FEB. 20, 2015
T he R ancho S anta F e News
A rts &Entertainment
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FEB. 20 PIANO CONCERTO Hear Music by the Sea with pianist Hayk Arsenyan at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive. Tickets: $13 FEB. 21 CABARET NIGHT San Dieguito Academy’s music and theater departments present their eighth annual Cabaret Night fundraiser at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 21 at San Dieguito Academy’s Clayton E. Liggett Theater 800 Santa Fe Drive, Encinitas, with entertainment by Theater and Band classes, food by students in the Culinary Arts Program, a raffle and silent auction. Tickets are $30 at seatyourself.biz/sdamusic. ART AT COLLEGE MiraCosta College presents “A Murmur in the Trees,” featuring the recent paintings of artist Gail Roberts through Feb. 26 in the college’s Kruglak Gallery in the Oceanside Campus Student Center, Bldg. 3400, 1 Barnard Drive, Oceanside. Gallery hours are Mondays/Tuesdays, 2:30 to 7:30 p.m.; and Wednesdays/ Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The gallery will be closed Feb. 16. FEB. 22 SALON DANCES From 2 to 3 p.m. Feb. 22, at the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive, Encinitas, the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective presents “Salon Dances” inspired by Isadora Duncan’s salon dances of the 1900s, with choreographer/dancer Erin Tracy and live piano by composer Ryan Welsh in collaboration with playwright Kristin Idaszak. Afterward, a talk-back session between audience members and artists. Cost is a suggested donation of $10. CONCERT BAND Coastal Communities Concert Band presents “Coming Home” at 2 p.m. Feb. 22, the great music of this country, at Carlsbad Community Church, 3175 Harding Street, Carlsbad. Tickets: $15, $12. at cccband. com/ or call (760) 436-6137. FEB. 23 SING OUT As part of the Museum of Making Music’s “Learn to …” workshop series, the Music Men Chorus from the Palomar-Pacific Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, is offering a six-week vocal training clinic for men and women from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays Feb. 23 through March 30 at 5790 Armada Drive, Carlsbad. Register on-line at museumofmakingmusic.org. Registration fee of $15. For more information, visit MusicMenChorus.org. ALL ABOUT COLOR Join an “All About Color‚ Any Media” Osher lifelong learning class beginning Mondays 9 a.m. to noon Feb. 23 at the Lake San Marcos Resort Pavilion. For non-artists and artists alike. For information, visit linda@lindaluisi.com. To
register, call (800) 500-9377 or visit csusm.edu/el. FEB. 25 OPERA SOIREE The Wednesdays@Noon concert Feb. 25 will be a North County Opera Soiree with Caroline Nelms, soprano; Ellen Rabiner, contralto; Lupe Rios, tenor; and Patrick Anderson, bass-baritone; accompanied by John Danke, piano, at Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive. For more information, visit NorthCountySundaySoiree.com (Encinitas Arts Division) or call (760) 633-2746. FEB. 27 LATINO FILMS MiraCosta College’s Oceanside Campus will host a free screening in the Latino Film series of “A Sacred Journey” at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Little Theatre, Room 3601, 1 Barnard Drive, Oceanside. The evening will also feature the film’s executive producer/ director, Ernesto Quintero. For more information, contact Lisa Montes at lmontes@ miracosta.edu or call (760) 757-2121, Ext. 6396. FEB. 28 SOUL FUSION MiraCosta College’s Umoja Community will hold its second annual fundraiser, Soul Fusion, a concert combining jazz, gospel, and R & B. Performers with a silent auction at 4 p.m., and concert at 5 p.m. Feb. 28 in the college’s Concert Hall, Building 2400, 1 Barnard Drive, Oceanside. Tickets are $10 at miracosta.edu/umojatix. For more information, call Kate Coleman at (760) 795-6933. PAINT ENCINITAS Paint Encinitas is raffling off an original, 12-inch-by-16-inch oil painting (Mixed Swell, a $1,300 value) in its fundraising efforts for the new 40-foot mural by Micaiah Hardison at the 7/11 on D Street and Coast Highway 101. E-mail Jax Meyers at paintencinitas.org/ author/jax-meyers to make a donation. A tax deductible $50 donation gets you one entry ticket. DEGHER AND DAUGHTERS Leucadia 101 presents Darius Degher and Daughters with Tim Flood & Friends at 7 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive, Encinitas. Tickets $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Encinitas’ own family of singer-songwriters, the Deghers, will trade songs in an acoustic showcase including Dad Darius, daughter Cleopatra, just back from a tour and 15 yearold Cordelia, a freshman at San Dieguito Academy. MARK THE CALENDAR VILLAGE CHURCH THEATER The Village Church Community Theater presents “The Curious Savage,” a comic tale, which will challenge you to discover again the values of kindness and affection lost in a world that seems motivated at times by greed and dishonesty. Tickets are $18 for 7:30 p.m. March 20, 7:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. March 21 and 2 p.m. March 22 at the Village Church Community Theater, 6225 Paseo Delicias, Rancho Santa Fe. Purchase tickets online at villagechurchcommunitytheater.org/2014-2015-season.
