The first weekend of Coachella kicks off at the Empire Polo Club in Indio on Friday, April 12 with headliner Lana Del Rey, along with performances by Peso Pluma, Lil Uzi Vert, Sabrina Carpenter, Brittany Howard, The Japanese House, The Beths, Deftones, L’Impératrice and Faye Webster.

Saturday, April 13, will feature Sublime, Blur, and No Doubt on the Coachella main stage leading up to headliner Tyler, The Creator’s 11:40 p.m. slot. Vampire Weekend will perform at the Outdoor Theatre at 5:00 p.m. The fest will close out on Sunday, April 14 with Los Angeles popstar Doja Cat taking the main stage at 10:25 p.m. along with performances by Jhené Aiko, Khruangbin, Lil Yachty, Taking Back Sunday, 88RISING, Victoria Monét, Reneé Rapp, Boy Harsher and Hermanos Gutierrez.

Vampire Weekend is a Coachella veteran, having played in 2008, 2010 and 2013. The trio just released its newest fifth studio record, “Only God Was Above Us,” on April 5.

Weekend one is officially sold out, but fans can still purchase weekend two passes at coachella.com/passes

Here is the full lineup of set times for all three days of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio April 12-14. For more festival information, go to coachella.com.

The first time I ever used trekking poles, they felt cumbersome, clunky and, at times, downright annoying.

It was February 2017 and my then-boyfriend (now husband) had convinced me to trade a day riding on the slopes in Telluride for a snowshoeing adventure. I had never snowshoed before and recall feeling like a newborn deer, shakily trying to navigate the placement of my large foot apparatuses alongside my poles.

“Right foot, left hand. Left foot, right hand,” I repeated under my breath as I tried to avoid stepping on one piece of equipment or another, and attempted to keep both my balance and my cool ascending several hundred feet up the Jud Wiebe Trail.

I was inexperienced for sure – there are pictures to prove I wore jeans during the excursion – but also frustrated. Why would anyone use these seemingly impractical poles that only added chaos when hiking?

Turns out there are a lot of reasons, from increasing stability to alleviating pressure from knees and joints to achieving a full-body workout. The use of trekking poles increases hikers’ heart rates, several studies have found, and some researchers suggest that it also increases blood flow to the upper extremities.

This last point has recently transformed me into a pole evangelist. When I hike without them, my fingers bloat — and painfully so —  as though they’re latex gloves blown up like balloon animals. With hiking poles, my hands feel great. Simple as that.

My revelation about the benefits of trekking poles is, of course, nothing new. Walking sticks and staves “have been around in many forms for as long as people have been walking,” said Rachel Gross, an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver and co-director of the school’s Public History Program. Throughout history, walking sticks, staves and canes were also used as tools for self-defense, storytelling and as status symbols.

“In that sense, this is an old technology with new materials, and it looks different but serves the same function as it did before, which is extra support and easing the weight on joints,” she said.

For her new book, “Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America,” Gross researched the history of recreational gear and its cultural significance. She said guidebooks from the 1950s through the 1980s suggest poles were historically seen as luxuries – not necessities. Most referred to using a single walking stick and often suggested picking up a piece of bamboo or wood at the trailhead to suffice.

“The terminology is pretty new because ‘trekking poles’ doesn’t exist in any of those materials. Usually, ‘walking staff’ is the preferred terminology from the 1950s to ‘80s. That indicates something important, which is trekking poles are used in pairs and walking sticks and staves are used singularly,” Gross said.

That’s why Gross also credits cross-country skiing, in particular, with helping evolve the accessory from an optional tool to a sought-after commercial product sometime in the late-20th century.

Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, ski poles were also made of bamboo in the mid-1900s, and mountaineers, especially in Europe, sometimes used them to hike alpine terrain. According to Sven Brunso, spokesperson for pole manufacturer LEKI, it wasn’t until 1978 that people began taking their utility seriously.

That year, mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed Mount Everest using a pair of LEKI poles, engineered in 1974 from aluminum. (The company still makes that model, the Makalu, to this day.) Their expedition was notable not only for that, but also because they were the first adventurers to climb Everest without using contained oxygen.

