Events

5:30-7:30pm

An offshoot of Santa Cruz’s iconic rock band Snail, the Messiahs’ original melodies, hot guitar riffs & killer vocals will transport you to rock nirvana. Featuring Bobby O’Neill, Ken Kraft & Craig Owens.

12:00-3:00pm

Animal Friends Rescue Project is coming to our Beer Garden! Grab a beer, enter their $5 raffle to win a special prize basket worth $100, learn about what they do to help our furry friends, and pet some adoptable dogs and cats. Could you find your next best friend?

Since 1998 AFRP has been dedicated to finding good permanent homes for abandoned, stray, and abused companion animals and ending the pet overpopulation crisis through focused spay/neuter programs. They work with our local community and animal shelters to identify and assist the dogs and cats most in need of a helping hand.

3:00-5:00pm

Love Creek is a folk-rock/jam band from Santa Cruz, California. Current band members consist of Malakai Lawton (vocals/guitar), Alex Bahler (lead guitar), Ryan Jensen (bass/vocals), Ed Levy (keys), and Rob Borella (drums).

Love Creek pulls from a musical headwaters of jam band and folk rock influences, creating original material that is both heartfelt and powerful, both lyrically and instrumentally. Along with a growing repertoire of original songs, Love Creek also performs music written by artists such as: Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Jerry Garcia Band, The Cure, Van Morrison, Marshall Tucker Band, Rusted Root, America, as well as many others.

Every Monday our brewers select a Keg of Honor, and YOU enjoy $5 pints from it all day long (until it’s gone)!

6/23:  Stay Tuned!

Movies in the Taproom Every Monday!

6:45pm start time

Next Trivia Night: 6/24
6:30-8:00pm
Hosted by Michael Cahalan

5:30-7:30pm

Cali-style lounge rock

5:30-7:30pm

“Jazz with a Twist”

The Jenny O’Leary Quartet is led by the swinging and talented vocalist Jenny O’ Leary. Jenny sings standards, blues, and bossa novas while accompanied by guitar, bass and drums.

3:00-5:00pm

Jazz On Tap plays jazz standards from The Great American Song Book. Featuring crooner Rocky Pase on vocals, Richard Robinson (sax, clarinet), Preston Brahm (piano) Thom Nold (Bass) and Bruce handloff (drums). Come out, enjoy a beer and swing with us!

5:30-7:30pm
Every 1st Thursday of the Month!

About Matt Hartle:

As the lead guitarist for the China Cats and Painted Mandolin, Matt Hartle has established himself as the preeminent jam band guitarist for Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. You can also find him hosting a weekly deep dead jam, where he welcomes Bay Area players for Grateful Sunday shenanigans. Matt’s unique voice and intricate playing style always gets the audience on their feet and feeling their groove. You’ll be dancing to songs from legends like Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, as well as rock, blues, jazz, americana, and of course some Matt Hartle originals. Stop by for a “Thursday after work” brew and some hot hartle licks when Matt returns to Discretion Brewing for 1st Thursdays of the month.

FREE* DAY (frē dā)

1. A day off
2. Discretion Brewing’s annual Independence Day celebration.
3. An IPA brewed to a different recipe every year and released on Free Day.

Let’s relax and celebrate freedom & togetherness!
Saturday 7/5 from 12-9pm

• Expanded Beer Garden w/ Outdoor Cash Bar
• Special Italian finger food menu from Sugo at Discretion
• Live Music in the Beer Garden
  • 12-2pm The Silver Lining Serenaders
  • 3-5pm Lake Eagles Blues Band
  • 5-6:30pm Back Porch Boys (inside taproom)
  • 6:30-8:30pm Love Creek
• Release of our 2025 Free Day IPA (West Coast) – Available on tap & in 16oz cans
• Corn Hole & other Beer Garden Games

*Free, as in Freedom/Independence; Not the cost of our products 😉

3:00-5:00pm

The BACK PORCH BOYS dig into the glorious roots of American music from the Delta blues in Mississippi to New Orleans up to Memphis over to Austin and jumpin’ to Chicago. Singer-guitarist RICH COWAN and harmonica enthusiast VIRGIL THRASHER put their combined 90 odd years of playing music on display. You will hear the likes of Tampa Red, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino among other icons from the early days.

Join us at Skypark in Scotts Valley for the ONLY locally run beer festival in Santa Cruz. In its 15th year, Hop n’ Barley will feature 50+ breweries, 10+ cideries, delicious local eats, live music, lawn games, and more! Hop N’ Barley is kid-friendly and dog-friendly, so the whole family is invited. See you there! Tickets & info.

5:30-7:30pm

Axe & Acoustic is a new local band with classic covers, fun originals, harmonies, harmonicas, all kinds of strings and drums.

