Tag Archives: Sacramento songwriter

Making People Feel Happy for the Moment

Sacramento folk singer Jenn Rogar plays music with a message

It quickly became clear that Jenn Rogar is much more than just a singer performing folk music as a hobby. She is an artist actively trying to change the world and just happens to be a talented singer and songwriter who spreads her beliefs through song.

As a schoolteacher, law practitioner and mother, Rogar has a wealth of life experience to draw upon. She has also been playing music off and on since 1998, as time permits or whenever she receives waves of inspiration. As it turns out, she wasn’t even familiar with the folk music genre until she met her friend and mentor, singer Diane Patterson while attending college to become a schoolteacher. Rogar cites Patterson, a fellow political leftist, activist and socially conscious local, as a main inspiration for launching her music career.

Rogar debuted Place Called Humanity, a stripped down folk album, which on tracks such as “Tree of Life” and “Torah Song,” raises moral and societal concerns and challenges listeners to take the high road; simply by attempting to be more responsible and aware of our environment. Jenn has set forth upon releasing her sophomore album Shasta within the next couple months and plans on having an accompanying slide show of Mount Shasta while performing the title track. This album release event will likely be educational, similar to her experiences shared here. Jenn will also be performing every Thursday for the next few weeks showcasing this material at Old Ironsides.

The common theme of folk music is to tell a story. What are your favorite stories to tell when you’re on stage?
I enjoy telling stories about the planet and anti-war sentiment with weaving in more mainstream topics while attempting to have a positive impact. As a history major and teacher, I have a background of caring about several issues such as the Navajo Indians and the environment. Some songs are simply born spontaneously.

What can we do to change the world? Where does it start?
Stop listening to the mainstream media. Seek out free speech radio news. You have to educate yourself and learn how things really work. There’s so much going on while everyone’s texting, playing games and watching reality shows. There are so many distractions and people are getting numb. But you can’t do it all. You have to find a niche that you care about, whether it’s the death penalty or birth control or trees.

When did you begin having these realizations as an activist and what has influenced you?
A Ph.D. graduate student, whom I was dating while in college at UC Davis, first influenced me. With experiences I had and being open minded, I became more aware. It was a gradual process. I was very influenced by the Redwood Summer, the Earth First kids who were activists who took residence in the Redwood trees in Humboldt, Calif. Like Utah Phillips said, “You pick things up out of the river.” River would represent history to me. I’m trying to spread the word through songs. I’m still trying to figure out how to reduce my carbon footprint.

How have you made a difference as a teacher, lawyer and songwriter?
I start by telling the truth. I taught in the classroom for several years and was good at imparting knowledge but was not good at disciplining the kids. There was a story written about me by a right-wing organization that has claimed I have participated in ZEP [Zinn Education Project] warfare, essentially claiming Howard Zinn instructs teachers to infect children’s minds. So I simply taught a chapter out of Zinn’s book about Christopher Columbus. Any kid will tell you they know what he [Columbus] did to the indigenous people. The history books will tell you he was a hero, but the story is now on the Web. Any time you go outside of the box, you run risks, but if not, what are you going to do? Just lie down and die?

I also have a law degree from Lincoln Law School. Since then I have been able to see things with a better vantage point. I’ve been taught contracts, real property, criminal law, so now I can see the bigger picture of what’s going on. It’s shown me we need to focus on one area and then find the niche of where they belong. As a songwriter, I feel sharper. Songs just come out now. If I think too hard, it won’t happen. It’s important to have a concept and then refine what I’ve done. To just go out there and sing about nothing can be bland or boring.

What is your main focus or niche for activism right now?
I’ve done rallies against the death penalty, against domestic violence and anti-war rallies, but my current focus is the war on dealing with the environment. But more specifically, we need to breathe the trees by limiting fossil fuels and saving the rainforests. I learned the other day that we share half our DNA with trees, so I feel a strong connection to trees. Utah Phillips once said, “There are too many people doing good things to afford me the luxury of being pessimistic.” If you think about it, there are so many good people out there. We have the power of the purse. We can make the choices for ourselves what to support. All people are good people if we get the truth. Some people are just misinformed.

