(Found at G&G, amidst their remodeling. Where’s Beer Frame when you need it?)
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Third and Mission, San Francisco:
¡Manos Arriva!
El Poeta, Smokey and D-Boy don’t go out after 10pm anymore. If they did, they say, they’d only get stopped by the cops and sent home. But D-Boy, who wants to be a police officer, says he understands where the cops are coming from. “They’re actually making it safer. Without cops, this place would be a mess,” he says. “There’d be people dyin’ everyday.”
Over the years, the three friends living in Santa Rosa’s Roseland district found different ways to stay out of gang life. First it was shooting hoops until sunset; for a while, it was playing soccer. And then they discovered hip-hop.
They started writing verses and swapping beats, and everything changed for them in Roseland, the predominantly Latino neighborhood whose younger residents are plagued by prejudices of gang affiliation.
“People say it’s bad,” says Poeta, 18. “But it’s not really that bad, or I would’ve been dead by now.” Poeta was just nine when he witnessed his first stabbing while living on Sunset Avenue, a notoriously bad part of the unincorporated Roseland area. Unknowingly tagging along with a group of older gang members for some basketball, he watched as a knife flashed on the court and felled one of the players. “It traumatized me,” he says. “Living in this life, you don’t have your days promised.”
Poeta’s longtime collaborator Smokey, 16, was approached on the street recently by two guys and asked where to get drugs. He shook his head, and the guys moved on, only to turn on him and fire shots from a .22. Smokey dropped to the ground and scrambled away; six shots later, he had escaped. Barely.
“I saw them two weeks ago,” Smokey says now. “We were playing soccer outside and they passed by, but we didn’t do nothing. We don’t wanna get in no trouble.”
D-Boy, 18, who often joins Poeta and Smokey, also strives to keep a low profile. “People ask me what my favorite color is, and I say ‘red,’ they say, ‘Oh, you’re a Norteño?’ You have to be careful about how you dress around here. We shouldn’t even be worried about that. I know people say it all the time, but it’s just stupid.”
Last month, Poeta, Smokey and D-Boy were offered a chance not only to be out past 10pm but to rock the stage at Roseland’s annual Cinco de Mayo celebration, rapping about their lives, their neighborhood and their culture in front of thousands. Poeta’s eyes light up when he recalls draping a Mexican flag over his shoulders and clutching the mic on that night. “I can still picture the moment when I looked over my right shoulder,” he beams, “and I saw all these people raising up their hands and shit, like a big-ass ocean, like a wave, going all the way down.”
“It’s a feeling,” D-Boy adds with a smile, “you can’t even describe.”
Welcome to Latino hip-hop in Santa Rosa, a story of struggle, music and redemption.
Hip-hop as an art form has almost always been informed by the black experience in America. But in Santa Rosa, where Latinos make up 20 percent of the population and where the area’s main Latino neighborhood, Roseland, is still not recognized as part of the Santa Rosa city limits and where more racism is directed at Latinos than any other demographic, it’s easy to feel like an outsider. One way to start crawling out is to grab a mic.
On a recent sunny afternoon, Poeta can’t be seen through the metal grating of his front door. “Come around to the garage,” he says. That’s where his recording studio is. Built from cheap particle board and lined with mattress parts that he found in the trash, the booth houses a microphone connected to a mixer and computer, all of which he bought while working three jobs. His first mix-tape CD, Living Like a Poet, came out last year, and through lyrics in both English and Spanish, much of it touches on self-actualization, immigration and the Latino experience at large.
During last month’s May 1 march, Poeta encountered a group of Anglo protesters in front of Santa Rosa’s City Hall. “I never in my life had seen somebody go against Latinos like that,” he says. “I just stayed there, watching them. It impacted me.”
Poeta, who comes from an undocumented family, gives his mother money from each paycheck for things like food and laundry detergent, and he lives under constant fear of ICE raids tearing his family apart. So when he took the stage four days after the march, it was with passion that he delivered the lines on “Latinos”: “I’m proud of who I am and I’m proud of being here / Pride in my blood, I’m not afraid to show it / I express it through my lyrics, that’s why they call me Poet.”
“They’re taking it as in, like, we broke into their house or something,” says Poeta of anti-immigration protesters. “But it’s not really their house, you know? Everybody who lives here and who doesn’t do bad things should be allowed to be here. I’ve never done anything bad, I’ve never gone out shooting people and shit.”
This week, Poeta will wear a cap and gown as a graduate of the founding class from Roseland University Prep, with a one-year grant to attend Sonoma State University so he can start paying back his family for the opportunities they gave him by coming to America. He wants to celebrate with a big rap show starring him and his friends as soon as he can raise the money. He can’t understand why there are so many empty storefronts right down the street which can’t be opened up to throw a community concert.
“Everybody talks about rap being a bad influence,” Poeta says, “but we’re trying to prove—even though it’s just maybe a couple of us that do it—that rap is not just about gangs and violence. It’s about whatever we are. What makes us.”
Roseland is full of legends. Grandma Bertram is one of them, an old woman who lived just down the street, on West Avenue, and who took care of all the kids in the neighborhood. “She was just a dear lady,” says DJ Ignite, sitting at his kitchen table in Rohnert Park. “She would do anything for anybody.”
