The road starts here. Every time I’m set to take off, I have to revisit past ground. In this case, a pre-tour-mini-tour of the central coast this past weekend, down Highway 1 to Monterey, through Big Sur, San Luis Obispo and back. It’s like an un-offical touching base: both in playing songs (thank you, my band & Jose’s Underground Lounge in Monterey for fun and SLO’s Linnaea’s for coffee house classicism) in the a variety of arrangements and getting back to bedrock, in this case the craggy California coast. In typical Highway 1 fashion, travel was slowed by a rock slide. should there be a road here?one wonders, sitting at the side of the road for an hour while a crew cleared a way the debris, grateful at the same time for the view, perilous thought it may be.
Read: Lonely Planet Road Trip California Highway 1
Eat: Duarte’s is a classic road stop tavern on Highway 1 in Pescadero. Artichokes are growing along vast swaths of the highway near Pescadero, Santa Cruz and Monterey. Duarte’s soup makes great road soup. Even NPR covered it! Duarte’s Artichoke Soup Make it vegan, by sub veg broth and unsweetened rice milk for chicken broth & cream, olive oil for butter)
Listen: “Feeling of Falling” Bonnie Raitt (from Longing In Their Hearts – 1994)
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.
