One Cubic Yard

One Cubic Yard, a photo by Michael Kuker on Flickr.

More Positive Development in Downtown Redding

The City of Redding Planning Commission has approved a proposal to build another mixed-use building in downtown Redding.

The old Greyhound bus station at the intersection of Pine and Butte streets in downtown Redding has sat empty since Greyhound relocated to the new transit facility adjacent to the
railroad tracks in 2010.

The Redding Greyhound Depot circa 2011, courtesy of Google Street View.

Parts of the Greyhound station date back to at least 1945.

Dean and Jane White bought the building in 2011 intending to renovate it for their medical-billing company, but soon discovered the costs of bringing it up to code would be prohibitive. This
past January, they have applied for (and were granted) permission to raze the structure and build a new building that better embodies the principles of New Urbanism.

The new building is designed by Scott Gibson of Chico, who also designed the lovely mixed-use building across from the Redding Civic Center on Parkview Avenue. The new two-story building will house over 25,000 square feet and feature apartments and offices on the second floor.

The new building will be twice the square footage of the old station and eliminate an empty bus staging and parking area facing Pine Street, another positive step towards enhancing the built environment of that major thoroughfare. This comes on the heels of the four-story mixed-use building built by Brent Weaver one block south.

According to the Record-Searchlight, construction could start as early as June of 2013 and take six months to complete.

The full City of Redding staff report with architect’s sketches of the new building can be found here.

No Sign

No Sign, a photo by Michael Kuker on Flickr.

A signpost for the old Salt Creek Bridge, located on an old alignment of Highway 99 normally underwater. There’s nothing like old concrete.

Meriam Library

Meriam Library, a photo by Michael Kuker on Flickr.

The lovely brutalist Meriam Library at CSU, Chico. Although brutalism can be pretty bleak in urban environments, I think it can be stunning in greener environments like the Chico State campus.

Lassen Peak

Untitled, a photo by Michael Kuker on Flickr.

A fresh angle on Lassen Peak.

Preview from the Vault: Old Crow Medicine Show

This brief article/interview appeared in the August 16, 2007 Chico News & Review.

Old School
Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor takes on modern times

It’s been quite a journey for the members of Old Crow Medicine Show. The band coalesced in 1998 during a legendary trek across Canada, where the members busked and barnstormed for gas money and food whenever they could. Such a tour has destroyed many a lesser band, but once they got back to the States, the boys in Old Crow holed up together in a mountaintop farmhouse in North Carolina, where they worked the farm, brewed corn liquor and learned traditionals from the locals. It was there that they were discovered by bluegrass legend Doc Watson and his daughter Nancy, which led to gigs at Watson’s annual MerleFest, the Grand Ole Opry, and an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion. The CN&R recently talked with Ketch Secor (vocals, fiddle, harmonica), who considered himself an odd kid (“I had an early appreciation for things much older than myself”), about the past, present and future of Old Crow Medicine Show.

How has the band changed since the days of the Canada barnstorming tour?

We definitely became a working band pretty shortly after that, and our whole ideology changed. Our fire became focused. We directed it toward the audience; because they wanted us to—they’ve been calling for it all along. They’re looking for a great time … for some answers. The music is very much about the listeners and the appreciation of it. There wouldn’t be any of this if it weren’t for [them]; we’d still be on the street corner.

What do you think of the current state of the music industry?

Presently, I think it’s just a torrent of lackluster artistry. Everybody’s got a record, everybody’s a pro, everybody’s got a show on Friday night, and everybody’s got a link to tell you about it … I think you can look at the computer and the “interweb” as being a very liberating force, but if it isn’t leading to live music being performed then it’s doing nothing. It’s all about selling something. I’m more [for] digging the ferocity of instrumentation, being real, and being present and linked to the artists. There it is, all happening before you. It’s the genuine article with all of its history and all of its bastard children standing around the cabin. There it is! Look at it! Go up to it, knock on the door—it’ll scare the hell out of you, but do it just to feel something.

How would you describe your show for someone who hasn’t seen it?