In the mid-’80s, Ignite was a nomad. Having left Mexico after his mother committed suicide when he was five, Ignite then left Los Angeles to live in a crowded motel room on Santa Rosa Avenue with three stepbrothers and a severely alcoholic father, before leaving the motel to—well, it’s simple, really: to leave the motel. What he wanted more than anything was to be like Joe Cooley, the DJ he’d hear on the Mack Attack Mixmaster Show on Los Angeles radio station KDAY, which miraculously came in at the motel at 11pm and provided a brief respite from the taunts he’d get at school about cockroaches falling out of his clothes.
When Grandma Bertram caught wind of this, she pulled out her credit card and bought Ignite his first turntables. “She’d say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna die anyway and my credit can go to hell,'” Ignite recalls. Soon he started DJ-ing parties and hanging out with other breakdancers and rappers. “But in the middle of all that, I was Mexican,” he says, “and society wasn’t ready for that in hip-hop.”
Though there were some early pioneers of Latino hip-hop for Ignite to look up to like Kid Frost, Mellow Man Ace and A Lighter Shade of Brown, Ignite wanted to paint a less gimmicky portrait of La Raza and aim it universally at all people; he became an MC. Before too long, he formed a group called the FunxSoulJaz, and immediately, in 1990, he knew what he was up against.
“I went to go see Leila Steinberg, who managed Tupac,” Ignite says. “I was excited, you know, I’m like, ‘I want you to hear our new song, it’s the FunxSoulJaz. It’s Phlex, who’s Nicaraguan and white, and Byron, who’s black, and me, Mexican. She heard it and she was just like, ‘They’re not ready for this. This is not where it’s at.’ It was a real pro-black thing at the time.”
The FunxSoulJaz persevered, watching friends like Ray Luv and E-40 get major label deals while making three albums on their own label. Then the group’s DJ, Covan (aka DJ Co-V-Co), was shot in the head and killed, along with his cousin, outside a party in Rohnert Park. “That made me say, ‘I can do this,'” Ignite says. “‘I don’t give a fuck if I’m Mexican, I can do this shit.'”
Now one-half of the hip-hop group the Blaxicans with his black childhood friend Capital B, Ignite is 38 and about to become a grandparent. He’s also gotten involved with an organization called One Dream, based out of San Rafael’s Canal District, which provides support for undocumented children who were brought to America from Mexico with no choice. As hip-hop grows larger and more inclusive than ever, Ignite sees lots of opportunities for young Latino rappers that he didn’t have. His son, Tone-E, has started rapping, and Ignite is constantly reminding him to inject life and poetry into his songs, something he watched blossom in, flow from and eventually make a legend of Tupac Shakur.
“No Latino on TV today has done what Tupac has done to me,” Ignite says. “When somebody does that, that’s when I’ll hang up my microphone. Because I’ll be content, I’ll be like, ‘Finally.’ That’s what I’m working for. To see one of us get to that level.”
The house where Big-D and Rikoo live is surrounded by goats and roosters. Deep in Southwest Santa Rosa, the area’s so rural that there are no sidewalks. It’s a change of neighborhood that the brothers, who used to live in the heart of Roseland, clearly appreciate. “We lived on Sunset for years, and it was all crazy and shit,” says Rikoo. “Out here, it’s peaceful, you can record better. We like it.”
Big-D and Rikoo are Latin Hyper, one of the West Coast’s premier reggaeton groups. A contagious blend of hip-hop and reggae dancehall, reggaeton hails from Panama and Puerto Rico and infuses merengue and bachata beats, heavy on the rhythmic triplet. Reggaeton is a more family-friendly style than rap; the music can be furious and thegritos aggressive, but songs about girls outnumber songs about guns.
“I mean, gangs, all that stuff—they don’t really mess with reggaeton,” says the 24-year-old Rikoo. “It’s a totally different thing than rap or hip-hop. So that’s one of the reasons I started getting into reggaeton. It’s a Latin thing. And when you say ‘Latin,’ it means my people—everybody.”
Rikoo’s 21-year-old brother Big-D was a rapper for years before Rikoo got him into reggaeton. Now he speaks of rap like an ex-girlfriend best forgotten, both because it didn’t fit him personally and because it meant closed opportunities. “If you go to a school,” he says, “and you say, ‘I’m gonna do a song,’ they’ll ask you, ‘What kind of song?’ And if you tell ’em it’s rap, they’ll kinda think about it twice, like, ‘Uh, it’s related to gangs or drugs.’ You know?”
Latin Hyper’s producer Omar, who used to sell hip-hop beats to Big-D back in Roseland and who’s lately picked up reggaeton production with a second-nature expertise, likens the switch to reggaeton as something larger than merely style of music. “You can be rapping for the streets, for the gangs. And after that,” he says, “it’s like a change in your life.”
In a small bedroom taken up almost entirely by three beds, the brothers crank up some new beats from their upcoming album, El Presidente, spontaneously breaking into rapid-fire vocals together. The bedroom light switch is triple-taped in the “on” position with a “DO NOT TURN OFF” sign—it powers the computer and mixer setup. Soon, they’ll take turns recording tracks in the closet, where clothes have been displaced for a microphone. Rikoo says he has a new song in the works that he’s especially into.
