Could G. Green Become Sacramento’s Most Loved Band?

G. Green was once the most unpopular band in Sacramento. Originally Andrew Henderson’s bedroom recordings moniker, his solo shows in Sacramento garnered anathema of clandestine ridicule and indifference. There was a time I loathed seeing the name listed on every Hub show and house party, and I wasn’t alone. It was fun to smear G. Green in 2009 and it was excruciating to see them on the verge of amateurish implosion in 2011. Most of you probably still assume G. Green is locked into a static identity as Midtown brats, drunk on youth, and too drunk to do much besides be obnoxiously loud. While we were laughing, when we stopped caring and stopped looking, G. Green quietly became a serviceable indie band, writing songs destined to shed the onus of snotnosed bush leaguers.

Before she became G. Green’s drummer, Liz Liles described the first G. Green show (a one-off lineup consisting of Henderson on guitar and promoter Rick Ele on drums) as horrible and a disservice to the former KDVS DJ’s sterling reputation.

“I thought ‘why is DJ Rick playing with this idiot,’” she said. “Me and whoever I was with, we watched one song and then went into the alley to smoke cigarettes.”

In the greenhorn years of the band, Henderson was the perpetual opener; the sort that would clear a venue, living room or DIY space except for his steadfast cheerleader, DJ Rick.

“I put him in front of audiences, and the awkwardness, the house slippers on his feet, and the most piercing moments of singing were initially a big turnoff to people,” Ele said. “But Andrew seemed totally impervious to disapproval.”

*****
They’re all laughing at you, aka the infamous Capital Bowl show

Mt. St. Mtn. founder and former Mayyors member Mark Kaiser put out G. Green’s first record, Crap Culture, in 2012, but it took time for him to become a backer. In gathering stories of infamous G. Green failures, Kaiser and Liles invoked the West Sacramento Capital Bowl show in 2008 without hesitation. In those days, bands would rent out the events room to play, and according to Kaiser, “trash.” The bill was geared toward trashing the place with Mayyors and Eat Skull (a notoriously self-destructive Portland band), while the G. Green solo set was the black sheep. Liles said she and her friends openly ridiculed the G. Green set. While Kaiser likened the clumsy solo performance as arriving “too late for that mid-’90s Olympia-wrought ‘any art is good art’ vibe.” Henderson was not going to be the next Calvin Johnson.

“Andrew was really young, and looked really drunk and really nervous,” Kaiser said. “He let loose, and I cringed. The show was fun, drunken chaos, all the bands on the bills were renowned for being a wasted mess, but this was excruciating.”

*****
Laughing: from ‘at’ to ‘with’

Liles might have mocked Henderson at first, but one evening he showed up at her Midtown home, then known as the Funcastle, expecting a Thee Oh Sees show. Liles had moved the show to another venue, but the encounter with Henderson sparked a quick friendship. At the time Liles was a—quote, unquote—drummer for experimental groups Sucks and Fatty Acid. Untrained and illiterate to tempo, she began telling Henderson she was G. Green’s new drummer.

Henderson obliged after booking a house show with Kurt Vile, Eat Skull and Ganglians. He had two months to put together an opening band; Liles was the first piece. The remaining guitar parts were filled out by Julian Elorduy (drummer for Mayyors in those days) and Dylan Craver. Two months proved enough and sustained the approval of scene-dad DJ Rick.

“I didn’t really know if the band would continue after that one show,” Henderson said. “Rick loved us and threw us on all these shows and put us on [Operation Restore Maximum Freedom]. Pretty much the reason Liz and I still play music together is because Rick threw us into the whirlwind of the Sacramento music scene at that time.”

Kaiser recalls being at the full lineup’s debut, despite purposely steering clear of solo sets since the bowling alley incident.

“The second time I saw Andrew play it was with this first incarnation of a live band and it was a world of difference,” he said. “It was sloppy and chaotic, but it was fun and there were lots of ‘whoa, if they keep doing that’ moments that had me intrigued.”

