The fifth annual Davis Music Festival is back for three full days of amazing live music from June 19 to 21, 2015. This SXSW-esque event has been gaining steam every year and sees many diverse bands playing a number of venues around the Davis area throughout the three days. More than 60 total acts will perform at 12 different venues! Highlights include a 10-year anniversary celebration of Davis-based Crossbill Records featuring bands from their roster like Two Sheds, Tom Brosseau, Appetite, Sunmonks, Be Calm Honcho and West Nile Ramblers. Also new for this year, DMF has added an all-ages DJ/EDM stage at Third Space for those looking to get turnt, as the kids say nowadays. Advance tickets are a straight-up steal at just $25 for a general admission wristband that grants you access to any venue over the three days. For a full run-down of performing artists and participating venues, and to snag your tickets, visit Davismusicfest.com. You can also hit up Armadillo Music at 207 F Street in Davis to get tickets in person.

-J. Carabba

From 2006 to 2010, the regional folk/Americana band Silver Darling enchanted fans locally as well as up and down the West Coast via extensive touring, sharing the stage with such greats as Jason Isbell, Damien Jurado, The Cave Singers and others. Silver Darling released one full-length album (Your Ghost Fits My Skin) and an EP (Wrap Around My Heart) via Davis-based indie label Crossbill Records, and they even landed on one of the covers of issue No. 16 of Submerge! When the group ultimately disbanded, frontman Kevin Lee Florence, who now lives in Portland, Oregon, began focusing on his solo career. He has now released his first solo album Given on Fluff and Gravy Records and is preparing for his long-awaited return to Sacramento for an all-ages gig at Insight Coffee Roasters (1901 8th Street, Sacramento) with local guitarist Ross Hammond on Saturday, March 21, 2015. “Flecked with folk influences, finger-picked guitar lines and distinctive harmonies provided by his sister Kelly Florence, Given falls somewhere between Sam Beam’s hushed, vivid folk and [Paul] Simon’s own conversational, quirky lyrical genius,” his bio reads on Kevinleeflorence.com. The album was recorded almost entirely live in the hip and artistic Echo Park area of Los Angeles at Fivestar Studios, where artists like Father John Misty, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and the band Dawes and have also worked. Given features a slew of world-class musicians, including Florence’s personal hero, Garth Hudson of the legendary Canadian-American roots rock group The Band, as well as bassist Jon Button (Sheryl Crow, Robben Ford), drummer James McAlister (Sufjan Stevens, Bill Frisell), and guitarist Danny Donnelly. Hit up Spotify or Florence’s website to hear a stream of Given. We highly suggest taking in the whole thing; but if you’re in a hurry, make sure to at least check out the album’s ethereal opener, “Alone and Everything,” and the single (track 3 on the album) “Peace Like a River,” which has a really cool psychedelic Beatles-esque stomp to it. The March 21 show at Insight kicks off at 7 p.m. and is just $5 at the door.

Sunmonks and the Organic Evolution of Sound

The day after Halloween carries with it the reputation for temple-crushing recollections of a costumed evening prior spent howling at the moon. Burning the midnight oil. Chasing the dragon. Whatever your bag may be. When I catch up with Sacramento’s Sunmonks, it’s as if this were some distant reality unlikely to affect them, rather than the possibly rough-hewn phoner I’d partway anticipated. After all, we’re talking about a band here. It’s not as if musicians don’t hold their own reputations for debauchery even without the benefit of an annual excuse.

The fact that Geoffrey CK (vocalist, guitarist) and Alexandra Steele (vocals) were unaffected, uninvolved and ostensibly clear-eyed as we spoke Nov. 1, 2014, over what may have been a PA system/speakerphone hybrid at an unidentified house speaks more astutely to the nature of their music than you might think. Centered as they are around mitigating the dependencies of contemporary approaches of songwriting, Sunmonks’ tendency to side-step the familiar has become a strong-rooted foundation on the relatively new group.

“We’ve written a lot of songs that we haven’t recorded and that will never be recorded and that we wouldn’t be able to remember,” explains CK. “We’ve written a lot of songs we won’t perform, that are kind of dead. So in one sense, we’ve been a band for a long time, or at least a duo for a long time. But we just did it because it was part of life. Now we’re making our whole life music instead of having music be part of life.”

