The New Shockwaves bring surf music to Balefire Brewing Co. – Santa Cruz Sentinel

Santa Cruz is of course no stranger to surfing and surf culture. Naturally, surf music is a big part of that. Jeff “Stretch” Riedle, the drummer and leader of local outfit The New Shockwaves, brings an evening of surf music to Balefire Brewing Co. this Saturday.

I caught up with Riedle to talk about this Saturday’s show and decided that a surf music 101 discussion was a good way to start. “Everyone knows surf music when they hear it,” Riedle said. Basically, “it’s all instrumental and heavily based with reverb. There’s a standard drum beat that repeats. And if you can play that, you can be a surf drummer like I’ve been the past 40 years. There are usually two guitarists. And over the years, some surf bands have added keyboards or sax.”

He continued, “With no lead singer, there’s still a front person. The guitarist is considered your lead. Sometimes you get guitarists who blend in really well with the bass and drums. And other times,” he quietly added, “you get a guitarist with an ego, and then you have a regular band.”

In addition to being a surf drummer, Riedle has years of music experience behind him. He did radio at Foothill College from 1980 to 1987. (Fun fact: He trained Mick Gray, who is now one of our regular DJs at KPIG). Riedle worked at several record stores over the hill, including running his own store for five years. He also has the distinction of being employee No. 1 at Streetlight Records in San Jose. After breaking from record store retail, he landed a gig running the drum department at The Starving Musician here in town.

Riedle was the original drummer for The Shockwaves, a precursor to The New Shockwaves, starting back in 1985. “We were a four piece, and we were playing a lot,” he said. This was also back in the late 1980s before the big resurgence of surf created by the Dick Dale track “Miserlou,” which opens Quentin Tarantino’s movie “Pulp Fiction.” After that, there were surf bands everywhere.

“The Shockwaves disbanded in 1992,” Riedle recalled. “I was playing in other bands including Fascinating Creatures of the Deep, The Concaves and The Submersions, but I decided I needed to put my own band together. And I had to come up with a name. I knew I didn’t want to just reproduce what I did in the ’80s with The Shockwaves.”

Even then, he added, “We weren’t traditional surf, had a lot of oddities in our decision making and liked to mix things up.” Riedle talked to Randy Hyden, the bass player from the band, and said he wanted to do some of their old songs in a new band. Hyden said, “Just call yourself The Shockwaves,” but Riedle wanted to go in a slightly different direction.

“Around town, I have still this nice reputation as ‘Stretch, the guy from the Shockwaves,’” Riedle said. To namecheck his old band but give allow room to expand, he decided upon The New Shockwaves. “We played some of the old songs,” he said, “so we weren’t starting from scratch. I also pulled songs from The Submersions. I had 15 years of being in two surf bands that I could pull songs from.

“I also knew that I wanted to try and appeal to a new crowd with this new band. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the audience would always be old guys in Hawaiian shirts.” He laughed and added, “You know: Guys my age. The most natural thing to do was try something that would appeal to a wider range of ages.”

Their new record, “From the Beginning,” covers that range well. It features their own takes on surf covers and well-known tunes including “Batwipe” (the Batman theme), “Louie, Louie,” “Eddie Goes Surfing” (a surf take on Pearl Jam’s “Better Man”) and a few originals from back in the days of The (original) Shockwaves that Riedle said, “We never got a chance to record.”

He added, “We’re an instrumental, psychedelic surf band. We’re definitely not traditional.”

Michael Gaither is a performing songwriter, radio DJ and the music writer for The Santa Cruz Sentinel.