Besides the causes you’re supporting by performing at rallies and fundraisers? What do you enjoy about these events?
Community happens at these events. That’s something that the current generation is starved for. Positive energy gets going and everyone feeds off of one another. You go to a café today and see everyone on a laptop and no one’s talking.

Can you explain the significance of your song “Dove Spring Girl?”
Dove Spring is the area near Flagstaff, Ariz., where the Navajo people live. All the relatives lived near each other and were forcibly relocated due to the politics that began in the ‘50s. The families lived there with no running water and weren’t able to grow crops or live a healthy or traditional way of life; they were forced to live a more modern way of life in the subdivisions, eating pizza and playing video games. So the song centers upon a girl, Janie, I met and the hopes of her to have a better life.

How does your upcoming album Shasta differ from Place Called Humanity?
Shasta is a bit of a departure from the first album. After performing off and on for several years as a solo artist, Mike Farrell and I started performing together and then recruited Eric Everett on the drums. Mike contributed a lot of music on the album minus the drums, produced the album and even learned to play the organ in the studio. Eric cleverly added drums to Shasta and then to several other tracks, even though I hadn’t intended drums to be on the new album at all. The songs are all over the map. There are folk songs and blues songs on the album. I started researching Mount Shasta on the Internet about its spiritual qualities. I visited Mount Shasta with my daughter and had an overwhelming feeling of joy permeating through my body, which I attributed to the secrets of the mountain. Mount Shasta is a true spiritual vortex. We need to reconnect with nature. And it’s not just about politics, but it’s about telling a story.

What’s the most memorable thing to ever happen to you while performing?
A lady came up to me and said, “I love your heart, soul and spirit. I’m totally a right wing enthusiast and don’t believe what you say, but you’ve got soul.” I didn’t quite reach her, but I did. We get caught up in performing and will get nerves, but the best thing to say to you is “this is not about me.” I’m just trying to make people feel happy for the moment. I didn’t expect to be doing this. But that’s life. It takes you along on this journey and you have to be ready to take the day head on.

See Jenn Rogar live at Old Ironsides every Thursday at 5 p.m. through June 20, 2013. The Shasta CD release party will take place at Fox and Goose on May 31, 2013 at 8 p.m. This is a 21-and-over show. For more about Jenn Rogar, check her out at Reverbnation.com/jennrogar.

Every Morning Seems Like A Fight

Singer/Songwriter Sherman Baker bears his soul, battles addiction and existential dread…all in a day’s work

Words by Joseph Atkins – Photos by Amy Scott

Sherman Baker has lived multiple lives: struggling Los Angeles actor, recovering heroin addict, mild-mannered songwriter. Yet, there’s something about him that eschews both of the former descriptions and settles on the latter. Baker’s bigger than you imagine, listening to his new full-length, Seventeenth Street. His songs make him sound fragile, delicate; but in person his wide shoulders wrap a guitar while he sings upwards into a microphone. On stage he appears focused, intent. His look is exactly right for the sound, and the qualities of Baker’s sound ultimately condition the person he is.

Up close, it’s hard to tell how much of his personality is shaped by the quiet childhood he describes or the humility of a recovering addict, or where they bleed together. But their silent strength produces songs that slowly engulf one’s attention. Baker has enough self-confidence to expose himself, musically or otherwise, to talk honestly about his past and present. He has a soft-spoken manner that leaves a small impression. He’s like a subtle fill that piques one’s interest and becomes the highlight of a track after multiple listens. He’s normal yet unique, exotic in his low-key banality.

There’s a subtlety to his brand of song craft, a fusion of Dylan and Elliott Smith, with the tonal foundations of old school pop. His hooks and harmonies draw out the anguish and joy of repeated failure and angst, verse after verse. Below them, a series of string melodies and rhythms complement and exacerbate his vocal tracks, as the lyric content demands. There’s a focused tension on the struggle of daily life and survival, but I’d suggest this is bigger than just Baker’s struggle with himself. Seventeenth Street is relaxing, serious and thoughtful in its treatment of uncertain conditions–Baker’s and otherwise. We sat down over water and espresso to discuss these uncertainties, the ups and downs of growing.

