Bay Station Love the Bay 2019: Episode Two featuring Yours Truly, Michele

Bay Station welcomes chanteuse and drummer Yours Truly, Michele aka Michele Kappel to the sailboat Espresso, for an afternoon conversation and concert on the Oakland Estuary of San Francisco Bay.

Bay Station Loves the Bay Video Series Launch! Episode 1 with Penny Opry

Bay Station welcomed nautical music duo Penny Opry to the sailboat Espresso for a later morning conversation and concert on the Oakland Estuary of San Francisco Bay.

Bay Station - "Trickster Moon" (Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse)

ay Station Love the Bay Full Moon Sail -January 2019. Filmed on the Alameda-Oakland estuary during the Super Full Moon Lunar Eclipse 1/20/19

Bay Station Loves the Bay: Music & Sailing Adventure

Wow, what a ride the past weekend has been. Bay Station completed its mission on Memorial Day, sailing from Richmond to Alameda after a music-filled few days with some of our favorite friends in music. Below is just a sampling of some of the tiny boat concerts staged on Espresso. Check out the Bay Station Facebook page for full videos! Thanks to all those who participated!

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Bay Station's Other Desert Cities Record Releases Today

A new record with Bay Station

While I'm more a periodic than routine co-writer, I love collaborating and making something that simply wouldn't exist otherwise. While we started co-writing as part of a challenge, Kwame Copeland and I have since made it an annual undertaking, resulting in a bunch of songs and the Americana band Bay Station. For the past several years, we've spent a lot of time in Joshua Tree writing together, and two years ago, we ended our cross-country tour there...and began a new batch of tunes. When it was time to record the keepers, we decided to record the songs near their source, took the band to Gatos Trail Studio outside of Joshua Tree and recorded the basics (We also played a gig and took a sound bath at The Integratron while we were at it!). Over the next months, we completed the 10 tracks at Lost Monkey Studio in Hayward. We’re pleased with how all those good vibrations added up, and, almost exactly a year after starting the record, we're excited to release Other Deserts Cities this coming Sunday, April 29 at The Starry Plough in Berkeley. It’s a double record-release show with our Bay Station bandmate Steve Waters. If you're in the Bay Area this weekend, please join us!

Wiggle!

Today I mourn, tomorrow I march: "Another Test"

Sad day, this inauguration day. I woke up at 4am to a large thunderclap, a low cloud going over our house crackling lightning and thunder, and then a downpour. It felt ominous, and it's taken half a day for me to snap out of a dark mood. In the meantime, the music has gone on. Bay Station has played a couple of fun shows in the past week, and we just shared a song we wrote in response to Black Lives Matter more than a year ago. Today "Another Test" just feels that much more timely. Today I mourn, tomorrow I march.

Bay Station "Go Out and Make Some" Tour Recap

I wrapped up the Bay Station Duo Go Out and Make Some Spring Tour with Kwame Copeland a couple days ago. Wowza. Over the past three+ weeks, we drove more than 6000 miles to play 22 shows in 15 states (including two double-days, one radio station, and (at least) one former brothel). We crossed the Mississippi River multiple times, skirted the base of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, and landed in the Mojave Desert. We ate tacos in New Mexico, hush puppies in Louisiana and fresh fruit pie wherever we could get it. Along the way, we happily gained a sense of the local music scenes in Nashville and San Antonio, connected with fellow touring artists in Dallas and Atlanta, and resumed old friendships in Austin and Chapel Hill. It was great to share our music with new ears, and get that much more inspired. Travel to different corners of the US is simply eye-opening.

Indeed, we experienced a sampler plate of what half the country has to offer: it's good, bad and ugly, red and blue. We were treated with the South's trademark charm while being constantly reminded of its oppressive and violent history. We talked to committed and aggrieved voters in Arizona, played the "only blue county" in Kansas, and were subjected to the gamut of political billboards in Missouri and Texas.

Mostly, we felt very fortunate to have music as our compass through such varied terrain, as it led us toward many warm-hearted and generous souls. I now feel much like I did when I finished a ride on the Big Dipper during childhood summer excursions to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk: "when can we go again?"

While I figure that out, we’ve a whole bunch of fun shows lined up around the San Francisco Bay Area during the next few weeks. Find my schedule and Bay Station's, at our sites:

www.deborahcrooks.com

www.baystationband.com