Deborah Crooks

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…

There's so much to say about the one year anniversaries that have been ticking by this past week. Today though, I'll keep it short and let you know about a string of upcoming performances I'm doing to round out the month. Tomorrow, Friday, Bay Station returns to playing a weekly porch concert (yes, a year to the day from our inaugural safe-social-distancing porch show in 2020). Next weekend, March 27, I'm part of another Quaranpalooza Fest, and I'll close out the month with a turn at Sisters in Song. More…

Check out this lineup and pick up your tickets HERE for the March edition of QuaranPalooza We're making music online to help get us through this pandemic. Get a ticket and join us to help us raise money for Bay Area Cancer Connections. 

Sat, March 27, 2021  4:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT 

The show will feature : 

Sara Rodenburg 4-4:10 pm 

Mjoy 4:15-4:25 

The Eastern Highs 4:30-4:55 

Frances Ancheta Becker 5-5:10 

Amalgamation 5:15-5:30 

David Jesitus 5:35-5:45 

Dawn Ellerbeck 5:50-6 

Deborah Crooks 6:05-6:20 

…

Hot off the presses! Spring Issue of the Bay Station Eagle has landed. A hyper-local, pocket-guide size, print quarterly penned by local residents and reflective of the Bay Station corner of Alameda island past and present 

In this issue: 

• Like All of You by Chrissy Collins 
• Spring Favas by Vanessa Barrington 
• Jazz on Mozart by Bill Chapin 
• The Longest Year by Alice Lewis 
• Star Harbor Transforms Anew by Steve Gorman 
• The Benevolent Biome by Hugh Morgan 
• Small Gifts on Park St. by…

When I'm adrift in getting longer pieces done, I like writing "CNF Tweets", short, tweet-length flash fictions. Creative NonFiction ran a #CnfTweet challenge of sorts on the them of #TheHeart during the week before Valentine's Day. I submitted several, one of which — my entry from Feb 10 — I was pleased to see made it into the magazine's newsletter. 

Here's my "suite" of CNF Tweets on the the subject:

• Feb 8 The Indian scholar’s face beamed onscreen alongside 24 other animated squares holding eager…

Hello there, 
It feels like spring in these parts: magnolia blossoms are bursting from branches, birds are nesting, and it's warm enough to play music on the porch again. Last year's porch shows really carried us through much of 2020 and we're glad to get back to it this month. Plus, Bay Station has a new EP cued up for an April release. Dates and more information follow. Here's to a happier, healthier, new month! Take care there, Deborah

MUSIC 

New Bay Station EP Beyond the Safe and Sound 

Bay Station is…