Berkeley. November 4, 2008

I had my recorder rolling at a few different points on Tuesday night when Obama won the election. The six clips with this entry are chronological starting at around 9:30pm.

Ramona and I were driving toward the Starry Plough for the open mic victory party. We came on a mob of people dancing in the street outside Guerrilla Cafe and parked the car to get in on the celebration. People had spilled off the sidewalk and blocked one of the two lanes on Shattuck, others were standing on the grassy median dancing and shouting. Cars were able to pass through slowly, blowing their horns.

Listen to the crowd

We got back in the car and drove a half a mile an hour through the crowd. I was leaning out the window slapping hands with the folks on the median, caught up in the shouting and laughter.

Listen to it here

When we got to the Starry Plough it was Girl George's turn to perform. I took my recorder on stage when I went to sing backup for her. We were three backup singers, three conga players (including Tony Mayfield who George gloats is Curtis Mayfield’s son, and Jack who used to be a bartender at the Plough), and Guy Michelle on guitar. Girl George’s act is unrehearsed, abrasive and poignant. She’s a sixty four year old punk rock radical with a million stories that she’ll tell you without you asking.

Listen to Girl George celebrate

Next up was Tony Mayfield. He spoke a few words about the momentous occasion of Obama's election and shared some of his memories as a long time Berkeley resident. In the clip I posted below he introduces a song that he and D'Wayne Wiggins recently released called Be Thankful for What You Got. I cut off the clip before he launches into the song but Tony's warm up is a nice taste of his sound.

Listen to Tony Mayfield on conga

It was my honor to close the show after midnight when hardly anyone was left in the venue except for Guy Michelle talking about the bass player in his band and a handful of other stragglers. I played a song I'd started writing earlier that day when it looked like Obama was going to win and Prop 8 was going to pass. Highs and lows. Girl George held my lyric sheet for me and Tony played the congas. The recorder was on Guy's table.

Listen to my song, partly written partly improvised

When they finally locked the front door at the Plough I was walking to my car when this fellow named Victor walked up and started talking to me about the open mic. He told me that he was living in his truck and had just moved to Berkeley from Delaware. I asked him if he'd play a song right there on the street. He started spouting some good old radical left wing politics soon as I got the recorder rolling, criticizing Joe Biden for the credit card industry in Delaware in a monologue about corporate America. Then he sang a song his brother wrote. It was the right amount of far left skepticism to end a night of liberal euphoria.

Listen to Victor

Oh please pass the cheese

This recording is from the same night as the one in my last post. It's Aaron Garber-Maikovska singing whatever comes to his mind and me playing the guitar part of one of my new songs. Greg Peters plays the surprise solo part way through.

My favorite line is when Aaron says:

"If we move fast enough
He won't know we're there
like the devil may care
with the Doc Marten's on
and my punk rock stare.
Look at the dogs, look at the geese
look at the apples and the cheese"

Aaron is a multi-media artist living in LA, raised in Berkeley and Petaluma. Music is featured in a lot of his work, check out the Youtube link below for a wild performance art piece filmed in a gallery. Whenever we hang out there are usually more harmonicas than inhibitions and the hours pass hysterically.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO AARON IN THE WEE HOURS

Aaron's piece on Youtube

Bio and info on gallery's website

more info

My Baby Don't Wear the Gas Mask

This is the kind of ridiculous freestyle session that can only happen around four in the morning when you're chilling with friends you haven't seen in a few months. After our good friend Greg Mullan's wedding on Saturday a group of us ended up back in Petaluma with a couple guitars, some cold cuts and no intention of going to sleep.

Gabe Griffith kicks off the session spraying his metaphorical mace, Greg Peters and I pick up on the guitars and drop the backup vocals on the first chorus. The second MC is Aaron Garber who always brings a killer stream of consciousness. You don't hear Greg Peters sing very often but he lays into a funky falsetto in third verse and almost hits most of the notes.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FREESTYLE SESSION

Surf and Saddle

The first leg of our California tour brought me down to San Diego where I holed up with Greg Peters for two weeks. The day after I arrived we threw a party in Peters' backyard where four bands played from sunset until around midnight. Peters is the head brewer at the Solana Beach Port Brewing Company so we had the tastiest beers this side of the Rockies on tap that night. Plenty of people came out to the party. We like to think it was because of the music but the reality is that there are a lot of tasty beers this side of the Rockies and when the best among them are on tap for no charge people are bound to show up.

