Bill “Dogfish” Pitts gets a little choked up when he talks about singing “Shallow Reef.” The song, a hard-driving ditty on The Concaves’ latest album Alive From the Red Triangle, reminisces about an absent friend.

“When I sing that song, I think of five young guys who surfed that first shortboard at the hook and how my four buddies aren’t here any more,” said Pitts, who trades vocals, lead and rhythm guitar for The Concaves with son-in-law J.D. Anderson.

It’s that personal connection to the music that binds the four members of this Santa Cruz surf band together. Each member of the group, which plays Friday (August 21) at The Catalyst, has his own story of how surf music shaped his life….

One could say the spirit of a long-dead 1970s folk singer is responsible for the Sherry Austin Band playing the inaugural Concerts in the Barn this Saturday (August 15) at the Agricultural History Project. At the very least, the music of Kate Wolf brought Austin together with Allan Molho, creator of the new two-concert series….

(Photo: The Sherry Austin Band, with Sherry Austin – left – and Sharon Allen, plays the inaugural Concerts in the Barn at the Agricultural History Project.)

By day, Gail Cruse, Vicki Neville-Coffis and Cher Peterson are a realtor, a worker at Google and an archaeologist. Come night, though, the trio join together with professional musician Paul Tarantino to transform into glamourous birds — Jazz Birds.

“Sometimes I have to come out of the field where I’ve been digging or doing an excavation — dirty, really dirty — and [I] shower and do my hair and makeup and that gown and jewelry and I’m a completely different person,” said Peterson, who plays cocktail drums standing up while singing alto. “It’s a lot of fun.”

A CD release party is being held Thursday, August 13, at Don Quixote’s….

Moe’s Alley doesn’t look like much from the outside. The light blue-colored building blends into the commercial district it occupies, as if it were another furniture store or warehouse.

Inside, however, Moe’s Alley is dominated by two things: the stage where an amazing variety of live music plays most nights and the gleaming bar that runs against one wall.

Behind the bar is the territory of Lisa Norelli, the head bartender. Raised in Marin County, Norelli moved here at a friend’s suggestion almost a decade ago. She agreed to an interview with Weekend Santa Cruz….

One plays saxophone, the other plays piano. One spent the past year studying classical music, while the other prepared to make an electronica album. One grooves on Charles Mingus, the other cites Danilo Perez as an early influence.

Jazz phenomenons Remy and Pascal Le Boeuf may be identical twins, but that doesn’t mean the 23-year-old Santa Cruz natives don’t have their differences. The Le Boeuf Brothers return to Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Thursday, August 6, for a hometown concert in support of their latest CD, House Without A Door. The brothers, now New Yorkers, will be joined by saxophonist Mike Ruby, drummer Michael W. Davis and Linda Oh on bass….

In Santa Cruz, the first weeks of August belong to The Dead. The Grateful Dead, that is. Events commemorating icon Jerry Garcia, one of the band’s founders, cluster around his birth and death dates, August 1 and 9. Performances by tribute bands China Cats and Shady Groove, Dead Dances, even a Cabrillo Festival orchestral extravaganza (See Dead-Centric Events) attest to the ongoing local passion for the Bay Area band 14 years after Garcia’s death from a heart attack.

The band may have its roots in the Haight in San Francisco, but it’s to banana slug territory that members chose to send their massive archives, gifting them to UC Santa Cruz in 2008. So what connects this locality to the Dead and vice versa….

Sizzling. Soulful. Electricity crackling. Smooth. In the hands of Mads Tolling, the violin wails, smokes and sings. You almost want a cigarette after listening to him play. He’s that good.

Known for his work with the Turtle Island Quartet, with whom he’s won two Grammy Awards, the 28-year-old Danish jazz artist started his own group in 2007. The Mads Tolling Quartet comes to Kuumbwa Jazz Center on July 30 for a performance sure to shatter prejudices about what a violin can do….

Addictive, finger-snapping, catchy. There’s something about Eric Hutchinson’s tunes that sticks in your mind and leaves you bouncing down the street long after the music is gone. Hutchinson, whose “Rock and Roll” can be heard everywhere these days (Jimmy Kimmel Live, the trailer for Away We Go), visits The Catalyst at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, July [...]

Work up a sweat dancing at Blue Lagoon and you’ll want to see Richard Herzon for something cold and wet. Herzon is the newest bartender to serve the dance club’s “drinks with a kick” and $3 specials. Though fresh to the Lagoon, the 31-year Santa Cruz resident is a familiar face to those who once frequented Club Dakota, which closed last year.

Herzon, who grew up in Fresno, took a moment out from serving tequila and vodka tonics to answer a few questions for Weekend Santa Cruz.…

Tucked away off Cedar Street, The Poet & The Patriot is a neighborhood hangout filled with laborers during the day and students at night. Its name refers to poet Padraig Pearse and Irish Labour Party founder James Connolly, both of whom were executed for their activism towards Irish statehood during the Easter Rising of 1916.

Bartender Jason Crane first visited the Poet when he was living around the corner as a UC Santa Cruz student. He found a home in this cross section of Santa Cruz society. After graduation, the Moorpark, CA, native moved back to Southern California, only to come back up north a few years later. He agreed to let Weekend Santa Cruz get to know him better.