Henderson and Liles cherish the times with that early incarnation, but also knew it could never last. Elorduy quit the band after Liles broke up with him for Hella drummer Zach Hill, and was replaced by Brittney Gray on bass. Henderson and Craver were the best of friends and also prone to volatile feuds. Every show and practice was a fun, drunken gathering that flirted with implosion.

“We were so close as friends that none of it mattered if people liked us,” Henderson said. “We were just getting drunk and having fun. Me and Dylan were good friends and then we’d hate each other. He probably quit the band infinity times.”

Before the final nail was put in the original lineup, G. Green enlisted Andy Morin, long before his stint in Death Grips, to record their debut, Crap Culture. A shambolic and lo-fi collection of mad-dash punk songs, Crap Culture captured G. Green at the time—unruly and unpolished, but beneath the caterwaul existed nuggets of pop punk gold. Kaiser compared the record to Superchunk’s No Pocky For Kitty, lauding G. Green for maintaining their live energy on record.

“‘Pool Of Blood’ was the song that made me offer them a record,” he said. “That song was a sign they had something and were capable of growing past the kiddish fun-punk into something bigger.”

Crap Culture arrived late to the cultural trend of low-budget to no-budget albums, home-recorded on junkable equipment. It was recorded in 2010, but did not see release until August 2012. By then contemporaries like Wavves had ditched the intelligible scuzz for pop-punk polished for MTV. Also, by the release of Crap Culture on Mt. St. Mtn., G. Green featured a lineup far superior to the rag-tag group that winged it through the debut.

With replacements Simi Sohota on bass and Mike Morales on guitar, G. Green returned to the studio, paying Robby Moncrieff to record a follow-up at the Hangar. Besides being a friend of the band, Moncrieff was a popular choice having recorded Dirty Projector’s critically praised Bitte Orca and fellow Sacramento band Ganglians’ Still Living. Unfortunately Henderson said the band made the mistake of requesting Moncrieff “make it sound like Woodhouse,” meaning Chris Woodhouse, the Hangar engineer responsible for seminal linchpins like all eight Thee Oh Sees records and the A Frames.

Henderson said, “We didn’t use Robby as he should be used as an engineer. He did the best he could, but it’s not the way Robby works. There was no unifying theme with it. It was just a smathering of shit and it didn’t sound very good.”

The record was scrapped, except for two songs which became the “Funny Insurance” b/w “Sounds Famous” 7-inch. Liles corroborated their poor performance, attributing it less to Moncrieff, and more to the band for it sucking. They entered the studio with songs written by all the members with no vision for the band’s identity.

Liles said, “we’ve had really bad luck recording full records… until now.”

*****
New lineup, new lease…

On June 10, 2013 I drove my then girlfriend’s Altima to Davis to see Parquet Courts, a burgeoning Brooklyn band, and Fine Steps, a new project by Julian Elorduy. G. Green was also on the bill, so I planned to arrive late, still pegging G. Green as the perpetual opener. To my surprise Fine Steps was on when I arrived at the Davis Bike Collective. I caught their last two songs. I grew despondent realizing a full G. Green set stood in the path to Parquet Courts. Who agreed to this bat shit order of operation?

With no beer to drink and no cigarettes to smoke outside, I remained inside conceding that despite my efforts I’d been hoodwinked into a G. Green set. Now, I don’t recall particular songs from the set in that blazing, claustrophobic bike shop, but I do know that’s the night I stopped laughing at G. Green. The additions of Sohota and Morales gave them chops previously lacking in the dynamic. Liles had become a force, and Henderson’s once pubescent screech had caked enough nicotine on his vocal cords for a second lease on his balls dropping. There’s plenty to love about a band bent on belligerence, but when that same band backs it up with the skills to earn that abandon, they stop being local brats and graduate into a menace worthy of unleashing on the country at large.

This year on the porch of Kupros I confess to the founding members the Parquet Courts show is when I started believing in G. Green. Henderson states it was his birthday that night, while Liles mentions that Parquet Courts opened for them when they played Brooklyn’s storied 285 Kent venue. Both are unphased that I once detested their band. I was never the only one and I wasn’t the only convert either.

Liles said, “A lot of people probably haven’t been taking the time to see us lately because they saw us so many times three years ago and have decided there’s no way we’ve actually progressed.”

