A mini-tour of So Cal sort of formed itself this week. The week got started with a gig at the very cool & venerable dive bar “The Cinema Bar” in Culver City. Along the lines of Austin’s Hole in the Wall if smaller, it’s dark and set up equally for drinking and live music. That is the stage is small too but there’s a decent sound system. When I arrived to set up, a crack bluegrass band, The Old No. 7, who are the Sunday happy hour band, was playing. They usually back Cliff Wagoner but he’d been stranded in Ventura and his band-guitar, mandolin and violin, carried on in fine fashion. A hard act to follow, but Cinema’s denizen’s were extremely friendly, and and good audience, so I enjoyed my set. Charles Saltzman closed out the night with a soulful set of covers and originals built around keys.
Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.
Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.
Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.