CK and Steele met in 2005, as they report, both immersed in a tight musical community in and around bucolic Auburn, California.

“We didn’t really care that the other of us played music,” says CK. “We just became friends and hung out a lot. I would write songs and play in bands and she would be around. Sometimes a band I would be in session with or playing live with would have a part they’d want sung and because she was there she would sing it. People liked it, so we started to play together.”

It wasn’t until around 2012 that CK and Steele settled on the direction they wanted to move toward as a musical entity, together. Prior to that, the duo wrote songs and sang together without any intentional path. Utilizing the admittedly modern benefits and staggered, textural whimsy of a loop station, CK began crafting songs like building blocks, creating demos by stacking parts over acoustic guitar and adventurous melodies and harmonies between himself and Steele. The formative wellspring of what would become the Sunmonks sound and ethos—so innately anti-modern—was stemmed from incorporating very modern technology.

This fact is important to the story of Sunmonks. Their debut EP In a Desert of Plenty—released Oct. 28, 2014, via Crossbill Records—explores themes, rhythms and melodies culled from myriad primal influences. Eschewing the parameters of what CK describes as a “paint-by-numbers” approach to songwriting, Sunmonks’ compositions are put through rigorous litmus tests by the band—now also including Julian Loy and Dave Middleton on drums and bass, respectively—unspoken though they may be.

“There’s no wrong way to make music,” begins CK. “But in terms of how much fun you’re having or how much you want to surprise yourself, I think it’s a lot more fun for us to play with people and even to start writing with people than recording yourself as a person on a computer.”

“Geoff still makes demos [with a loop station],” clarifies Middleton, “but he’s a great writer and arranger, so they come fully formed. A lot of music is written with loops in modern times, but one of the unique advantages from taking a looped composition and laying it out organically is you get these unique moments of chaos or these little human things that wouldn’t otherwise happen. I feel like that’s where we’re at now.”

For CK, citing inspirations like David Byrne and Fela Kuti (some symbiosis of the two may approximate the percussive-heavy, tribal pop R&B mish-mash of Sunmonks’ oeuvre) instigates the internal conversation he has regarding what the purpose or relevancy or resonance a particular song might have prior to even being shared with anyone else.

“It’s a more religious experience instead of a more scientific experience,” says CK. “That’s something that really excites me about music in general: some deeply profound or magical, primitive thing.

“People who write using plug-ins or gridded beats or things like that, I don’t know that they necessarily intend on having a religious experience while they write. Oftentimes it’s sort of feeling their way through it. It’s like, ‘this is super dark, so I like it,’ or ‘this is intense, so I like it.’ Then a listener hears that and they have a religious experience. Which I guess is the point anyway. But with me it has to start that way or else the song doesn’t survive the point where I can even show it to anybody else.”

On Desert of Plenty, the EP’s four songs play from most recent song written, to oldest song written, alluding to the recording’s nomadic snapshots, as this collection of songs was written and recorded over long periods of time and in mostly different locations. In an attempt to include some sonic congruency, the four songs were mixed together at Panoramic House studios in Stinson Beach by the band’s producer—and Tape Op publisher—John Baccigaluppi.

Special attention was given to eliminating the use of cymbals, as Afro-beat progressions bubble and bloom throughout the title track. Elsewhere, on the outstanding tune “The Deaf,” Sunmonks’ affinity for superb horn arrangements, densely layered textures and feel-good romps ripe for dance-alongs is made plain. Geoffrey and Alexandra’s voices weave together in primeval harmonies, expounding ancient melodies that create bridges between the organic inspirations they covet and the contemporary crutches they’re all but beholden to. To wit, the band says Desert of Plenty is a record of where they’ve been, with their upcoming 2015 LP aiming at where they are now.

The fantastic “Golden Words” ushers in yet another dynamic for Geoffrey and Alexandra’s quiver of songcraft, with fissures of funk cascading over sultry R&B melodies. Still, overused genre classifications do little to discern the lively vibe of Sunmonks’ sound. Those aural observations, as we’ve learned, are triggered by the energies dispersed during the composing of the songs.