Henderson added, “There’s an image that probably still exists in a lot of people’s minds of these weird shitty kids that are drunk all the time and looking for the next party. We’re convincing people who’ve seen it from the beginning that we’re a great band now.”

Liles and Henderson turned 25 this year. Neither member wanted to be pigeonholed to perceptions developed when they were still teenagers. The upcoming Area Codes album was honed on tour, the band delegating a set it would play nightly until the songs were ingrained in their muscle memory. The decision to be professional and treat their live set with care translates to the album, which was recorded by Woodhouse, whose specialty is live tracking, room sound and mic placement. Even a late night of binging on spirits and karaoke at the Distillery couldn’t sandbag their comfort with the songs.

“We finally developed a sound that cut any bullshit,” Henderson said. “We didn’t really know how to make a band sound. In recording with Chris, he just documents what we’re doing.”

But is their scene-dad Rick Ele a proud papa?

“So many Chris Woodhouse productions have that unmistakable Woodhouse touch,” Ele said. “He becomes the fifth Beatle to so many bands, but in the case of Area Codes, I think he really just used his magic to maximize the G. Greenness of this record.”

Kaiser was equally impressed, keeping the band on his Mt. St. Mtn. roster for a second go-round, calling their current incarnation a “quick progression.”

“The new lineup came about and they tightened up both their live presence and song writing. I kept telling Andrew to just pony up the money and record with Woodhouse. He’s the wizard, he knows their sound and knows how to make them sound more like themselves. That’s what they did and this new recording is a huge step forward.”

The night at Kupros we drank enough short-n-talls of Coors Light and Jameson to carry the festivities to the former Funcastle, now also the home of Henderson. I apparently needed to try “tangler,” a moonshine-like infusion engineered by Liz’s boyfriend. Once there it was filmed and failed beer shotguns for the tour promo video, messy blueberry pancakes, and Guided By Voices’ Alien Lanes on the record player. As both made more of a mess than a mouthful in shotgunning the PBRs, I wondered how they ever got the stigma of a party band. Earlier that night Liles insisted they were misunderstood. “We’re not a party punk band, we’re a weird band,” she said. “The record only mentions pizza once!”

“We’re a straight up indie rock band now,” she said.

Most importantly are these last words from Ele, their cheerleader since day one. Watching a solo project from an awkward kid from Folsom become a band after making friends with the girl who laughed at his sets.

“Andrew’s always the heart and soul of the band as voice and chief songwriter, but through these lineup issues, Liz really stepped up to become the band’s leading co-star. They could change lineups 100 more times, and from now on, I’ll always think of Andrew and Liz as G. Green.”

Celebrate the release of Area Codes Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014 at Witch Room (1815 19th St.) with G. Green, Rat Columns, Violent Change and more. The 18-and-over show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are just $5. Check out
Facebook.com/ggreenband for more info.

Submerge had been hearing rumors for a while about legendary Sacramento recording studio The Hangar closing after 20-some-odd years in its current downtown location, but until owner John Baccigaluppi blogged about it on Feb. 18, 2013 at Thehangarstudios.net/blog, we were holding out hope that they were untrue. “In March of 2013, we will record the last band in the space and move out, ending an over two-decade run of making records in the building,” wrote Baccigaluppi before going on to list some of the things he’s proud of, some of the things he’s bummed about and some funny “celeb type moments” that happened at The Hangar (cameos from Kanye West, Ian MacKaye and others).

We don’t have enough space in this issue to talk about how many amazing records have been recorded and/or mixed there (seriously, look into it, you’d be surprised), just know that there are a lot of them!

“So that’s it really after 20 something years here,” he wrote. “A big pile of recordings coming out of Sacto that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people have heard. But for me personally, it will always be more about the people and the small things we shared making these records.”

He pointed out that The Hangar as we know it will be moved into a house at the base of Mount Tamalpais overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Point Reyes, Calif., and will turn into a residential studio. Baccigaluppi also said that he and fellow engineer Chris Woodhouse are building a new studio a few blocks away from The Hangar’s current location in the historic General Produce Building.

