San Cha at the Audubon Center (photo by Glen Han)
Find us in song with the birds & the trees on the eve of the summer solstice.
In the right hands, a pen and a guitar have the power to truly transform our spirits. When we first held a show with Ella Williams a few lifetimes ago in 2016, Squirrel Flower did just that, and in the 9 years since it’s been a joy to watch a cathartic level of confidence imbue every note of this music.
This summer evening we’ll sit in the courtyard of our beloved Audubon Center, enveloped by toyon, sages, and sycamore, and hang onto every word as Squirrel Flower performs solo. For this special gathering, Ella has invited friends Free Range and Al Menne to set the tone for the evening, and we’re simply thankful for these gifts.
Bring a blanket, a friend, a picnic, and come through. We’ll have tea while it lasts & will wrap with the sunset.
6:05p: Al Menne
6:30p: Free Range
7:10p: Squirrel Flower
We recommend arriving early to account for parking. The onsite lot will fill quickly, so we recommend parking down the hill nearby on Griffin Ave and walking up to save you from driving the loop around. If we sell out of online tix in advance there will still be some room for walkup tix!
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A gentle reminder to please leave your adorable pups at home this afternoon as to not disrupt the Audubon Center’s ongoing habitat restoration efforts.
Squirrel Flower is the witch rock project of Ella Williams. Currently based in Chicago, by way of Iowa and Boston, Ella crafts songs from silk threads, weaving layers of vocal arrangements and sparse, sometimes distorted guitar with sentient observations about internal and external worlds.
Free Range, the project of Chicago-based musician Sofia Jensen (they/she), shares their new record Lost & Found this spring. Lost & Found is about the logical next step of trying to feel like an adult. Much of the album stems from the experiences of 21-year-old Jensen, who formed Free Range when they were 15, moving out from their parents’ house and expanding their world in the Chicago music scene. Amid these changes, Jensen experienced feelings common in one’s early twenties but pervasive throughout adulthood: striving for connection even when you’re surrounded by people, and struggling to be emotionally open.
Al Menne came up in the music scene as the lead singer of Seattle-based rock band Great Grandpa. In this outfit, Menne’s remarkable voice was on full display, despite not being the primary songwriter. When Great Grandpa took a break in 2019 due to various life circumstances, Menne was free to explore new musical pockets and step into their own as a songwriter, which precipitated a move from their lifelong home in Seattle to Los Angeles in 2021. There, they connected with an impressive cast of collaborators and friends that helped bring their solo record Freak Accident to life, including producer Christian Lee Hutson, engineer and mixer Melina Duterte (Jay Som), and guitarist Meg Duffy (Hand Habits).
Menne’s songs are filled with clever melodies and honeyed, homespun rock arrangements that showcase their taut songwriting. They manage to collapse a maze of gnarled emotions into clear, direct, and inviting pathways, often using humor as an access point to something more profound.
For 20+ years the Audubon Center at Debs Park has been a beacon for how conservation organizations can work within our cities to cultivate a deeper relationship between people and place.
Through monthly hikes, restoration days, bird walks, field trips, movie nights, community festivals, and hosting gatherings like ours each and every month, our local Audubon Center has played an essential role in building a diverse and inclusive conservation movement here in Los Angeles. We’re so grateful for the humans of the Center, the advocacy that they champion, and it’s an honor to work in conversation.