“The Sunmonks stuff has to be instantly recognizable as Sunmonks stuff,” explains CK. “It just is Sunmonks stuff or it isn’t Sunmonks stuff. We tend to know that from the beginning of the song, when it starts to appear. When we get to the barking stages, and we’re barking at each other.

“Something stuck with me a while ago where someone was talking about arranging, and they were talking about there being certain rules for using brass, or certain rules for using guitar and a rule for Sunmonks is using [the instrument] not how it’s supposed to be used. Or at least trying to. The anecdote was described as everything being a drum. To not necessarily treat a guitar as Jimi Hendrix would have treated it or as Django Reinhardt would have treated it, but to treat it like Ginger Baker maybe would have treated it.”

Sunmonks vinyl release show for their debut EP, In a Desert of Plenty, is on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2014, at LowBrau (1050 20th Street). They will also perform at Old Ironsides (1901 10th Street) as part of Lipstick’s annual New Years Eve party on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2014. For more info, visit Sunmonks.com

In 140 characters or less…

It’s probably trite by now to remind you that fans just don’t consume music the way they used to. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. We still enjoy putting on an album and ingesting it en masse, but it’s also fun to put the iTunes on shuffle and let fate decide, troll YouTube for new music videos or share play lists via Spotify. So for this year’s Top 20, we decided to mix things up a bit. Instead of just albums, we included a music video, EPs, live shows (even a comedy album snuck in there). Here’s our favorite music moments of this past year, in tweet-friendly format.

20. Jason Webley (live show)

Beatnik Studios, Sacramento
Oct. 30, 2011
When the man on stage thrusts his torso into a giant red balloon and gets the entire audience drunk enough to link arms and sway, you know it’s a good show.

Each song rocks, and it’s short and catchy enough to listen back to back, and back. They have mastered a sound, exemplified here. Loud fun.

Possibly the local comic’s best work to date, if this album/DVD doesn’t have you rolling on the floor, check your pulse, you might be dead.

Mastodon ditches spacey prog metal for gnarly bruising metal/rock hybrid and makes us wonder why they haven’t tried it sooner.

From dub to dusty breaks Mike earns the name Colossal.

Metal heads dose heavy riffs w/ stoner-core harmonies, crushing drums, subtly brilliant solos & bring serious balls back to rock ‘n’ roll.

The small porch in Davis provided the perfect environment to fall in love with every up-beat strum from The Generationals.

Hacksaw Ben Thuggin. Period. Fik is a rapper for real. From Halloween concepts, to catchy anthems, his words are precise and full of vigor.

Under-appreciated experimental rocker Ann Clark dropped the most schizophrenic, bipolar mélange of musical porridge ever stirred into a commercial triumph.

No one expected Oak Park to birth the ingenious production and vocal aggression of Death Grips. Nor expected it to tear down stages worldwide.

Eight tracks of chiming synths and fragile vox swelling into magical crescendos. Trevor Powers gives a taste of hibernation at its best.

Local country-tinged rockers spin 15 songs and something for every mood. Engaging, memorable songwriting at home in any genre.

Classic Sacto shots in this Faux Real Productions video. Light rail, top level on a parking garage, in front of downtown murals, real nice.

A solo debut that amalgamated the producer’s credentials with midnight recordings of glitch hop in the kitchen.

Appetite’s Teddy Briggs masterfully created this rich, dense album that’s nearly impossible to define. Weird pop-folk that dabbles all over.

Big band indie rock devoid of cloying twee impulses. Sprawling yet hauntingly intimate. A rare EP that doesn’t feel incomplete.

Irresistible neo-retro hip-hop from a fashionable Trinidad-born, Brooklyn-based MC. A “rap” album hipsters and indie-kids can agree on.

Take the gentle vocals of Feist, acoustic guitars, special guest Little Wings, and it might equal the most intimate show of the year.

Sacramento’s psych rockers produce yet another gem, keeping that Beach Boys sound meshed with unexpected twists, ballads and tribal rumbles.

KTP made Harlow’s feel like a house show! “Flight” theme featured hot stewardesses and (drunken) pilot outfits. Plenty of moshing ensued.