“A lot of people thought using poles was kind of a crutch. That (expedition) launched the platform for us,” Brunso said.

Using poles for everyday hiking and mountaineering took off in the Alps in the 1970s and ’80s, Brunso said, and that may also be where the modern vernacular originated.

“It started in mountaineering and trickled down into ‘trekking,’ which is the European term for what we call hiking,” he said.

Since its inception in 1948, LEKI has created dozens of different poles as technology and materials have evolved. Brunso maintains that the basics of hiking poles have not changed much in the last 50 years, but the company has innovated to make the equipment more comfortable and useful.

One of its proudest innovations was the integration of the speed lock, which enabled poles to be adjusted on the fly. That way hikers can shorten their poles when climbing uphill and lengthen them going downhill to maintain the ergonomic benefits.

Over the years, the company also experimented with various types of grips to alleviate hand cramping, prevent blisters and wick moisture, and created numerous tips to make poles appropriate in more settings, even indoors. Brunso said LEKI sells more than 50 pole models designed for trekking, trail running and Nordic walking.

“It’s all about giving you the feeling you’re comfortable and supported,” he said.

I don’t have a specific brand that I prefer. There are innumerable styles and weights; some fold down to fit in backpacks and others remain a static height. It’s really up to your personal preference and budget, as well as the outdoor activities you plan to use them for.

Brunso, however, said that you get what you pay for in this space. Depending on what the poles are made of, they could be at risk of bending under stress, he said. And if you’re traveling by airplane to a recreation destination, the poles need to fold down to fit in your checked luggage.

He suggested testing or renting a pair at your local outdoor outfitter and ensuring they are the right size before buying.

Or, as Gross notes, there’s always the option to pick up a stick at the trailhead.

Until the announcement, the distribution house had been serving more than 300 independent literary publishers and distributed titles, including books that were National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners.

SEE ALSO: Sign up for our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

Small Press Distribution, or SPD, issued a statement pointing to “years of declining sales and the loss of grant support” as well as “the challenges of a rapidly changing book industry and funding environment.” With the closure, hundreds of indie presses and authors are now scrambling to figure out how to pick up the pieces and move forward.  

Leland Cheuk, founder of the Los Angeles-based 7.13 Books, said his company has four books that were set to be distributed by SPD, two of which were the indie press’s bestsellers. The publisher had until then been ordering print runs of around 500 books for each title and then replenishing as needed; there are hundreds of books they’re trying to account for. 

Cheuk is just one of many wondering, “How do I get them? How do I sell them? Are these just out of print?” 

According to Cheuk, the New York publishing scene often shies away from experimental literature. “We publish primarily debut books,” he said. “I just don’t think people should have to wait until they’re on their deathbed like I did to publish this first stupid book” – Cheuk’s own near-death experience led him to publish his first book – “It’s just a book, right? You should go out and share it with people. It doesn’t have to be The Big New York Book.”  

For bookworms looking outside of what’s found on the bestseller lists or celebrity book clubs, Cheuk said it’s already difficult for readers to get their hands on literature outside of the mainstream. “You really have to be a fan of small press literature to go get them. Those displays that you see in indie bookstores, the small press showcases and stuff like that, those disappearing will be bad,” he continued. “I think for a lot of bookstores, it’s easy for them to just call up Small Press Distribution and say, ‘Hey, what are your bestsellers? Should we stock some of those books?’ I think those going away will have an impact on people who are shopping for books in brick and mortar stores.”

Unnamed Press editor and publishing manager Allison Miriam Woodnutt echoed Cheuk’s take on corporate publishing, adding that while “these corporate entities that are in the business of making art,” they don’t always leave room for experimental works. As well, she says that’s also true for books in translation, works by marginalized voices, and “anything that kind of goes beyond a kind of channel of the mainstream becomes harder to sell.” 

“They’re in the business of selling as many books as possible to keep their giant houses running,” she continued. “Smaller presses and independent presses – they’re independent. We all work to publish the books that we want to publish.” 

Woodnutt said small presses are able to publish books that cover taboo topics, and marginalized writers whose work may have been overlooked.