“It’s talking about life,” he says. “It’s talking about hunger in Africa, about the war in Iraq, about communism in Cuba, Venezuela and Korea. It’s talking about those different things about the world, how it’s fucked up. Why are we suffering? Why are we going through things we shouldn’t be going through?”
As one of the few reggaeton groups in the Bay Area with a seemingly endless supply of serious beats and ruling hooks, Latin Hyper has a solid chance at bringing what Miami and New York already know to the West Coast. And even though their entire life is put into their music, they’re aware that opportunities for recognition don’t come easy. “You gotta fight for it,” Rikoo says. “It’s tough for everybody, not just us. It’s tough.”
First Bite
Editor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they—informed, intelligent eaters like yourselves—have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do.
True to its name, Cottage Eatery is in a tiny space. Its tables are tiny. Its menu is tiny. Its prices, while not entirely tiny, are certainly reasonable, especially for its posh location tucked away along the Ark Row in Tiburon.
One thing’s for certain: Cottage’s ingredients are big. Opened in February under Edward Carew and Jennifer Rebman (formerly of New York’s Gramercy Tavern), Cottage is all about fresh, focusing on everyday fruits and vegetables crafted into sexy stuff. (House-made kumquat mostarda and caramelized onion tart, or a recent amuse of cucumber, yogurt, almond and sea salt in a shot glass roll off the mind’s tongue in a sensuous lilt.)
There’s dreamy-sounding pasta like pappardelle with favas, Boccalone pancetta, onions, pepperoncini and parsley ($17), and spring-kissed seafood such as marinated Monterey sardines with fresh mint, bufala mozzarella and red pepper ($12). I found it impossible not to crave a mouthwatering plate of Anderson Farms organic spring lamb fricassee with fregola sarda and Meyer lemon ($25) just by the sound of its components.
There’s little butter, little fat. If such natural flavors are tiny, the kitchen kicks in more salt, sometimes with such exuberance that it left crystals crunching in our teeth.
Peas were the star of a recent evening, perfect specimens blanched to bright green pop-snap. The chef, casually sipping from a big glass of red wine as we caught sight of him in the partially open kitchen, transformed them into an extraordinarily silky pale green panna cotta ($12) littered with fava beans and more whole peas, fresh mint leaf and the rousing bite of sea salt.
Peas and favas populated a pleasant plate of roasted chicken thighs ($22), the petite legs from a young bird golden, crisp and splayed over roasted tomato, artichoke, cipollini onions, a whole clove of garlic and chickpeas fashioned into polenta-style fries.
Peas weren’t advertised in a Pacific fried oyster appetizer ($10), but there they were, peeking out of a nest of shredded iceberg. This was the best dish of the night, mounding four enormously good mollusks with bacon, jalapeños and a slather of smoked paprika aioli.
Yet roasted beet ravioli ($11) needed something—pancetta, ricotta, perhaps even peas to enliven the pale pink pockets set in a barely discernable poppy-seed-butter-grana padano sauce. Cottage’s signature dish is crispy suckling pig ($25) with tiny green Umbrian lentils and pickled red cabbage, but sadly, the pork was sold out by 7pm. A special of bland spaghetti and meatballs ($16) made a poor substitute: underseasoned, undersauced, featuring more ricotta than meat, it was merely a belly filler.
Desserts could make Cottage an industry. These flavors sang. There was a dense buttermilk panna cotta, barely sweetened with the tart chewiness of poached rhubarb ($7), and pound cake ($7), spiked with lots of lemon and lavender under drifts of whipped cream and strawberries.
For such a small treasure, it’s no wonder that reservations are a must. Cottage is a cozy little discovery.
Cottage Eatery, 114 Main St., Tiburon. Open for dinner, Tuesday through Saturday. 415.789.5636.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
Spiritual Stains
06.04.08
D uring the recent visit to the United States by Pope Benedict, I heard the~biggest lie since January 1998 when then-president Bill Clinton looked the American public in the eye and said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Bill was semantically correct. You remember what Monica said under oath that she had done to him? Since she had the black dress with the “stains” to prove it, Bill had to get back on TV and admit that he did in fact have improper relations, but oh boy did he really have to get back to the work of being our president.
That was the same type of lie I heard during the pope’s recent visit. It came out of the mouth of one of his cardinals. When asked by a New York Times reporter about U.S. bishops’ misconduct in cases of child abuse by priests, the former Bishop of San Francisco, Cardinal William Levada, responded, “I personally do not accept that there is a broad base of bishops who are guilty of aiding~and abetting pedophiles, and if I thought there were, or knew of them, I would certainly talk to the pope about what could be done about it.”
Well, I can think of two. In addition to Santa Rosa Diocese’s current Bishop Daniel F. Walsh, who delayed reporting abuse by one of his priests as now required by law long enough to allow the Rev. Xavier Ochoa time to flee to Mexico, there is Santa Rosa’s former Bishop Patrick Zieman, who was allowed to resign after gross personal sexual and financial violations.
No matter how carefully Levada chose his words for his Clinton-like excuse, I personally know that priest and bishop misconduct is ongoing and has a history. (For current and background information, check out the website for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.)
