Photograph by Rory McNamara

Monsters of Rock: Roger Tschann has been courted by L.A. music execs and may yet move to where the money is. But for now, Grizzly is his home.

Behind the Music

Beyond the doors of Roger Tschann’s Grizzly Studios, legends are made

By Sara Bir

You hear stories. Oh, you hear stories: plates of petrified spaghetti in the sink; crusty punk rockers in gorilla suits with bottles of Jim Beam, standing in the driveway heckling passers-by; shock-rock bands smearing feces (or something like it) all over the studio walls.

Bands on speed. Bands with crazy people on speed. Bands that aren’t even old enough to drive yet and have to have their moms drop them off at the studio, where they get all jacked up on junk food and soda. Bands that sit in front of a television playing fat-fetish porn as the studio is readied . . .

So the first thing you notice about Grizzly Studios–the actual, real life studio, not the one of legend–is that it’s really not that bad. Where once there was a lot full of weeds there is now a brand-new deck, and the studio itself is clear of McDonald’s wrappers and used condoms and empty beer cans–all the flotsam typically associated with rock bands gone wild. The sofa’s pretty beat up, and recording equipment is strewn about, though not wildly. “The reason these cables are not put away,” Roger Tschann says, gesturing toward a few piles of recording equipment, “is because we use them.”

Maybe Grizzly Studios used to be that bad. As it is now, the bathroom looks in better shape than most public restrooms found in fast-food joints, even though it has no sink. But you know how stories are. They gain momentum upon each retelling, and any place as storied as Grizzly is bound to be the victim of wild exaggeration for dramatic effect.

Or maybe not. Some of these stories are true, and others may be slightly less true. But they’re all good ones.

Someday someone could write a book about Sonoma County’s underground music scene. It would make a great read, but not too many people would care, save the ones from the bands and maybe their moms and girlfriends or boyfriends. After a while, you learn that everyone in the scene is in some kind of band. It’s like one huge band with 1,000 different side projects–one big, happy/miserable incestuous family. Some people you know by name; others, just by sight, and you will never know their names, just their faces and they way they lurk in corners and nod their heads to the music.

Probably half of that book would take place at Petaluma’s Grizzly Studios, where Roger Tschann has been recording bands since 1993 or so. Sometimes he’s credited as producer, sometimes he’s credited as engineer, and sometimes he’s not credited at all. What started in his mom’s garage moved to grander digs where partyers have puked, legends have been created, and about a million bands have recorded. Most of them are locals, but some come from Santa Cruz, Oakland, and L.A. One band even drove all the way from New Jersey to record.

What makes Grizzly great is also what makes it not so great. “Grizzly is very comfortable,” says Jon Fee, bass player for the Rum Diary, who have recorded an EP and two albums there since 1999. “Which is wonderful, but it can also become a band’s worst enemy when it’s time to work.”

Ah, yes. Fun, comfort. Translated into rock-musician terms, that means partying. And party the musicians have. The studio itself looks like it’s seen some rock. “You can’t have on the big, bright lights. You gotta have these,” Tschann says, flipping on a set of red and blue track lights that cast a seedy glow. “You close the door, you don’t know whether it’s day or night outside. You’re in your own world in here.”

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly which world that is–small-time rock stardom? Fledgling greatness? The sordid lair of rock incarnate, going on nonstop right under our community’s nose?

“Having a career like this encourages you to have a certain rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle,” confesses Tschann in his usual dry yet dramatic delivery, at turns self-deprecating and self-glorifying. He has longish, dark, unkempt hair; and has sported variations of a Fu Manchu/goatee arrangement for years. “It’s not the jet-set rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle–people come here and they’re all rock ‘n’ rollers. I’ve curbed my rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle a lot, and you will see that reflected in the organization and tidiness of the place. There used to be a lot more rock ‘n’ roll, let me tell you.”

This coming from a man who uses the tag line “Smells like ass” in his studio’s advertisements. But he’s grown up since then. And he’s put some stuff away, most of it in a narrow storage room full of junk. “I’m kind of a pack rat. I have a hard time throwing things away,” explains Tschann as he pulls out a flat piece of plastic that’s covered in spray paint. “This is one of the stencils they used to make the promo packs for Little Tin Frog’s press kit. We’re talking 1996.”

It’s precisely such junk–plus a library of recordings by hundreds of bands that have come, gone, and come again–that makes Tschann an archivist of North Bay music by default. “Pretty much every band that ever existed in the North Bay,” Tschann says, pointing to a shelf crammed with tapes, “almost any band–they’re up there.”

