Davisville

KDVS, the University of California Davis radio station run by students, is at a crossroads. It’s the last occupant of Freeborn Hall, and must move. It’s coping with a pandemic that has reduced access to its studio. Technology and patterns of how students listen to music has changed tremendously since the station began in the 1960s, so that’s another factor. And mixed in with all that is its legacy of decades as a voice for music and ideas that reflect the interests of UC Davis students. Today we talk with Noel Fernandez, the general manager of KDVS and a UC Davis senior, about where the station is headed.

If 2020 had been normal, my plan was to talk about Frankenstein, which the Davis Shakespeare Festival was going to present this fall until the pandemic killed off in-person performances. Rob Salas, co-artistic director and co-founder of the festival, is my guest today, and we still talk about the play by Nick Dear, which is based on the book by Mary Shelley and presents a creature very different than the “green skin and neckbolts” image of the monster in the 1930s movie. We also talk about how the 10-year-old festival is holding up during the pandemic, how they’ve spent 2020, their thoughts about next year (which might still include Frankenstein), how Black Lives Matter has changed their mission, and why they chose Davis as a place to create a professional Equity theater company.

So, what’s your opinion of the Eagles? The band, not the team. How about Emmylou Harris, the unusual pedal steel of the Flying Burrito Brothers, or the pop twang of the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon”? If any of this resonates with you, or even simply makes you curious, then today’s guest might interest you: Larry Lobre, a retired administrator at UC Davis, a musician, and an instructor whose next class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Davis in October presents “The Origins and Development of Country Rock Music.” We talk about the genre, what it offers, OLLI, The Flying Burrito Brothers'Gilded Palace of Sin, and the time Merle Haggard, his backseat full of 45 records, drove in to a Signal gas station where Larry was working in Oildale.

The Palms Playhouse, with no clear end to the pandemic in sight, has gone on indefinite hiatus and isn’t renewing its lease for the location in downtown Winters it has called home since moving from Davis in 2002. However, co-owners Nora Cary and Andrew Fridae are keeping the Palms going as an organization. On today’s Davisville we talk with Cary about the pandemic, the last concert they held on March 7, running a for-profit business with no profit, the magic of a good performance, some favorite moments since she and Fridae bought the Palms in 2016, and what might come next. (Photo shows Peter Case onstage at the Palms in July 2019)