“It’s gonna be badass!” he wrote. “Chris has some great ideas on a streamlined, analog-centric room where he and the rest of us can get rock bands up and rolling super quickly and get a great record done fast, which also means cheap. The building is really cool. It reminds me of what the Meatpacking District in NYC must have been like before it got super gentrified and trendy.”

So at least there is some good news coming out of this! Head to The Hangar’s blog to learn a lot more about the closing, as well as read some funny stories and also check out what a few musicians have to say about their memories of The Hangar.

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/.

The Speed of Sound in Seawater Are Out For A Good Time

There’s been a lot of crazy shit happening around the world lately–maybe you’ve noticed? Earthquakes, tornadoes, Osama bin Laden’s death, all this nonsense about the Rapture! It can be overwhelming and downright depressing at times to turn on the news or read the newspaper, or, let’s face it, stare at your Facebook feed. For these reasons and so many others, it’s important to have creative outlets in life where you can simply have fun and get your mind off things. The members of local indie-pop-meets-math-rock band The Speed of Sound in Seawater know just this. “If we ever stopped having fun, we would stop making new music,” admitted lead vocalist and guitarist Damien Verrett during a recent conversation in a midtown coffee shop. “That definitely is key.” Fellow six-stringer Jordan Seavers (who also sings) agreed with that notion. “Obviously the music is important,” Seavers said. “But we’re not so much like, ‘We’ve got to make it as a band!’ We just have fun playing music.”

The theory of “having fun” makes its way into every aspect of the band: song titles, album titles, even their promo photos–one of which sees the four young gentlemen dangling their feet in a swimming pool while sporting pink bath robes. “There are so many stupid little inside jokes on the new EP,” said Verrett, referring to the group’s latest offering, a five-track EP released on April 27, 2011 titled Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets. “Lyrically, in titles, so much of it,” he said. “Even the name of the album, it’s just this stupid inside joke. It’s something Fernando [Oliva, drums, vocals] said like maybe three years ago. We were all swimming in the pool and he comes up and whispers to me, ‘Do you want to play underwater tell each other secrets?’” He laughed and continued, “I just thought it was the funniest thing ever, and we remembered it. When it came time to name the new EP we were like, ‘Let’s call it Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets.’”

“We’re all pretty goofy,” Seavers butted in. “We like to entertain other people but we like to entertain ourselves at the same time and just be goofs.”

All jokes and goofiness aside, The Speed of Sound in Seawater are a really talented band, and Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets showcases their ability to blend technically advanced playing (i.e.: a flurry of finger tapping, complicated hammer-on riffs, shifting time signatures and rhythms, etc.) with an undeniable knack for writing pop-y, memorable melodies. When listening to their songs, it’s difficult not to think of one the genre’s pioneers, Minus the Bear. Verrett recalls when he first heard the Seattle-based group. “I remember just finding them randomly on some forum and someone was calling it ‘math-rock,’ and I was, ‘What the hell is that? I’ve never heard of that.’ Then I listened to it and I was like, ‘Well, that’s exactly what it is.’” Verrett went on to explain how he thinks Sacramento natives Tera Melos and Hella are good examples of bands at one end of the math-rock spectrum as far as being “way out there and not as accessible,” and that groups like This Town Needs Guns and Maps and Atlases are at the other end of the spectrum and are becoming “indie sensations who have songs in commercials and stuff.” He went on to say, “I didn’t really know if those two sects of math-rock were aware of each other, but I feel like we’re more leaning toward the pop-y side. I like that about us.”

For Underwater… TSOSIS enlisted Robert Cheek as producer/mixer/engineer and from March 11 to 13 they worked out of The Hangar, arguably one of Sacramento’s most credible recording studios, where they did all the takes live. Seavers and Verrett both agreed that it was a sonic match made in heaven. “I was actually thinking about this last night,” Verrett said. “Just how many records he’s produced and engineered that I’m a huge fan of. There’s got to be like six or seven that are just some of my favorites.” He goes down the line: Tera Melos, RX Bandits, Mister Metaphor; all bands that TSOSIS share qualities with. “It just fit so well,” Verrett said of the pairing with Cheek. “He’s from here, he records all the music we love, he’s really experienced in the genre. He just got us instantly.”