Garrett Pierce taps the healing powers of lyrics on his new EP

Envision sitting on a boat along a murky jungle river in a downpour of a storm in Guatemala, watching the river boat captain try to navigate the boat, except for the fact that he is lost.

This wouldn’t seem like a time for laughter.

But for semi-local songwriter Garrett Pierce, the moment could not have been more perfect.

“I just started laughing. It’s one of those epiphany moments where things that were built up from my time in San Francisco were just kind of built up and went down that water,” he remembers.

These are the heavy emotions that often play out in Pierce’s songs.

This October, Pierce is releasing a four-song collection on the EP Everybody Breaks under Narnack Records, which will be followed by his full-length City of Sands, which is set for release in January or February 2012.

Everybody Breaks is both melancholic and uplifting. At times it feels like reading a diary in the gray of winter. “In Silence” is sung over the sound of a warped organ, while “Shape Us Like Waves” is a rich composition in which Pierce sings, “We are people of the coast, so we know that the waves can break if we make it so,” in a dreary ode to the Bay.

What has been a constant is Pierce’s passion for writing. His musical beginnings were fostered in Southern California, starting when his dad bought him his first acoustic guitar around age 12.

“The first thing I did was write, which was very strange. He wanted me to take lessons and learn blues guitar, but I had no interest in shredding, I guess. I just wanted to write,” he said. “It hasn’t really changed since then.”

Growing up in what is considered either the armpit or artistic mecca of California, depending upon your outlook, Pierce has immersed himself into music from a young age.

First he went through a grunge phase that morphed into a hard rock phase by the time he joined a rock band in high school.

Pierce remembers when he first dabbled with writing acoustic-based songs after moving back to Los Angeles.

“Everybody was trying to be Jewel or John Mayer or something on the acoustic guitar, and it was a terrible time for me because I had all these songs. I just didn’t feel like I had an audience yet,” he said.

It was during this time that a friend invited Pierce to move to Davis to start playing music.

He laughed at the question and asked, “Why on Earth would I move from L.A. to Davis?”

As it turned out, he said it ended up being the best move of his life. He established his roots as a songwriter and connected with the likes of Davis experimental indie band Sholi as well as Michael Leahy, a KDVS host and founder of Crossbill Records, which would eventually put out Pierce’s first two albums, Like a Moth and All Masks.

“L.A. was not the place for me, there was just all these people trying to cut you record contracts down there,” he said.

Davis provided something that L.A. didn’t. There was a tight-knit musical community and he could play his songs where people would listen to him as a songwriter. And it was at this time that other lyrically creative, acoustic-based performers like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart began to garner attention in the music world.

“That was just a totally great time to be playing music,” he said.

Nowadays, Pierce finds himself again adjusting to new territory, this time in Sonoma.

When Submerge caught up with Pierce over the phone, he had just gone for a five-mile run through the oaks and pines.

It sounds like you’re an advocate of having strong lyrical content.
Oh yeah, that’s the biggest thing for me. It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to music that doesn’t have lyrics. Thirty Three is one of my favorite bands, and they don’t have a singer. For me, it’s really important that people who are interested in my music think of it first as a lyrically based form, that writers are my biggest influences, taking from people like Steinbeck and Richard Wright, they are my biggest influences… Lyrics are huge, and shaping the right mood of the song around the lyrics is the most important thing.

Everybody Breaks struck a chord with me, both the EP as well as the song. You said some of these songs are older, but I was interested in knowing what you were feeling at the time you wrote “Everybody Breaks.”
That’s a tough one. I was talking to Nathan, our publicist, and just describing the songs to him, and I realized that the EP sounds pretty and it sounds uplifting even at times, but the lyrical content is on the darker side. I was thinking of long-term relationships and thinking about the body breaking down and all these dark feelings started coming together into one mass. I was listening to a lot of John Jacob Niles, an old soul folk singer, and my buddy who is Ellie Fortune, they both have this really nice, rootsy, folk guitar playing style. So I based the vibe of the song around this sparse guitar picking, and then the lyrics were just trying to lift me out of a funk of just thinking about the end of things.