On your opening track, “Constant Contact,” you plead repeatedly for the world to “stop posting things.” Did you check in on Foursquare when we got here?
I did not. I’ve been trying really hard to not be obvious like that. That song came from Facebook [where] an ex-girlfriend used to post about me while we were dating. She’d be like, “Don’t you hate when guys do this.” And then 20 lurker dudes would be like, “Yeah, fuck that guy.”

Do you have other songs about her?
Some of the other songs like, “Golden Gate Park,” “Man on a Wire” and “Sign of Light” are about a [different] ex-girlfriend whom I feel essentially left me for dead and didn’t seem to care that I was overdosing and attempting suicide.

In one of my favorite lines from “Sign of Life” you sing, “There’s no time for philosophy/When you’re fighting/To survive.” The next track follows with another line: “We have tried to be good/But I’d rather be wrong than dead inside.” What is the major antagonist in your life?
The new record is basically about heroin addiction. I was shooting heroin in 2008 to 2009. It wasn’t like, “Oh, Elliott Smith did it, or John Coltrane.” It was a simple addict progression from Vicodin to heroin. A typical Intervention episode was my life. I went to rehab, and after six or seven weeks of horror, I finally came out. The last two years I’ve been moving away from it. I tried to off myself. I was put in a mental hospital. The tension is me trying to fight existential dread.

Yours is actually a success story. Many addicts never even get to rehab. How were you able make the decision to get clean and stay that way?
It’s a daily struggle to stay clean, but I need to in order to survive. There isn’t a way to abuse opiates that doesn’t end in death or severe impairment. My uncle was kind enough to pay for me to go after I asked him for help. It was in L.A. I needed to get out of town. I went a long way from any dealers or money. I was forced to spend a month in one bed crying, shitting and puking on myself. Literally. It was so incredibly painful emotionally; I have felt a little bit numbed ever since. But I’m also certainly a much stronger person. I’m lucky.

I think really great artists tend to be addicted to creating. Do you feel like overcoming one addiction has allowed you to focus your attention more into your musicianship?
One hundred percent. On a physical level, my energy is up; it’s like night and day. I’ve been looking at my music like an athlete–how can I get better every day? Quitting smoking, writing every day, practicing every day, I’m always thinking about what things are helping me. I have a drive to write and make music that is certainly not rational. I’m not making money. Music is my art.

You’re releasing the album yourself. How’d it all come together?
My father died, which opened up money from my family that wasn’t being used for his medical care. I had a really low budget. I recorded a lot of it at my uncle’s house. He’s got a really big place up in Granite Bay. We actually did some of the drums. All the guitars, all the vocals, all the bass–everything I did–was done there.

We mixed at The Hangar and did some of the live drums and bass there. Matt McCord played drums, and Kris Anaya [Doom Bird] played bass on a few songs. Robert “Flossy” Cheek did the mixing.

There’s a definite Elliott Smith influence on the record, but the recording process sounds a lot like his process as well.
Elliott Smith would be a good analogy except I don’t play drums–minus the brilliance factor.

Losing your father seems like a big moment in your narrative. Are there points on the new CD where his loss is felt? 
Yes, “Lonely Star” is about him to some degree. The bridge lyrics, “Where is the green light?/The future you told me of?” is a reference to The Great Gatsby’s last page about the green light of the dock. It was my father’s favorite book. A lot of the record is about mortality in some way. That might be part of the problem with selling it. 

What happens if you never sell all the CDs you print?
I’m used to disappointment. If people don’t want to buy my music, I can’t force them to… I’m pretty reconciled to living a low income, humble lifestyle, regardless.

Do you still believe in those divisions between DIY, indie and major labels?
Not really. Death Grips are the latest example of a “big deal,” and they’re as DIY as it gets. I think pipe dreams have definitely disappeared. In the ‘90s, there were a lot of kids thinking, “I just gotta get that deal and then… Chicks!”

You spent some time in L.A. as an actor. How did you get there?
I got into a good acting school. It’s where Denzel Washington went; Elizabeth Banks was there while I was. It actually helped me learn to sing. By the time I left, I just wanted to do music. I went to L.A. because I had an agent; it was a great opportunity. I was trying to get on soap operas. I wanted to focus on music instead.

