Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the B9:
➤ Thirty years ago, folksy storyteller Garrison Keillor was not merely a star but an American treasure, at least within the rarified realm of Volvo-driving, NPR-loyal, blue-state fans of his monumental radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.” The passing years and a MeToo scandal have greatly diminished Keillor’s pop-culture throw weight. But at 82, he’s still touring, sharing the news from Lake Wobegon and celebrating a Midwestern front-porch culture that seems like a distant dispatch from another century, and sometimes even another country. Keillor’s road show drops into the Felton Music Hall next Tuesday evening. And if you’re nostalgic for the wry humor and understated decency of Lake Wobegon, who can blame you these days?
➤ Multi-instrumentalist Jake Blount is an explorer in the realm of Black folk music, and singer-songwriter and bassist Mali Obomsawin comes to free jazz and rock through her heritage from the Abenaki people of Quebec. Together, they’re interested in uncovering North American roots music that goes way deeper than most “roots” musicians go.
➤ Nobody alert the killjoys at the House of Mouse, but the famous Disney brand is likely to be besmirched in campy and fun ways at the hands of the Sin Sisters Burlesque & Drag show, Saturday at the Kuumbwa.
➤ Jazz trumpeter Chris Botti has said that his enormously successful career began at 12 when he first heard Miles Davis. We’ll never get to hear what the famously surly Miles might think of his influence on the man who gave the world “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” but it’s clear that in the world of jazz crossover trumpet, Botti is the reigning king.
➤ Catch a glimpse of some of the Monterey Bay region’s most impactful figures in tech and business when Santa Cruz Works presents its Titans Awards at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. You’ll almost certainly learn something new.
➤ Santa Cruz writer Liza Monroy has her mind on the future, and how technology is warping our most basic and sustaining human experiences. She tells it all in her insightful new book, “The Distractions.” She’s at Bookshop Santa Cruz next week.
➤ The Los Angeles-based band Levitation Room takes its psychedelia seriously, moving from a classic garage band sound to something more like 1970s soft rock with its new album. The group brings its beguiling “Strange Weather” sound to Moe’s.
➤ The monthly “Hive Live!” poetry reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz jumps into 2025 with the Philippines-born poet Rick Barot and the celebrated Peninsula poet Cintia Santana.
➤The great Canadian power trio Rush has unfortunately migrated into prog-rock history, but switch out one letter and you have Rash, a Rush-themed tribute band that is very much alive and well and performing at a club near you, namely Felton Music Hall on Friday.
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