Kris Wott

Before moving from Ohio to Ocean Beach in 2010, Kris Wott taught himself guitar, writing his first song at 14 and learning about vocal harmonizing from his brother Frank. In OB, he became friends with fellow musicians like Michael Head of Country Rockin’ Rebels. Wott’s brother Andrew moved to OB in 2012 and they formed Kris’ first band Joint Custody, which played regularly around town. In 2013, Michael Head and Mark Eppler asked him to front their blues band, the Moneymen. Wott had a bicycle accident in 2015, injuring his left pointer finger and forcing him to begin playing the harmonica as his primary stage instrument. He purchased a Green Bullet Harmonica Microphone and sought council and instruction from his harmonica mentor Bubba McCoy. In 2017, he joined Michael Head in the Country Rockin’ Rebels. Head’s label Cabeza Records recently signed Wott and will release his full-length Time Will Tell in July. The album features nine songs written over a 12-year period. “Kris and I have played music together for over eight years in multiple incarnations,” says Head, “including the Moneymen, Country Rockin’ Rebels, and tons of duo acoustic shows as the Moneymen Duo. It was time for him to do a record of solo songs.”

Jefferson Jay

New Jersey native Jefferson Jay moved to San Diego in 2000 and founded San Diego Musicians Collective, as well as heading up a yearly Acoustic Evenings series at the La Jolla Athenaeum, an institution he once wrote a thesis about before earning his degree in history at SDSU. In February 2012, Jay launched Happy Hour Open Mic at Winstons in Ocean Beach, hosting various versions of the event right up until around the Covid shutdown. He’s launched multiple editions of his Operation 365 project, where he records a new song for his website every day for 365 days. “According to the Huffington Post, it holds the record as the largest daily internet project ever mounted,” says Jay, who’s also producing an animated series with a cast of physically and mentally challenged performers, The Hunt For the Great Christmas Tree. “My new record, Welcome, the first of a five record set called Spring, was just released,” says Jay of his eighth full-length. “The 12 songs were written all at once in an experimental, bulk songwriting approach I’m pioneering. I wrote all 12 songs on a weeknight in February to help meet the demands of my 2016 daily video project Operation 365.2.”

Carnifex

Fallbrook deathcore band Carnifex began gaining professional momentum in 2010 when their album Hell Chose Me sold around 3,100 copies in the United States in its first week of release. The CD landed at number four on the Top New Artist Albums Heatseekers chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of the Billboard 200. Earlier this year, the group debuted a video for their cover of Korn’s 1998 track “Dead Bodies Everywhere,” and May saw the release of a lyric video for “Seven Souls.” The band has a new single for their track “Pray For Peace,” recorded earlier this year at local Back Lounge Studios, produced by the band and Mick Kenney (Anaal Nathrakh, Bleeding Through) who, along with Shawn Cameron, engineered the single. They also filmed an accompanying video, currently streaming online. According to the band, “With each song we release, our goal is to take you further into the abyss, further from reality. ‘Pray For Peace’ is no exception, a nihilist’s anthem with blasts, bounce, and breakdowns to keep you pitting.” They’ll play downtown’s House of Blues on September 19, alongside the Black Dahlia Murder and After the Burial.

Hargo

Hargobind Hari Singh Khalsa says he was around seven when teachers and friends decided his name was too difficult to navigate and started calling him Hargo. The Sikh musician has a new track called “Spring Flower.” “It’s the first single from an EP of new material that I’ve been cooking up over the last year. This song is my first collaboration with Lana Del Rey producer Daniel Heath...the song came through in two huge bursts of creative spirit full-body downloads, with a message from the universe telling me, in the midst of so much global panic and confusion, that there is hope.” The tune was recorded in his new home studio. “I can track drums, a whole band, the possibilities are practically endless, and it’s just the beginning. The biggest and most exciting thing, aside from seeing the walls go up and painting them with my dad while he was in town, was getting the Neotek Series II console in there, the big thing with all the knobs and faders that I saw as a little kid, installed in the control room. The live room has a beautiful baby grand piano courtesy of Sanjay from Feather and Dot, and a huge projection wall for doing livestream concerts and video content. We just did a photo shoot in there a few days ago against the huge white projection wall.”

Switchfoot

The 12th album of Switchfoot’s 20-plus year career, Interrobang, will be released August 20 via Fantasy Records, preceded so far by singles for “fluorescent” and “i need you (to be wrong).” The album was produced by Tony Berg (Paul McCartney, Phoebe Bridgers, Andrew Bird) at Sound City studio in Van Nuys and the band’s own Carlsbad facility, and mixed by Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Fiona Apple). Regarding the title, Interro is derived from “interrogation point,” the technical name for the question mark, and bang is printer’s slang for the exclamation point. “More than ever, we want our music to be a bridge, reaching out with melody and lyrics to sing an honest song for anyone who’s got ears to hear,” says frontman Jon Foreman. “Interrobang is an album that celebrates the journey, even when the arrival is unsure. Interrobang is the sound of joy and pain, faith and doubt against the backdrop of the strangest, most difficult year we’ve ever experienced.” The band will join NEEDTOBREATHE on their Into the Mystery Tour, along with indie-pop group the New Respects, for a 37-city run that kicks off September 7 in St. Louis and hits SDSU’s Open Air Theatre on September 14.