And what about “A Bus in Africa?”
I was listening to NPR, and I heard this horrendous story, about–I think it took place in Uganda, if I’m correct–about this group of people in a bus who got pulled to the side by child soldiers, and pulled out of the bus and taken out at gunpoint, and people were put underneath the bus, and the bus driver was [forced] to get back in and run over the people, over and over. It was the most disturbing thing I had heard all year, and I couldn’t get it out my head, the image was terrifying to me.

For me, it’s harder to talk about those things sometimes. You don’t just want to bring it up in a conversation like that with your friends. So I take myself to a place where I can find out what was really happening in the minds of some of those people on the bus. It’s a first-person account, for some reason it’s the only way I could think to write it, and the chorus, like a lot of my songs, it’s not purely dark. The chorus has this amazing, positive chant, “That’s what love is for.” And it sounds very strange in juxtaposition to the lyrics that talk about these bandits that are killing everybody. But this person [has] this mantra of love for his family and why you need to have love so you don’t turn into these monsters that were taking the lives of people around them.

You were in an experimental noise band, 60 Watt Kid…
[Laughs] You have done some pretty good research. Where did you get that information from?

It’s amazing the things you find online. It looks like you were the drummer, and I listened to it, and I thought, “Man, what prompted this drastic change from you being in an experimental noise band to being a folk singer/songwriter?”
Well, actually those were concurrent. I was still playing plenty of solo stuff, but my whole goal when I moved to San Francisco was to be able to play my own music and kind of make a living from it… I just ran into them randomly at a bar in Oakland, and they said they were looking to hang out with new people and play music. He and this guy Derek had started this band 60 Watt Kid, and I invited them to play a couple shows with me. They were looking for a drummer, and I said, “Hey, I think I know how to play drums. And I’ll play with you guys until you find somebody.” And we just ended up clicking really well. The songs actually started more acoustic-based. We were like a lot of people at the time, we were listening to a lot of Animal Collective and it definitely showed in some of the earlier recordings. And then it just kind of got crazy… We would play characters on stage too, and dress up in sparkly weirdness. And I would kind of go caveman crazy on the drums. I was playing all four toms and a cymbal, and a tambourine around my ankle. It was not very complicated drumming, it was that caveman tribal stuff. It was so good to be physical, and we would break stuff and yell at each other’s faces. It was more Andy Kaufman, honestly. It was wild and it was so much better than standing with an acoustic guitar for me, for a little bit. It was a performance aspect I had missed since I was in rock bands in high school.

Garrett Pierce’s Everybody Breaks is out now on Narnack Records. He’ll celebrate the release in Sacramento on Oct. 21, 2011 at Bows & Arrows. Look for his new full-length album early next year.

Local musician Teddy Briggs (aka Appetite) is teaming up with Davis-based Crossbill Records (home to Sea of Bees, Jake Mann + the Upper Hand and other great artists) to officially release his album Scattered Smothered Covered produced and recorded by Raleigh Moncrief. “It is the official release of the CD-R I passed around last fall,” Briggs said. He pointed out that it’s been re-mixed, though, and that “a few things have been re-recorded or added to previous tracks,” and that “two new tracks will be added to the record.” He mentioned that the track order has also been re-arranged and that a third new song, or “bonus song” as he put it, will be added to the digital release of the album, bringing the track totals to 10 on vinyl and CD, 11 on the download version. Of his relationship with Crossbill owner Michael Leahy, Briggs said, “Michael is a good friend of mine; we go way back, maybe six years. We first met when we were both working at KDVS in Davis as radio DJs. He has been very supportive and encouraging of my music. He really loves music, and he is in it for all the best reasons.” Briggs has assembled a new live band lineup that includes some “familiar Sacto music scene contributors,” including Carson McWhirter (Everybody) and Jesse Phillips (Ellie Fortune) on guitar, Addison Quarles (Chelsea Wolfe) on bass and Sam Coe (Sea of Bees) on drums. Look for a mid-August release of Scattered Smothered Covered and also look for this newly formed lineup to perform around town throughout the summer. Keep an eye out at Crossbillrecords.com and at Appetitemuch.tumblr.com

Sea of Bees is a buzz with debut album

Just as I was getting ready to ring the bell labeled “Tape Op” on the door of Sacramento recording studio The Hangar, I heard a voice down the street call my name. “Adam!” I turned, and up rode Julie Ann Bee on a well-worn brown bicycle. We exchanged salutations and made our way inside the giant warehouse studio that was once a punk venue years ago. Bee treats me like a friend she’s known for years, a facet of her personality that makes her so easy to engage. I’m really excited for our interview.