“The health of publishing, books, art and writing in general – it depends on who’s advocating for it, what we’re advocating for, how we do that, and how we distribute it and get it on shelves.” 

According to Allison K. Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association (and a former books columnist for these newspapers), it’s readers who ultimately suffer the consequences when an institution like SPD closes, which she believes is the result of Amazon’s stranglehold on the book industry. 

“Small presses are vital to the literary landscape,” said Hill. “They publish debut authors, champion diverse voices, introduce experimental formats, and ensure that a variety of books from a variety of sources are available to readers. And many small and independent press titles and authors are award-winning and/or bestsellers that might not have been published without this support.”

Small Press Distribution’s abrupt closure hasn’t just disrupted the availability of indie books; it’s also created a financial challenge: Publishers and authors need to get paid, and there are now tens of thousands of books stuck in limbo.  

“I emailed frantically,” said Holly Crawford, who founded and runs San Diego’s AC Books, a small nonprofit publisher that specializes in contemporary art history, criticism and art practice. “I had to quickly tell people, please don’t ship to the [SPD] warehouse.” 

Crawford said she had to break the news to authors expecting their work to be distributed by SPD. Crawford said she’s been working tirelessly to find alternatives and save these authors’ books. 

“I feel a responsibility to people,” she continued. “I’ve taken on their books, and I need to figure out how to get them out.”

New York’s Black Lawrence Press had used SPD as their primary distributor for the past 12 years. The independent publisher launched a GoFundMe campaign, stating that it could not withstand a financial loss of this magnitude. According to the crowdfunding page, the closure had put Black Lawrence Press in a dire position – uncertain how or when it would have access to 18,289 books in SPD’s warehouse or collect royalties owed. (On April 4, Black Lawrence Press posted an update stating it had met its GoFundMe goal: “We still have a logistical mess on our hands, but we’re working diligently to come to solutions as quickly as possible. Thanks to your donations, however, we are not in the dire financial circumstances that we found ourselves one week ago today.)

While rising rental costs, book publishing costs, increasing postage, and across-the-board price hikes for backend operations have hit the publishing industry especially hard in recent years, Jhoanna Belfer, who founded Long Beach’s Bel Canto Books, thinks SPD’s closure should serve as a wake-up call for book lovers. 

Belfer said now is the time for folks to get to know the small presses in their communities, to make sure that you’re purchasing books from them, interacting with them on social media, signing up for their newsletters, and becoming involved. 

“It’s gonna take each and every one of us to get more involved in the publishing and book reading community to ensure that authors across the spectrum – especially authors from historically marginalized communities – are still able to find their audiences and get in front of readers,” she says. 

The Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts updated the Disability Access Service programs on Tuesday, April 9 that offer assistance to theme park visitors with developmental disabilities like autism and other neurodivergent disorders.

The changes go into effect May 20 at the Walt Disney World resort and June 18 at the Disneyland resort with the goal of limiting the Disability Access Service program to only guests who require the services, according to Disneyland officials.

ALSO SEE: First look at Avatar themed land proposed for Disneyland

Disneyland spells out the dire penalties for lying during the Disability Access Service registration process under the Frequently Asked Questions section of the updated DAS page on the theme park’s website.

If caught, DAS cheats will be permanently barred from the Disneyland and Disney World resorts and all daily tickets and annual passes will be forfeited without refund, according to the DAS websites for both parks.

How would Disneyland catch a disability fraud?

Disneyland doesn’t say, but Disney cast members would likely be the first line of defense backed up by the digital trail left by using the Disneyland app for Lightning Lane access. There are also security cameras covering virtually every corner of the park and security guards monitoring suspicious activity.

ALSO SEE: Disneyland closes 4 attractions during busy spring season

In 2023, Disney World cracked down on third party tour guides selling unauthorized services including Genie+ and Disability Access Service, according to the Disney Tourist Blog. The unaffiliated tour guides who serve as in-park escorts have been stopped by Disney World managers, issued trespassing notices by local police and indefinitely banned from the Florida theme park resort, according to the Disney Tourist Blog.

Tales of DAS abuse and tips for cheating the system are rampant on social media.

Twitter user Wildest Ride recounted how friends use false claims of Irritable Bowel Syndrome to fraudulently acquire Disability Access Service passes at Disney theme parks.

