Friday, December 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Zebulon, Los Angeles
**Rose City Band, Pearl Charles** Rose City Band’s music is sun-kissed timeless country rock whose seemingly effortless momentum carries the joy of its creation without ignoring the darkness pervading our consciousness. Led by guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, the music of Rose City Band is rooted in his love of private press records of the mid to late 70’s. The band, in addition to Johnson, features pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg and drummer John Jeffrey who enmesh a keen sense of rhythmic drive and melody with gentler, sumptuous atmospheres. Sol Y Sombra digs its heels into insatiable grooves, its parade of catchy songs conjuring a sunset drive through an open desert, both a celebration of a sojourn and a reach for the warmth of home. The contrasts of Sol Y Sombra, the musical equivalent of bright stars in a night sky, are to Johnson an inevitability. “With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” says Johnson. “This time I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.” Like many genre-breaking private press albums, the melancholia-infused Sol Y Sombra’s contrasts equally enhance moments of joy and movement whilst elevating the music with its honesty and intimacy. Nuanced performances and interplay between players unfurl like desert flowers splashing color onto an arid landscape. The ensemble’s buoyant moments still glide with ease, but there is room to revel in respite of the shade of a dark cloud. For Johnson, the album finds places where the conscious meets the unconscious, the songs emanating the more mercurial and curious aspects of their sonic dream world, using darker hues to paint the panorama around them. \--- Born in the mythical land of Hollywood, Pearl Charles was raised on American folk music. In this land of cults and alternative spirituality, she developed her own cosmic brew from the influences around her - Disco, Country, Yacht Rock, Funk and all of the folk musics of the post-urban migration of mid-20th century America. Weaving these influences together, she offers up her own addition to the great patchwork quilt of American music. By sifting through the fragments of bygone eras and reimagining what she finds, she creates her own unique brand of modern American folk music and reframes retro-fetishism as a futurist vision.