Shiny Red Nose: Happy Holidays from KCDC

We've holiday-ized another KCDC tune. Shiny Red Nose! Artwork by the amazing Rebecca Stees

Holiday Shows & Music: Mann & Naylor Update the Usual

I went to two very different but equally excellent holiday-themed shows this past weekend: Aimee Mann's rock 'n roll Holiday special at The Fillmore on Friday and Jacqui Naylor's intimate jazz show at Salle Piano's on Sunday. Very different in setting and mood, they were both excellent, featuring stellar accompaniment (key players being songwriter/guitarist Ted Leo for Aimee and pianist Art Khu for Jacqui) great singing and new takes on holiday favorites.

Both Mann and Naylor have above-and-beyond-the-usual holiday albums. Check 'em out.
Jacqui Naylor — Smashed for the Holidays
Aimee Mann —  One More Drifter in the Snow

 In addition to co-leading the show with Leo — they've been performing as 'The Both'  for the past year or two — Mann called in a couple of comedians as well as Bangle member Susanna Hoffs to fill out the evening. Their video, below, albeit not Christmas-related, captures the chops and humor this bunch brought to the stage.

Happy Holidays Song: "Ho Ho" (Tired Santa)

All the best: Christmas lights

I love Christmas lights of all kinds. Luminarias in New Mexico, small LEDs for wreaths and trees, the lights on the Embarcadero. While large city displays are impressive,  you really can't beat homegrown kitsch which is abounding in the East Bay. If San Francisco loves a parade, Alameda loves a reason to decorate its homes.  And the December holiday season has brought out great profusions of Christmas lights in place of off-the-hook haunted houses and ghoul-bedecked yards. Blinking strands of red, purple and blue lights edge window frames, twinkle from shrubs, swirl over rooftops and generally create a psychedelic experience for night-time drivers traveling certain streets. And then there's the variety of, umm, Christmas-themed statuary. Large inflated Santas, mechanical 'deer' contraptions (that move), Snowman, both painted plastic and constructed of choice round rocks. You can pretty much go anywhere on the island right now and find some interesting light display — there's a lot of small quirky displays that make night-time strolls in our neighborhood that much more rewarding —the place to go (along with a lot of other light lovers) is 'Christmas Tree Lane,' residents of Thompson Ave off of High St have created a true wonderland.

John Prine "All the Best"

Telegraph Ave Holiday Street Fair 12/14-24

I'm playing a set amid Lisa Graciano's round-up of artists at the Telegraph Ave Holiday Street Fair. Come get your Berkeley art and music on!

"Located between Dwight Way and Bancroft Way near the U.C. Campus in Berkeley CA.Holiday shoppers to the Telegraph business district will be treated to an abundance of good cheer, great music, fine food, and unique and unusual handcrafts by some of Northern California's finest artists.This fair offers the rare opportunity to buy fine art originals and inexpensive gift items in the same place. Shoppers can choose from a tremendous diversity of arts and crafts, including jewelry, beadwork, wirework, hats, candles, leather work, silk-screened and tie-dyed clothing, pottery, wood crafts, metal crafts, paintings, henna-art, gift boxes, photography and sculptures"

TELEGRAPH STREET FAIR 2012 Performers Line-Up

Friday Dec. 14, 2012: 12pm-4pm Lisa Graciano

Saturday Dec. 15, 2012: 11am-12pm Lisa Graciano, 12pm-1pm Fly Right Sisters, 1pm-3pm Lisa Graciano, 3pm-5pm Jeff Rolka

Sunday Dec. 16, 2012: 11am-1pm Deborah Crooks, 1pm-3pm Lisa Graciano, 3pm-5pm Paul Anderson

Saturday Dec. 22, 2012: 11am-12pm Lisa Graciano, 12pm-1pm Paul Anderson, 1pm-3pm Lisa Graciano, 3pm-5pm Paul Anderson

Sunday Dec. 23, 2012: 11am-1pm Hali Hammer & Randy Berge, 1pm-5pm Lisa Graciano

Monday Dec. 24, 2012: 11am-12pm Lisa Graciano, 12pm-1pm Paul Anderson, 1pm-3pm Lisa Graciano, 3pm-5pm Paul Anderson

Listening: Have Yourself A Merry...

I've spent the past two Christmas's in India, where people appear to have no problem folding Jesus and Santa into the general pantheon that permeates everyday life there. December in India is about a lot of things besides Christmas, and Christmas day kind of comes and goes along with a half dozen other unrelated holidays that happen to fall in the season. So the Yuletide decoration and shopping machine at work in the US seems especially acute to my eyes and ears this year. Trees and wreathes and holiday music piped through elevators and restaurant speakers at every turn. I like a lot of this — more Christmas lights, please! Sure, I want to go to your party — but, suffice to say, there's a lot of truly awful Christmas music out there.
Amid it all, Kwame challenged us to learn some new Christmas songs and lo, we both chose "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" as one of our holiday covers. Turns out this 1944 classic made popular by Judy Garland is among the most-oft performed Christmas songs there is. Everyone from Garland and Sinatra to The Carpenters and The Pretenders, She & Him and Christine Aguilera have had a go of this tune. Even Dylan did it! In any case, it's a good song, in my book, not so much because of its tribute to the season, but it's realization of change and impermanence amid celebration. Here's the version that got it all going:

Songwriters: MARTIN, HUGH / BLANE, RALPH
Have yourself a merry little christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be
Out of sight
Have yourself a merry little christmas
Make the yule-tide gay
Next year all our troubles will be
Miles away
Once again as in olden days
 Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon, we all will be together If the fates allow
Until then, well have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little christmas now.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you much love, peace and joy for your holiday season

Thanks so much for supporting my musical endeavors and reading the blog this past year. Here's to more music, good cheer and community in 2012.

Love, Deborah

Merry Christmas

It doesn't feel too Christmasy in the way of my American life, but India is not immune to even this holiday. Certainly, the many students in the Ashtanga community here didn't miss another opportunity to celebrate. Yan's (w/me in the photo) birthday coincided with Christmas and she threw a dinner party asking female guests to wear traditional dress. I didn't think it would ever happen, but I indeed went sari shopping downtown one evening and with the help of a seasoned sari wearer, was able to get about in the one piece of fabric plus sari-top. I felt equal parts like a poser and totally delighted. Much more comfortable than I thought, though the after dinner-party, after caroling, & dance floor @ Alex's called for a change into something more familiar.


Christmas day itself in Mysore, has been warm and sunny. I'm paying a visit to Operation Shanti's Karunha Mane to see the gift distribution. There are several orphanages, social service organizations (OS, AshaDayaka, Odanadi) and other charities in town for those in need. As in years past, many of the yoga students have banded together to buy gifts for the kids as well as volunteer their time in other ways.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you much love and happiness during this holiday season! peace & gratitude, Deborah

If you're in the Bay Area I've a few end of the year performances. Come say hello and raise a glass:

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Dive Into the New Year @ The Stork Club - 9pm
2330 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA 94612 $5

Featuring Jean Mazzei, Alex Walsh and me with our respective bands.

Thursday, December 31st, 2009
New Year's Eve @ Le Meridian - 9pm-2am
333 Battery St
San Francisco, CA 94111 $15

photo©Jose Maria Cuellar

Friday Festivities

I will be doing a Hayes Valley/Monterey one-two on Friday, December 4. Early @6 the Hayes Valley Block Party & later @10 at Jose's Underground Lounge in Monterey. Both should be super fun.

Hayes Valley Block Party- 6-9pm (I play @6)
Patricia's Green, Hayes & Octavia St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

Jose's Underground Lounge--doors 9/show 10pm
638 Wave St
Monterey, CA 93940
(831)655-4419

the family

For 24 hours I played @ suburban living: cooking in a big kitchen, watching Elf with my niece and nephew, feeding the part of the cookies Santa didn't eat to the dogs... My brother in law did a Starbucks run. My brother played on The Wii with the kids. I got my nephew to use his drum kit while I played some guitar, but IPods, Nanos and the aforementioned Wii trumped live music...and some connections were lost. A walk through the cul-de-sacs and golf courses of San Ramon yielded only two other walkers (with dog, of course), not one siren, and yellow rumped warblers, phoebes and a dove. The city has been wearing on me and the novelty of suburban quiet was welcome --as was realizing a lot of peace has been made in this family (sister, brother, his dog, niece and nephew w/me in this shot appraising Santa's loot). A necessary check-in....Nonetheless, I was soon scribbling notes to myself... I long for quiet in the city; I long for all the things I'm accustomed to in urbanity.....Ever the twain shall meet....

faith matters

Growing up, Christmas Eve used to be mass, then home for eggnog in porcelain cups, opening the 'family presents' and staying up with my brother in an attempt to see Santa, who would fill our stockings and restock the gifts under the tree sometime before dawn.
I arrived at my sister's house after visiting friends in the East Bay as her family, and my brother, who'd driven up from the Santa Cruz county house we grew up in, were getting ready for church. Having gotten up at the crack of dawn to practice yoga and chant, "I'd done my thing for the day," I explained as I opted out of the service, then got to cooking, my gift to them (we've outgrown the shopping frenzy) being the preparation of the vegetarian components of the Christmas dinner: winter green salad, mixed squash soup, beets&kale, quinoa with brussel sprouts, something with yellow Finn potatoes I haven't quite decided and a gluten-free spice Bundt cake (They'll round out the rest with a roast, bread, See's candy and a bona-fide buche de noel). I rarely make anything that takes longer than 10 minutes to prepare in SF but put me in suburbia with a big kitchen, and voila, my inner Martha rears her oven mitts.
Church though, that doesn't come back as easily. I thought about the information I got from the Catholic Church long ago, much of it I've been working to undo. My dad, I recalled, had always bowed out of Christmas Eve services as well, waving us off to the Church my mother insisted we attend, in favor of Karl Jung and Joseph Campbell books.
"The two most important things you can give a person are information and food," an Indian saddhu who'd wandered and chanted his way through much of that country told me during my time there.
Back in suburban California, I sliced squash and sauteed onions, thinking of my parents and what beliefs they'd carried with them to the end of their lives. They'd given me information, that's for sure, but much of it, I'm still grappling with.
I thought of the saddhu's words and got back to the vegetables. Hopefully they'll be enough! In addition to my sister, her husband, two children, my brother, about 10-15 more people are expected to arrive. I'd pureed half the soup, by the time the church goers returned. I let them do some "quality control" taste-testing and asked my brother about the house. What was growing? What was new?
He thought a moment, then told me the one thing he knew I'd appreciate (and I very much appreciate that he knows I'd appreciate this):
A month or so ago, a Cooper's Hawk had flown through his window, mostly likely as it was attempting to catch one of the quail that flock in the yard. The large bird knocked itself out, before coming to and flying about the house, banging into walls and more glass. Imagine! A big hawk in your house! What to do? Eventually they were able to guide it back outside, to open sky, freedom. This story, to me, is information I can use.