Scanning their labels, you can receive a crash-course in North Bay music of the past decade or so: SFB, Meriwether, Skitzo, the Tonkas, Shut Up Donny, Cannonball, the Wunder Years, Farewell to Steam.

Those are all older recordings, though. As for the new stuff, it just keeps on coming. “Yesterday,” Tschann says, flipping through a legal pad that makes up his recording schedule, “Go Time was here–California ska, kind of Sublime-ish.” Also recently at Grizzly: Sorry about the Fire, Enslavior, Traction, and some metal band called Crucial Torque.

So that’s ska, emo, and metal. “There’s definitely trends in music, and that’s reflected from people who come in here,” says Tschann. “It affects me, too; I get into whatever everybody else is into. A lot of the bands that come to me are on the heavier side–maybe punk, metal. Most of the time, I record rock groups or live acoustic kind of things. It runs the gamut from bluegrass to bands like Inkwell, heavy pop stuff.”

Grizzly’s bread and butter are local bands, who come to the studio for dependable recording that’s within their budget. “There’s such a need for what he does. There’s a lot of recording studios around the county, but I wouldn’t really want to go to any one of them,” says Gabe Meline, whose band, Santiago, recorded an album at Grizzly this summer. Meline works at the Last Record Store in Santa Rosa and has been in many North Bay bands over the years (including, for a few months, a Bruce Springsteen cover band with Tschann). “It’s incredibly affordable, the sound quality is magnificent. Roger hangs out at shows; you can get drunk at a party with him. He’s a good person.”

“Grizzly is basically the Honda Accord of studios,” says the Rum Diary’s Fee. “It ain’t a BMW and it ain’t a Pinto. What makes it great is the finished recording product will always provide you with an honest description of the band. Roger will never make you sound better than you are, and he’ll never make you sound worse.”

Not everyone would agree, though. Some maintain that crappy bands with crappy equipment can go to Grizzly and come out with a decent-sounding recording, because Tschann will do what he can to make them sound good. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to the listener.

Sometimes bands–particularly bands from farther away–will camp out at Grizzly for the duration of their recording. “It’s kind of fun. I like doing albums that way,” Tschann says. “It’s almost like a vacation for them, and it’s cool because we’ll barbecue and drink beer and hang out and record an album–like going to camp or something.”

Camp Grizzly is typically what spawns the best stories–and the most trash. “If I had the gumption to bring my recycling in, I’d be a wealthy man.” Tschann theorizes. “Every week there’s a trash can full of beer bottles, because every week four or five bands come through.”

A few months ago, Los Dryheavers came up from Watsonville with an entire library of wrestling videos to keep them entertained while recording their new album. That’s the tamer side of Grizzly. There’s a story involving closed-circuit video cameras and the unwitting participants of a sexual encounter who got spied on. There’s a story about a band who smoked crack. Or the band who dressed up like the Village People . . .

And then there’s Casey, who Tschann insists is “the future of rock ‘n’ roll.” Casey (Tschann says he doesn’t remember his last name) was a not-quite-all-there guy with the singing voice of Kermit the Frog, who played guitar and wrote strange little songs prodigiously. He’d hire a session drummer, book studio time at Grizzly, and record an album. Not as crazy as Wesley Willis, Casey was as serious. Sample lyric: “Minerals in my gray teeth / Minerals in my gray teeth . . .” When Casey moved to Portland, Grizzly lost its most unique client.

Tschann grew up in Petaluma, listening to “everything from glam metal to death metal to punk rock to shoegazer stuff.” He used to play guitar in various bands, and when he convinced some friends of his to chip in to buy an ADAT (a recording device about the size of a VCR), the recording bug bit.

Tschann began acquiring equipment and set it all up in his mom’s garage–“a bunch of rinky-dink microphones and stuff,” he says. “Sure enough, it didn’t sound like a record, just some rinky-dink studio. But it didn’t sound that much worse than what all of my friends were getting out of going to more legit studios. And I was doing it super cheap. I got more and more into it, and eventually it became this obsession.”

Figuring he could make a go at doing this for a living, Tschann quit his job at the T-shirt silk-screening place where he worked and put all of the money he made into buying more gear. The first band he recorded was called Lungbutter.

“I’m lucky that my mom let me do it in her garage for a few years. It was cool of her. She’d had just about enough. But I bet she kind of misses it now. Tattooed skinhead kids using the bathroom–‘Hi, Mrs. Tschann.'”

In 1997, Tschann moved from his mom’s garage to the “Ranch,” as it’s called, a house in an unassuming east Petaluma neighborhood. Tschann gutted it and converted it into what advertisements for Grizzly claim, perhaps only half-jokingly, is “quite simply the best recording facility in the whole wide world.”

