KZSC Santa Cruz

The Salmonid Restoration Foundation's (SRF) 42nd Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference will be in Santa Cruz at the end of April; Dana has been Executive Director for 20 years; the conference is the largest Salmonid / watershed conference in the northwest; 550 people are registered, but it's a challenging time: starting last year, there was a freeze on state employees traveling, and now Federal;...

Gail Pellerin is California's 28th Distict Assemblymember. The legislature met their constitutional obligation to pass a budget by June 15, and they sent it to the governor - it's *very* different from what he sent over; there is significant uncertainty due to the federal government budget cuts and next year's budget, compounded by uncertainty over state tax income with LA having an extension; the...

Bonny June & Bonfire (Ken Kraft & Craig Owens) are singers / songwriters / storytellers based in Santa Cruz, California. Topics covered in the interview include: songwriting as story telling: every song tells a story! Sometimes they come to Bonny fully formed in a dream; birthday bash coming up will feature 2 new covers; The Money Question? Craig: no. Club owners like paying what they paid in the...

Justin Cummings is Santa Cruz County 3rd District Supervisor Local impact of chaos in Washington? If the proposed cuts to Medicaid go through, this will impact California, and then us, with 40,000 people (out of a total county population of 250,000) losing health coverage; Justin, formerly a soft money scientist at UCSC, is now an adjunct in the Coastal Science & Policy Program; Trust: slow to bui...

In Santa Cruz a bit unexpectedly, because the California Senate started the week with 300-400 bills that had to be voted on to be passed over to the Assembly ahead of today's deadline for bills to move out of their "House of Origin" - and the Senate finished a day early! Bills will now be assigned to committee(s) in the other house - if they include fiscal implications (more than $50,000) they als...

G-Ma's Place is a young Santa Cruz jazz band comprised of Otis Ragen-Andrews, bass; Ryu Cirillo, Keyboards & Trombone; Rowan Thompson, Guitar; Xander Shulman, Drums. Got together 2nd semester, 8th grade, in 2022 to form a band to compete in a talent show - now all high school juniors; inspired by local Kuumbwa Jazz Center; Ryu has perfect pitch, which he discovered in 8th grade - it's more of a bl...

Britain to New York & Colorado via Paris, where French encouragement helped him make the leap to being a professional musician; "Guitar-based story telling", and has been called a virtuoso; "California 1" song is a love song to our iconic highway; if he sings, it's an original, but he will play some classical guitar covers; as a songwriter, antennae always up...looking for patterns; he makes a liv...

  Born in Montana, raised in Oregon, high school in Ohio, then Connecticut; New York since 1983, starting with Manhattan School of Music; busking (playing on street)...made enough to (almost) cover rent, busing with bands, duos, trios, no one place - but musicians competed for street corners, and even sent one member early to claim space; own arrangements of other's music, with few originals; subb...

Celebrating 10 years of "Painted Mandolin"...and Monday is the 36th Anniversary of "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club"...and this year marks 40 years for "The Banana Slug String Band"; "Painted Mandolin" begins when Larry had an idea to put together an acoustic band celebrating Jerry Garcia for a show at Don Quixote's in Felton (now the Felton Music Hall)...practices for a gig that would be a "one-...

All 4 founding members of the band are still together: Sun (Solar Steve), Soil (Doug Dirt), Water (Marine Mark) and Air (Airy Larry); all educators, who formed around the Pescadero Valley outdoor education program 40 years ago, and decided to take it further; now, 40 years, and 12 albums later, they have managed to make music a part of their living / life, with environmental education music for al...

During Covid Gerard banged his head, and got the idea for "Poi Rogers", a mash-up of old fashioned country western meets Hawai'ian; public radio stations are crucial to up-and-coming artists, providing a way for them to reach audiences without being curated by an algorithm; the money question? Survive through a diversity of money sources, including their guitar repair shop in Soquel; been in Santa...

Attending Grand Opening of Beach Ranch today, a 247 acre parcel along the Pajaro River that the Land Trust is preserving, including wetlands; Land Trust is a local non-profit; Assembly currently in Spring Recess; Assembly working on the budget, and going through it line by line; next week is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and on April 28th, Asssemblymember Pellerin will host a floor ceremony honoring...