abundance

Holiday party going has been in full force and I'm spoilt from Friday's shindig at Peter's (where I actually met some of the people I work with face-to-face) and Emily and Chris's Saturday “Holiday Bamo-wamo.” Featuring a drum kit in front of the oven so Tora’s band "Sugarbutt Tiger" and Emily and Corey’s one-off band "Ethel Bourbon" could perform in the kitchen, the house was filled with musicians and writers. Along with the bands above and the Whoreshoes members, I caught up with Heidi-Jane whose hard at work on her new CD.
Boogieing on the linoleum to Led Zeppelin and Go-Gos covers helped account for some of the increased chocolate and cookie consumption of the past few weeks. However, I knew I was a little over done when I looked at a table laden with salmon, truffles, spanokopita, olives, a groaning cheeseboard, multiple varieties of cookies, free-flowing wine and reached past all for the Pelligrino. How fortunate I've been this season, of which Saturday was a good reminder, as it was a day spent with friends, both new and old.
Earlier, I took a train to the South Bay to meet up with Sally to furniture shop and continue our ongoing mulling over what it means to be approaching 40. Sally and I have known one another since kindergarten. Ostensibly, I was looking for a couch and she was shopping for a gift for her son, but our conversation’s terrain included more thoughts on children, husbands, boyfriends and the vagaries of love than couch fabric and easel height and we both exited the store encouraged if empty handed (We did manage to check in on a couple of her landscape designs, which are developing nicely.)
Getting up this morning with a day off, mostly unplanned save for some last-minute menu planning for the cooking I'm set to do for the family on Christmas day, meant I have time for writing, a welcome event I know Karen Hildebrand in NYC understands. I met Karen about 10 years ago at a writer's conference in the Colorado Rockies. We were both in the midst of making radical changes in our lives, in part so we could pursue our creative dreams, which led to the West Coast and beyond. I'm so glad we're still in touch, too, so I can appreciate the journey it's been from the desire to make an idea or a feeling into art, the sacrifices undertaken to do so, and the actual result. Karen's been enjoying a wave of poetry publications of late, so check out the sidebar of her blog.

Congrats and kudos to all my accomplished friends for going the distance! Here's to more in 2008.

stories

"Everyone has a Gump's story," says Marta Benson, who heads up marketing at the venerable emporium of art objects, luxury furniture, jewelry and home accessories. I happened to meet Benson amid a fit of holiday nostalgia having met up with Emily in Union Square after work and pre-party for a last-minute shop and H&M accessory run. We both had childhood memories associated with viewing ornate window displays at Gump's around Christmas. My Gump's story is wrapped up with drama class bus rides to the city to see ACT's A Christmas Carol production and spend an hour at Union Square's flagship department stores. Walking into Gump's back then, with its exotic craftwork, jewelry, Limoges and furniture displays, was like walking into a treasure chest. Though the store fed my burgeoning wanderlust, I was always a little afraid I might bump into some glassware and break it. The window displays were a little more approachable, and, at the time, enchanting with their dancing bears and North Pole scenes.
The windows outside Gump's, December 2007, were luxe, albeit stately, and adult. No movable parts to be seen. Perhaps the special holiday windows were on a different side of the streets?
"Where are the window displays?" I asked the Gump's employee who would turn out to be Benson.
"Right there," she said teasingly pointing to the non-moving windows. "Aren't they beautiful?" In back of her a row of Christmas ornaments glittered. Shoppers murmured over Asian artwork. The district attorney walked by. Last-minute gift purchasing was in full effect if without the frenzy of H&M.
Gump's, Benson reminded me has a history stretching 146 years back, institution status in these Western parts. The store has registers containing the signatures of countless dignitaries including U.S. presidents.
"Now aren't our windows nice?" she laughed. Fine glass, ebony boxes, embroidered cloth. No dancing bears or skating elves...but I had to agree.
Benson laughed again: "Macy's has the puppies and kittens in their windows, right around the block."