Inside the engineer room, where Bee recorded and mixed her first EP appropriately titled Bee Eee Pee, a large mixing console and strange audio concoctions surround us as we sit down to begin. She informs me of the soul this particular room has. Besides being the place where her own journey began, this space was where Terra Lopez of Sister Crayon mixed parts of their record, and the bassist for Rilo Kiley, Jonathan Wilson, recorded a few tracks here himself. Bee hums me a line from a Rilo Kiley song titled “Silver Lining.” It’s a treat, and I’m lost in her voice for a second and stumble over my words when she asks me if I’ve heard of them.

Bee is the singer/songwriter of Sea of Bees, and she is a rare talent. Like a ship in a bottle, she has slowly built herself up inside with love and passion for everyone to see and hear. To watch her sing is almost as enjoyable as hearing her, as the harrowing words flutter from her tiny mouth and her hands strike the strings of her acoustic guitar, brown hair falling over her face. YouTube videos show Bee playing songs like “Skinnybones” and “Gnomes” to rooms full of people who stare at her mesmerized as if gazing into a supernova.

It was at age 15 that she first knew that she wanted her own voice, a different voice.

“But I didn’t know how to go about it,” says Bee.

At that time, Bee was in a youth group at her church where a woman she admired was singing and playing guitar. Bee was “in love” with her voice, and like all great artists have done, she emulated the voice she admired most.

“I just blended with her voice and knew how to do it, compressed it and worked on it.”

Eventually she wanted to make this voice her own, and over time she crafted it to sound the way that it does–natural. Not a word feels forced when you hear Bee sing and even when she cranes her neck and reaches for notes, they wail as if being squeezed from the depth of her very being.

It was her voice that, like a siren’s song, lured in the man who would help guide Bee along her blossoming career.

John Baccigaluppi, publisher of Tape Op magazine and owner of The Hangar, was walking down the hallway of his studio one day when he heard Bee’s voice for the first time. Bee was passing the time in one of the rooms while her current band at the time, Find Me Fighting Them, was recording in the studio. She grabbed a guitar and was recording some demos on Garage Band. Baccigaluppi popped his head in after thinking to himself, “whoever is singing has a nice voice.” He gave her his card and when they talked later, it became clear pretty quickly that Bee needed to come into the studio. She had no real demo and Baccigaluppi wanted to help.

“I said come over and we put her in this room and I kind of showed her how to work ProTools and then left for the day,” recalls Baccigaluppi.

Bee, brand new to ProTools and left to her own devices in the studio control room, went to work. At the end of the day, she had a nearly complete five-song EP that would become Bee Eee Pee.

“I was under the impression that she would come in here and just bang out something,” says Baccigaluppi. “But I would come back and there would be all these overdubs. I was like, ‘Well I guess you figured out how to do that!’”

Having never really recorded a record herself, Bee took full advantage of the opportunity she was granted.

“I didn’t know how many days people spent on recordings. I was just like, ‘Gotta get it done,’” she says.

Maybe it was that exact attitude, that excitement to record, that kept Bee and Baccigaluppi working together. When Bee’s EP was complete, they decided to continue recording, tackling two songs in full production together (“Gnomes” and “Willis”) to see if they “got along together and wanted to go further.”

“We decided to do a whole record,” remembers Baccigaluppi.

With Songs for the Ravens, Bee and Baccigaluppi worked at a slower pace, only doing a few tracks at a time. The recording experience was centered on having fun making a record and exploring any ideas that came into the picture along the way. Bee would record an idea on Garage Band and show it to Baccigaluppi so he could get an idea. From there, they slowly pieced together the songs one track at a time, adding bass here or drums there. Bee herself played 80 percent of the instruments on the album, some of which she had never played before.

“She’s super intuitive as a musician. There’s a lot of stuff on this record with instruments that she played in one or two takes that she’d never seen prior to that,” says Baccigaluppi.

