Folksinger and Songwriter John McCutcheon will return to Santa Cruz for two fabulous concerts on FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 7:30P.M. AND Children/Family Concert SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 10:00A.M. Both concerts will take place at FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 900 High St., Santa Cruz.
Tickets make great gifts! Proceeds beyond expenses benefit the Resource Center for Nonviolence. Please be generous in your support!
TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW:
Tickets via our website: Click on “Donate” button to right. Fill out all info. ***VERY IMPORTANT: On the final payment page where it says “Special instructions for the Merchant”, write HOW MANY TICKETS YOU WANT, AND WHICH CONCERT (Friday or Saturday). Web prices include a service charge: FRIDAY CONCERT: sliding scale $17-25 (pay any amount you’d like in this range, or more- proceeds beyond expenses benefit RCNV!). SATURDAY CONCERT: sliding scale $9-15. All tickets are general seating. Ticket prices are the same for adults or children. We will mail your tickets up until January 9. After that date, tickets will be held at will-call at the door.
Tickets available NOW IN PERSON at: Resource Center for Nonviolence, 515 Broadway, Santa Cruz, CA. Hours: M-Th 12-5, Sat. 12-4. RCNV will be closed from Dec. 20-Jan. 1. You can also call 831-423-1626 to make ticket reservations, but we encourage you to buy your tickets in advance to keep the ticket lines manageable.
TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE AT STREETLIGHT RECORDS, 939 Pacific Av., Santa Cruz. Ticket prices at Streetlight: Friday concert: $16, $18, or $20. Saturday Concert: $8 or $10.
DOOR PRICES: If we still have tickets available: Friday concert: $17-25 sliding scale. Saturday concert: $10-15
FOR MORE INFORMATION: 831-423-1626. Background info on John below:
about John McCutcheon: Life, for this gifted folklorist, singer, entertainer, multiple instrumentalist, and storyteller, stretched like a highway toward the beckoning horizon, lined all the way with people, each of whom would feed his imagination and whet his curiosity for what lay ahead.
More than that, they would change our lives too, as McCutcheon memorialized them in songs he would sing as he traveled the world. From fishing villages to front porches, from picket lines to sandlot baseball diamonds, from college campuses to “Houses of Culture” in the Soviet Union, McCutcheon listened to the stories of those he came to know, celebrated and unknown, finding miracles in the lives of those who changed the world and poetry in the struggles of those who played their parts on more intimate stages.
His chronicles differ from what we hear on the news. His music touches someplace deeper than the songs that play in brief radio rotations. He’s an author more than a journalist, a minstrel who is also a bona fide virtuoso. More than that, John McCutcheon is the kind of American who lives in our folk memory, spreading the rhythm and spirit of our land like seeds along the trails of imagination.
More than 35 years have passed since that first ride sent him to the Appalachians to seek out the banjo players and balladeers whose music summoned him in recordings of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Clarence Ashley and Roscoe Holcomb. In that time he has recorded more than thirty albums. Six of them garnered Grammy Award nominations.
McCutcheon has been hailed famously by Johnny Cash as “the most impressive instrumentalist I’ve ever heard,” by the Oakland Tribune as “the Bruce Springsteen of folk music,” and by the Washington Post for transforming his concerts into “little feats of magic.”
He has recently released “This Fire,” a collection of original tunes and one cover that celebrate hope, simplicity, and love, remember an amazing yet little-known Native American athlete who died too soon, and evoke the scatology and marksmanship of Dick Cheney with something almost but not quite like affection. His subsequent album, “Sermon on the Mound,” is dedicated to the lessons learned from baseball, whether played by superstars or by fathers and sons in moments that bind them forever.