Pomerado Newspaper Group (4/19/2001)
PSB Records and the Bernardo Winery present a Springtime Festival of Music and Wine from 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 22 a the turn-of-the-century winery, 13330 Paseo del Verano Norte, Rancho Bernardo.
The event will include free entertainment featuring musicians from PSB Records. Food, wine and beer will be available for purchase. PSB Records will present the following recording artists:
*Steve Baird, M.D. – “Scientific Gospel Satire”
*Big Toe -rock and roll
*Nick Binkley & the Street Dogs – Americana/country and western/rock and blues
*Mark Hart – Rock singer/songwriter
Binkley, a former BankAmerica vice chairman who survived BofA’s acquisition of Security Pacific Corp, but left after becoming disillusioned with post-merger life, has put to music the angst he feels toward corporate life.
“I decided to go public with the music and put it on a CD,” said Binkley, who spends his day as a venture capitalist with Forrest Binkley & Brown in Newport Beach when he’s not in the studio. He released his first album, the country-rock and folk-influenced CD “Pin Stripe Brain,” last year. His second album, “Let The Boy Jam,” focuses on the importance of balancing work and family.
Baird plays the dual role of musician and Chief of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the VA Medical Center, San Diego, as well as professor of clinical pathology at UCSD. During his scientific education, he underwent a conversion to rationalism and, almost immediately, he said, noticed the dearth of ‘scientific gospel music.” While teaching medical school classes, he acquired the habit of reducing medical and other scientfic concepts to popular form.
This led to a relatively large body of material on such arcane subjects as cytokynes, interleukins, gene function, chromosome structure, cellular immunology, and so on. Occasionally more cosmic subjects caught his attention, such as the “Big Bang” theory or black holes. Prompted by a letter from Dr. Eugenie Scott in Science News noting that the other side (creationists) have all the good songs, Stephen Baird decided to return to the “long neglected problem” of scientific gospel.
The beginning of that liturgy is represented on his newly released CD, “Hallelulah! Evolution!” on PSB Records. The collection, which was produced by recording industry veteran Denny Bruce (Leo Kotke, John Fahey, Fabulous Thunderbirds, John Hiatt) along with label owner Nick Binkley, features Baird on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, backed by some of Southern California’s top studio musicians, including guitarist Chris Darrow (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen, The Kaleidoscope, Ben Harper); bassist Doug Lunn (Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mark Isham, Wayne Kramer); drummer Brock Avery (Marshall Crenshaw); and keyboardist Jerry Waller (Dick Dale).
For PSB Records’ roster of local artists, visit www.psbrecords.org.