At the time bassist Josh Staples and his then-girlfriend (and presently wife and bandmate in the New Trust) Sara Sanger rented out the house next door to Grizzly. In the early ’90s they started Flying Harold Records, which eventually put out albums by locals Cropduster, Adam Theis Ensemble, the Conspiracy, and others. Roger had become a partner in the label in 1994 with a release by Eric Lindell and the Reds.

Also launched at the house not long afterwards was Section M, a zine covering underground music in the North Bay with an irreverent but ultimately charming tone. It was a bit of a golden age for music up here. Venues were plentiful; bands like the Conspiracy, Edaline, and Cropduster developed major local followings; and idealism ran high.

Later that same year, Flying Harold, proving to be too time-consuming for its partners to support and stay sane (Roger often spent 60-plus hours working in the studio, Staples’ band was frequently gone on tour, and Sanger was a full-time student with a full-time job), ceased to be. In 2001, the all-ages Inn of the Beginning, which hosted many local and touring bands in a midsized, hospitable venue, closed its doors. Most recently, Section M, in want of manpower and funding it never had in the first place, went on hiatus. These events all went down over an extended period, but they’ve been somewhat indicative of how diffused the music scene has become in the North Bay.

“Santa Rosa’s a provincial town, and people involved in the music scene in Santa Rosa are in love with the idea that none of the really remarkable bands from here are going to go anywhere,” says Meline “And that’s unfortunate. There’s a sort of nihilism that pervades us all, a romanticism of failure, and I think that actually affects the fact that Roger hasn’t had a big hit.”

Tschann himself is in a band. Tschann’s alter ego (“Pedactor”) plays drums in Aphrodisiax, a full-on assault of ’80s metal, sort of on the Guns N’ Roses tip, with songs about evil women and drinking too much. Scott “Scotty Steele” Morris–formerly of the Invalids, currently an engineer at Grizzly–does the vocals. Aphrodisiax don’t play too many shows, but their CD sounds really good. Go figure.

A few years ago, an A&R guy from Virgin called Tschann. He had noticed some very nice-sounding records sent his way, and they were all recorded at a Grizzly Studios. Then someone from Capitol called. The big-time music industry came a-courting. “For a while there, I was talking to people from the L.A. world, and they were all saying that I should move to L.A. I’ve weighed my options, and I’m still thinking about maybe doing that at some point. But I like being up here. I like that I have some history here. Plus, I don’t like L.A. that much. Maybe I would like it if I tried it out for a while, but it doesn’t appeal to me very much right now.”

In any case, Tschann isn’t as content to sit in his pink bathrobe recording bands in a room full of empty beer cans as he used to be. Grizzly studios is growing up, sort of. “Back in the day, I’d sit there and hold the bands’ hands through the whole process a lot more than I do now.” he says. “I was often not credited as producing, but I never really cared. I just wanted to make some cool records. But to get on that industry track–it’s a lot more of a different style of operating. I know I need to make some sort of next step, because I’ve been cruising along like this for a while. And maybe,” he trails off, “the next step is moving to L.A. . . .”

And it’s true. You get older, restless, ponderous about what else in the world there is for you to do and where you could be doing it. But Grizzly Studios is here now, and as long as it is, both the 16-year-old next door who just learned to play bass last year and the slightly balding mandolin virtuoso know where they can leave a record of their art for all posterity. And for hella cheap, too.

“Roger once told me his studio was the cheapest whore in town,” says Fee. “I wouldn’t know where to start with naming every single band or artist that has recorded at his Grizzly–he’s pretty much nailed us all! And to think he’s supposed to be the whore in this equation? Go figure.”

“I just like music,” Tschann says. “Music’s cool. Almost everyone listens to music, and I think it helps to shape people’s identity. It certainly has shaped my identity. If I wasn’t doing this, I don’t know what kind of stupid person I’d be. I like thinking of myself as some sort of maverick studio dude.”

A Grizzly Sampler

Over the past seven years, some of the best and brightest recordings of the North Bay (and beyond) have come from Grizzly Studios. Here’s a crib sheet.

Cropduster, ‘A Strange Sort of Prayer,’ 1998
The swan song of Flying Harold Records. Nearly every person spoken to for this story cites Cropduster’s heartbreaking alt-country masterpiece as their favorite record to come out of Grizzly. Says Gabe Meline: “That record is as if the heavens opened up and the descending angel of all that is good landed in Grizzly Studios.”

Cannonball, ‘Hiphopulation,’ 2001
Trombonist extraordinaire and Sonoma County native Adam Theis plays ringleader to Cannonball’s funky circus of creative rapping and be-bop jazz.

