Palo Alto’s Earthwise Productions, in its 31st season as a promoter or manager of jazz and rock music and artists, announced three shows, all featuring guitar heroes, loosely marketed as “Guitarslingers series”.
The shows feature Jim Campilongo (as Spaghetti, featuring he, Scott Amendola, Sam Reider and Matt Muntz), free, Friday, May 10 at Lytton Plaza; Mark Lettieri (as a quartet), free May 24 at Mitchell Park Bowl; and Nels Cline (with Phillip Greenlief, reeds, and Amendola on drums) for $20 at The Mitch Hall.
All three events are available on EventBrite — the free shows require registration, the hard-ticket show accepts credit card payment and is limited to 200 capacity. (Earthwise nominally lists the capacity at downtown Lytton Plaza as 200. and that of Mitch Bowl (amphitheater in the 21 acre park) as 500.
Campilongo, who is from nearby San Bruno and lived in New York City for many years until recently, is known for playing with Norah Jones, and also played recently at Lytton Plaza as a duo with cellist Ben Davis.
Lettieri hails from adjacent Menlo Park, CA and is a five-time Grammy winner for his work with the jazz band Snarky Puppy. His group comprises Mark Lettieri, guitar and baritone guitar, Wes Stephenson, bass, Daniel Porter, keyboards and JJ Thomas, drums.
Earthwise founder Mark Weiss claims that the series fell into place somewhat arbitrarily but that it is loosely a tribute to Gryphon Guitar store founder Frank Ford, who died in December.
Earthwise has produced 15 shows so far in 2024, all in Palo Alto; it completed 61 events last year; it was founded in 1994 as a spin-off from Bay Area Action Earth Day at Stanford for which Weiss volunteered and organized “Earthwise Traditions” a cluster of indigenous’ groups takes on the environment. The first event that Weiss independently produced was an “Earthwise Mini Pow Wow” at Addison School, in conjunction with Cathy White Eagle’s Eagle Vision Educational Network EVEN of Sacramento.
Weiss says that more than half of his events are free and outdoors, especially since the COVID shutdowns in 2020 but that just recently he realized that outdoor shows are more earthwise than using public halls.
“Lita Albuquerque spoke outside the Anderson art building this week and her description of her work resonated with what I have been doing –although I’m an arts administrator and she is an actual artist”, he said. Creating a temporary audience in a public space, public park or public plaza, with or without music, is like an art installation, he said or wrote or is at least thinking this morning, 8 a.m on the dot, with his dog, waiting for breakfast.
OpenCRISPR-1 out of Profluent Ali Madani is the AI version of CRISPR-cas-9 (Doudna, Porteus et al) big opportunity on a dead planet. Cade Metz sends regrets.
I have barely started rolling out my spring outdoors season but I now know that the last show of the year will be under the oak at Johnson Park with Karl Evangelista guitar and Alexander Hawkins quartet on Monday, October 14 which is both Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day. 6 pm or about 90 minutes before sunset. Rain cancels. Johnson Park is the only place I do shows that the city of Palo Alto does not offer permits, so I just make sure my Downtown North neighbors know about the show, plus I get there at sunrise to put out my gear and sandwich board. Its first-come first-serve.
My next show is with DJ Sep at Lytton Plaza on Saturday, May 4 at 3 pm, after Duffy and I walk the May Fete parade. There is still a slim chance that my Cochiti Camero will magically pop up at Heritage Park that day, between the parade and DJ Sep’s set. Also, I will be doing something at the park as she spins. A dj is slightly different than a band, I think in that the audience does slightly less watching — Iv’e never done a pure dj set, as Earthwise Productions.
Also: May 10, Jim Campilongo; May 24 Mark Lettieri; May 30, Nels Cline; June 2: Eddie 9V with Jimmy Dewrance; that’s about five guitar heroes in a row, or within a month. Five events in a month, or four in May and one in June, within 30 days.
And1: Stephanie Chou, who is a math and music double major from Barnard and Columbia, and recorded a song about Paul J. Cohen/continuum hypothesis/infinity for my Lions With Wings label, will likely appear, at Palo Alto Art Center, in November; she said she’s firm with hits at San Jose Jazz and SF Jazz Joe Henderson Room. We will rename the Palo Alto Art Center the David Hilbert Room in her honor or are we being irrational?
Andand: I wrote to Kris Davis, who will be at Stanford Jazz this summer but have never met, about playing Paul Cohen’s piano in the math building while she is out here; I thought of it because an act on her label has a math-related or math-inspired title.
Manages department level special studies and projects, that are more high level and complex in nature which includes: contract administration; establishing and monitoring timelines; preparing requests for proposals; selecting consultants; ensuring compliance with applicable regulations, specifications, and/or requirements; monitoring project budgets; tracking projects; preparing related reports; and, performing other related duties.
The City of Palo Alto is looking for people to be Human Resources Anaylst for $116,000 per year —I’m calling them “hookers” in the sense of managing other humans as resources -/ and or scratchers in the form of playing the mandolin like the feller last night at First Friday..
Tonite I am producing a showcase with 30 musicians and 10 staff, on California Avenue, for 3rd Thursday, or Earthwise for 3rd Thursday. It went from a Brazil Showcase to a Latin Showcase to Latin and Local to Latin and Loco and finally Ants April Tsing. You know, like the Dave Matthews song “Ants Marching” but March gives way to April. And Tsing is like “thing” and “sing” and “Ching”. I Ching. You Ching. We all Ching for April TSing.
I am medium cool on Dave Matthews. My wife likes him, so we saw him or them at Shoreline once, from the lawn. I’ve been medium cool on Dave Matthews longer than I’ve known my wife. I remember grabbing a cassette single of the then unknown Dave Matthews Band from a storefront not the Haight in 1995 or so.
But its also true that when my mom was in hospice and I distracted myself or coped by imagining music at her memorial I suddenly heard —like for the first time in 20 years the lyric
Goes to visit his mommy
She feeds him well his concerns
He forgets them
And remembers being small
Playing under the table and dreaming.
And of course lights down you up and die.
I cannot remember what I was going to do. I don’t think I knew Dave Matthews well enough at the time to actually ponder getting him to play the memorial; I remember thinking about, for example, Ben Goldberg and Sheldon Brown doing a jazz clarinet version of Lynyrd Skynyrd “Simple Kind of Man” — mama told me when I was young etc. I also left a vm for someone who worked with Boots Riley about getting boots and the Boot-ettes to do “Jesus the Pimp” a cappella because of the relationship between the protagonist and his tragically flawed mater.
We ended up with no music at the memorial but we did have a U.S. Congresswoman speak and give us a ceremonial document of her also standing in congress in honor of a great American, Barbara H. Weiss. Thanks, Anna. We will miss you, Come on out to hear if not six versions or three simjultaneneous versions of “Ants Marching” or Ants April-ching then some samba, some salsa, some bluegrass and maybe “Losing my Religion” by Midtown Dreamers or maybe they know ants marching.
On the other hand, don’t count us out: the daughter and the brother of the act near El Camino actually does have a version of Ants Marching with the actual Dave Matthews:
Yes, if you are a multigenerational real estate developer worth hundreds of millions of dollars already. For example Boyd Smith and Lund Smith, at the corner of university and Middlefield.. want to build 63 units of housing within 40 feet of a heritage oak tree which we the people stipulate should be protected better. (last time I looked there was a formula where they measured the diameter of the tree and projected out).
Palo Alto Forward which I used to call Palo Alto For War meaning “class war” — the billionaires versus the rest of us— approves of the project.
I am cynical enough to believe that people who claim they are pro housing are actually pro developer.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 