Sacramento: sun, fun, stay, play

Once upon a time in another California, when everybody’s dad wore flannel shirts and put Brylcreem in their hair, if they still had any, and drove around in pickup trucks with camper shells with truck radios permanently glued to KRAK radio 1140 AM, it was pretty damned hard to avoid Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. At least for those of us melanin-deficient types who grew up in the small towns and bigger-city suburbs in this part of Okiefornia, there was no escaping the music of Buck and Merle, along with Johnny Cash and a bunch of other country acts. And if you tried to switch the dial to a rock or, dog forbid, soul station, you got shut down pretty fast.

Maybe that’s why I still hear Haggard songs in my dreams. It’s a throwback to an earlier California, one that’s rooted a lot more strongly in this state’s Old West identity. And maybe that’s why Richard March’s new CD, Levee Road, resonates so nicely.

Now, most of Levee Road isn’t the kind of hard-twangin’ Cee & Dubya that sent my sainted mum running for the safety of her Robert Goulet records whenever ol’ pop cranked the KRAK on his Jimmy’s AM radio. Not that it’s all urbane, either: It’s just that March’s songwriting comes from the same smart place that Haggard mined in his heyday, the place you found once you got past his badass posturing on “The Fightin’ Side of Me” or the inside joke of “Okie From Muskogee” to hear gems like “Silver Wings” and “Big City.”

There’s a musical sweet spot that Haggard’s better records always hit, and March often nails that spot on Levee Road. There’s even a bit of overt homage, as March’s song “Libraries,” with its line “they’re closing all the libraries,” references Haggard’s “They’re Tearin’ the Labor Camps Down.” And now that Air America-type radio stations have dropped “Libraries,” with its succinct delineation of what’s gone wrong in America over the last quarter century, into rotation as a bumper, it isn’t hard imagining March getting propelled into some kind of populist bard, like our own homegrown John Mellencamp figure.

Sonically, March hews closer to Mellencamp or to the more country flavored songs of, say, Steely Dan, than he does to the kind of gasoline-marinated country music that barreled out of Bakersfield in the 1960s. Still, he’s more country than any of the benighted stuff coming out of Nashville these days.

March and his band still play the Americana Ramble every Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. at Marilyn’s on K Street. Dig it now, because if Levee Road is any indication, that residency won’t be a forever thing.

Public service: On Thursday night, May 3, the Mat Marucci/Doug Webb Trio Featuring Kerry Kashiwagi will play a record-release party at the Clarion Hotel, 2600 Auburn Boulevard, for its new Cadence Jazz CD, No Lesser Evil. Show starts at 8 p.m., admission is $8 (or $6 for seniors and students), and there’s a jam session afterward.

And over in Davis, there’s a Whole Earth Benefit Show at 8 p.m. on Sunday, May 6, at the newly remodeled Varsity Theatre at 616 2nd Street, featuring Jason Webley and Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band. Donation is $10.