“Obviously not a large sample size, but of the four people I know who have a DAS pass, 3 of them claim it’s because they have IBS — which they told me personally they don’t, they just don’t want to wait in line,” Wildest Ride wrote on Twitter. “Seems like anything to prevent abusing ADA is a win for everyone.”

The Disability Access Service has become the most widely requested service at the Disneyland and Disney World resorts with the volume of guest usage more than tripling over the last five years, according to Disneyland officials. Disneyland and Disney World are taking steps to preserve the DAS program now because the trend is only expected to continue.

The series premieres April 14 on Max and is based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It’s an espionage thriller about a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles.

The 626 Night Market, which is named after the San Gabriel Valley area code and is modeled after the night markets in Asia, will aim to take people back to Vietnam with a handful of Vietnamese food vendors such as All Dat Dumpling, All Dat Noodle, Café 949, Ridges Churro Bar, and The Ugly Bao serving their grub April 13 and 14.

“We hope people will come through the weekend of our show premiere and celebrate Vietnamese and AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) stories and food and culture,” said JR Tungol, a marketing official for the series.

The weekend will include Vietnamese-American DJs Demonslayer and Annalog spinning tunes both days and a performance by Vietnamese-American artist Dolly Ave from 7-10 p.m. on Saturday, April 13. There will also be “The Sympathizer” photo booths recreating the streets of Vietnam and the world of the series.

“The purpose really with this is to get Vietnamese people, AAPI audiences really excited about seeing themselves on the screen and seeing themselves reflected in our show,” Tungol said.

The 626 Night Market is at 1324 5th Street, Santa Monica. It’s free and open from 1-10 p.m. April 13-14. Free tickets can be reserved at 626nightmarket.com

“I think the Inland Empire is the backdrop of this band,” said guitarist and vocalist Kevin Martin in a recent Zoom interview, who says that the group finds ways to incorporate the area “into everything.”

The Inland Empire city of Rialto was home to Martin and his brother, the band’s bassist Tony Martin, and Rialto profoundly influenced the thematic elements of the psychedelic-soul group’s upcoming sophomore album, “Sounds Good,” which will be released on Friday, April 19. The band kicks off its West Coast tour in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 18, and follows up with a second Southern California show at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown on Sunday, April 21, before embarking on the tour’s European leg.

The recording of “Sounds Good” was a bittersweet experience for the Martin brothers. As they wrote the album, their parents decided to sell their childhood home in Rialto. Despite not living there for years, the space held a special place in their hearts. The loss and the inability to return to their childhood sanctuary seeped into the album.

“It was uprooting, and when I was writing some of these lyrics for “Peach Optimo,” I was reminiscing about what it was like to be over there, and a lot of that was on my mind,” Martin said, “I think a lot of the album is tied to loss and the gains that come from loss, starting over, new chapters and new beginnings.”

The Martin brothers’ musical journey began in their childhood home, where they regularly listened to radio DJ Art Laboe’s show. Their father, a gospel soloist, introduced them to the rich sounds of oldies, soul, funk, and R&B. Their Grandpa Juan, a talented saxophone and clarinet player, sparked Tony’s love for blues and jazz.

These diverse influences, combined with the deconstruction of their formal music education and meeting drummer Eric Hagstrom in college, laid the foundation for the unique sound of Brainstory. But like many local Inland Empire bands trying to hit their big break, they were initially confined to a music scene limited to backyards and DIY spaces.

“There are no real venues other than small bars and coffee shops here and there,” Martin said. “I didn’t really grow up playing any ticketed events. I mean, there is the Glass House, which exposes people to some up-and-coming and more established acts, but it’s arguable that Pomona is even in the I.E. But I believe it is, culturally.”

Despite their love for these intimate settings, they yearned for a professional breakthrough. In 2014, they made a necessary move, relocating to Long Beach when Burger Records and Lollipop Records were booming, and garage and surf rock dominated Southern California’s music festival scene.

“We didn’t exactly fit into that mold or that scene, but we definitely entered through there,” Martin said. “We found a home in Long Beach because it was more down to earth and something that we were used to as friends in a community playing music together. Long Beach has a strong sense of musical community.”