Then in 2007 my personal life got crazy, and I just dropped out and did drugs for two or three years. I didn’t do much at all. I did in my head, but I wasn’t functioning.

You’ve mentioned that there’s a lot about yourself–your voice, how you look on camera, people watching you–that makes you anxious or nervous. Are we socialized to be confident individuals and overcritical of everyone else?
In a word, yes. I’ve always been kind of shocked at how I’ve put my heart out there and then had it taken apart by a critic or local Internet commentator. I guess it’s my own naiveté. To tear apart local struggling artists and critique a person as if you are writing for the New York Times, reviewing a show at Carnegie Hall, is the height of arrogance. Blogger culture is gross. It’s too easy just to spout off about what you don’t like or do like.

Acting seems like a curious choice seeing as you feel uncomfortable in front of a camera.
I don’t like being looked at. I don’t like being on stage and being looked at, still. I don’t mind being heard because I’m comfortable with how I sound. My stage presence is just as shitty as it ever was; I just stare at the ground and sing. I just couldn’t care less about my stage presence. I’ve just never said, “Oh, I wish I could be like Steven Tyler.” Never. I just don’t care.

Head to Beatnik Studios in Sacramento on June 2, 2012 to celebrate the release of Sherman Baker’s newest album, Seventeenth Street. Also performing will be Autumn Sky, who also happens to be releasing her new CD that day. If that wasn’t enough for you, Ricky Berger will open. Showtime is 7 p.m. For more info, go to http://shermanbakermusic.com/.

A Shot in the Dark

Chelsea Wolfe’s The Grime and the Glow dresses folk music in a black cloak

Ravens perched on bare branches, snow falling on tombstones, wooden shutters clattering against cloudy window panes in a strong gale–these are just some of the visuals The Grime and the Glow, the latest fulllength album from Sacramento songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, may conjure in the imagination of the listener. Songs such as “Cousins of the Antichrist,” on which Wolfe intones “All in vain” in a steady refrain as the song ends, reinforce descriptions of her music as dark or goth folk. Wolfe herself describes another selection from the album, “Halfsleeper,” as “a slow-motion painting of what it’s like to die in a car accident with your loved one.” Wolfe, however, admits that The Grime and the Glow isn’t necessarily all doom and gloom–not that she’d mind if it were. She says that songs “Advice & Vices” and “The Whys” are more playful lyrically than she’d normally write. Wolfe describes the latter as “a song making fun of myself for taking everything so seriously.” But these concessions aren’t in hopes of lightening the album’s dark mood.

“I don’t mind it getting too dire,” Wolfe says in a recent interview with Submerge.

From the album cover, to the videos made for the songs, to the music itself, The Grime and the Glow seems born from a single cohesive vision. Wolfe says that the theme for the album came to her once its title was in place. She says the title is taken from the introduction to the novel Death on the Installment Plan, by French author Louis-Ferdinand Celine. The darkly humorous novel had quite an effect on Wolfe, even though she wasn’t able to finish it.

“I…read most of [it], but had to stop because of the dark place it puts my head space,” she explains. “I didn’t really need to dig any deeper into understanding that much of the beauty in the world is crawling with worms beneath the surface.”

To get the dark and distant sound that permeates the album, Wolfe took a much more stripped down approach compared to that of her previous release, Soundtrack VHS/Gold. For that album, Wolfe says she went into a nice studio in order to create a “tapenoise- sounding” album, but she “eventually realized how illogical that was.”

“It’s a very different album,” Wolfe says of her previous effort. “I wanted to get an eight-track sounding record in a nice studio. Didn’t make any sense, but we did mix it down to tape.”

Wolfe says she wasn’t unhappy with the results, but instead with the lengthy recording process leading up to the release of Soundtrack VHS/Gold, which was released in an extremely limited run of about 50 CDs on Chicago-based indie label Jeune Été Records.