I met Father John Rogers in 1976 when I lived in Eureka. He was there as a priest, but was also a friend to my family and me. Initially assigned as an associate priest at Sacred Heart in Eureka, he was transferred to the Newman Center on the Humboldt State University campus. From there he became the parish priest for Arcata.
The first time I met Father Rogers was when I called the Sacred Heart Rectory in Eureka, asking them to send a priest to St. Joseph’s Hospital one night. My wife and I had taken our infant daughter to the emergency room. She had been diagnosed with meningitis and the doctor had just told us to prepare ourselves in case she did not live through the night. He sat with us, and while I am sure he silently prayed, he visibly did no more than hand my wife Kleenex. Our daughter is now a married sixth-grade teacher in Santa Rosa.
Father Rogers was with us when my great-grandmother passed away at home after a long illness. He was back at the hospital with us, and later at our home on Nov. 8, 1980, when my wife and I and our three children recovered after our VW Bug was knocked off a collapsing freeway overpass by an earthquake just south of Eureka. He officiated at my mother’s wake and funeral. I never knew he had another life.
When credible accusations came from an adult that Father Rogers had molested him as a child, church officials whisked him to a seminary in Brussels, Belgium. When it became apparent that extradition was about to bring Rogers back to answer the accusations, he walked into the Belgian woods and shot himself in the head.
In my opinion, church officials did not supervise the conduct of their priests around children carefully enough to prevent what had happened to Father Rogers’ accuser and thousands of other children. Neither did they seem to provide the type of support for offending priests that would have helped them face the criminal and moral consequences of what they had done.
In his current capacity of supervising the conduct of bishops and priests, Cardinal Levada may say he personally does not accept any of this. Regardless of what he says, and the careful words he chooses, like Bill Clinton, he cannot deny the “stains.”
Tom J. Mariani is a retired local banker and corporate risk manager who is now working full-time as a poet and a freelance writer.
Open Mic is now a weekly feature in the Bohemian. We welcome your contribution. To have your topical essay of 700 words considered for publication, write [ mailto:op*****@******an.com” data-original-string=”pgDD9vAQH8yE0K5jv/MV4Q==06a0nKquC2D+BzMmxW2CcerI/yA/+rVCOgF0QOm9h3bzGI7uTEt+RY8HkhCGSsGreO/0JdLAfjC6VsYsKLUx4ktjy29bJbggkO0kGWF4z2t7d4=” title=”This contact has been encoded by Anti-Spam by CleanTalk. Click to decode. To finish the decoding make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser. ]op*****@******an.com.
Inventing Locally
06.04.08
After 11 years in the Army reserves and the California Army National Guard, Cazadero resident Joe Meisch takes the Army engineers’ motto seriously: Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
That’s been his approach to turning his personal solution to a raging headache into a useful plastic gizmo that is apparently the only one of its type on the market. In the process, Meisch hasn’t strayed far from his roots.
And he hasn’t forgotten his friends still serving in the military. Last fall, Meisch sent 40 of his unique temple massagers to his old unit, the 579th Engineer Battalion in Iraq. Another 40 went to Walter Reed Army Hospital, for use by amputees and post traumatic stress disorder victims. The response was incredibly positive; a Red Cross liaison has asked Meisch for 2,000 more for use at the Walter Reed and Fairfax Virginia Military medical facilities in Bethesda, Md.
Meisch estimates it will cost about $8,000 to create that many, money he doesn’t have. An injured finger has sidelined him as a carpenter—his “day” job—so he’s contacting veteran and other organizations, hoping for assistance.
“I’m going to donate as many to them as I can,” Meisch vows. “For me, it’s a priority.”
His efforts are centered around a 15-inch-long Y-shaped piece of flexible plastic that comes in sea foam green, violet, black, dark blue or sky blue. It’s used to gently massage a person’s temples, the location of the largest cranial nerve. The massage can be used along the jaw line, down from the temples and back again.
“It’s kind of silly using it in public, because it makes your mouth hang open and your jaw hang down,” Meisch laughs.
Despite advice to manufacture his patented product in China, he’s kept it a local operation. The manufacturing is done in the North Bay, he buys his supplies here and he even uses his mom’s old 1963 Singer sewing machine to stitch up the storage bags that come with the massagers.
Kirsten Iuppelatz is co-owner of Sebastopol’s Pilates Collective, one of the local businesses selling the Meisch Temple Massager.
“People try them out and really love them,” Iuppelatz says. She adds, “We all tried it. It felt great to me in my jaw, which is where I hold my tension.”
The idea for his temple massager grew out of a road trip Meisch took with some friends prior to leaving the National Guard in 1998. Struggling to balance the demands of his National Guard duties, his push to finish college and the need to earn a living, Meisch was tense, irritable and had a headache. Holding his sunglasses by the bridge, he idly used the tips to massage his temples.
The effect was immediate. There was a calming sensation in his jaw line and a warm feeling in his temple area. His head felt better and his focus returned. “My headache disappeared,” he says. “That’s when the proverbial light bulb went off, so to speak.”
After he got home, Meisch tried to buy a temple massager and found there were none on the market. He spent the next few years trying to create one—burning plastic in his oven, mangling clothes hangers, playing with chemicals and breaking wooden models. Eventually, he decided needed proper materials and a professional mold.
It’s been an educational experience.