In 2019, the band released their first album, “Buck,” produced by Leon Michels, the leader of the soul project El Michels Affair and co-founder of Truth & Soul Records and Big Crown Records. The group said that “Buck” was their first time recording in general, let alone in a studio. They were also still getting acquainted with Michels but said they’ve developed more chemistry as a team, built their own studio in Long Beach, took everything the group has learned from crafting their first album, and carried it into the recording of “Sounds Good.”

“It’s been a culminating process,” Martin said. “With ‘Sounds Good,’ we’ve been stepping into our own sound that sets us apart from most of what’s going on right now.”

“Sounds Good” is indeed a step forward for the band, with substantive tracks that illustrate the group’s musical and lyrical growth. The album’s soulful ballad, “Too Yung,” begins with a melancholy acoustic guitar and nostalgic lyrics that yearn for events of the past.

Other standout tracks include “Hanging On,” a groovy melodic soul collaboration with alt-indie singer-songwriter Claire Cottrill (aka Clairo), adding a layer of soft backing vocals that serves as a nod to the oldies but goodies heard on the rest of the album and throughout their music. While these genres help shape their sound, it doesn’t define it. Martin said that part of the mission of their work is to take their influences and modernize them with more depth.

“When you are open to adding different elements to classic styles like R&B and soul, you get a new sound, and we do draw from these old influences, but we’re not doing it to cosplay an older time or even a sound like Motown,” Martin said. “We don’t want just to do the same old ‘Baby Baby, I love you’ type (stuff). There’s a lot more going on in the modern world, and the music has to reflect that. (We’re not) dissing other bands that only do that oldies sound, but we’re trying to move forward and see what’s ahead.”

Brainstory

Where: Lodge Room, 104 North Ave 56, 2nd floor, Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, April 18.

Tickets: Sold out.

Also: 9 p.m., Sunday, April 21, at Pappy & Harriet’s, 53688 Pioneertown Road., Pioneertown. $30-$35 at pappyandharriets.com.

The Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts updated the Disability Access Service programs on Tuesday, April 9 that offer assistance to theme park visitors with developmental disabilities like autism and other neurodivergent disorders.

The changes go into effect May 20 at the Walt Disney World resort and June 18 at the Disneyland resort with the goal of limiting the Disability Access Service program to only guests who require the services, according to Disneyland officials.

ALSO SEE: First look at Avatar themed land proposed for Disneyland

All of Disneyland’s accessibility options will not be available to all guests with disabilities, according to Disneyland officials. Disneyland hopes a wide suite of options will offer solutions for everyone.

The Disability Access Service has become the most widely requested service at the Disneyland and Disney World resorts with the volume of guest usage more than tripling over the last five years, according to Disneyland officials. Disneyland is taking steps to preserve the DAS program now because the trend is only expected to continue.

DAS is intended for Disneyland visitors with a developmental disability like autism who are unable to wait in a conventional queue for an extended period of time. DAS visitors get a return time through the Disneyland mobile app comparable to the current standby wait time for an attraction.

ALSO SEE: See early Disneyland ride concepts that never got built

Disney will continue to operate DAS on both coasts and partner with Inspire Health Alliance on the implementation of the updated programs. During the interview process, Disneyland visitors seeking DAS will be asked about their life experiences but not their disabilities. The program update will require everyone who has an existing DAS pass to reapply.

ALSO SEE: Disneyland closes 4 attractions during busy spring season

The sheer number of DAS users today are overwhelming the limited capacity of Disneyland’s infrastructure and bogging down the whole system, leading to backups in the Genie+ Lightning Lane queues shared by DAS guests, according to Disneyland officials. The increased volume of DAS users means longer wait times for guests with disabilities and those who have paid for Genie+ — defeating the purpose of the shorter lines for both groups.

On June 18, Disneyland will move the DAS processing center from guest relations inside the parks to new disability services windows at the ticket booths on the esplanade between the parks. For now, DAS processing will remain at the guest relations desks at Disneyland City Hall and Disney California Adventure’s Chamber of Commerce through June 17.

