Seven years ago, Angi Lemucchi had a notebook full of lyrics and chords and a desire to turn them into songs.
She met Jon Havens and Dave Cohen, who liked what she had written. In no time, the three of them evolved into something much more than what Lemucchi imagined: the emotive, moody six-piece Santa Cruz/San Jose Americana band Hurricane Roses.
“I was on a path to New York or Nashville, because I wanted to pursue music pretty vigorously,” Lemucchi says. “It was supposed to just be a little country thing. I met John and Dave and one thing led to another.”
They scored some free studio time from a friend who was looking for promising bands. The music they recorded there for their first album was primarily written by Lemucchi, and fleshed out by everyone in the band. As they continued to play and build a following through the Bay Area, Hurricane Roses became a more collaborative effort, evident on their second album Home To Haunt You.
“That was a huge success for us. We all got to do things that people in the band had dreamed of doing,” says Lemucchi. “One of my bandmates really wanted at some point in his career to have a string section on our album, and got to have that. Jesse, our drummer, is a huge vinyl lover and he made sure our album got put out on vinyl.”
Over the past seven years, they hit it pretty hard, and this upcoming show at Moe’s will be the Hurricane Roses’ farewell show. Instead of moving to New York, Lemucchi made the compromise of moving to San Francisco to keep the band going. Now she is moving to Los Angeles.
“It’ll definitely be the last one that we do as a serious committed band. We may get together every once in a while, if something interesting comes up,” Lemucchi says. “It’s not the end of music for us. It’s just the end of Hurricane Roses as an active type of thing.”
INFO: 9 p.m. Saturday, May 23. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $10. 479-1854.