It’s a high-energy atmosphere and oftentimes it feels like a revival—but not like a folk revival, like a tent revival. Like a snake-handlin’, venom-spittin’, strychnine-drinkin’ tent revival. There’s a lot of passion, there’s a lot of fire, there’s a lot of emotion. So it’s all those things, but it’s also important to recognize that it’s an acoustic show and a rockin’ show.

Where would you like to be in another 10 years?

Oh, disappeared in Oregon somewhere, up some logging road.

Still playing though?

[Laughs] Ten years from now? I don’t know what’s going to be where. I don’t really feel that I can trust 10 years from now in the way that people from before could. I just think that the rate of change and growth and destruction is spiraling out of control, and I fear for 10 years.

Speaking of which, this show is going to be a benefit for a sustainability fund. What are your thoughts on sustainability?

You couldn’t pick a better band to represent the value of sustainability: Here we are, playing the music that has been played on this continent for 200 years. We’re also adding to it to make it appropriate to the present; we’re enriching it. When you think about sustainability, it’s using the environment you’ve been given, and finding the natural resources that exist freely within it and harnessing them instead of extracting them, destroying them and burning them. The thing about Old Crow is that we have this ability to sing the old songs for people; the songs are healing and the songs are part of who we all are. They’re voices that have strength today and have resonance today. So singing them, it’s a very natural thing.

Review from the Vault: George Jones, The Essential

The Essential George Jones
George Jones
Legacy / Sony

There’s no better way to drown your sorrows than with country music on jukebox, and when a discerning fella needs to drink a gal off his mind, he naturally reaches for George Jones. With songs like “She Thinks I Still Care,” “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will),” you know the ol’ Possum has been down in the dumps, too. The Essential is a great sample of his earlier honkytonk work as well as his later countrypolitan work; and of course, no George Jones retrospective would be complete without a few duets with the late, great Tammy Wynette.
If, like me, you’ve been waiting for the perfect George Jones compilation to come out, this is the one; the transfers are top notch, the track listing has all the classics, and the liner notes ain’t half bad, either. So, next time you hop on your riding lawnmower and head on down to the liquor store, be sure to pick this collection up; it’s one disc that lives up to its name– essential.

(Originally published in the Chico News & Review.)

http://open.spotify.com/album/2Pf9lml86yy0wuEDUSBIUF

Review from the Vault: Son Volt, The Search

Review from the Vault is a new category revisiting past reviews published elsewhere that seem to have disappeared from Google.

The Search
Son Volt
Transmit Sound/Legacy

The Search, the latest release from roots rockers Son Volt, opens with a minor key mantra with the sole lyrics of “Feels like riding in a slow hearse.” Fair enough. But, at times, this hearse picks up some speed and starts fishtailing around hairpin curves, like on “The Picture,” the album’s brassy (literally) second track. When Farrar sings “We’ll know when we get there, if we’ll find mercy,” you suspect he already knows the answer—and you just aren’t going to like it.
Although the music isn’t all downbeat dirges—there’s some patented Farrar rockers like “Action” and “Automatic Society”—the album’s lyrics are focused on calamities and catastrophes on both the personal and global scale. Pleasingly, the new line-up is beginning to gel more as an actual band than it did on its previous lineup, and there’s near-perfect balance of straight-ahead rock with the more esoteric instrumentation of Farrar’s solo releases. As Farrar mournfully croons on the closing track “Phosphate Skin,” “It can only get better from here, don’t have any fear.”

(Originally published in the Chico News & Review)

http://open.spotify.com/album/7sGSCHzr2qCTA0NFl5cjo9

If There’s a Bustle In Your Hedgerow

If There’s a Bustle In Your Hedgerow, a photo by Michael Kuker on Flickr.

The beautiful Hedge Creek Falls near Dunsmuir. Since this visit, they moved the parking across the street and improved the trail down to the falls. At the falls themselves, they seem to have reworked the grade and land around the pool in a fairly invasive manner that makes me wonder how the EIR got approved.

Stardust at 7am

Stardust at 7am, originally uploaded by Michael Kuker.