Visitors who do not qualify for DAS will be directed to other options like Rider Switch passes, Stroller as a Wheelchair tags, Location Return Time passes for older non-ADA compliant queues, wheelchair transfer options, handheld devices for the visually impaired and sign language interpreters.

DAS validation will be good for the length of the daily ticket type or for 120 days for annual passholders.

DAS use has exploded in recent years in part because more people have become aware of the service. Social media hacks have exploited DAS as a free way to avoid paying for the Genie+ line-cutting service and have led to abuses.

The updated Disneyland disability services website highlights rules that limit the number of people who can use a single DAS pass, requirements that the visitor who registers for DAS must ride the attraction and penalties for making untrue statements when registering for DAS.

What he found changed his life.

“It was kind of like a musical bomb,” Souther says from his home in New Mexico, describing the night he stumbled onto Sill performing to a dozen or so people at Artie Fatbuckle’s Cellar in Hollywood in 1971. “I expected her to be good because David Geffen said she was great, and he has great taste.

“I did not expect her to be an absolute original,” he continues. “Because she was really unlike anything any of us had ever seen at that moment when we were all just starting out and just being signed to (Geffen’s) Asylum Records.”

For singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin, while the setting was different, the epiphany was much the same.

“I was 17 and I was scooping ice cream in Baskin-Robbins in Carbondale, Illinois,” Colvin says from her home in Austin, Texas. “We were listening to our college radio station, WTAO, and this woman comes on and it was … I was kind of like pushed back and nailed to the wall. I was like, ‘Who’s that?!’

“It was ‘There’s a Rugged Road,’ which is the first song on ‘Heart Food,’” she says of the 1973 album that had just come out when Colvin heard Sill for the first time. “The guitar playing was superb. Nobody before or since, to me, has ever sounded like Judee Sill as a singer and as a writer. So it was totally unique, but in a genre that was close to my heart.

“And that was it. I just went to the record store and got ‘Heart Food.’ The record probably cost $3.99. And fell in love with it.”

Souther and Colvin are not alone in their love of the singer-songwriter whose hard life has often overshaded the genius of the two albums she made for Asylum in the early ’70s, where she was the first artist signed after Geffen launched the label.

They, along with artists including Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Big Thief, Weyes Blood and Fleet Foxes, all appear in “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill,” a new documentary that opens Friday, April 12 in theaters and on streaming services.

Through the testimony of musicians, friends, writers and more, the film seeks to restore Sill to her rightful place in music history, say co-directors Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom, who worked more than a decade to bring the project to the screen. (Full disclosure: Lindstrom and I were college classmates.)

“We were very lucky to have such enthusiasm,” Lindstrom says of the response from those they approached to participate in “Lost Angel.” “The feeling was like, ‘Wow, this is about time. People need to know about her. How can we help?’”

A life revealed

Sill never shied from sharing the basic facts about her life before she made her first record.

As a teenager, she was arrested for a string of robberies in the San Fernando Valley and sent to reform school where she developed her musical skills by playing gospel songs on the organ for chapel services. After her release, she fell into drug addiction, sometimes working as a prostitute for money to buy heroin.

But that’s not the story Lindstrom and Brown wanted to tell, and to those who knew her, it never defined or confined her as an artist.

“What was striking about the interviews was, each of the people we talked to just said how much fun Judee was,” Lindstrom says. “How lovely she was. What a light she was. It completely blew away that kind of Wikipedia doom and gloom, the female Nick Drake depiction of her.

“One thing that’s really notable is the circle of love that she built in her life as an adult,” he says.

“She was, as far as her friend group, their dearest friend,” Brown adds. “The funniest person they ever knew. The one who would organize all the holiday gatherings and gave presents on their birthdays.”

Sill released her self-titled debut in 1971 and the sophomore release, “Heart Food,” in 1973. The first sold about 40,000 but failed to break through commercially. The second sold less and Sill was dropped by the label, a huge blow to a singer-songwriter who wanted not only to be famous, but also to heal the world with her music, as she says through interviews and journal entries in “Lost Angel.”

The filmmakers were limited to the decades-old footage of Sill in performance, but even in a video recorded by a friend at a performance at the University of Southern California, her talent shines through in the grainy images.