For months leading up to The Hangar recording sessions, the band practiced full-on dress rehearsal style, setting up microphones around them and demo-ing their songs in the living room of the house in Elk Grove in which Verrett grew up. “We actually share the same practice space as Damien’s dad does,” Seavers joked, referring to Verrett’s father’s R&B cover band formerly known as The Detours.

“Once my mom gets home we have to play a little quieter,” Verrett joked. “I really don’t like having to quiet down, these guys are always like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Verrett, we’ll turn it down,’ and I’m always like, ‘No guys, we don’t have to do that!’ It’s really funny, that has to have influenced our music in some way.”

This is a fair assessment, considering TSOSIS rarely use distortion on their guitars, giving their music somewhat of a shimmer and an overall easier-to-listen-to vibe than bands with heavily distorted guitars constantly blasting. “Damien and I both really like jazzy tones and stuff like that,” Seavers said. Verrett jumped in, “And all the distorted parts hit so much harder when they’re so infrequent, you know? If there’s hardly any distortion, you really notice.” Their songs are consciously “loose,” too. Frequently, the skilled musicians will slip in and out of one part into another, sometimes perfectly in sync, sometimes not, giving their recordings an organic feel. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Man we sound really sloppy, we need to clean it up,’” Seavers admitted. “But then sometimes I’m listening to another band and I’m like, ‘It’s so cool they’re sloppy, I want to play like that.’ It sounds a little more fun when people are sloppy.”

With a new EP freshly tucked under their belts, along with two others (2009’s Blue Version and 2010’s Red Version), TSOSIS has a plethora of songs to pull from when they tour throughout California this summer. “It’s odd that we’re at the point where people are like, ‘Oh your first EP is the best one!’” Verrett joked as our conversation was coming to an end. “It’s like, ‘Are you kidding? That was like $200 and we made it in like eight hours, and you think that’s the best? We just dropped a lot more on this one; you better think it’s the best.’”

The Speed of Sound in Seawater will play at Luigi’s Fungarden on Friday, June 17 alongside Town Hall, The Relatives and The Dreaded Diamond. Show starts at 8 p.m., is $5 and all ages are welcome. TSOSIS will welcome back their former bassist Lucas Ulrici for this show and a number of other performances this summer, as their current bassist Michael Littlefield will be busy recording with his other band, A Lot Like Birds. To learn more about TSOSIS and to stream or download tracks off all three of their EPs, visit Thespeedofsoundinseawater.bandcamp.com.

Sister Crayon Steps It Up Further on Debut LP

It was a gray and windy afternoon on the beaches of Malibu. A tidal wave warning was in effect, but there local band Sister Crayon stood, fully-clothed, sharp shoreline rock at their ankles, as photographer Eliot Lee Hazel barked orders to capture the frozen chaos of crashing white caps for the band’s debut album art.

Lead singer Terra Lopez slipped during one shot, cutting her leg, but Hazel ran his shoot like a drill sergeant. “He just said, ‘Get up. Don’t smile. Don’t look at me,’” Lopez said. “Well, he’s a sweetheart, nice guy, you can sit down and talk to him, but when he’s taking photos he is so intense.”

As absurd as it feels to the members of Sister Crayon, Lopez and drummer Nicholas Suhr spoke of the shoot as one of their most memorable music experiences–even though it had little to do with music. Along with Hazel’s artwork, the band has a high-def music video done by celebrity photographer Robert Ascroft. Browsing both photographers’ websites, perusing the tastefully gratuitous images of Devendra Banhart, Usher, Mariah Carey, Edward Sharpe and Brad Pitt, Sister Crayon will be the first to tell you how privileged, yet out of place they feel. Are these the last remaining minor moments of Sister Crayon before they receive Coachella bookings and Japan tour offers?