“I had to learn an enormous amount about manufacturing, marketing, financing,” Meisch says. “I had to teach myself plastics. I had to teach myself mold-making.”
The first company he approached urged him to have the mold and the units manufactured in China. Determined that he everything should be made in the United States, Meisch ended up working with Designit Prototype and R&D Products Inc., both in Rohnert Park, for creating the mold and manufacturing the units. The plastic used is 100 percent recyclable, and Meisch buys the fabric for the storage bags from Carolyn’s Canvas in Valley Ford. He sells through local stores and on the Internet.
“In a small way, I’m stimulating my own local economy,” he laughs.
There’ve been a few stumbling blocks. The massager includes an aromatherapy pad that lets soothing scents surround a user. But the first thousand or so models were made with a different type of plastic. The oil ate through them and they had to be tossed.
Undeterred, Meisch continues on, determined to get his product to a wider audience. He’s especially determined to come up with enough to donate to the military hospitals.
But he shakes his head in wonder at how far he’s already come.
“I’m still to this day blown away that I thought of this and that nobody else has one out there.”
To donate, go to www.templemassager.com.
Gracefully Humane
06.04.08
Life in war-torn Iraq is obviously no picnic, but it starts to look a little bit better when compared to conditions under Saddam Hussein (unless you were one of the select few who received his double-edged favors, of course). In Heather Raffo’s poetic, gracefully humane one-woman play The Nine Parts of Desire, running through June 14 in the Studio at Santa Rosa’s Sixth Street Playhouse, nine Iraqi women tell intimate stories of their lives before and after the fall of Saddam. Some of these stories are lovely and inspiring, some are funny, many are harrowing. All of them are performed by Denise Elia, taking another major step forward after several years working in the community theater trenches of smallish character parts and ensemble roles.
In Nine Parts of Desire, Elia, always a very physical actor, morphs in and out of the bodies of a distinct array of women: a grieving Bedouin woman dropping the shoes of dead people into the Euphrates every day as an act of devotion; a wealthy Iraqi artist wrestling with the compromises that have brought her success under Saddam; a neglected wife and mother, yearning for love, who discovers her own worth while posing for the aforementioned artist; an expatriate Iraqi, living in New York, anxious for news of her family as the post 9-11 bombing of Iraq begins; a fearful ob-gyn in Baghdad describing the horrific health conditions of her people after the commencement of the war and invasion; and others, all richly detailed, distinctly individual portrayals, thanks to Elia and co-directors Bronwen Shears and Elizabeth Craven.
The set is clever patchwork, suggesting different times and places with a television set here, a pile of rubble there, an easel, a chair, an array of glass water urns, a pool of water. Elia navigates from one character to another using slight costume changes, shifts in voice, changes in posture. This is a beautiful show, and an important one, taking us into the lives of “others” in ways that are both mesmerizing and deeply moving. Nine Partsis the type of show that was designed to challenge, change and inspire the people who see it, and in the hands of Shears, Craven and Elia, that’s exactly what this play does.
Nine Parts of Desire runs Friday-Sunday through June 14 at the Sixth Street Playhouse. Friday&–Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm. 56 W. Sixth St., Santa Rosa. $12&–$18. 707.523.4185.
Museums and gallery notes.
Reviews of new book releases.
Reviews and previews of new plays, operas and symphony performances.
Reviews and previews of new dance performances and events.
The Hills Are Alive
06.04.08
From world-class studios to smaller, project-based operations, North Bay musicians have an array of choices when it comes to recording. Why are so many of these studios based in the town of Sebastopol, population 7,000-ish? We have absolutely no idea.
Ausgang Audio “We love working with creative musicians and bands, and have recently recorded the Highlands and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitarist Imaad Wasif,” says Justin Millar, who with wife Cara Phillips, runs this hi-fi analog recording studio with digital recording options. Located in an old Petaluma Victorian, the studio features a separate control room, live rooms with 10-foot ceilings and wide plank oak floors. Millar brings years of experience as a Skywalker Sound staff member to his work as an engineer.
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Jeopardy’ Files Star Wars freaks can record on equipment actually used at Skywalker Ranch, the compound run by Jungian-inspired director George Lucas.
Recording Philosophy “We’re passionate about recording, vinyl records and archiving a band’s uniqueness.” www.ausgangaudio.com.
Banquet Studios Thirty years of recording experience is one of the perks of working with Warren Dennis Kahn, retired SSU music professor and the owner/engineer at Banquet Studios. Kahn recently upgraded to a beautiful, acoustically sound studio in rural Sebastopol with views of rolling wheat-colored hills. The large studio (they recently hosted a 40-person choir from Occidental) is strictly digital. “It’s a huge endeavor to put out a record,” says studio manager Shanin Jones, a singer and percussionist with R&B dance band Blue Moon. “Just to have the guts to do it. We want people to feel encouraged and supported. Since we are all musicians here, we understand the pressures of the recording process.”
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Jeopardy’ Files Deepak Chopra, author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, recorded an audiobook here.
Recording Philosophy “Our purpose is to provide a conscious recording environment in which personal artistry is encouraged, creativity is inspired and the human spirit is expressed.” www.banquetstudios.com.