Very limited editing was required for the record, too, and a lot of what you hear on Songs for the Ravens are raw, uncut tracks. Half the tracks on the record, including “Blind,” the masterfully crafted outro song, were live takes, recorded with the other musicians. That says a lot about this record and the musicianship that was involved. Standout players include the tasteful drum set playing of James Neil, who, at times, nailed tracks immediately with very little time to record or to rehearse. It seems as though everybody involved in the creation of this record connected seamlessly with Bee and was able to interpret her ideas perfectly.

“The songs that were in my head, I had a vision of what I wanted them to be. They somehow came out exactly how I wanted,” says Bee with gratitude in her voice.

Another interesting note is the appearance of Wes Steed of Hearts and Horses, who offered his meticulously placed drum programming on songs like “Won’t Be Long” and my personal favorite, “Willis.” Steed was given very rough mixes of the songs to allot as much room as possible for him to navigate the drum tracks. Steed’s tracks were imported toward the end of finalizing the songs, and they would, without fail, fit perfectly into the mix.

The business side of putting out the record was always tucked in the back of both Bee and Baccigaluppi’s minds, but it didn’t need to be dealt with until it was finished. With that moment now upon them, the first thing they did was send it out to a few people that were close in both of their circles. Michael Leahy, who runs Crossbill Records in Davis, was one of the first to respond to Songs for the Ravens. Baccigaluppi sent him a copy immediately after mastering and he replied quickly, saying that what they had created was pretty awesome and to shop it around to lots of different labels. So they did, but to no avail.

“We spent a fair amount of time looking for labels and had some interest from some larger labels, and in the end no one was willing to move fast enough,” explains Baccigaluppi.

In the end, they went where open arms would receive them and inevitably ended up going with Crossbill. This turned out to be a great decision for Bee and was mutually beneficial, as Leahy scored a distribution deal through Burnside Distribution in Portland, Ore., with help from the strength of Songs for the Ravens.

“They’ve been really working it. Every week there’s more good news from Burnside,” says Baccigaluppi.

On top of Leahy standing behind the record and pushing it aggressively, he had a couple more friends up in Oregon that he wanted to introduce Bee to. Riot Act Media, a boutique publicity firm in Portland, picked up on Songs for the Ravens and offered their support for Bee.

“Riot Act’s Joan Hiller and Nathan Walker, they’re good people. It’s like family,” says Bee.

The pace of Bee’s success is steadily picking up with the anticipated release of Songs for the Ravens. And although she’s no stranger to performing, she’s just now starting to warm up to her audience–just in time for a 12-date tour that will land her in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, to name a few.

“I’m learning to open my eyes and see [the audience]. I’m starting to understand that it’s not just about me and my music, it’s about them,” says Bee. “I want to bring more to the table.”

When I asked Bee if she had measured out any sort of success for herself, she brought up musician friends that she and Baccigaluppi have who are able to “pay their rent and buy a car” by playing music. Modest goals for someone so talented.

“How do they do it?” Bee pondered. “It’s a lot of work. But it’s what I want to do.”

Never Settle

Ask Kevin Lee, lead singer of Silver Darling, about the band’s fast acclaim and he will tell you quite simply that it was unexpected. With their first full-length, Your Ghost Fits My Skin, released on Crossbill Records this month, Silver Darling has quickly become a popular band in Sacramento. With their natural ability to create powerful, soulful music along with Kevin Lee’s weary, intoxicating vocals, Your Ghost Fits My Skin has become a highly anticipated release. Though it was just a project that simply started out as two roommates playing guitar together, the band has progressed into a three piece whose musical diversity has allowed them to redefine the folk genre. Submerge recently spoke to Kevin about the band’s influences, plans and the new album.

How did Silver Darling begin?
Josh Ahlansberg and I were roommates when I first moved to Sacramento, and I was just learning guitar. It kind of just developed from there. It’s been a really natural progression the last couple of years. Our friend Jesse Phillips started playing with us. There was definitely a time, about two years ago when we started a more intense practice schedule. We just asked ourselves if we really wanted to do this, if we wanted to commit to it and we did.

Sacramento seems to have embraced you guys pretty quickly. You have such a solid fan base already.
A lot of people who come out to shows are our friends. I think more people are starting to come out. It still feels like it’s the beginning. We are just getting people together and playing music. Sacramento has been great to us. We love to play in Sacramento when there are places to play.

