Arts Devo

Refugee song
This is a tough watch. Longtime local musician John-Michael Sun sits in a chair in the ashes of his destroyed Paradise home and plays guitar and sings in response to the tragedy. “Well I had me a garden, and everything I grew there/kept me thinking, ‘I’m OK,’ here in my easy chair/I finally had me some roses that weren’t eaten by deer/It was a good life, but now I cry me a tear.”

The beautiful folk tune was posted on the Facebook page for Climate Uprising (see it at goo.gl/pVm4YJ), a local group born in the wake of the Camp Fire that is spearheading a global call to action for responding to the climate crisis. The video also features Sun’s partner, musician/open-mic promoter Susan Dobra, and the images of them surveying their burned home for the first time are heartbreaking, especially as the song’s achingly sad refrain plays in the background: “I’m a refugee, and I wanna go home.”

The song’s title is “Refugee,” and it’s one of three tunes on Sun’s new EP called The Ashes of Paradise, available for free download on his Soundcloud page at soundcloud.com/jm-sun.

What was lost
Local artists Rebecca Wallace and Rebecca Shelly are spearheading an ambitious art project designed to connect Camp Fire survivors with artists who will create artworks to give back to those who’ve suffered loss. Working with gallery-production students from Butte College and the 1078 Gallery, they’ve created a Facebook group (facebook.com/groups/whatwaslost) where they are posting images and stories of what was lost that artists will in turn “adopt” and create a piece of art from. The works will be shown at 1078 Gallery April 26-27 during the Remembered: Art Honoring Loss from the Camp Fire exhibit before being given to those being honored.

To share a story or inquire about creating art, visit the Facebook group or email whatwaslostinthecampfire@gmail.com.

More tuuunes!
Dude! The local emo crews know how to record. Chico four-piece Creekside just dropped a self-titled EP, and the sound is huge and clean without sacrificing any energy. Five songs of fist-pumping post-punky power pop, with whiplash stops and starts and emotional-boy lyrics. Hot track: melodic closer “Nails.” Get it at creeksideca.bandcamp.com and find ’em on Facebook to see where the house party is this weekend.

At the other end of the emo timelime, those grandfathers of the local indie scene in Surrogate have been teasing a someday-to-be-released album called Space Mountain by leaking five tracks over the past several months on Spotify (and a few on Bandcamp). Hot track: the gorgeously recorded slice of baroque pop, “Song No. 4.” Find Surrogate on Spotify or visit surrogatemusic.bandcamp.com.