I spent the first part of 2010 touring a fair amount and taking some extended trips to the East Coast. Travel, even short getaways, is one of my addictive tendencies.
While I love it (and am hardly knocking it, my winter will probably look very different) it can become a short-term solution for whatever nagging discontent I might be experiencing in my ‘everyday’ life. So in the the interest of walking my talk and shaking up my sneaky self-delusions, I set the for-me-radical intent to keep it local for at least a few months and get to know the East Bay a lot better: No planes, biking and walking as much as possible, close to home gigs, etc.
I wrote about intention a while back and if the past couple months are any indication, they do work! Staying closer to home (my ‘core area’ of my territory as a wildlife biologist friend termed it) has begun to yield its own unique harvest of deeper connections, new found opportunities and friendships, and as far as the gig calendar, a host of dates at venues that uphold a local, sustainable ethic.
This weekend, I’ll be playing the Acoustic Brunch at Gather, an extremely well-thought out hub of excellent food and drink in the heart of Berkeley. In October, Oakland’s latest proponent of neighborhood cultural enrichment, Actual Cafe (see video below from gig there a few months ago) will play host to a monthly Sunday residency of sorts for the Songwriting Collective of which I’m a part. Živjeli!
Saturday, August 7th, 2010 Gather Restaurant Acoustic Brunch – 11am-2pm 2200 Oxford St. Berkeley California 94704
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.