What’s your favorite venue to play in Sacramento?
A house. Our best shows have been at houses. We are playing at Harlow’s for the CD release show. We’re looking forward to that because it has such a great sound system. It’s unfortunate because even though house shows are fun and it provides so much, after a while you start feeling the music itself is degraded a bit. Sometimes it’s really appropriate and the party atmosphere is awesome, but when you listen in a really excellent sound room”¦ Some places are just designed to hear music. I wish there were more places like that here in Sacramento.

You recently won an award for best male vocalist in Sacramento. How did that feel to get such an award?
It was really unexpected. I think, any embrace that has happened, has happened quickly. I was really surprised by it. It was an honor, of course, just surprising. I just didn’t think we were on the radar out in Sacramento yet.

You list influences from Neil Young to The Roots on your Web page. It seems you guys have a diverse range of musical artists that you look up to.
As far as the diversity, I think it comes from people who just put everything into their music. Just taking Neil Young and The Roots as an example—to me, those are people that really put themselves completely into their music. I feel like The Roots and Neil Young never settle and they only put forth their best music. They are always working on something. They are those performers who you can just tell that they put everything into their music. Bill Withers is also another huge influence. Every single thing he made came from such a real place.

Your album, Your Ghost Fits My Skin is being released on Crossbill Records. How did your relationship with Crossbill come about?
Well, we absolutely adore working with Crossbill. I can’t imagine a better working relationship. When we first started out, we were looking for people with that same passion for music, and we sent Mike Leahy a message and asked him if he had any openings on his radio show in Davis. We went and played on the show and put a couple more shows together with him at the Cool Cat Gallery with The Cave Singers. It kind of developed from there and he called us up and said that he would like to do what he could to put out our first album. It’s just a beautiful working relationship. Mike is our friend. To have someone on a label that we can call anytime is a lot more than what most people get, so it’s wonderful.

Where did you record the album, and how long was the recording process?
We recorded at the Hangar. We had plans to record at some other places in order to get really into the atmosphere where we were recording—off onto the country and whatnot. But as soon as we started working with Christian Kiefer, it just became obvious that it was not going to be feasible. We were not going to be able to bring out pianos and pump organs to a barn you know? It was becoming too big. We booked four days at the Hangar and we just practiced a lot. The Hangar is amazing and we can’t imagine now not recording at the Hangar.

You finished recording the entire album in four days?
We recorded the whole album in three days and started post-production on the last day. Kiefer also worked for about three days by himself on the mixing and the editing.

For new listeners who may not have heard the album yet, how would you describe it?
It’s the album that we definitely wanted to make. I think there are elements of folk, country and bluegrass. I also think there are singer/songwriter techniques. It’s a moody album but it’s not a storytelling album. It describes life experiences but not in a typical storytelling way. Rather, it describes more of how those experiences felt instead of explaining what actually happened. A lot of the songs don’t really bother getting to the results of what’s going on, just the moment of what’s happening.

That’s a really interesting approach to songwriting”¦revealing more of the emotional aspect of the experience rather than the actual experience. The title of the album is really interesting as well. Do you mind explaining it or would you rather not?
No, of course. I think Your Ghost Fits My Skin talks about the real stuff, about what’s really happening in life. I think it talks about the potential of people and the potential for life.

As a songwriter, do you feel that your life experiences makes up most of your lyrical content?
I tend to focus more on the heavier aspects of life. There are different phases throughout this album. I am influenced by things my friends are going through, and what I am going through. At first listen to this album I think there is a lot of darkness, but I try to inject a lot of hope and excitement over change. The second song on the album addresses that straightforward…that moment of change. The point where you are missing where you were but you are walking toward something better. I mean, those are the best moments in life for sure.

What are your plans for the band?
We are releasing the album and playing three different CD release shows. We are having all the musicians that played on the album play with us for those shows, so we are going to have a lot of people on stage. Then we are going to be going up to Arcata and probably going to Seattle and back at the beginning of the year. We are going to plan more shows. We are already starting to work on the next album as well. We are definitely just going to keep on going.