” offerings pumped out by the band known as the Messthetics, at Ojai’s Deer Lodge on Friday. The band brings together the rhythm section from Fugazi with the great and currently jazz scene-making saxist James Brandon Lewis in the line-up. I caught this band at the Deer Lodge a couple of years ago, and was duly wowed, by the band and the perfect roadhouse-y setting. (Hear their latest release here).

In all, a happy collision of music options on the books this week.