We spent the next week rehearsing in a garage in Carlsbad, getting ready for our Thursday night show at the Surf and Saddle, a sweet dive bar in Solana Beach. For John, Greg and Kyle (three of the four members of the band Guns of Avalon) the rehearsals were double since all three were playing in my band as well. The bill at the Surf and Saddle had The Minor Keys kicking off the show (a group of youngsters from Ocean Beach who wore neck ties and colorful rimmed sunglasses) followed by the Guns of Avalon with my band, the Doghouse Brewer, finishing out the night.

By the time the Guns of Avalon took the stage the room was packed. Our good friend Gabe took the mic to introduce the band and they eased into their rocking opening number, Quite One Universe. Peters laid into the introductory riff and John built it up with heavy distortion on his Epiphone. It was a dramatic and haunting opener to a killer set. Listen to the song below.

The next day Peters and I drove up to Hollywood to play a set at Room 5, a slick little club with a great sound system and some of the best Italian food I've had in a while.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE GUNS OF AVALON PLAYING "QUITE ONE UNIVERSE"

KOA

It was the last stop before driving back up to Berkeley and we hadn't had any coffee yet. Ramona, my brother Marshall, his girlfriend Janie, Greg Peters and I were in two cars: one filled with guitars, amps, tents and backpacks, the other with mountain bikes. We pulled up in front of Zachary's restaurant in Santa Cruz where a few of us had eaten in the past, hopped out of the cars and stretched our legs before going inside.

While we were loitering out front a man walked by carrying a guitar in his left hand and a milk crate in his right. It was nine o'clock on Sunday morning, not a time you would expect to find a busker playing for change on the street. But this guy had the look and equipment of a seasoned busker. I called out to him as he walked determinedly past the restaurant, asked him if he was going to play. He said he would if there was a dollar in it. I got a dollar for you, I told him, but he kept walking and disappeared around the corner.

We'd been camping at a KOA (Kampground of America) for two nights near La Selva Beach between Santa Cruz and Monterey. It was the tail end of our tour, me and the Doghouse Brewer, and the KOA had left us under-rested and wondering what the hell "kamping" was. The experience staying there was such a far cry from any camping any of us had done that I imagine they had legal problems calling their grounds "camps" and had to exchange the "c" for a "k" so as not to fool people into thinking they were actually camping. They jam as many people as they can into as small a space as possible. Driving through the place it looks like dirt stalls packed with humans and their oversized cars; tenements for people who are mildly interested in being outdoors. Babies crying all night, grumpy neighbors and horrible music piped through the speakers in the bathrooms.

Kamping aside, the trip down the coast was the perfect end to our first California tour. This was the northern stretch of shows: first at the Starry Plough in my hometown Berkeley, then down to the Firefly in Santa Cruz and finally the East Village Lounge in Monterey. We spent our days doing a live studio performance at KUSP in Santa Cruz, napping on the beach and busking on the wharf. The shows got better and better as we traveled down the coast.

The climax was in Monterey at the East Village Lounge where we played a tight set in their intimate backroom and then got asked to stick around and play another set at the after party of a fundraiser benefiting the town of Big Sur. The town had recently fallen victim to the terrible fires that burned much of the central region of the state and many of the area's most well-endowed patrons had come out to support the firefighters and victims. I was told they raised $250,000 that night. The wine they served was phenomenal and the folks that came to the after party were ready to get down with me and the Doghouse Brewer.

We didn't get back to kamp until around three in the morning. Ramona, Marshall and Janie were already asleep when Peters and I rolled up to our stall so we tiptoed as quietly as we could to bed. Me to the my tent and Peters to his bag in the fog.