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Being miserable doesn’t always lead to great art By Dave Gil de Rubio
The idea that suffering makes for great art is one of those time-honored rock ‘n’ roll tropes that even made its way into the title of a 1982 Todd Rundgren album (“The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect”). And while Lucinda Williams has had her share of personal trauma that’s informed her work over the past few decades, the happily married musician isn’t buying it. For her, happiness is rather underrated when it comes to the creative process, even if the name of her fine new double-CD, “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone,” might suggest otherwise. “(Being miserable in order to create great art) is a big myth,” she said with laugh on the phone at her L.A. home. “Not that suffering doesn’t help your writing, but I can’t write when I’m in the middle of feeling like crap. That’s the last thing I want to do. Tom Petty said the exact same thing in an interview. There’s this whole myth that you’re sitting on the side of your bed drinking Jack Daniels while your tears fall onto your guitar and you’re writing away. That’s not how it works (laughs).” “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone” marks something of a new phase for the respected 61-yearold singer-songwriter. She left her former label, Lost Highway, following the release of 2011’s “Blessed,” and has signed with the artist-friendly Nashville-based imprint Thirty Tigers, which signed off on Williams’ request for her new album to be a two-CD set. “I wanted to do this back when the “West” album came out (in 2007),” she explained. “I actually had enough songs for a double album then but [label head] Luke [Lewis] didn’t want to do it at the time for business reasons. He was concerned that they’d have to charge more for it and that the fans wouldn’t want to pay that much. So a lot of the songs that came out on “Little Honey” (in 2008) were supposed to come out on “West.” That was frustrating for me because once you have a batch of songs that kind of all fit together, you want to put them together.” It would be easy to worry that “Where the Spirit Meets the Bone” could go down a slippery slope of creative over-indulgence. But Williams managed to deftly sidestep that with a collection of songs that are all killer and no filler. The opening cut, “Compassion,” is a piece by her father and renowned poet Miller Williams that the singer-songwriter put to music. Stripped down to vocal and acoustic guitar, it has the cadence of a murder ballad that has a
Lucinda Williams performs at the North Park Theatre Feb. 21. Photo by Michael Wilson
world-weary aura hanging over it and includes the line Williams chose for the album title. (Miller Williams passed away on New Years Day at age 84.) From there, the Louisiana native drawls her way through swamp rock that would do Tony Joe White proud (the twang-soaked “Protection”), endearingly pledging her love (the “Harvest”-like “Stowaway in Your Heart”) and even
gives a girlfriend an emotional hand up (the upbeat “Walk On”). Elsewhere, she goes from railing over the trio of teens framed in the 1993 murders of three Arkansas boys (a laconic “West Memphis”) to serving up classic tear-in-yourbeer sentiment (the honkytonk ballad “This Old Heartache”). Best of all is a near-10 minute reading of TURN TO WILLIAMS ON 16
DUKE