This time, Wolfe took a more “logical” approach to making an eight-track sounding album by using an actual eight-track machine. The Grime and the Glow was recorded by Wolfe on a Tascam 488, a handme- down from her musician father, that she says she’s recorded on for years. Wolfe says that doing the album herself, on a familiar machine, “made it sound exactly the strange and special fucked up way I wanted it to sound.”

Strange and fucked up are excellent adjectives for The Grime and the Glow. Though the mood is consistently dark, songs range from the wildly dissonant “Deep Talks,” which grates Wolfe’s bittersweet voice through layers of noise, to the aforementioned “Advice & Vices,” a catchy piece of dark pop that’s as tuneful as it is morose–and she sure doesn’t skimp on the reverb.

“I also like clean, straightforward vocals sometimes and will experiment with that someday,” Wolfe says, “But for these songs I wanted to capture my voice or the instruments, whatever, inside a certain soundbox, so when you have your headphones on listening to it you feel like you’re in a tiny, claustrophobic echoroom or a parking garage cathedral.”

Adding to the eerie, almost antique sound of the songs is the album’s format. The Grime and the Glow will be released some time in June–pushed back from the original May 18 release date–on limited edition vinyl by New York-based label Pendu Sound. Wolfe says that it was the label’s decision to release the album on vinyl, but it’s a decision she’s happy with.

“I don’t think this album would work as solely a CD release,” Wolfe says.

In addition to the music, Wolfe has also been busy working on visual companions to the songs. The Pendu Sound Web site for The Grime and the Glow features a series of four videos created for “Advice & Vices,” “Moses,” “The Whys” (featuring camera work by local horror filmmaker Jason Rudy) and “Bounce House Demons.” The videos for “Moses” and “Bounce House Demons” star Wolfe’s friend, writer Jessalyn Wakefield, whom Wolfe calls, “a perfect visual muse.” At the time of our interview, Wolfe also mentioned that she was working on a video for the song “Widow,” which will feature a “goth-glam girl lip-synching the song in a dark studio.”

“I like the element of darkness mixed with a bit of silliness,” she says.

This mix of music and film comes as no surprise as Wolfe states that movies had a big influence on her in the making of The Grime and the Glow.

The Seventh Seal is my long-time favorite film,” says Wolfe, who also listed David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Jean Rollin’s French vampire movies as sources for inspiration. “The character of death in that film has forever been an influence in my creative life. Ingmar Bergman in general is a big inspiration for me. The portrayal of life in his films is so honest and desolate but rich at the same time. Another favorite is The American Astronaut (Cory McAbee), a dark space-western with hand-painted special effects and a pretty low budget that manages to get such a defined feel across, haunting but still silly, like so much of the folk art I love.”

In fact, Wolfe finds inspiration from most forms of art–but not so much with other music.

“Throughout my life and for this album I’ve been very inspired by authors, poets, painters and filmmakers, more so I’d say than any band or musician,” she explains. “In fact, for many years I wouldn’t allow myself to listen to music because I didn’t want to infuse anyone else’s sound into my own–I wanted to see what would happen without that influence.”

The Grime and the Glow is a solo project, but it was still a collaborative effort. Andrew Henderson of G.Green, Ian Bone from Darling Chemicalia and Ruven Reveles all made appearances on the album. Kevin Dockter, Drew Walker and Addison Quarles (collectively known as The Death) and Ben C. also played parts and have come together to form Wolfe’s band. Wolfe, Dockter, Walker, Quarles and C. will be heading into a proper studio in June to record a fivesong EP. Wolfe says her past experience working on Soundtrack VHS/Gold will inform her decisions on her upcoming trip to the studio.

“I’m much more focused, and I’m also giving this recording a deadline,” she says. “I’m going to try and finish up five songs in about a week and a half, which will mean lots of late nights and hard focus. This project will also be with my band mates–all five of the songs will have the same five people on them, which is a first for me. But I’m very excited about the challenge of finishing something on a fixed time limit.”

Until then, The Grime and the Glow should sate those with appetites for dark music, as long as they don’t mind the worms.

The Grime and the Glow is available for preorder through the Pendu Sound Web site. Go to pendusound.com/releases/psr-0040/. Those who pre-order the album will receive four free bonus songs for download.