The Pattern, ‘Immediately,’ 2001
Well, that whole ‘garage band revival’ thing didn’t last too long, did it? Perhaps Oakland’s Pattern, who dropped a string of singles and just one album in three short years before disbanding last month, sensed this. But they were a blast of a band, and on Immediately they distilled all of the energy from their terse, loud, and raunchy live sets into a six-song EP with hooks, sneers, and leers aplenty.

Sin in Space, ‘Asteroid Band,’ 2001
Santa Cruz’s Sin in Space have sadly imploded (too much rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle), but they leave behind Asteroid Band, whose crystalline simplicity and upbeat aggressiveness call to mind Trompe le Monde-era Pixies in all of the best ways. The recording is clear as a bell. No tuneless emo-esque singing or messy fusion of 50 underground music styles here, and thank God. You play this CD and you know what you get.

Skitzo, ‘Got Sick?’ 2000
Decades will pass and civilizations will fall, but Sonoma County will always have Skitzo. This album’s cover features a photo of lead puker Lance Ozanix’s face imposed upon a woman’s genitalia, so it looks like her–well, her you know–is puking. Metal, metal, metal, sick and addictive.

From the November 13-19, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Rock Solid: Y&T are now sticking to what they do best: live shows.

In Rock They Trust

Y&T beats the odds, reunites for three-night stand

By Greg Cahill

I love this job,” says Y&T guitarist Dave Meniketti, “the live performance, the interaction with the fans, this feeling that is unexplainable to someone in any other job. When you stand up in front of an audience of a couple of thousand people, or even a couple of hundred, and feel the emotion that they’re giving back to you from what they’re getting from you–well, there is no other feeling quite like that.”

It’s been 30 years since Meniketti, bassist Phil Kennemore, and drummer Leonard Haze– Oakland residents at the time, one and all–formed the core of a band inspired by the melodic hard rock of Deep Purple and named after the Beatles Yesterday and Today album (the band shortened its name to Y&T in 1978).

Y&T’s first two albums–1976’s eponymous debut and 1978’s Struck Down, both released on the London label–won kudos for their melodic rock, swaggering confidence, and biting guitar riffs. Sales were slow at first, but on nearly a dozen major label albums released throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, Y&T unapologetically flew in the face of the punk, new wave, and grunge onslaughts to build a rock-solid blue-collar following. Some critics derided Y&T as defiantly unhip–the All Music Guide decried the band as “little more than a blot on the American hard rock canvas.”

But don’t assign Y&T to the heavy metal scrap yard just yet.

After a four-year respite and playing with its original lineup for the first time in 15 years, Y&T is set to perform an unprecedented three-night stand next week at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. Even rhythm guitarist Joey Alves, who gave up playing professionally in the late ’80s, will join the band for a couple of songs.

The band’s return is a milestone for a group often portrayed as the Bad News Bears of hard rock. The rap on these big-hair, power-ballad-toting rockers is that Y&T had one of the best live performances around but suffered from bad luck, missed opportunities, and an inability to convey on record the sheer energy of their concerts.

“I’ve heard that assessment for most of my career,” Meniketti says with a laugh, “so it’s not something new to me. And I understand some of that–actually I understand the whole thing, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. When you’re in the studio, there is a whole different energy than when you’re onstage, and it is difficult to capture that on tape. So there is some validity to that criticism.

“And there are breaks and there are breaks. Sometimes there are mistakes made by management or the record label or the band members themselves. And in collaboration with all that happening, you never know how the dice are gonna roll.”

A promoter coaxed Y&T back onstage last November to join Joe Satriani, Journey, and several other ’80s acts at the Chronicle Pavilion. “We were just sort of testing the waters,” says Meniketti, 50, who also fronts his own band, “and when people found out about it things just sort of went crazy. We started getting offers for festivals in Europe and all sorts of gigs. We sat down and evaluated it and said, ‘Yeah, this is fun–let’s keep playing.'”

Earlier this summer, Y&T played the huge Monsters of Rock tour in England, along with former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore and White Snake. “It was great,” says Meniketti. “It’s always good to play, and it was a real exciting thing for fans to see the band after almost 20 years. And it was equally exciting for us because we knew that fans were anticipating seeing the band again. It made for great performances for us.”

The success of the U.K. tour has ignited interest stateside. “It looks like this could end up being a banner year,” he adds.