Coyote Creek Studio On a sunny day in Sebastopol, Robert Butler, owner of Coyote Creek Studio, plays a rough cut of “We are the Ones,” a heartfelt song by singer-songwriter Sky Nelson. Working primarily with such regional artists as Kelly the Singer and rock band Jed, Butler looks for artists with potential and is willing not only to record them but also to help with post-recording promotion. “This is a comfortable place. Artists are in a situation where they can do their best work,” Butler beams.
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Jeopardy’ Files The studio got its name from the coyotes that liked to visit during late-night recording sessions. According to Native American lore, these creatures represent the trickster god. Maybe the studio is situated on some Sedona-like vortex.
Recording Philosophy “The signal path is the key. It starts with talent, mics, the room and pre-amps.” www.coyotecreekstudio.com.
In the Pocket “I wanted to build a studio where I could achieve the sounds of my favorite records,” says owner Gregory Haldan from his finely outfitted In the Pocket control room. After purchasing a NEVE console mixing board previously used on The Benny Hill Show, Haldan continued his search for the best gear available. “I have a clear vision of how I want to approach equipment,” he says.
Clients like Gov’t Mule and Tom Waits, who recorded both Alice and Blood Money here, have taken advantage of the isolation and privacy. “It’s about helping people make the record of their dreams,” Halden says.
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Jeopardy’ Files “Dr. Woo,” the mysterious previous owner of the property attempted to build a “spiritual creek” underneath one of the houses. It has since been diverted.
Recording Philosophy “Focus on the music.” www.inthepocketstudio.com.
Prairie Sun On first approach, Prairie Sun looks like a farmhouse. In fact, it spent the first part of its life in rural Cotati as a chicken hatchery, a fact that co-owner Mark “Mooka” Rennick shares with pride. “It’s basically a funky old chicken barn,” Rennick says about his successful recording facility. But don’t be fooled by the rough exterior. Prairie Sun is a world-class studio, featuring vintage analog equipment combined with the most up-to-date digital profile. Patronized by the likes of Tom Waits, who recorded the Grammy Award-winning Mule Variations in a modified closet now called the “Waits Room,” the Mountain Goats and Heavy Weight Dub Champion, this “funky chicken barn,” has seen its share of brilliance.
Studio B features a Neve Mixing board previously owned by Pete Townshend. Studio A features an 80-input mixing board. “We can handle huge projects,” Rennick stresses. Musicians who want to mix analog with digital can do that, since each room has a proprietary digital ProTools system, all wired for two-inch analog tapes.
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘Jeopardy’ Files Before a recording session by a West County hippie band, a guru-priest attempted to splash holy water around one of the studios, seriously threatening some very expensive equipment.
Recording Philosophy “Prairie Sun is an artistic compound with professional services and great vibes, and we like to have fun.” www.prairiesun.com.
Zone Recording/Blair Hardman Productions “We get all levels of performers in here and we make everybody feel comfortable,” says Blair Hardman from the helm of an immaculate control room that resembles the inside of a small spaceship. “I majored in psychology so that’s a big help,” Hardman laughs, speaking of his ability to stave off nervousness in clients who may be new to the recording process. Clients can also choose from hundreds of guitar amps since they are given access to all of the gear in the adjacent Zone Music store.
From the Rock ‘n’ Roll Jeopardy Files Blair Hardman made a guest appearance on the bestselling audiobook The Secret. He read the biblical quotes.
Recording Philosophy “Recording at Zone means never having to say you’re sorry.” [ http://www.zonemusic.com ]www.zonemusic.com.
Other Studios to Love
Grizzly Studios “From the early ’90s to 2000, it seems like practically everything that came out of the North Bay area came through the studio,” says owner Roger Tschann about his legendary Petaluma digs. From Mac Dre to Cutie Pie—a Japanese ska outfit who flew across the Pacific to record with the man responsible for records by California ska bands like the Bruce Lee Band—Grizzly is a place where musicians of all stripes can come for quality analog and digital recording.
“It’s affordable with a relaxed vibe,” Tschann says about Grizzly. With a track record of producing classic recordings from pretty much every cool band to come out of the North Bay, Tschann can put his output behind his words. 707.763.BEAR.
The Plant Recording Studios Fleetwood Mac recorded their perennial hit Rumours at Sausalito’s original Plant in 1976. This world-class facility still caters to the big names, including the Dave Matthews Band, Joe Satriani and Santana. For those with a little extra cash, check out the “Garden,” a studio room complete with tropical plants and a hot tub. www.plantstudios.com.
Route 44 Owner and engineer Harry Gale has captured the sounds of many of Sonoma County’s finest including Doug Jayne, Charlie Musselwhite and Laughing Gravy. Route 44 features an efficient and comfortable set up along with ProTools-based digital recording on two acres of country land in Sebastopol.
“All egos get checked at the door—including mine,” says long-time musician Gale. “We usually wind up having a great time doing our best, and I have many clients who come back repeatedly for three or more albums.” www.route44studio.com.
Sebtown Slated to open this month, Sebtown is a professional recording studio in the heart of Sebastopol. Studio designer Jack Jacobsen designed the world-class acoustic recording rooms. Owner Chuck Johnson doesn’t hesitate to declare, “it’s the best in Sonoma County.” Local artists are encouraged to contact this affiliate of the New Vintage Artists label to see for themselves. 707.495.9001.