Other sources provided more context. An audiotape of an extensive interview she gave a journalist for the L.A. Free Press covered much of the same ground as the cover story that Rolling Stone published. Her niece had kept many of Sill’s journals, which through the narration of a voice actor and animation of Sill’s drawings, provided more of her voice for the film. The multitrack tapes of “Heart Food” allowed Sill’s music to serve as the film score.

“Our goal was to have Judee tell the story, but we didn’t have the archive to do that,” Brown says. “That’s partly why it took 10 years to make the film, because we were accumulating these things as we went along.”

J.D. and Judee

After that first night in the folk club on Melrose, Souther was completely taken by Sill.

He was already deeply enmeshed in the growing country rock scene in Los Angeles, writing and performing with friends such as Glenn Frey and Don Henley, soon to become the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Warren Zevon.

Yet in Sill, Souther says he saw things that none of them were doing yet.

“None of us – even Jackson, who was at that point far better than Glenn or Don or Zevon or I – had the kind of detail and the sort of admixture of the numinous and the absolute earthiness,” he says. “It was just great. She was great.

“She was by far the best writer of any of us,” Souther says. “If you asked her what musicians she liked, she would say Ray Charles and Bach. And she kind of liked the Sons of the Pioneers, which you can hear in some of her stuff that’s kind of cowboy country. Her craftsmanship was just elegant, well-formed, and deep. It had a point of view without judgment, but it also had great detail, great specificity.”

Souther and Sill became an on-and-off couple. It ended for good when Souther left to tour with Ronstadt and came home in a relationship with her.

The breakup inspired one of Sill’s greatest songs, “Jesus Was a Cross-Maker,” which mixes holy metaphors with earthly sorrows as it takes Souther down a peg or two for how he broke her heart. Famously, she showed up at his house before breakfast one day to let him hear it straight from her.

“Oh yeah, she threw it right in my face,” Souther says, laughing. ” “Here’s how I feel about you, you unrepentant bastard.’

“I think I said, ‘Wow. Well, let’s go to Lucy’s and get some huevos rancheros,’” he says. “So we went to El Adobe and had some some huevos rancheros. She had spoken her piece, you know. And then we got close again after that. Even when Linda and I were together, and we were in the studio singing, Judee was there a couple of times.”

One of the greats

After Sill lost her record deal, she struggled. Her new boyfriend at the time wasn’t good for her, Souther and other friends say in the film.  A car crash in Souther’s borrowed VW Beetle left her with long-term back pain, which soon led her back into a drug habit.

When she died in 1979 of a drug overdose, she left behind two albums, both of them filled with beautiful music, but outside of her friends few noticed her passing. Her dream to succeed ended unrealized by commercial measures, but that’s not the only way to judge an artist’s life.

“My first instinct is to just prompt us all to kind of re-evaluate what it means to make it,” Lindstrom says. “Can anyone listen to ‘The Kiss’ and think that Judee, in any way, did not make it?

“I think she kind of helps us understand her story with her last words in ‘Lopin’ Along Through the Cosmos,’” he says. “‘However we are is OK.’ I think that can sometimes be used as a kind of meaningless phrase, but in Judee’s case, it’s quite the opposite. I think of it as a kind of hard-won depth and acceptance and grit and perseverance to it.”

Unlike Souther, Colvin never knew Sill through anything but her records. She recorded that first song she heard on the radio at the Baskin-Robbins on her 1994 album “Cover Girl,” and has performed other Sill songs including “The Phoenix,” which appears in “Lost Angel,” over the years. But the most common response to her mention of Sill’s name has been the blank expressions of those for whom it isn’t known.

“That’s why this movie is so important,” Colvin says. “I liken her to Van Gogh or something. It’s like you’re gonna know about her long after she’s gone, and hopefully this is the start of that, because she really should be.

“I just think it’s one of those cases where I have to believe that she just wasn’t meant to blow up while she was alive,” she says. “And who knows how long it’s going to take. But she belongs among the greats. Because she is one of the greats.”

Tickets for the Pride Nite events go on sale Tuesday, April 9 for Magic Key annual passholders and Thursday, April 11 for the general public. Ticket sales start both days no earlier than 9 a.m.