Unfettered by the pressure of a recording contract, Y&T now can focus on what they do best–live shows. “It’s funny because we studied that recently,” Meniketti says when asked what distinguishes Y&T in concert. “We realize that we really put a lot of energy into our shows and a lot of passion into our playing. It’s not like nobody else does that but there just seems to be this amazing amount of energy inside of us that’s never left through the years. The intensity has never changed and we really enjoy what we’re doing up there. Lots of bands have that–we just have it in spades.

“I mean, the whole thing about enjoying music is to get out there and play in front of people and get the reaction of the fans. That’s the most exciting part for me, and I sorely missed doing it in a big way like we did in the ’80s. So this past year has been great.

“It feels like we never stopped, really.”

Y&T perform Nov. 14-16 (9pm on Friday and Saturday; 8:30pm on Sunday), at the Mystic Theatre, 21 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Tickets are $30. AC/Dshe open the first two nights. 707.765.2121.

From the November 6-12, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

There Goes the Sun: Bright colors belie the mood conveyed by Timonium’s new release, ‘Until He Finds Us.’

This Is Slowcore?

Gear up for moody fall days with Timonium’s stunning release

By Sara Bir

The term slowcore is another one of those handy but ultimately annoying devices that music fans and critics use as shorthand. And just as with the genre handles of emo, punk, and shoegaze, slowcore is not exactly the most alluring of names. Apparently, slowcore’s tempo is–well, slow–and the range of dynamics it employs lists noticeably to the quiet side.

The L.A.-based band Timonium does require a bit of patience to appreciate, but labeling their output–especially their latest, Until He Finds Us–as slowcore, as a few music critics have done, is unwieldy and inaccurate. Though their music takes place in a world where edges are blurred and volume is subjective, Timonium’s inversion of the pop music equation eventually leads to a liberating musical catharsis unexpected enough to stop time for just a glorious split second.

Timonium was formed in 1994 by guitarist and vocalist Adam Hervey, drummer Adam Garcia, and bassist and vocalist Tracy Uba, who all met in high school. When Hervey departed L.A. to attend Sonoma State University in the mid-’90s, the band turned into a long-distance relationship.

While at SSU, Hervey took money he had made from acting in a Pizza Hut commercial and started a small record label, Pehr (first based in Petaluma, now located in L.A.), which has subsequently released all of Timonium’s recordings. Nearly all of Pehr’s bands (many of which are European or South American) fall into a very specific musical niche, offering minimal to no percussion and dissonant tones galore. That’s right: slowcore. But the main thread is that it’s all very pretty music, the kind of stuff indie filmmakers use to score movies about interpersonal relationships.

Timonium has always been the most accessible of Pehr bands, and Until He Finds Us sees the quartet at a peak (guitarist James Rawson has departed since the album’s recording, and Timonium is once again a trio). Until He Finds Us was recorded at Prairie Sun studios in Cotati last summer, with engineer Gene Cornelius (who has worked with And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, as well as Tom Waits) at the helm.

Toms roll like a distant, muted thunderstorm in the opening measures of “Populations,” the first track, echoing the ominous rumblings in the sky that break in the middle of cloudy afternoons, muzzled and moody.

Timonium is not a sunny-day band. Their previous album Resist Education and the EP Suspende Animation were both studies in subtleties that unwound delicately, weaving drawn-out chords with the hushed vocal trade-offs between Hervey and Uba. On Until He Finds Us, the vocals function more as a centerpiece rather than additional layers of sound, as they did on previous recordings. Uba, who before was primarily on backing vocal duty, sings a lovely, understated lead on the album’s most moving tracks, such as “Across the Footlights.”

One of Timonium’s greatest gifts is their ability to make a profound impact by doing very little. With such sparse pacing and slow-motion guitar chords, when Timonium builds up to a richly colored sonic backdrop in their peak moments, it’s a thrilling revelation, as if it were the first time you’ve heard anything get loud, giving you virgin ears all over again.

By saying that Until He Finds Us is more of a rock record isn’t saying that it rocks, because it does not–and God forbid if it did, anyway. It would be missing all of its ethereal dismalness. But the songs are shorter, more compact, more concrete than previous Timonium efforts.

Until He Finds Us is the perfect rainy-day album, sharing a broken worldview that’s uplifting in its fragility, akin in tone to Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s I See a Darkness, and Sir’s The Night I Met My Second Wife. Indeed, I think these are all breakup albums–or at the very least albums about the human condition’s innate helplessness. Timonium’s whole album wrangles with this, in fact, on both a grand and an intimate level; there has to be some breaking up going on behind all of this.

Even so, Until He Finds Us isn’t just another depressing album; it’s a gorgeous depressing album, beautiful enough to make depression exquisite.

From the October 30-November 5, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.