”We had 33 gigs booked when the pandemic hit. That was a low point,” musician Annie Boreson told the Sun. A singer and cajonist, Boreson is one half of a California-based traveling duo, Pricey Diggs. Her husband, Mark McMillen, is the duo’s keyboardist, and both partners provide vocals and compose their original songs together.
The COVID-19 crisis forced the duo to cancel an extensive road trip tour, which would have stretched from Los Angeles to the Canadian border—including stops in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties—and across to Wyoming and back.
“Some of our all-time favorite places to play are on the Central Coast,” Boreson said.
From wineries in Los Olivos to bars in Pismo and Cayucos, Pricey Diggs had become well acquainted with the local music scene over the past few years. Among their favorite venues to perform is Vino et Amicis in Old Town Orcutt. Pricey Diggs’ connection with the wine bar began with its owner Kurt Hixenbaugh, McMillen’s stepbrother, who also helped introduce the Los Angeles-based duo to the town of Orcutt and the Santa Maria Valley in general.
“He’s [Hixenbaugh] been great at introducing us to the area and a lot of nice people,” Boreson said. “We can hardly wait to play there again when everything gets back on track.”
In place of the canceled tour, Pricey Diggs has spent the past seven months completing a new studio album, Home Free.
“COVID-19 changed our course and threw us a lemon. But as we’ve come to learn in life, some of our greatest blessings appear at the darkest times. For us, being homebound and quarantined led to productive days dedicated to writing, recording, and making this CD,” an excerpt from the album’s inside cover reads. “So I guess you could say that we took that lemon and mulched it into sonic lemonade.”
While the duo is known for playing a variety of genres—including country, funk, jazz, Latin, R&B, reggae, and rock—Home Free is difficult to categorize, Boreson explained.
“It’s always tough to put a label on our own music because it covers a lot of different styles, but our PR guy, Robert, calls us ‘an eclectic, contemporary, blue-eyed soul slice of Americana,’” Boreson said.
McMillen lovingly described Home Free as “the newest chapter of my wandering minstrel life that I’ve been so fortunate to lead with Annie.”
So which of the new album’s 10 songs is each musician’s personal favorite?
“That’s a tough one because I’m proud of all the songs and feel each one has its own personality,” McMillen said. “‘Distance’ kind of kicked things off and seems to resonate with a lot of people.”
The second track of the album, “Distance” covers themes of pandemic-induced isolation and is also Boreson’s favorite song the duo composed and recorded specifically for Home Free.
“We wrote it at the start of quarantine, when we were missing the life we knew and family. Isolation is hard for everyone, and we channeled our feelings through that song,” Boreson said. “It nearly wrote itself.”
Boreson and McMillen’s musical adventures and countrywide travels as Pricey Diggs began a few years ago, shortly after Boreson was diagnosed with cancer, her husband said.
“Here she was hooked up to chemo telling me she wanted to buy an old camper, learn to play an instrument, and start playing gigs up and down the coast,” McMillen said. “When she was well, I held her to it.”
About a year before purchasing their 1982 Toyota Sunrader, Boreson spent her free time learning how to play the cajon. McMillen was already an experienced musician, having toured with R&B legend Bobby Caldwell for more than two decades before embarking on Pricey Diggs with his wife.
“I built her a cajon and we practiced night and day. When she wasn’t rehearsing with me, she was watching cajon players on YouTube. A year or so later, we bought the camper and hit the road, playing gigs wherever we went,” McMillen said.
“I couldn’t be more blessed to have him as my partner-in-crime,” Boreson said of her husband. “We love traveling in the camper as every day is different, never knowing who you will meet and what adventures you’ll stumble across.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood wants to know what adventures you’ve stumbled upon lately. Send postcards to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 5-12, 2020.