ON the Beat | Year-End List-omania Strikes, in and Beyond the 805

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on January 4, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

As the year turns, our brains — especially the culturally obsessed ones — turn to what has gone down and left an imprint. Live music in Santa Barbara, particularly of the pop, classical sort (jazz still needs more stage love here), was more fully in flower than at any time since COVID’s reign hit. My “one that got away,” due to travels: the Pat Metheny solo show at the Lobero that was, reportedly, a remarkable night.

Art, too, unveiled its rich and diverse tapestry in spaces alternately institutional of the private gallery type and as pop-ups at places such as CAW.

In film, a healthy harvest proved that there is still life beyond the creatively bankrupt world of Hollywood’s sequel and Marvel-ous follies. In one mini-trend, two of the finest American films were cleverly, subversively crafted feminist sagas — Greta Gerwig’s bright and irony-laden Barbie and artfully twisted Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s unflinching and wild Poor Things (with Oscar-worthy Emma Stone in stunning, shape-shifting, and body-bending form).
        
Here is a random sampling of one cultural omnivore’s List-omania impulses, an attempt to put a frame around the fruits of 2023 in and beyond the 805.

Films:

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismaki)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra, part of the SBIFF “French Wave Festival”)

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)

Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster)

Live Music in the 805:

Samara Joy and family, Granada

Daniil Trifonov, Campbell Hall (Rameau, Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier”

Silkroad Ensemble, “American Railroad” (director Rhiannon Giddens’ second notable local appearance, after heading up this year’s Ojai Music Festival in June)

Ojai Music Festival, “Creative Lab,” linked to California Festival

Foo Fighters, Bowl

Wilco, Arlington

Father John Misty, Bowl

Patti Smith Trio, Lobero

Paul Thorn, Maverick Saloon (“Tales from the Tavern” series)

Jeremy Denk, Bach Partitas, Hahn Hall (part of Music Academy festival)

James Taylor, Bowl

LA Phil x 2, Granada (CAMA presentations), in May, led by Gustavo Dudamel, with premieres of Ellen Reid’s West Coast Sky and Gabriella Smith, Lost Coast, returning in December with Zubin Mehta conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 1

Augustin Hadelich, solo recital emphasizing Bach, at the Lobero

ARTEMIS, Campbell Hall

Danish String Quartet, “Doppelganger” project, with new work by Ana Thorsvaldsdottir

Connor Hanick, playing music of Galina Ustvolskaya, at Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series

SB Art exhibitions:

Shape, Ground, Shadow: The Photographs of Ellsworth Kelly, SBMA

From Within: The Architecture of Helena Arahuete, UCSB AD&A Museum

Cameron Patricia Downey: Orchid Blues, MCASB

Straddling Circumference… The Art of Linda Ekstrom, Ridley-Tree Museum of Art at Westmont

Nicole Strasburg, Surfacing, Sullivan Goss

Bill Dewey Delta, Marcia Burtt Gallery

Curious by Nature: Works by Charley and Edie Harper, SB Museum of Natural History

USCB MFA show, Chaotic Good, AD&A Museum

The Private Universe of James Castle, SBMA

Joan Tanner, Out of Joint, SBMA

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Chris’s Christmas Bonanza

Just before Christmas landed, Chris Shiflett came to town, as he is now officially wont to do. The nimble, Santa Barbara–born/bred guitarist best known as a Foo Fighter in the past quarter century (the band also did a victory lap onto the Santa Barbara Bowl stage last fall in the first Foo concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl). As Shiflett — singer, songwriter, guitarist, and rocker in solo mode — he is now also known for a tradition in the making, this was his third annual pre-Christmas Hometown Holiday Hoedown show at SOhO. SRO crowds heeded the holiday call, in SOhO’s festive hang zone.

The happy local “hometown-y” connections flowed, including special guests hailing from our town, and with close links to Shiflett’s 90s musical romps here. For the Friday night show, the first of two-night stint, famed surfer (who also folk-rocks) Tommy Curren — joined by his multi-gifted son Pat on drums and trusty/wily Todd Capps on keyboards — supplied a jolt of the surfing culture important to Shiflett and many others in the room, followed by a spunky solo acoustic set-let from Pennywise’s Jim Lindberg, demonstrating the truism that punk is often folk music sped up and with edges left raw.

Shiflett’s persona in solo mode is that of a meaty rocker with alternative country elements seeking a happy genre melding. The project is working, as heard on Lost at Sea, his latest album and number five in a discography going back to 2010. His SOhO set was delivered with tidy power and just the right amount of roughness by his trio (and with the leader sometimes relying on an octave divider to thicken the sonic brew). They showcased new tunes, including the infectious “Damage Control,” “Black Top White Lines,” and “I Don’t Trust My Memories Anymore” (we know the feeling), but also the pandemic-tinged “A Long, Long Year,” and a ripe closer, “West Coast Town.” Yes, it’s a tip of the hat to the then humbler Santa Barbara hometown of his youth.

Towards the end of Shiflett’s set, he called up his guests in the house for a rousing dip in the twanged anthem that is Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down).” A possible subplot of this night out was that settling down — raising children (like Shiflett’s sons, in the crowd) — and keeping a finger on the rowdy, for a living or otherwise, aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
        
2024 begins. Shiflett, like the rest of us, bucks up for another ride into the thicket of life. For him, this means juggling hats as a Foo and a solo artist digging deeper into that channel of his musical adventure.