Silverado “We believe in creating an environment where the artist feels supported by a combination of state-of-the-art electronics and precision engineering, editing and mastering—and quality professional people with positive attitude, to get quality results,” says Patrick Flynn, head engineer at Silverado. Located in rural Calistoga, the studio combines a vintage TAC magnum console with ProTools for those looking for personalized hybrid touch. Rates are comparable to other studios, and they offer package deals for longer projects. www.silveradomusic.com.
Fame Game
06.04.08
Rock-star encounters happen every day in Marin, from sharing a bathroom with Huey Lewis to sharing a sandwich line with Carlos Santana. My favorite story involves a childhood sleepover at Jerry Garcia’s place that left a young girl wondering why the fridge was stocked solely with tubs of giant mushrooms.
“People lived down the street from Grace Slick or saw Van Morrison in the drugstore—they really treasure those kinds of associations,” says Marin Independent-Journal columnist Paul Liberatore. In his March 20 column, Liberatore rather innocently proposed that the county create its own rock hall of fame. Almost immediately, he had a mountain of old stories and memorabilia to peruse. “I expected some response, but I had no idea of the scope,” says the former rocker, who was inspired by the deaths of musician friends Martin Fierro and Chuck Day. “I got way over 300 emails, and when people started sending in nominations, it went off the charts.”
Serendipitously, the Marin History Museum was preparing for “Marin Makes Music” as the theme for its annual gala fundraiser, held May 2 in Mill Valley. “I go to 20 or 30 fundraisers a year,” says Pam Hamilton, who does PR for the museum, “but there was something electric about that night; people were so excited.” Excited enough, apparently, to make it an annual event. “Next year, we will embrace the Marin Symphony, country, blues, jazz,” Hamilton says. “Tommy Castro couldn’t make it, but said, ‘Next year I’m there.'”
Hamilton, like many, sees the hall of fame concept as restrictive and inherently controversial. “It becomes a selective process,” she says. “We want to honor people regardless of whether they made the top of the charts like Huey Lewis or are just one of the most solid music-makers, like Austin de Lone.”
Liberatore’s idea has similarly evolved. “After I’ve had time to think about it and talk to people, the emphasis should be Marin’s rock history rather than making it a hall of fame for all the hotshots,” he says. “Criteria would be decided later, but now I’d like to see us preserving our rock history and getting it out there so people can enjoy and learn from it.”
Local real estate agent and guerrilla historian Jason Lewis, whose Marin Nostalgia website features an interview with jazz luminary George Duke, couldn’t agree more. “I think Paul’s thing is a great idea, but the national one has left out some groups that are more than deserving,” he says. “What is a true hall of fame based on? Record sales? Number of Top 40 hits? Or just bands the editors of Rolling Stone magazine think are ‘cool’?”
Coincidentally, the museum gala’s emcee was former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres. He is also weary of the increasingly criticized Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, cofounded by his former colleague Jann Wenner. “It’s a no-win situation, where people are pulled in and others are left out,” he says. “You also have the politics and the economics of an organization like that.”
Fong-Torres has even devoted an episode of his KFRC 106.9-FM radio show to those who were snubbed. “The Steve Miller Band, the Doobie Brothers and Boz Scaggs come to mind,” he lists. “I don’t understand why they haven’t even been nominated. There’s something going on there.”
Having covered Bay Area music for decades, Fong-Torres supports the plan but believes extra precaution is wise. “Altogether, [the gala] was a successful early step in the process, but let’s try to do it right and recognize as many people as possible right away,” he says with a laugh. “[Pianist] Jon Allair is totally unknown to the music industry, even though he’s got great credits with Van Morrison and others.”
Perhaps Village Music’s recent closure and the Sweetwater Saloon’s sluggish relocation have catalyzed local fervor. “I think it woke people up,” Liberatore says. “People are afraid, and they see these things going away.”
And this cultural richness doesn’t stop at county lines. “I think Sonoma may want to have its own, which I would encourage,” he says. “People like David Grisman, Tom Waits, Nick Gravenites in Occidental. It overlaps in a lot of ways, but Sonoma has a real history of its own, too.”
As pied piper of this effort, Liberatore remains generous. “I would like to see it happen, so anything that I can do to bring it about, I’m going to do it,” he says. “I know Martin [Fierro] really would’ve liked some recognition. Wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to honor [him and Chuck Day] when they were still living?”
Psych Psnap
06.04.08
There’s talking, laughing and the clinking of beer bottles. Suddenly, the sound of four perfectly tuned voices echo off the walls of the Paris Métro. Inside the train, four young men grin at one another and strike up a beat on a metal pole. As the clinking intertwines with clapping, they break out once again in harmony. The faces of average French citizens stuck on the subway in the wee hours of the night slowly morph from flabbergasted confusion into an enchanted look of euphoria.
The performance is like witnessing world diplomacy through song. The train slows to a stop, the doors part and whistling applause escorts the men out onto the platform. The foursome giggle as if they’re immensely surprised with the music they’ve just created.
As cheesy as this video clip sounds, these exuberant young men are at the forefront of indie alternative music’s new wave.
Welcome to Yeasayer, people.