The Pride Nite events will be held on June 18 and 20 at Disneyland.

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Entertainment will include a Welcome Pride cavalcade with Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Donald, Daisy, Pluto and Clarabelle in rainbow outfits, Pride Nite fireworks, the Pride Nite Dance Club along the Rivers of America, the Ohana Dance Party in Tomorrowland and Country Line Dancing in the Golden Horseshoe.

The 2023 Pride Nites were the first time Disneyland had hosted an official LGBTQ special event. Unofficial Gay Days Anaheim mix-in events with theme park meet-ups, trivia games, scavenger hunts and parties have been a regular fixture at Disneyland for more than two decades.

The 2023 Pride Nite featured more than 30 Disney characters along with a pair of openly gay superheroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Phastos from “Eternals” and America Chavez from “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”

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The Pride Nite photo op locations throughout the park included the Rainbow Steps on Main Street USA, the Rainbow Crosswalk in Fantasyland and Rainbow Ridge in Frontierland.

Disneyland has already hosted two After Dark events in 2024 — the returning Sweethearts’ Nite and the new Disney Channel Nite. The always popular Star Wars Nite events return on select nights between April 16 and May 9 at Disneyland.

All of the Disneyland After Dark events feature specialty themed entertainment, character meet-and-greets, photo op backdrops, food and drinks, collectible merchandise, commemorative keepsakes and unlimited PhotoPass digital downloads along with select rides and shows.

Pre-party mix-in starts at 6 p.m. each night with the private event running from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. each evening. No theme park reservations are required to attend the separate-admission events. Parking is not included.

Located just south of State Farm Stadium, which hosted the Final Four, work continues on VAI Resort, a new entertainment destination that will include a Mattel-themed indoor park that is scheduled to open later this year. VAI Resort also features an innovative amphitheater built up against a hotel tower, allowing hotel guests to watch a live concert from their rooms.

VAI Resort and the new Mattel Adventure Park will be the latest additions to a growing list of attractions in Glendale, where Camelback Ranch has been the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spring training home since 2009. In addition to the Final Four, two Super Bowls and the kickoff of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, State Farm Stadium hosts the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. North of the stadium lies the Westgate Entertainment District, which is home to Desert Diamond Arena, the former home of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes.

That’s a fascinating story, as the city basically decided that its arena was better off financially without the NHL team, which is now playing in a tiny college arena in Tempe. Since the break-up, Desert Diamond Arena has booked a variety of concerts and other shows, with an Arena Football team soon to move in. The arena’s naming sponsor, Desert Diamond Casinos, also operates a casino in Glendale, adding to the city’s attraction line-up.

But with a new theme park and its surrounding resort, local officials are hoping to drive even more new tourists to the city. Last month, I got to walk the VAI Resort construction site and see what developers have planned for the resort.

In addition to the amphitheater, VAI Resort will offer 1,100 rooms, convention facilities, shopping, a one-mile white-sand beach and pool, a 130-foot tall rotating sky bar and a tethered hot air balloon ride. Mattel Adventure Park will offer two Hot Wheels themed roller coasters, a Thomas the Tank Engine land and a Masters of the Universe-themed laser tag arena, among other attractions. The park’s biggest draw, however, is likely to come from what might be the hottest entertainment property in the world over the past year — Barbie.

The new park will include a Barbie Beach House attraction that has been announced to include a rooftop bar, Barbie-themed Flying Theater ride and a Barbie Dream Closet experience.

Other U.S. cities offer sports stadiums, concert halls and the sundry attractions Glendale now has, including a Tiger Woods miniature golf attraction and a pickleball-themed bar and restaurant concept. Theme parks can take a destination to a new level of popularity, however, especially when they are based on franchises as popular as Mattel’s, led by Barbie.

Only when the Mattel Adventure Park opens will we see if its attractions can challenge establish industry leaders such as Disneyland and Legoland to lure potential visitors from Southern California. As a fan, though, I love seeing more communities and companies step to compete for our business.

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Robert Niles covers the themed entertainment industry as the editor of ThemeParkInsider.com.