The Crooked Jades are a groundbreaking, internationally influential band from the San Francisco Bay Area with more than 11 albums under their belt, including the recent, highly acclaimed Empathy Moves the Water. Other releases include World’s on Fire (featuring a track chosen by Sean Penn for the soundtrack of Oscar-nominated film Into the Wild) and Seven Sisters: A Kentucky Portrait (the soundtrack to the award-winning PBS documentary of the same name). They composed the soundtrack for the 2023 award-winning documentary Call Me Mule. Two of their albums were co-produced by alt-country’s Richard Buckner. The Crooked Jades have also collaborated with contemporary dance choreographers Kate Weare and San Francisco dance company ODC founder and artistic director Brenda Way. They were nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award in 2019 for Outstanding Achievement in Music/Sound for the ODC’s World’s on Fire production. The band was featured on the KQED television and online program Spark, which takes the audience inside the creative process to witness the challenges, opportunities, and rewards of making art.
The core of The Crooked Jades are co-founders Jeff Kazor (vocals/guitar/ukulele), Lisa Berman (vocals/slide guitar/banjo), and Erik Pearson (vocals/banjos/ukulele/slide guitar). Our two sensational new band members are, on fiddle, the phenomenal Amy Kassir, hailing from Durham, North Carolina, and on bass, the multi-talented arco bass player JZ (Joshua Zucker).