In the next few weeks, the band is playing humbler venues like Townhouse for the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival and Luigi’s Fungarden for the Bellow album release party. So our indie darlings have yet to grow too big for our sleepy city. Lopez looks like a siren Viking vixen in the video for “(In) Reverse,” but when I met with her and Suhr at Mondo Bizarro (formerly Butch & Nellie’s) for an interview, she was back in her Midtown garb, a second-hand green army jacket and jeans–the Lindsay Weir of Freaks and Geeks look. She’s still the same shy songwriter, fronting a gloomy pop act that seeks inspiration in the lonesome despair of poets like Jean Genet and Fernando Pessoa.

The Bellow sessions scattered across the span of a year and a half. The newly realized lineup of Sister Crayon crammed in 18-hour shifts at The Hangar with engineer Scott McShane, who described the process as “tense” and a “guerilla recording style.” McShane produced the first Sister Crayon EP, Enter Into Holy (Or)ders, and the band never entertained the thought of working with anyone else. “Recording already is a really intimate thing. We bond so well with him. He gets what we’re trying to do, even before we understand it,” Lopez said.

“He’s able to throw out ideas that’s not in an insulting way. It’s just full-on experimenting and you know that it’s for the best. He pushes us to succeed,” Suhr added.

The tension came from the hourglass pressure of paying for studio time and the unfamiliarity of having a new drummer join two weeks prior, writing his parts on the fly. Suhr was not a complete stranger, knowing Lopez from her stint in The Evening Episode, but he and Lopez talked of the anxieties surrounding a debut full length. “We were zombies. We’d spend 18 hours in the studio and you can hear it in the record,” she said.

Originally, Bellows was intended to be a five-song EP, written by Lopez and synth-keyboardist Dani Fernandez, with “I’m Still the Same Person” being the only pre-released song to make the album. But once the band wrapped recording those five songs, creativity was running high and five more songs were written collectively. “Scott kept telling us there was a lot of tension on the record,” Suhr said. “If you know what was going on at the time it makes sense. There was a lot of time spent coming to an agreement on things, but whenever we’re writing together there’s no awkwardness. It was easy to go into the next five songs with an open mindset.”

Indeed, the settling in is brazen and culminates with a spacious piano ballad called “Ixchel, The Lady Rainbow,” in which Lopez’s visceral croon soars over a piece written by former member Genaro Ulloa. “Ixchel” was the last song the band recorded, a one-take recording done well past the midnight hour. “We did it live tracking,” Lopez said. “He was in the other room and I was in the main room singing. We could see each other through a little window, but that was it. It was the first take and it was incredible. I know it sounds corny, but there were tears in everyone’s eyes. We were all exhausted. Even Scott had tears in his eyes.”

Suhr added, “It’s one of those songs. Every other song on the record we did multiple takes because we felt we could do better. At the end of that song, everyone was just like what the fuck. It’s one of those songs where if it didn’t sound like that, with the imperfections left in, it wouldn’t have worked.”

The gloomy pop instrumentation informed by the troubled words of dead poets is an appropriate setting for an album titled Bellow, but Suhr said a lot of the mood is owed to McShane’s guidance. “I heard the five songs written before I joined, but the mood had changed through Scott’s ears.” Lopez said his touch is most prevalent on “Here We Never Die and “(In) Reverse” as he took the band’s ideas and focused them into a cohesive sound.

In addition to McShane, the Sister Crayon sound, most notably the lyrics, is in homage to the writings of Fernando Pessoa, a 20th Century poet and literary critic. Lopez only admitted her obsession with Pessoa’s work. She has a Pessoa tattoo and her Pug’s name is Ophelia, after Pessoa’s secret crush to whom he never confessed his love. “It’s the despair,” she said. “It sounds dramatic, but he was such a lonely individual. He was very mysterious and obviously people are drawn to that.

“I think that is a huge part of Bellow. ‘Here We Never Die’ is my talking to a lover in that way. The despair and sadness that he wrote is so sad that I can’t even finish one of his books. I have to read a sentence a day sometimes because it’s so much. It just floors me. I have no option when it comes to his presence in my music.”