The next morning, Sunday, we woke up to huge drops of condensed fog falling on our tent shell. Next thing we knew Peters was banging on the tent soaking wet and insisting that we strike kamp. Any hope we had of sleeping in was shattered by Peters' exposure to the elements. So we set our sights on Zachary's and drove the half hour up to Santa Cruz where we could finally have a cup of coffee and a few pancakes.

I ordered the pancake breakfast with chicken apple sausage then went outside of the restaurant with Peters to get something from the car. There, sitting on his milk crate, was the man I'd seen walking past with his guitar. He was playing slide guitar with an actual sanded down bottle neck on his ring finger. We dropped three bills in his guitar case and hit record on my ipod microphone...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SATCHEL PLAYING SLIDE ON HIS MILK CRATE OUTSIDE ZACHARY'S IN SANTA CRUZ

funding the tour

I've put together a short coastal tour for the next three weeks. Shows with Greg Peters and our band, the Dog House Brewer, in San Diego, LA, Monterey, Santa Cruz and Berkeley. It's not cheap, all this traveling, especially when riding a bike from town to town won't get us in time to where we need to be.

Like my brothers and I have done many summers when it's time to earn some cash, I picked up a hammer as soon as I got back to Berkeley and went to work with my dad. He's a contractor who does mostly private residential work, though a while back we did some projects in the Co-Op dormitories at UC Berkeley and at my old elementary school in Oakland.

We've been building a deck for a family in Orinda, just the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel where the marine layer fog doesn't reach. The temperature has been up in the hundreds out there while it's cool and foggy two miles away on the Berkeley/Oakland side of the hill. The swimming pool on the property is tempting but we're far too dirty to jump in at the end of the day.

No song attached to this entry, just this picture of my dad and me building this deck. Him with his mullet hat and me grunting to fund this tour.

Back By the Bay

Six days after pulling out of Brooklyn we're back in Berkeley. Day two on the road I decided to challenge myself to drive the entire length of I-80 though Ramona was more than happy to spend some hours behind the wheel. 2,901 miles later we made a victory lap around the Bay: through Berkeley and Oakland, down to Palo Alto to see some friends, up to San Francisco for dinner with my grandma then on to San Anselmo for a barbecue.

The show at Matchless on June 12 was the best way I've ever left town. The Elephant Army played a hell of a set to open the night then Philipp, Elijah, Bill, Drew and I closed it out with a cover of Woody Guthrie/Jeff Tweedy's California Stars off the Mermaid Avenue record. Drew and I sang it as a duet, he was on keys, Bill on mandolin and, of course, Philipp on drums with Elijah on bass. The recording is linked below.

It was an emotional night, but instead of feeling like the end of an era I had the strong feeling that it was a new beginning. I'll be back in New York at least a few times a year and now my friends back there have a reason to come out to the west coast.

First thing I did when we crossed the state line near Truckee, CA was text Drew that I was resting my weary bones underneath California Stars that night.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR VERSION OF CALIFORNIA STARS

digging back

We spent the day outside on Greenpoint Avenue in the ninety five degree humidity with a few friends helping us sell our stuff. Inside boxes have piled above our heads and the shower has no hot water. I'd be all right if I chose to take a cold shower and could control how cold it got, but the water was the kind of cold that burns the back of your head and makes you breathe in sobs.

Tonight I'm listening back over recordings I've made in the last five years since moving out to New York. I wrote the instrumental posted here two years ago when I was living in Tivoli with my friends Michael, Melissa and Giovanni on Route 9G. One night I wasn't sleeping so I loaded Garageband and let her rip. I named the song daddad oped because the guitar was tuned to d-a-d-d-a-d, an open d tuning.

It's not a sound I've messed with too much. I was listening to a lot of Bad Religion and Rage at the time and Michael had played in a bunch of rock bands. I played daddad oped on my Larrivee acoustic guitar so as not to wake up Giovanni, though the sound I heard in the headphones as I played was the distorted metal sound you hear in the recording.

LISTEN TO DADDAD OPED

catch you soon, dog

Ramona and I are gearing up to drive across the country in a week and a half. Reality's beginning to set in as more and more boxes pile up in the apartment and we slowly say goodbye to friends we won't see between now and June 15. Leaving is one of the hardest things we've ever done, though we'll be back about a half a dozen times a year. Picking up and putting distance between ourselves and a life we've grown to love is just as hard this time around as it was when we left the Bay five years ago.