Arcata, California (Humboldt) based; start in music? Kray quit grad school (was at the Graduate Theological School at U.C. Berkeley) and started touring, playing quite a bit in Alaska; when he became a single parent he realized he needed something more dependable, and so got a Ph. D. in Fisheries Modeling before working for the government in Arcata; when his daughter left the nest he quit and went...

Deep dive into California's Cap & Trade system (Senator Laird is on the Senate's Working Group on Cap & Trade, which met last week to disuss how far we want to extend it, and whether to move up the current sunset ); How Cap & Trade works: measure emissions, and if over a cap, company has to pay a fee for the amount of emissions over the cap - alert listener Eric in Santa Cruz texts in that they ca...

Jackson relocated to Santa Cruz a year ago, from Carbondale, Colorado, because he's addicted to surfing!; "You're never a prophet in your hometown!"; Songwriter Round format...Jackson experienced this at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, where the performers were in the middle, the audience surrounding them, and each takes a turn; it was intimate, and Jackson wanted to try it in Santa Cruz; Abigayle...

March is Women's History Month; recently announced the winners of the Assembly Distict 28 Women of the Year, with a deeep dive into each of them and why they were nominated / awarded; Assemblymember Pellerin's staff who helped pull this off; every woman in the California legislature is given a number - Gail is #187 - and they are now up to 206...almost 50% of the California legislature (Assembly a...

...heading to San Jose today; the deadline for submitting bills for this year's regular legislative session is today; lawmakers can submit up to 35 bills per 2 year session; staff member Lisette suggested a bill on renters getting their deposits back via Venmo if they paid their deposit via Venmo; re-introducing bill for transferring Semper Virens parcels to State Park system (=AB679); also a bill...

Named after James Taylor (middle name), so destined for a life in music. Started on classical flute, and got into Berklee School of Music in Boston, where she came across Bluegrass (Molly Tuttle was in her class). Put together a bluegrass band (Twisted Pine). Put out a CD of songs ("Heartless Things", and later formed "Traveling Light" with Cat Wallace on fiddle and Mike Segal on bass. They put ou...

Been a musician all of his adult life - 20 years; the Money Question? Yes! Able to make a living as a musician mostly through shows, also teaching, production, some private events; not putting out CDs any more - it's "a thing of the past", because many people (including Dave) no longer have CD players; Dave Holodiloff Bluegrass covers of the Grateful Dead? Been a fan since high school, learned to...

Legislative deadline for bill submittal passed (2/21); Laird submitted 19 bills - the legislature previously had limits of 40 bills per 2 year session in the Senate, 50 in the Assembly - now, both houses have a limit of 35 for each Assemblymember and Senator; Senator Laird has a few bills in "spot form", which has the focus of the bill, but it needs to be fleshed out - cannot amend within 30 days...

When we spoke in November (on Santa Cruz Voice) Bill said that the Country was in bad shape? Now? "It's gotten worse!"; in Compton, the school buses are all electric, helping combate greenhouse gas and climate change - incremental gains are happenning...but this administration, with "Drill, baby! Drill!"; what question would a retired state senator have for a current college student? "What a great...

We interviewed Bruce "B-Movie" Bratton last Friday on his last regular segment of movie reviews on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" after 19 years; Bruce passed away at home, in his sleep, 5 days later on December 11, 2024; in Santa Cruz Bruce worked for every newspaper in town, the Good Times, the Santa Cruz Metro, the Santa Cruz Sentinel; Sleepy knew Bruce for 35 years; Bruce always had a beef...

Peppino has been professional since he was 18, and the music industry has changed in the last 40 years, but the power of music has not, and never will; now, it's all about performing live, and no longer making royalties from records; how Peppino mixes performing live with soundtracks, music for video games, and guitar workshops, master classes, and seminars; as a solo performer, it's easier, becau...

Moss Landing's Vistra facility is the largest battery storage facility in California, which had a horrific fire last month that burned for days; Morro Bay has a planned battery storage facility, but which will use a newer technology that is less prone to failure and more powerful; battery storage in California is growing, and saved the grid during a recent heat spike, supplying more power to the g...

Aid package for Southern California passed by legislature, addressing historic (and horrific) fires...$$ for recovery, debris removal passed by the special session after the governor expanded the scope, with rules waived and bill passage expedited; deep dive into CZU fires 4 years 5 months ago and of the 967 homes destroyed, 18% have been re-built, with another 19% under construction - leaving alm...