The Santa Barbara Music Foundation will sponsor a concert by the John Doe Folk Trio at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, in the Lobero Theater. The Goleta based duo, The Brambles, will open.
John Doe made a name for himself, so to speak, as the co-founder, vocalist and bassist (also, co-writer of most of the songs) of the pioneer Los Angeles punk band, X, which is still performing, with the original members, 40 some years after their debut (before X, he was John Nommensen Duchat).
Were that all he has done, Doe would have earned considerably more than a footnote in the history of American rock, yet X was only the beginning.
In 1982, he got together with fellow X members Exene Cervenka and DJ Bonebrake, along with guitarist Dave Alvin (of The Blasters) to form the country-folk-punk band The Knitters (a play on The Weavers), which is also still in operation.
Then, there is his participation on two albums of The Flesh Eaters, his eight (and counting) solo albums, and his massive filmography as an actor in films and on TV.
He has, as well, a solid reputation as a poet. Recently, to take up the slack in his creative life, he founded the John Doe Folk Trio and went on tour.
The Folk in the John Doe Folk Trio indicates only the acoustic nature of the ensemble.
Doe will not be favoring us with “The Gypsy Rover” or “Pastures of Plenty.” He wll be singing his own songs, many of them recorded with X, The Knitters, or on his solo albums.
It may be that, as a serious poet, he decided it was time to place his words in a musical environment where they could be heard and appreciated in their own right.
(Comprehending the text of the song being the sine qua non of folk music, it always amused me that R.E.M. billed itself as a folk group, since their lyrics were notoriously incomprehensible.)
Despite their deliberately off-putting appearance, their implacable hostility to polite conventions, and the high noise content of their music, I have always had a soft spot for punks, on account of their fierce devotion to the written word, filling letters and editorial sections of their ‘Zines wth critiques, social comment, and polemics pounded out on manual typewriters and stuffed through the mail slots of the storefront offices of fly-by-night publications (most notably, Maximum Rock and Roll).
The last legitimate heirs of the Beat generation, they poured their passionate thoughts — surprisingly coherent and often politically sophisticated — into what amounted to suicide notes, left on the shore before wading out into the media ocean until their feet no longer touched bottom, when they began to swim.
They felt themselves at the end of civilization, and they might well have been right.
The Brambles are Carly and Bethany, two talented and engaging daughters of Goleta. One plays a ukulele, the other a tambourine — a delicate sketch of accompaniment perfectly sufficient to support their exquisite vocal harmonies (somewhat reminiscent of the 1960s duo Cathy & Carol).
Sometimes, they are joined by a guest artist on upright bass — at the Lobero this will be Jeff Kranzler of The Bryan Titus Trio. For more information, consult their website at www.thebramblesmusic.com.
Tickets to this concert are $25-$55. They can be purchased at the Lobero box office, 33 E. Canon Perdido St., by phone at 805-963-0761, or online at https://www.lobero.org/.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.