On Thursday, June 12 we're throwing a party called Catch You Soon, Dog at Matchless in Brooklyn. It was at Matchless a year ago where I played my first Brooklyn show with Elijah (on drums) and Yair (on bass). Two Matchless shows to bookend this year in Brooklyn. This time around Philipp Gutbrod will be on the drums, Elijah on bass, Bill Bell on keys and mandolin, and Daniel Bieber sitting in on cello.

The Elephant Army is joining me on the bill on Thursday, a great band whose members I have featured a time or two before on this blog. Drew Nix sings, writes and plays acoustic guitar; Elijah Tucker plays mandolin and drums and writes; and Olentangy John normally plays banjo and writes songs but he won't be there for the Matchless show. Mark Wixom will be on the upright bass.

We played a gig all together this past Monday at Rockwood Music Hall to warm up for the show next week. Our sets were at 11 and midnight so we felt free to let loose and try some new ideas. For Drew and Elijah letting loose meant shots of whiskey and renaming the band Cannibal Apocalypse for one night only.

As a preview of our show at Matchless, below are two recordings from our Rockwood show. The first track is one of my new songs, for new we'll call it "Too Long to Remember." Elijah's on drums, Bill's at the piano and Yair's playing cello. Roberto Fuentes is playing the quatro, a Venezuelan instrument that's easy to confuse with a ukulele. I met Roberto up in Tivoli a few years back when he was acting in a film I was helping some friends produce. He's a phenomenal voice teacher and collaborator with a life that brought him stardom in Venezuela and a contagiously whimsical passion for performing.

The second track is Drew, Elijah, Mark and Bill (Cannibal Apocolypse) rocking Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right Mama," better known as Elvis' first hit single. At first it looked like Elijah was going to play the mandolin, but with some convincing from his bandmates on stage and Yair in the audience he grabbed his sticks and jumped behind the drums.

You can also check out a short clip of our performance of New Paltz Waltz, shot by my old friend, Rebecca Letz, on her cell phone.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MY NEW SONG, TOO LONG TO REMEMBER

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO CANNIBAL APOCOLYPSE ROCKING ARTHUR CRUDUP'S CLASSIC

Indy, Indie

My good friend Elijah spent last summer in Northern California trying to dig up whatever work he could find. Craigslist is a good place to start when you're a damn good drummer, guitarist, bassist (in my band), mandolin player and songwriter, so he spent his first weeks checking posts on a daily basis.

One day he came across a post by a man named Bret looking for someone to help arrange and record a song he'd been working on. Bret was not a musician and had never written a song in his life, but with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull coming out he'd been touched by the muse. An Indiana Jones die hard, Bret had memorized all the lines from the first three films and counted himself among the members of a variety of Indie fan groups.

He had the song all worked out in his head. Every harmony, background vocal, lyric, and rhythm change was clear in his mind, he just didn't know how to put it all together.

In stepped Elijah. Unaware of how absorbed he would become in this project Elijah agreed to arrange and record the song for a small fee. They decided that the best approach was to have Bret call on the phone and leave a message on Elijah's answering machine in which he sang his musical ideas for the song. After being cut off by the machine six or seven times because of the length of his messages Bret had finally communicated to Elijah every detail of the song.

Elijah set to work and spent all waking hours for three weeks working on the tune. He recorded all the vocal parts, the bass lines, percussion and guitar solo one track at a time on Protools through an Mbox. Bret was thrilled with the result and doubled his payment to Elijah in appreciation of his work.

Those one hundred dollars were the only income Elijah earned that month. He's still never met Bret in person.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO "OH INDIANA JONES" BY BRET MOSELY AND ELIJAH TUCKER

Bret made a video once the song was done. Here it is on Youtube. Some of the comments by Youtube users about the video are unappreciative at best. As for me...looks like a nice bike ride.

(I posted the mp3 version of the song separate from the video because the sound quality in the video is low. I think the cameraperson had positioned a stereo playing the song near the camera while they were filming to capture the audio.)