Arts Devo

This makes me Smiley Smile Arts DEVO loves getting emails with subject lines like, “BIG news” or “HUGE announcement,” especially when the news actually lives up to the tease. Like, when Daran Goodsell, marketing maven for Chico Performances, sends me a note about a “HUGE addition” to the calendar at Laxson Auditorium: Brian Wilson! As in, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, one of the greatest and most influential songwriters anywhere ever. Holy five-part harmonies! He'll be visiting Laxson on Nov. 29 with a full band that includes OG Beach Boy Al Jardine. It's especially exciting that he's coming to Chico in the wake of the release of Love & Mercy, this summer's biopic on him and the Beach Boys, and on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beach Boys' greatest album, Pet Sounds (1966).

Also included in the email was the announcement that comedian and former host of The Late Late Show, Craig Ferguson, has been added to the Chico Performances lineup as well. Currently on the road with his New Deal Tour, Ferguson will stop in Chico on Dec. 15.

Presales for CP members (for both shows) run Oct. 7-9, and tickets for the general public go on sale Oct. 12. Visit www.chicoperformances.com for more info.

1K This here is No. 1,000. After 12-plus years writing for the Chico News & Review I am just about to complete my one-thousandth piece for the newspaper. That's 458 columns (Arts DEVO and Local Bastard combined) and 542 (mostly arts-related) articles. Crazy.

I've been skimming my archives and it brought back a lot of good memories: convincing my editor to let me do full cover story/oral history on my favorite Chico band, 28th Day; interviewing Aaron Rodgers at the coliseum when he was a star at Cal; traveling to Appalachia in search of my birth father; getting paid to write about beer on many occasions; and hundreds of stories on local artists, musicians and other freaks.

I also went back and reread my very first piece, which was an assignment from then-Arts Editor John Young to do a profile on longtime Chico musician Jimmy Fay (“Up all night for 27 years,” June 12, 2003). In it, Fay talks about his long, continuous history of performing—from his days growing up in New Jersey to his 30-or-so-year run with legendary locals Spark 'n’ Cinder—which he summed up with: “Once you get into it, you get extended too far to not finish it through.”

It came across as fatalistic to me at the time, like he was saying, “What else am I gonna do?” But as I skim the archives, the idea kind of resonates for me now, both in the fatalistic sense (seriously, what else would I do?), as well as in the sense that I have become deeply invested in the creative community and have this part to play. I've always cared about music and the arts in Chico, long before my time at the CN&R, and now it's my work/purpose to tell these stories. I get to celebrate the art being made, shine a light on the hidden gems and keep our city's wild, arty fun-makers on everyone's radar and give 'em a little juice from time to time.

So, thank you, Chico arts community, for having me, and thank you, CN&R, for keeping me around. Let's “finish it through.”