The thing about Karina Deniké is that any particular gig offers just the barest glimpse of her musical range.
She’s probably best known as a primary vocalist for Dance Hall Crashers, the popular Berkeley ska band that has toured and recorded intermittently since 1989. Most recently the group reunited last year for the first time in two decades to join the Vans Warped Tour.
Deniké spent a decade providing vocals and keyboard work for the Los Angeles punk band NOFX, and often joins the collective Red Room Orchestra for sumptuous soundtrack concerts, like a 2023 Great American Music Hall performance of the entire score for the cult film “Repo Man.”
But around the Bay Area Deniké can often be found singing pre-World War II popular songs with The Cottontails, the group she brings to San Jose this weekend for the second installment of the SJZ Break Room Jam and Hang. Featuring pianist Michael McIntosh, guitarist Vic Wong and bassist Joe Kyle Jr., “it’s my main group who I do any type of jazz with, though we also do some jump blues, early Ruth Brown R&B from the 1950s, and even throw in a little 1960s ska every now and then,” she says.
Deniké also performs with an expanded, quintet version of The Cottontails at the Sound Room in Oakland March 20. A gifted songwriter herself who released the critically hailed album “Under Glass” in 2015, she tends to focus on lessor known material from the American Songbook’s back pages instead of the oft-interpreted standards.
“There are so many great, forgotten tunes,” she said. “I’m always looking to early Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, looking for songs from different composers.”
Her San Jose Jazz mini-residency offers an unusual opportunity to get a deeper look at Deniké’s wide-angle sensibility. She and some bandmates join the Break Room jam session Friday, which SJZ presents in conjunction with South First Friday. The program opens with sets by the SJZ U19s youth combo and saxophonist Michael Webster’s group.
The Hang on Saturday offers a different format. After browsing at the Downtown vinyl outpost Needle to the Groove for interesting records Deniké will bring her finds to the Break Room for an hour-long listening session.
“I’ll be talking about influences and favorite records, which are not necessarily jazz,” she said. “I was told, whatever has inspired you as musician. For me, that could be the Pointer Sisters, Toots and the Maytals, the Staple Singers, or Tina Turner and David Bowie as performers.”
After the needle drop Deniké plays a set with the Cottontails, which is followed by an informal hang with the musicians. This new format is the brainchild of Christian Vela, who recently joined SJZ as associate artistic director.
A San Jose native who grew up attending the San Jose Jazz Festival back when the summer event was free, he was coming to the end of two years on the road as tour manager for the great Malian couple Amadou and Mariam when he was recruited to run production at the newly opened SFJAZZ Center in 2013 (a position he held until the end of 2024).
He came to SJZ after a year as COO for the Presidio Theatre, though he was already deeply involved with the organization after a stint as SJZ Summer Fest production manager. He credits his homecoming to a seed planted years ago by the late Chris Esparza, an essential creative catalyst on the South Bay music scene for decades.
“Chris was really a mentor, and he was proud of all the work I was doing,” Vela said. “A few years ago, he said, ‘Hey man, you should really work with San Jose Jazz. You can contribute to the organization.’”
The Jam and The Hang expand the Break Room’s possibilities, making use of the intimate confines to facilitate audiences connecting directly with musicians. A community-building grant eased the path for an initiative that Vela describes as “very selfish, bring together all the things that I like.”
Sharing a passion for vinyl with his partner, who spins records for SFJAZZ and Stanford University’s Frost Amphitheater as DJ Weekend Girl, Vela had been looking for “a unique way to introduce a vinyl night,” he said.
“How can I sprinkle some stardust on the jazz jams? We thought, let’s invite guest stars. Then how can we lasso them together? I proposed a mini residency, where we have a featured artist jam and spin records. It’s a work in progress, but we’re so far, very promising.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].
KARINA DENIKÉ
Performing with the Cottontails
When & where: 5:40 p.m. March 6 and 7 p.m. March 7 at San Jose Jazz Break Room, San Jose; free-$20; sanjosejazz.org; 7:30 p.m. March 20 at Sound Room, Oakland; $30; www.soundroom.org
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