The Zippidy Yeah's!

"With a few exceptions, the music bookings this week reflect a local bias — and I include Santa Cruz in local; they are, after all, just across the bay.

As long as we're on that, I was thinking quite a few Santa Cruz bands play in this area, but how many Monterey County bands play in the Santa Cruz area? I'm thinking not many. I'd love it if someone proved me wrong.

Monterey's live music scene — at least in numbers — seems to be concentrated in a one-block-size area of Cannery Row...Bullwacker's skews towards classic rock, alt rock, reggae and R&B, with the occasional hard-to-categorize booking, such as this Saturday's session with the rock/blues/folk of Sarah McCoy & The Zippidy Yeah's. More on that later... As for McCoy, back in the day Sarah's music would have been called hippie rock or hippie folk. Nowadays the term freak folk seems to be popular (hello, FolkYEAH! productions)...Whatever you call her music, it's very folk bluesy, with her distinctive voice a cross between the bluesy grit of Janis Joplin and the soulful passion of Nina Simone."


-Mac McDonald
The Monterey County Herald
Posted: 02/25/2010

http://www.montereyherald.com/search/ci_14468436?IADID=Search-www.montereyherald.com-www.montereyherald.com
- GO! Magazine - Monterey Herald

"A couple of weeks ago I went to see Kaki King play at the Brookdale Lodge out on Highway 9 in Santa Cruz county. King was the headliner so I wasn't expecting much with the two opening acts, Nico Georis and Sarah McCoy. But both put on tremendous performances. The combination made for a great evening despite the late start and lack of heat.

Georis led a full band with a set of up-tempo freak folk Highway 1 music with a vocal style reminiscent of Donovan or Lou Reed on a better day. Georis is primarily a keyboard player, but also played guitar on a couple of numbers which I caught on video.

After some delay, Sarah McCoy took the stage with a series of blues-belting numbers playing piano and occasionally guitar. She has a powerful vocal style that is authentic and moving. She played mostly original songs from her CD "Songs from Under the Bridge" including the extremely clever "Use Caution" and finished the set with a cover of "Mad World" that was riveting.

Both bands are from the bay area, and if you have the chance to see them live, you will enjoy it immensely. Hopefully the promoter Folk Yeah will get some more gigs for these artists in the coming months. A heated venue would be nice also."

- Guitarvibe.com

Blues Bruises
Sarah McCoy channels homelessness and hurt into some soulful music.

By Stuart Thornton

At Jose’s Lounge Underground, Christmas lights cover the small room’s columns like luminous colored barnacles as a local singer/songwriter prepares to bare her soul to an audience of about 30. What comes next will surprise those unfamiliar with the dreadlocked musician.

“My name is Sarah McCoy,” she says from behind a keyboard. “It’s my pleasure to play for you this evening. This is my life.

“These are the songs that come from under bridges,” she begins singing in a powerful, unaccompanied voice, “from the bushes to the ditches.”

After a few more lines, she adds keyboard to her dizzying original “Merry-Go-Round.” In the middle section, she sings “won’t you open this door” followed by a pound, pound, pounding on her keyboard that sounds like frantic door-knocking. Following that intense portion of the number, she effortlessly eases into Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” but with her own reinvented lines (like, “I still told his ass to hit the road.”) that drive the crowd to applause.

“Do you want a beer or a Jack Daniels?” someone asks after McCoy finishes the number.

“No thanks, I have a Guayaki tea,” she says before trailing off into laughter. (I learn later that the tea bottle is filled with whiskey.)

Though she is clearly having a blast onstage, a lot of McCoy’s songs ride an undercurrent fed by both good experiences and bad ones. On her next song, “I Ain’t Got No Friends,” she masterfully teases the drama out of the lyrics over piano that sounds like a menacing but bruised thundercloud.

