Music . Movies . Books . Clothing . Posters . Culture
ATTENTION Greg Brown ticket holders! If you purchased General Admission tickets from us oreventbrite.com, please e-mail tickets@fremontslo.com to be assigned a specific seat. There was a mix-up, and seats are now being assigned! PLease help spread the word!
Coming to the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, March 17th, Zac Brown is riding the crest of his “Best New Artists” nod from the Grammys. Not that he wasn’t sizzling stages coast to coast previous to this award, but it’s nice to see a musician whose been doing it alone, finally get an acknowledged measure of success. If you feel like your Celtic luck is running high, we’re offering one lucky winner a pair of tickets to see the Zac Brown Band in Santa Barbara. We’ll pick a winner on Monday, March 15th. Tickets are also available at all TicketMaster outlets and the Arlington Theatre Office. To charge by phone please call, 805-583-8700. Order online at www.ticketmaster.com
Zac Brown Band
Zac Brown is a country singer, songwriter, and bandleader, one of the brightest stars in a generation of performers set on changing the paradigm of the country music business. He’s also a record producer, record label head, and philanthropist set on making the world a better place for as many people as possible. With his winning combination of country, bluegrass, reggae, and Caribbean music, he appeals to country fans and jam band hippies, and could well cross over to lovers of world music and pop. He sold over 30,000 copies of the first two self-produced albums he made for his own Southern Ground label, and “Chicken Fried,” the Zac Brown Band’s first single to get national distribution, went platinum with over a million downloads.
Brown was born in 1978 in Atlanta, GA, and grew up in Dahlonega, GA, a small town in the north Georgia mountains. He was the 11th child in a family of 12 kids, and grew up in a split family. Brown’s oldest brother was 21 years his senior, later, he was rumored to of known Willie Nelson’s son and so, he was exposed to a wide variety of music growing up. His siblings’ record collections included country, pop, bluegrass, reggae, folk, and singer/songwriter albums by Cat Stevens, James Taylor, the Eagles, Bob Marley, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. His brother Wynn played bluegrass guitar and banjo, his mother liked old pop singers like Sinatra, and his dad played folk guitar and led the family in campfire singalongs. Brown sang as soon as he could talk, and started classical guitar lessons at age seven, which helped his fingerpicking skills when he switched to bluegrass and country in middle school. He started playing solo gigs while he was in high school, doing covers of pop and country songs as well as his few original tunes.
In 2002 he put together the first Zac Brown Band, looking for players with a high level of musicianship who wanted to be equal partners in a band with a communal vibe. They played about 200 gigs their first year, a pace the band keeps up to this day.
You might think this is a step back, but it’s also a step forward. Toad the Wet Sprocket gained acclaim in the ’90s, charming radio with a number of hits. After their break-up, lead singer Glen Phillips built a solid career with solo albums and collaborating with Nickel Creek. Now they’ve reunited, and are coming to town to revive the old flame and open up the ears of previous fans. The show is this Sunday, March 14th at 7:00pm with opening act Truth About Seafood. We’re offering one lucky person a chance to win a pair of ticket to the show. Act now, because a winner will be selected later tomorrow afternoon, Friday, March 12th. Best of luck! Scroll down to enter to win.
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Toad the Wet Sprocket was among the best and most popular of the adult alternative pop/rockers of the early ’90s. They harnessed R.E.M.’s jangle pop, smoothed it out, and turned it into something pretty, melodic, and accessible to a wide audience. Toad the Wet Sprocket never was as idiosyncratic or edgy as R.E.M., so they could reach a totally different audience, comprised equally collegiates and housewives. Their third album, Fear, arrived in the late summer of 1991 (after R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”), and they benefited from radio’s new willingness to play alternative bands, as “All I Want” and “Walk on the Ocean” became staples on modern rock and adult contemporary stations alike. Their long-delayed follow-up Dulcinea appeared in 1994, and it spawned the hit “Fall Down”.
Glen Phillips launched a solo career several years after the band’s breakup. He remained the most visible member of the group, collaborating with Nickel Creek and issuing a string of solo releases during the early 2000s. Toad the Wet Sprocket reconvened for several tours during the decade’s latter half, with Phillips often serving as the band’s own opening act.
