Deborah Crooks

Today is the San Francisco Free Folk Festival! Online  I'm doing double duty, presenting a set of my solo material and taking a turn with Bay Station Band, amid a virtual feast of music including comrades Aireene Espiritu, Bob Hillman, Matt Jaffe, Maurice Tani Judi Jaeger, Jo D'Anna and more!

Revisited the beautiful inspiration for “River Stones” last week, the amazing, dynamic, ever-changing Salmon River:

 I'm just home after a week-long songwriting retreat in the mountains with small group of beautiful humans, an extra special and slightly overwhelming experience after so much time spent sheltering in place. It's so good to shake off the dust and the rust of the past year+ and look forward to brighter days ahead.

While I expect to add more live dates to the calendar later this summer, my next performance will be virtual, as I'll have a showcase video at the San Francisco Free Folk Festival on Saturday June…

1. New Roots 
2. Twin Lakes 
3. We're All In This Together 

“This is our chance to make it better/ call a friend, help your neighbor/ speak out when you see wrong/cause everyone belongs.” 
— from "We're All In This Together" on Twin Lakes.

All songs ©words & music Deborah Crooks (ASCAP) 
Deborah Crooks, acoustic guitar, vocals 
Kwame Copeland, guitar, dobro, backing vocals 
Ben Bernstein, bass 
…

I feel as if I've woken from a dream or come back from a long trip overseas. Everything feels familiar but different. Seeing friends I haven't seen in person in more than a year is energizing and...amazing! Wow and yay to the best of humans and heart connections. Still, I'm taking the whole re-opening of things slow if steady. Upcoming performances are still hyper-local and virtual and I've more recorded music to share: Amid working on the Bay Station EP, I recorded Twin Lakes, containing three new…

Anyone else feel like they’re waking up from having a weird dream after falling asleep in a hotel, having checked in late at night after a long drive? (I’m talking starting to emerge post-vaccine and seeing people you haven’t seen in person in a year here, not 4/20). While I CAN’T wait to get back to playing out in the world, there's new music and more virtual and porch music programming on deck here in Bay Station! Tune in, take a listen and please continue to take care out there.  

I've been feeling cautiously optimistic. ...and like a blinking bird, thin-skinned and gangly, discombobulated by the resumption of so many activities at once. How will we emerge from this time? A time of pandemic and climate crises, social strife and division?  I’m looking to the butterfly that fluttered by the other day, listing and dropping down and rising up, seemingly precariously but never wavering from its path. Gentle, beautiful, intentional.

Hear our new EP Beyond the Safe and Sound out today. Six new songs reflecting on a year like no other:

1. What to Do When the Lights Go Out (3:21) 

2. 103 Degrees (4:43) 

3. Enough (3:48) 

4. Beyond the Safe and Sound (3:16) 

5. Masked Marauders (3:59) 

6. Everything Adds Up to Now (2:37) 

All songs Deborah Crooks & Kwame Copeland (ASCAP) except Masked Marauders by Deborah Crooks, Kwame Copeland and Karen Hildebrand. 

Kwame Copeland, vocals, acoustic and electric…

I grew up in a then-rural area with a party line and two-and-a-half channels on the TV (one rarely got decent reception). The lights went out every time there was a storm and the internet was a distant planet. Books —a librarian-staffed bookmobile visited the nearest intersection every couple weeks for us to peruse its small shelves — local radio, what was outside and what sprung up in my imagination provided most of my entertainment.  Though I couldn't wait to get out there at the time, lessons learned…