3:00-5:00pm

*Bio Coming Soon*

5:30-7:30pm

With a big map and no planned destination, this trio of seasoned improvisers from the jazz and jam band worlds use song and structure the way spacecrafts use planets: not to land and stay, but to SLINGSHOT around and be propelled back out into the galaxy. During this mostly-improv show, a familiar song could materialize at any time. Or not. All we can promise is that nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Slingshot is:

Guitar and Vocals: Matt Hartle (China Cats, Painted Mandolin, Shady Groove, Grateful Sundays with Matt Hartle and Friends)
Bass: Pete Novembre (OM Trio, Coffee Zombie Collective, Aza, Elephino)
Drums: Bret Bailey (Shady Groove, Elephino, Cosmic Pinball, BlissNinnies)

5:30-7:30pm

Jazz quintet offering up swing, ballads, bossas, and standards drawn from a wide range of time periods on trumpet, piano, guitar, bass, and drums.

5:30-7:30pm

Bagwell & Troy is a bay-area duo featuring Kyle Bagwell (songwriting, vocals) and Anna Troy (songwriting, vocals and guitar). They released their debut album earlier this year, and they have some brand new original songs and many additional covers that they play as well. Their music builds on a broad Americana foundation, with strong blues, country, folk and jazz influences. Tying the songs together are compelling melodies and moving lyrics that often evoke bygone eras. Anna’s smoky, emotional voice blends perfectly with Kyle’s deep, smooth baritone to bring their songs to life.

3:00-5:00pm

Lefty Rosa was born in Santa Cruz county but has traveled far and wide to perfect its dreamy brand of original Americana music. It features Ezzie DeGiovanni (acoustic guitar/vocals), Joel Murach (Telecaster/vocals/harmonica), Chris Weinress (upright bass), and Tom Murach (drums).

5:30-7:30pm

Aardvark is a jam band indigenous to the SF Bay Area that has been channeling the spirit of the Grateful Dead and like-minded music with choice songs, sweet vocals and transcendent jams since 2011. Aardvark features the talents of Jon “Skippy” Sherred (bass), Robert Parker (drums), Ben Hollin (keys), and Greg Gavalakis (guitar), often joined by tasty percussionist Paul Stevens and exceptional vocalist Jenifer Freebairn.

5:30-7:30pm

*Bio Coming Soon*

5:30-7:30pm

Live music in the Beer Garden from local surfboard crafter, Ashley Lloyd

Photo cred: Dave Brown

3:00-5:00pm

The Trolley Drops Brass Band will be playing dance music from the 20s and 30s, hokum blues & novelty tunes on banjo, guitar & bass, trombone, clarinet, trumpet & percussion and kazoo, (jug band music without a jug).

5:30-7:30pm

Local Honey is a Santa Cruz-based band that drips with honey sweet harmony and hums with tight, inventive musicianship. Local Honey’s repertoire pays homage to some of the the big voices of the last seven decades, including Big Mama Thornton, Rachael Price, Gladys Knight, Stevie Nicks, Grace Slick, and Amy Winehouse, among other divas. They seek out feel-good songs with strong vocals and infectious beats and make them their own. Though Local Honey is a new band, all of them are veterans of the Santa Cruz and Monterey music scenes. Members have worked with Honeytone, Ten O’Clock Lunch, Come Together, Backyard Birds, Menage, and Bay Bop. Over the years they’ve played in different combinations at many venues, including Michael’s on Main, Chaminade, Davenport Roadhouse, Hallcrest Vineyards, Joe’s Bar and the Food Lounge.

5:30-7:30pm

‘It is not what you play, but how you play it’ is a common aphorism in music, and rarely do we get to experience someone who embodies both the virtuosity and the primordial force of musical expression. Chris Lynch is one of those musicians. Multi-instrumentalist, film composer, arranger, producer, and engineer, are just a handful of titles you could pin on Lynch, though he is foremost a violinist. The violin has been the centerpiece of Chris’ musical story arc since moving to Santa Cruz from Minnesota in the early 2000s. He began scoring films like Code and Response (Austin Peck), touring with Marty O’Reilly, The Brothers Comatose, and The Shook Twins, to now, putting out his debut solo album entitled ‘Migrations’ on Sonderhouse Records.

If you’ve seen Chris Lynch live, you know his ability of reminding us how to feel music, rather than hear it or try to understand it. Lynch plays with such focused emotion that it’s hard to tell where the violin ends, and the person begins. Oftentimes a recording falls short in matching an artist’s live essence, but Lynch’s debut solo album, ‘Migrations’ manages to bottle up his ineffable quality for its full thirty-five minutes. Chris has shown us that the violin is versatile across any genre. What we’re hearing on this debut is a conversation between all the parts of the violin that Chris has unearthed in his relationship with the instrument.

