Redwood Weekender: Felton Music Hall Runs the Table
Every so often a single room gets the whole weekend right, and this week the honor goes up the hill to Felton Music Hall, which has stacked four nights that between them cover roughly the entire waterfront of American independent music. If you only leave the flatlands once this summer, make it Route 9 this weekend.
The week was already warming up before we got here — synth-pop travelers Nation of Language rolled through on Tuesday, July 14, and The Mainliners kept things loud on Wednesday, July 15 — but the marquee run starts tonight.
It opens tonight — Thursday, July 16 — with RJD2, the producer and turntablist whose instrumental hip-hop has soundtracked a generation of TV cold-opens and late-night drives. A guy who built a career out of dusty breakbeats playing a room tucked into the redwoods is exactly the kind of scale mismatch we live for. If you know the deconstructed-soul swing of "Ghostwriter," you already know why a Felton crowd will lose it.
Friday, July 17 brings the weekend's biggest hometown-adjacent hug: Hot Buttered Rum & Tea Leaf Green, two Bay Area jam institutions on a shared bill. Hot Buttered Rum's string-band-goes-electric approach and Tea Leaf Green's road-tested rock make for the kind of long, loose, dance-until-last-call night that Felton was practically built to hold. Expect the crowd to skew toward people who own more than one pair of Chacos, and to mean it as a compliment.
Saturday, July 18 pivots hard into transcendence with KR3TURE, the live-electronic and world-fusion project that pairs flute and production into something closer to a ceremony than a set. It's a smart Saturday booking — the sweaty, hands-in-the-air counterweight to Friday's jam bill.
And Sunday, July 19 sends everyone home smiling with Los Tranquilos, keeping the room's Latin-rock and cumbia end honest. A Sunday-night dance party is a small act of defiance against the coming work week, and we endorse it fully.
Why does a four-night run in a mountain town matter? Because it's proof of the thing we keep insisting on: that you do not have to drive to San Francisco to see real touring artists. The programming here — a national producer, two jam heavyweights, a world-electronic ceremony, and a cumbia band, all in one long weekend — is the argument for regional independent venues made in miniature. The scale is intimate, the sightlines are honest, and the drive home smells like bay laurel.
A few housekeeping notes: Felton shows generally list an 8 p.m. start. Route 9 is dark and winding after the sets let out, so pace the pours and mind the deer. And if you're coming from the coast, budget extra time — summer traffic through the San Lorenzo Valley is its own slow ceremony.
And if you can't make the weekend, the room doesn't quit: 60 juno keeps the calendar alive the following Friday, July 24, before the touring machine really cranks up in August.
Four nights, four completely different rooms' worth of music inside one actual room. That's not a lineup. That's a dare.
Sources: Felton Music Hall Events; Felton Music Hall — JamBase