As his name suggests, Arts DEVO has a beat that he covers for the Chico News & Review. Pre-COVID-19, my notebook of story ideas and potential column fodder was always a mess of scribbles and notes that offered an ever-changing cultural snapshot of Chico that I would try to translate for the paper each week. During the coronavirus lockdown, the mostly blank white legal pad on my desk has been a stark reminder that the beat has gone quiet.
But things could be changing. To my surprise, there are more than a few scribbles to decipher this week, and I have a handful of arts bits from which to choose to write about. I choose … all of them.
For real live and in person music La Salles has distanced the tables and taken out a bunch of seats and has been open and serving food and drinks for three weeks now. And the downtown bar/restaurant has also brought back live music! You can hear acoustic performers in person during Friday happy hours (4-6 p.m.) and Saturday brunches (11 a.m.-2 p.m.). This week it’s Obe (tonight, June 12) and Tanner Richardson (Saturday, June 13). Due to limited seating, reservations are recommended.
More from the Uncle Dad’s family tree It’s no surprise that two of our little city’s primary arts instigators—Josh Hegg and Michael Bone—have kept busy making art (music, paintings) and then sharing it online with us shut-ins. The latest release is a vocals/piano duet of the not-so-popular standard “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)” released on YouTube as a split screen video. The song, with its wonderful wandering vocal melody, was written in 1938 by Hoagy Carmichael (with words from a poem by Jane Brown Thompson), and Hegg and Bone’s version is a sweet and melancholy treat.
Lock-down style Speaking of split-screen music videos, Chico engineer/musician Dale “The Snail” Price has posted a 32-minute “How To Make a Band Music Video Lock-down Style” tutorial for musicians looking to make one of those Zoom-meeting/Brady Bunch-intro style live recordings. As Price says, it’s not as simple as getting the band together for a remote meet-up and jamming. Audio latency makes it impossible to play in time with one another. But The Snail spells it out by showing how he made a lock-down video for “We Lost Mama in a Pothole,” by Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours, one of the bands he plays in. (And for the adventurous, go get lost in the Dalesnale YouTube channel and its many sonic wormholes.)
1078 Updates June was the month that the CN&R and the 1078 Gallery were hoping to get weird together again, but with art spaces having been OK’d for reopening just this week, the Keep Chico Weird Art Show has been postponed again (stay tuned for new dates). With that news, the gallery will extend its [Virtual] Members Show through the end of the month. The 1078 also announced a call for artists to install a mural on the side of its building. Visit the site to submit proposals; deadline is June 22.
Chico Arts Patron Survey As we mentioned earlier this week, Chico arts organizations are seeking input from showgoers in order to help them decide how to reopen. The deadline to have your voice heard is June 14.
DEVOtions: Two highlights for your calendar:
• June 16, 7-8:30 p.m.: Zoomsday. The Blue Room’s annual Bloomsday event—celebrating Leopold Bloom’s day (June 16, 1922) in James Joyce’s Ulysses—goes live online.
• June 19, 5-7 p.m.: Juneteenth, “a gathering for justice and healing,” with speakers, music, spoken word, a community-made altar, Know Your Rights training and more. In the Chico City Plaza.
It’s Good to See La Salles Back in Business… I Loved going to that Place… It’s a Reminder that We Will Survive and There is a Life Beyond Coronavirus… Hopefully we will have learned something. AND REBUILD A BETTER WORLD!