Many of her songs and accompanying banter are informed by her two and a half years of traveling around the country before landing in Monterey in 2006. A few days before the show, McCoy explains how she left her hometown of Charleston, S.C., to travel with her friend Star. After attending the Charleston County School of the Arts from eighth to 11th grade, where she received an intensive musical education that involved around four hours of practice each day, they hit the road. “We were like, ‘We have hula hoops and glitter,’” she says. “‘We’ll follow Ratdog.’”

The next two years were a blur of trucker’s cabs, new towns and beautiful places. Though at first McCoy and her friend had a “little maroon Honda named Old Bessie,” they later split up and hitchhiked all over the country.

There were some rough times on the road including a stint in 108-degree weather outside Yuma, Ariz. It wasn’t only the desert heat that was frightening but also a handful of locals who drove by McCoy and her fellow hitchhikers, informing them that they’d be dead if the locals had guns in their trucks. “It’s like the dead-end of any travel,” McCoy says of Yuma. “It’s like the ‘oops’ of America.”

McCoy also somehow transformed the experience of having all her belongings stolen at a music festival in Ohio into something positive. “It was actually liberating,” she says. “For the first time in my life, I had absolutely nothing. I didn’t even have a shirt. I just had a bikini top.”

McCoy’s travels brought her here in the winter of 2006. She spent her first seven months in the area sleeping under bushes and in abandoned buildings. “I had poison oak for four months straight, and I was bit by a black widow,” she says.

Even though she often didn’t have a roof over her head, McCoy made a startling discovery in Monterey: She found her voice as a musician. Her awakening to her musical talents was partially due to the support of Wave Street Studios owner Rhett Smith. After hearing her perform, Smith signed McCoy to a three-CD contract, making her the first artist signed by the fledgling studio.

“I think she immediately communicates a common humanness,” Smith says. “She’s a no-holds-barred performer. She will take you with her. You do not have a choice.”

Both McCoy and Smith are looking forward to Dec. 20, when the 23-year-old musician will celebrate her debut album Songs From Under Bridges with a party at Wave Street Studios, including performances by McCoy and the Big Sur Family Band.

At downtown club Jose’s, McCoy relishes introducing her songs to new listeners in a live setting. She performs “Use Caution” on the keyboard that sounds like a twisted carnival before moving onto acoustic guitar for “Anita Shame,” a story-song with an avalanche of adjectives.

Near the end of the evening, McCoy announces an untitled original. “This is a song I played before I got hit by a truck,” she says.

Then she bores deeply into the number, which includes the line: “I let you go on the darkest day of my life.” After the most powerful moments, McCoy, laughing, tacks on a ridiculously happy ragtime-like instrumental to the song’s end.

She closes the night with a rousing version of Janis Joplin’s take on “Me and Bobby McGee.” With lyrics about traveling around the United States, the Joplin song is a perfect fit for McCoy ev - The Monterey Weekly

"...For McCoy, music is the dying sacrament she's determined so save.
"Songs From Under Bridges"" marks a riveting debut from the classically trained pianist who just so happens to play the guitar and ukulele, blending soul, blues and folk "with a gypsy twist."
McCoy has earned a stand-up reputation at local open mics, flexing a voice so strong, audiences sit up and notice.
Raised in Charleston, S.C., McCoy received schooling in the fine arts, majoring in piano and later theater.
After landing what she thought was a quick stop in Monterey, McCoy's music never left.
She has traveled the country for more than two years hitching rides and experiencing life on the road while creating her own genre of music that she calls "Bridge Music."
Her songs were written during her travels. On "239 Million Lightly Fried Egg," McCoy, over soaring piano keys, gives a heartfelt examination of the drifter's lifestyle.
"Mamma, I went south today
No, Mamma please don't cry,
I know it's such a shame...
Life it goes on
Life it changes/and life, as I
know it just aint the same...
and life
Turned into yesterday."
Rhett Smith, owner of Wave Street Studios, invited her to become the first artist signed to his new record label.
Said Smith, "She will take you with her. You have no choice."

Article by: Marc Cabera (Herald Staff Writer) December 18-24 2008.

- GO! The Monterey County Herald