3:00-5:00pm

The BACK PORCH BOYS dig into the glorious roots of American music from the Delta blues in Mississippi to New Orleans up to Memphis over to Austin and jumpin’ to Chicago. Singer-guitarist RICH COWAN and harmonica enthusiast VIRGIL THRASHER put their combined 90 odd years of playing music on display. You will hear the likes of Tampa Red, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino among other icons from the early days.

5:30-7:30pm
Every 1st Thursday of the Month!

About Matt Hartle:

As the lead guitarist for the China Cats and Painted Mandolin, Matt Hartle has established himself as the preeminent jam band guitarist for Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. You can also find him hosting a weekly deep dead jam, where he welcomes Bay Area players for Grateful Sunday shenanigans. Matt’s unique voice and intricate playing style always gets the audience on their feet and feeling their groove. You’ll be dancing to songs from legends like Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, as well as rock, blues, jazz, americana, and of course some Matt Hartle originals. Stop by for a “Thursday after work” brew and some hot hartle licks when Matt returns to Discretion Brewing every First Thursday!

5:30-7:30pm

Medicine Road

Throughout the course of their exciting journey as a group, the members of Medicine Road have won over the hearts of music lovers around the Bay Area, performing at a variety of venues and making countless public appearances. A talented rock band, Medicine Road has earned the admiration and affection of critics and fans alike from Santa Cruz to San Francisco. Medicine Road formed in their hometown of Boulder Creek, California in 2007. Since then they evolved into popular and versatile talented group of musicians.

They consist of 4 members, Pablo Eagle (singer-songwriter, guitarist), Jonathan (Skippy) Sherred (bass guitar, vocals), Doug Underhill (drums, background vocals), and Sean Woodward (lead guitar, background vocals). The sound can be anything from psychedelic, country, hard rock, jazzy, and or folky, all in one show. The band will not and never has wanted to be one style of music, and pleases people of all ages and musical tastes. They take pride in being an original music band, and playing the music they love, and it shows! A Medicine Road show is like non other, and not to be missed!

5:30-7:30pm

Axe & Acoustic delivers classic covers, fun originals, harmonies, harmonicas, all kinds of strings and drums.

3:00-5:00pm

Jazz On Tap plays jazz standards from The Great American Song Book. Featuring crooner Rocky Pase on vocals, Richard Robinson (sax, clarinet), Preston Brahm (piano) Thom Nold (Bass) and Bruce handloff (drums). Come out, enjoy a beer and swing with us!

5:30-7:30pm

About Matt Hartle:

As the lead guitarist for the China Cats and Painted Mandolin, Matt Hartle has established himself as the preeminent jam band guitarist for Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. You can also find him hosting a weekly deep dead jam, where he welcomes Bay Area players for Grateful Sunday shenanigans. Matt’s unique voice and intricate playing style always gets the audience on their feet and feeling their groove. You’ll be dancing to songs from legends like Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, as well as rock, blues, jazz, americana, and of course some Matt Hartle originals. Stop by for a “Thursday after work” brew and some hot hartle licks when Matt returns to Discretion Brewing for 1st Thursdays of the month this summer.

5:30-7:30pm

Brian Fitzgerald (7- and 6-string guitars) is an active member of the Bay Area music scene. An accomplished jazz guitarist and teacher, he draws from a deep musical background and education, covering a wide range of influences. He has toured and performed extensively as both a sideman and band leader. In addition to a wealth of studio and recording experience, he is well versed in both jazz and classical theory and composition, and has had years of experience writing and arranging for big bands, R&B groups, and jazz ensembles.

A short list of the venues includes Monterey Jazz Festival, Cabrillo Music Festival, Los Gatos Fiesta de Artes, Bing Music Series at Stanford, Santa Cruz Jazz Festival, Scotts Valley Art & Wine Festival, Capitola Art & Wine Festival, Artichoke Festival, Begonia Festival, and Jazz On The Wharf.

He is the dynamo behind the scenes at Kuumbwa Jazz who handles all the education programs (including their Summer Jazz Camp) and manages all the booked artists.

“My actual bio is long and boring, but diverse and very Irish. It includes much formal classical and jazz training and education, some great programs and teachers, tons of coffee and endless hours of disciplined practice.”

