KZSC Santa Cruz

KZSC Santa Cruz

On-demand news, interviews, and live performances from KZSC 88.1 FM Santa Cruz - Non-commercial, educational, community radio for the Monterey Bay, California

Episodes

July 31, 2025 27 mins

oe Weed is a musician, composer, fiddler, and documentary filmmaker; playing music since 7 years old; as a fiddler, remembers and passes along who you learned a song from, and who it's by..."Mystery of the Ookpit" is a film about a fiddle tune that was mistakenly assumed to be derived from Native American music, but instead was written in 1965 by a Canadian; it gained prominence when someone played it at the Weiser, Idaho, National...

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UCSC undergrad in the early 90's majoring in psychology with a minor in journalism (there was not an option to major in journalism), where she was a reporter, and then the editor, of the campus City On A Hill newspaper; she wanted a career in journalism, but first worked in finance, and accounts receivable at a law firm; her break, and her first paying journalism gig, was writing for a monthly motorcycle magazine (she rode for 27 y...

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Megan, and the other members of "The Musers", hails from Sonoma County; "The Musers" was an acoustic band project started by Megan and Anita Sandwina about 8 years ago...Anita is on vocal rest for another month, so the trio will play The Ugly Mug tomorrow night, with Tom Kuhn on upright bass, and Leslie Jackson on mandolin (plus fiddle, banjo, reso guitar, and harmonica) - all 3 sing; Anita & Megan and the songwriters, but they als...

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1 week from today is the deadline for bills to pass out of the policy committee in the other house (not the house of origin); this last Monday broke the record for the # of emails Senator Laird received in a day, which blew up over a bill on anti-semitism - an interesting & emotional twisting & turning, with an elevated # of instances across the state, especially in schools; the original bill, SB715, was bare bones, and was amended...

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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; Santa Cruz will host the conference...

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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...

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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 80s. Ken: yes. Has been able to sup...

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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 build, quick to destroy; RTC = Regiona...

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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 also go to...
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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 blessing than a curse; they practice ...

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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 living playing music, with almost all ...

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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-off"; Larry knew Matt Hartle from p...

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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 all ages; Steve is the primary songwr...

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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 Cruz 15 years, and found the perfe...

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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 R...

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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 back on the road (2017); who would'...

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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 can buy emissions from other companie...

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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 Cr...

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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...

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