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Berkley Hart at The Grassroots Oasis
The "Berkley Hart House Concert Revolution" continues at the new home of Oasis House Concerts! They've played hundreds of house concerts not just in San Diego, but around the country, and have helped establish some now well-known series -- including Oasis House Concerts! Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart are giants in the vibrant San Diego music scene and beyond. The North County Times wrote of Berkley Hart:
"A throwback celebration of the glories of harmonized vocals, San Diego's Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart are such gifted performers that they instantly elevate any song they touch. Soaring vocals in the model of Seals and Crofts or Loggins and Messina combine with virtuosic playing on guitar to create that elusive sense of magic that most bands never manage."
Join us for a sublime Saturday night of beautiful song, engaging wit and supreme musical artistry on July 25th. Doors at 7:30p, Showtime about 8p. Reserve your seat(s)now!
If you were to time warp back 25 years to the music scene in the cozy metropolis of San Diego California, you would find that, like every other town in America, country music had taken over. Garth Brooks ruled the country and pop charts and the people lined up outside of every club were sporting cowboy hats and cowboy boots.
It was in the midst of this mania that Calman Hart, a singer-songwriter transplant from the Rocky Mountains of Utah, found himself opening for touring country acts at San Diego rodeos and country bars. Then one day, disheartened with where country music was heading, he hung up his cowboy hat and walked into Java Joe's Coffee House. What he found was a thriving, exciting singer-songwriter community composed of fresh new artists like Jewel, Steve Poltz and Gregory Page, who immediately made him feel at home. And gluing it all together was a young singing percussionist named Jeff Berkley.
Berkley, a native Southern Californian, grew up listening to all kinds of music. He absorbed everything from Bauhaus to the Beatles and Woody Guthrie to Nick Drake. Spent alot of his early 20's touring with a few bands and following The Grateful Dead. A drummer in bands with punk roots and hippie sensibilities, early on he played house parties, churches, and the venues that hadn't succumbed to the Nashville craze. (The country music clubs where Calman played were so foreign to Berkley they might as well have been on Mars.) Then one day while recording a record with The Cages for Capitol records, Berkley took a day trip to visit a friend in Santa Barbara. On that short respite from LA he discovered the soulful magic of the African djembe.
Almost overnight he became "the" percussionist of the fledgling acoustic music scene in San Diego, which was poised to explode and launch several careers, with Jewel leading the way. It led to 20 years of gigging, recording and touring with all sorts of notables from San Diego's Jewel, Joel Rafael, Steve Poltz & Gregory Page to Jackson Brown, Ben Harper, David Crosby, Arlo Guthrie, & Indigo Girls, among others. Playing percussion with the amazing talents in San Diego and abroad was like going to Songwriting School for Berkley. San Diego was buzzing with excitement and overflowing with incredible music!
Out of all this emerged the duo of Berkley Hart. Since then, Jeff has won the Kerrville New Folk Songwriter Award and together, Calman and Jeff have recorded seven albums, winning a total of eight San Diego Music Awards.
Their latest effort, "Fleur De Lis," is their best album yet. It's a powerful collection of 20 new songs about love, longing, joy, sorrow, introspection, and home. With their trademark vocal harmony and unique acoustic style, Berkley Hart have created a listening experience as warm and peaceful as a summer evening on the bayou.
From its title track, a beautiful anthem of longing for home, to "It's Gonna Be Okay", a song about learning to cope with life's curveballs, to "Walking With My Shoes Untied", a catchy commentary about forging ahead, the songs on this record leave no stone of human emotion unturned. And as if their new songs aren't enough, Berkley Hart have included two standout covers: the first, a new Jack Tempchin cautionary tale for young love called "Tumbleweed"; the second, a Berkley Hart arrangement of David Crosby's "Guinnevere" that is certain to give any old hippie gooseflesh.
Each of their previous six albums has earned nominations or won San Diego Music Awards (SDMA) and critical acclaim.
With their 6th studio album, "Crow," the duo explored the ups and downs of life in song. Much like how the crow symbolizes despair and darkness in some cultures, while in others it is a harbinger of hope and light, this contrast fits the yin and yang of the songs on "Crow" both musically and lyrically, and thus inspired the title.
In their 2009 effort, "Las Vegas," Berkley Hart explored the sonic landscape as it relates to absence, love, loss, religion, redemption, and the power of rock and roll wrapped around the duo's unique twists of observation.
Their 2006 album "Pocket Change," was dubbed by the San Diego Troubadour as finding the duo "at its best, combining poignant lyrics with masterfully crafted melodies and harmonies. It captures their live sound in its purest form: two guys, two guitars, and an occasional harmonica or banjo."
Prior to that, their third album, "Twelve," released in 2004, was self-produced and recorded entirely in a home studio. The album received an SDMA for Best Americana Album. The All Music Guide noted, "'Twelve' reveals that [;;;Berkley Hart];;; know how to create appealing, harmony-rich country-rock songs. In fact, this disc feels like an excellent calling card for Nashville."
In 2002, the duo released "Something To Fall Back On," which received that year's SDMA for Best Adult Alternative Album. For that album, Relix Magazine proclaimed, "The band infuses its rich, harmony-laden songs with strains of bluegrass, folk, country and rockwhiletheir solid and finely-crafted songs are a good melding of yesterday and today."
And their debut album, 2000's "Wreck 'n' Sow," was a critical success out of the box that won that year's SDMA prize for Best Local Recording, and took home the coveted Best New Artist trophy to boot. SLAMM magazine said, "Sometimes an album surfaces that is so emotionally and musically authentic that it crumbles resistance to its genre."
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LocationThe Grassroots Oasis (View)
3130 Moore Street
San Diego, CA 92110
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 13 |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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