On their debut album, All Hour Cymbals, the band’s self-proclaimed “Middle-Eastern-psych-snap-gospel” sound is a collage of chimes, occasional a cappella harmonies, African and Indian beats pounding away in the background, and wispy synthesizer layers. Psych-snap-gospel hardly begins to describe it.
Pronounced “yay-sayer,” the band is comprised of a cacophony of musical talents: Anand Wilder, Ira Wolf Tuton, Chris Keating and Luke Fasano. Wilder and Keating became friends during high school in Baltimore, Md. In 2004, the duo reconnected in Brooklyn and began playing music. A year later, Tuton joined as the bass player, and in the summer of 2006, Fasano’s drums formed the backbone of the group.
Yeasayer are only one of recent Brooklyn imports to the popular music scene. Along with bands like Vampire Weekend, MGMT and Animal Collective, they are slowly transitioning from underground experimentation to hipster playlists to guesting on such mainstream fare as Late Night with Conan O’Brien and MTV.
Commercialism may be the name of the game in Manhattan, but Brooklyn gives artistic innovation a new stomping ground, heralding the rebirth of the broke and statusless musical genius.
While Yeasayer may find their home and inspiration among the crop of new bands like A Place to Bury Strangers and the Muggabears, their results sound far different. Where A Place to Bury Strangers pair lazy vocals with frenetic, pulsating drumbeats, Yeasayer lean toward the mystical side of the spectrum, kneading the drumbeats and guitar into wispier rhythms. The Muggabears, who classify themselves as “emotronic,” are just that: a little more pop and a little more angst, like a grunge version of the Australian band Jet. Yeasayer hit the middle mark with ease, each track of All Hour Cymbals more expansive and multifaceted than the last. They are relatable. Listenable.
“Beautiful” is the one word that crops up again and again with reference to Yeasayer in music blogs and review sites. Their lyrics are beautiful, the sounds are beautiful, the sentiment is almost too beautiful to handle. What exactly are these four guys—all hailing from different areas of the East Coast but all living in Brooklyn now—doing to evoke such strong reactions? The secret lies in the content. Not in the trippy melodies, and not in the Phil-Collins-circa-1980s vocals in tracks like “Sunrise,” but in the nature with which they tackle some startlingly pessimistic subject matter. In their single “2080,” which launched their introduction into the mainstream, lead vocalist and keyboardist Chris Keating sings, “I can’t sleep when I think about the times we’re livin’ in / I can’t sleep when I think about the future I was born into.” Such a harsh take on issues facing the world today was in part motivation for the band’s unique name.
“The name ‘Yeasayer’ seemed positive,” Keating recently told New York Noise, an indie and underground music television station. “You know, we thought, ‘If we have a positive name, then we can kinda go ahead and talk about the dark stuff.'”
In a Top 40&–driven musical market, Yeasayer have managed to create something new, which is normally thought to be an increasingly futile goal for new musicians. The bands coming out of Brooklyn are turning alternative indie music on its head, and Yeasayer are right there, bringing in that Middle-Eastern-psych-snap-gospel. Right on.
Yeasayer appear July 19 at San Francisco’s Download Festival. www.downloadfestival.com.
Everyone Loves Resse’s Pieces
(Found at G&G, amidst their remodeling. Where's Beer Frame when you need it?)
¡Manos Arriva!
A look at Latino hip-hop in Santa Rosa — a story of struggle, music and redemption.
Spiritual Stains
06.04.08D uring the recent visit to the United States by Pope Benedict, I heard the~biggest lie since January 1998 when then-president Bill Clinton looked the American public in the eye and said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Bill was semantically correct. You remember what Monica said under oath that she had done to him? Since...
Inventing Locally
06.04.08After 11 years in the Army reserves and the California Army National Guard, Cazadero resident Joe Meisch takes the Army engineers' motto seriously: Adapt. Improvise. Overcome. That's been his approach to turning his personal solution to a raging headache into a useful plastic gizmo that is apparently the only one of its type on the market. In the process,...
Gracefully Humane
06.04.08Life in war-torn Iraq is obviously no picnic, but it starts to look a little bit better when compared to conditions under Saddam Hussein (unless you were one of the select few who received his double-edged favors, of course). In Heather Raffo's poetic, gracefully humane one-woman play The Nine Parts of Desire, running through June 14 in the Studio...
The Hills Are Alive
06.04.08From world-class studios to smaller, project-based operations, North Bay musicians have an array of choices when it comes to recording. Why are so many of these studios based in the town of Sebastopol, population 7,000-ish? We have absolutely no idea.Ausgang Audio "We love working with creative musicians and bands, and have recently recorded the Highlands and Yeah Yeah Yeah's...
Fame Game
06.04.08Rock-star encounters happen every day in Marin, from sharing a bathroom with Huey Lewis to sharing a sandwich line with Carlos Santana. My favorite story involves a childhood sleepover at Jerry Garcia's place that left a young girl wondering why the fridge was stocked solely with tubs of giant mushrooms. "People lived down the street from Grace Slick...
Psych Psnap
06.04.08There's talking, laughing and the clinking of beer bottles. Suddenly, the sound of four perfectly tuned voices echo off the walls of the Paris Métro. Inside the train, four young men grin at one another and strike up a beat on a metal pole. As the clinking intertwines with clapping, they break out once again in harmony. The faces...
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