Cytrus brings an eight-piece funk party to Lost on Main for New Year's Eve

The psychedelic funk octet headlines Chico's downtown room on Dec. 31 with Blü Egyptian, and the ticket comes with champagne.

There are two kinds of New Year's Eve in Chico: the one where you watch the ball drop from the couch, and the one where you're packed into a room with eight musicians when midnight hits. Cytrus is pitching the second. The funk octet headlines Lost on Main on Thursday, December 31, with Blü Egyptian opening. Doors and music are both listed at 8 p.m.

The show was announced Oct. 28 and is billed on Eventbrite as "New Year's Eve at Lost on Main: Cytrus and champagne," so the toast is part of the deal. Lost on Main holds 300. With an eight-piece band on stage, that is a full room in every sense.

If you haven't caught Cytrus yet, the short version comes from The Herald in Everett, Washington, which profiled the band in 2024 as a Lynnwood-based funk octet. The players had been working together under the name HopSol before deciding a new sound needed a new name, and Cytrus was born in 2018. The Herald describes their music as a blend of psychedelic funk, disco, electronic, rock, soul and hip-hop. JamBase files them under jamband and jazz, which tells you the other half of it: these are long, elastic sets built for dancing, not three-minute singles.

Eight musicians, 300 people and a countdown. That's the whole pitch, and it's a good one.

That's the right fit for this room. Lost on Main is Chico's downtown spot for exactly this kind of night, small enough that the horns hit you in the chest and loose enough that nobody is standing still by the second set. An octet in a 300-cap room on New Year's Eve is basically a house party with a better sound system.

Cytrus has been working the West Coast circuit for a few years. Downtown Bellingham's calendar listed them at the Wild Buffalo in late November 2024, and Cascadia Daily and the Herald have both covered them in their home region. For Chico, the appeal is simpler. Instead of driving to Sacramento or the Bay for a big-ticket countdown, you can walk in from downtown and ring in 2027 a few feet from the stage.

Opening the night is Blü Egyptian, a good reason to show up when the doors open instead of strolling in at 10:30. On New Year's Eve, the openers often play to the people who planned their night best.

Practical stuff: doors and start are both listed at 8 p.m., which in New Year's Eve terms means a long night. Pace yourself on the champagne. Tickets are through Eventbrite, the official seller for this one, and at 300 capacity this is not a room you can count on walking up to on the 31st. Figure out your ride home now, because downtown on New Year's Eve is a lot easier to get into than out of.

Plenty of bigger parties will happen that night. Few of them will have eight people on stage, a bottle of bubbly built into the ticket and a room small enough that you'll know half the crowd by midnight. That sounds like a Chico New Year's.

Sources: Lynnwood-based funk octet Cytrus has the juice (The Herald) (heraldnet.com); Cytrus (Big Hassle) (bighassle.com); Wild Buffalo presents Cytrus & Midpak (Downtown Bellingham) (downtownbellingham.com); Cascadia Daily News (cascadiadaily.com); New Year's Eve at Lost on Main: Cytrus and champagne (Eventbrite) (eventbrite.com)