5:30-7:30pm

With a big map and no planned destination, this trio of seasoned improvisers from the jazz and jam band worlds use song and structure the way spacecrafts use planets: not to land and stay, but to SLINGSHOT around and be propelled back out into the galaxy. During this mostly-improv show, a familiar song could materialize at any time. Or not. All we can promise is that nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Slingshot is:

Guitar and Vocals: Matt Hartle (China Cats, Painted Mandolin, Shady Groove, Grateful Sundays with Matt Hartle and Friends)
Bass: Pete Novembre (OM Trio, Coffee Zombie Collective, Aza, Elephino)
Drums: Bret Bailey (Shady Groove, Elephino, Cosmic Pinball, BlissNinnies)

5:30-7:30pm

“Cruz Control” is:

Vince Tuzzi: vocals, guitar, ukulele banjolele

Stan Parola: vocals, ukulele, guitar, harmonica, mandolin & banjolele

Gary Cunningham: stand up bass, vocals, electric bass, ukulele bass

5:30-7:30pm

The Paperback Ryders are an acoustic harmony power-trio. Accurate harmonies from many notable bands.

3:00-5:00pm

THE JAMISSARIES – Featuring Arindam Krishna Das’ originals as well as funked-up versions of music they love by the likes of The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Donovan, Joe Cocker, David Bowie, Tenacious D and more…

With Arindam on guitar/keys/vocals, Devii Grace DiMarco on violin/vocals, Jonathan Kessler on bass/vocals, Rob Borella on drums/vocals and Alex Bahler on lead guitar, their funky, sweet, sticky, psychedelic Jamz will get your Soul grooving and your body moving!

5:30-7:30pm

Paul Kent & Stu Wilson live in the Beer Garden – enjoy mellow guitar & violin!

Paul Kent is a singer / guitarist originally from Brooklyn, NY. In his acoustic shows, Paul plays heartfelt classic rock, country, pop and folk favorites – with occasional surprises of acoustic takes on new music – that provide audiences with reflections from great American artists across genres and eras. Some of the artists he covers are Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Mayer, Ryan Adams, Paul Simon and James Taylor. Paul’s repertoire is comprised of songs that tell the story of how we travel through life making connections and finding meaning.

5:30-7:30pm

Arcane Lullaby is an original band that plays an eclectic mix of various musical styles with positive lyrics. This female-vocalist driven group is based in Santa Cruz, California and has two full length albums mixed by grammy-nominated, multi-platinum producer/engineer Ulrich Wild.

Arcane Lullaby’s contemplative music includes both lullabies and rockabies infused by a unique sound of its own across various genres such as Rock, Blues, Pop, Goth, Punk, Reggae, Prog, Soul, Metal, Funk, and more. “Alternative Rock” can summarize the band’s distinctive style.

This is not an ordinary band – we wish to inspire deep thinking, personal growth, harmony, joy and meaning.

3:00-5:00pm

The Owls are Bob O’Neill—songwriter & founding member of Snail—on vocals & guitar, Craig Owens–bass player and vocalist extraordinaire and Harpin Jonny– virtuoso harmonica player & vocalist in the Larry Hosford band and many others.

This unique trio has come together to create a brilliant balance of blues, R&B, and original tunes. The Owls will take you on a fascinating musical flight!

5:30-7:30pm

Matt Hartle jams with Skippy and Dan this Thursday at Discretion.

As the lead guitarist for the China Cats and Painted Mandolin, Matt Hartle has established himself as the preeminent jam band guitarist for Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. You can also find him hosting a weekly deep dead jam, where he welcomes Bay Area players for Grateful Sunday shenanigans. Matt’s unique voice and intricate playing style always gets the audience on their feet and feeling their groove. You’ll be dancing to songs from legends like Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, as well as rock, blues, jazz, americana, and of course some Matt Hartle originals. Stop by for a “Thursday after work” brew and some hot hartle licks!

5:30-7:30pm

Local Honey is a Santa Cruz-based band that drips with honey sweet harmony and hums with tight, inventive musicianship. Local Honey’s repertoire pays homage to some of the the big voices of the last seven decades, including Big Mama Thornton, Rachael Price, Gladys Knight, Stevie Nicks, Grace Slick, and Amy Winehouse, among other divas. They seek out feel-good songs with strong vocals and infectious beats and make them their own. Though Local Honey is a new band, all of them are veterans of the Santa Cruz and Monterey music scenes. Members have worked with Honeytone, Ten O’Clock Lunch, Come Together, Backyard Birds, Menage, and Bay Bop. Over the years they’ve played in different combinations at many venues, including Michael’s on Main, Chaminade, Davenport Roadhouse, Hallcrest Vineyards, Joe’s Bar and the Food Lounge.

Special guest Rico Rushworth on drums!

3:00-5:00pm

The BACK PORCH BOYS dig into the glorious roots of American music from the Delta blues in Mississippi to New Orleans up to Memphis over to Austin and jumpin’ to Chicago. Singer-guitarist RICH COWAN and harmonica enthusiast VIRGIL THRASHER put their combined 90 odd years of playing music on display. You will hear the likes of Tampa Red, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino among other icons from the early days.