Liz Cooper & The Stampede trotting into San Diego for Casbah show

May 6, 2019 1:33 PM PT

Given that Liz Cooper & The Stampede hail from Nashville, it wouldn’t be surprising if they played hard-driving country-music with a proudly neo-traditional focus.

Instead, Cooper and her group specialize in a brand of psychedelic folk-rock that is by turns lilting and swirling, especially on jam-happy songs like “Outer Space” and “Dalai Lama.”

What results at times sounds like it could have come straight out of the late 1960s or early 1970s, with nods to such Bay Area bands as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Kak and the recently reunited Ace of Cups.

Maryland native Cooper handles lead vocals and guitars with admirable conviction and gets able support from bassist Grant Pettyman and drummer Ryan Usher.

Given more time to build on their influences, the three should be able to develop their music into a truly distinctive blend.

Liz Cooper & The Stampede, with Briston Maroney and Dani Bell & The Tarantist

9:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd., Middletown. $12 advance; $14 at the door; must be 21 or older to attend. (619) 232-4355. casbahmusic.com

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George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”