As intense as Sister Crayon is sonically and visually portrayed, Hazel’s insistency that the band stop smiling as the chilly Pacific waves capsized on their heads speaks of the band’s unbridled joy in its work. As arresting as “Ixchel, The Lady Rainbow” is, Bellow closes with “Souls of Gold,” a cheery campfire sing-a-long with a blasting brass section and woozy synths. “We’re always such a serious band and a lot of our songs are really dark,” Lopez said. “I do like that the album ends on a lighter note than what it could have been.”

See Sister Crayon live at their release party for their new album Bellows at Luigi’s Fungarden on Feb. 19.

Beloved Sacramento band Mister Metaphor to reunite for one night

Bands form and break up all the time; it’s what they do. What’s extremely rare, though, is for a band to become more popular after they’ve broken up, to gain hype without even playing shows, with no self-promotion whatsoever. Such is the case with Mister Metaphor, a Sacramento-based four-piece post-punk/experimental group who had a good, albeit rather brief, run back in the early to mid-‘00s. In order the achieve this sort of post-break-up popularity, one thing is for certain: the music has got to be really, really good to withstand the test of time, to remain relevant throughout the years and to not get lost in one’s CD booklet or erased from one’s iPod. Mister Metaphor’s music had all the ingredients: It was technical and highly skilled, but not so much as to make your head hurt counting time signatures; it was fast and high-energy, but not enough to scare people away; it was melodic and memorable, but not too pop-y or sugarcoated to make you want to vomit when the chorus came around. Their music had a little something for everyone, and it struck a chord with those who were lucky enough to discover the band, whether during their time together or after the fact.

Mike Sparks, Mister Metaphor’s co-guitarist/lead vocalist (who later went on to form the band Bridges, which ultimately became By Sunlight) knows first-hand the capability of good music to spread. “As the years have passed, especially the last three with all the touring that By Sunlight has done, one out of every two shows we‘ve ever played on tour some kid has come up to me and said, ‘Are you the guy from Mister Metaphor?’” Sparks admitted to Submerge during a recent interview. “For a lot of people during that time frame, it just sort of got to them. It was what they wanted to hear.”

Justin Goings, Mister Metaphor’s drummer (who has played in a slew of credible bands with regional ties including Playing to the Grandstand, O! the Joy and Jeepster), has had a very similar experience since they disbanded. “I’ve talked to so many people that have said, ‘Man, I never got to see that band and that’s one of my favorite bands,’ and I’m always like, ‘Wow!’ I’ve met so many people like that after the fact,” Goings said. Again, all of this is rather surprising considering that Mister Metaphor was only a band for about three years, played less than a hundred shows and put out two EPs, only one of which ever saw a proper release (Die on the High Road, released on Omnibus Records). “It was really brief,” Goings said of the lifespan of the band. “It went by really quickly. It was like going down a chute or something, and I got spit out the other end and I was like, ‘That’s it?’”

Turns out, that wasn’t it. Earlier this year, Francis Eastman, a good friend of the band and member of Oakland’s Echo Location, proposed to Sparks that Mister Metaphor should reunite for one last performance. “It was the end of the night after some show, and me and Frank were a little drunk and we were sitting out on his front porch,” remembered Sparks. “Basically, he asked that because he was turning 30 this year he wanted to have a Mister Metaphor reunion show.” Sparks agreed, contacted the other members and it was eventually set in stone: Mister Metaphor would reunite for one show on Nov. 6 at Townhouse Lounge in Sacramento. But who was this Eastman guy and how did he have enough clout over the band to coax them into reuniting after all these years? Surely the members of Mister Metaphor had been bombarded with random requests to reunite many times before, so why now?

“He paid for our last EP,” Sparks admitted with a chuckle. “He paid for it outright. It actually got recorded about a year or maybe even two after we were broken up.”

A-ha! Now it makes sense why Mister Metaphor owed it to Eastman. He had done them a huge favor years before by funding a trip to The Hangar to work with engineer Robert Cheek to bust out five songs they had written but never captured on record. Doing this show was a simple matter of paying Eastman back then, right? Wrong. It’s deeper than that. “It was a little bit more than that,” remembered Sparks. “He’s a really good friend of ours. And honestly yeah, fuck; we do owe it to him. But it just felt kind of right. We never really had a farewell show or anything. The band just disintegrated really, really rapidly.” Sparks recalled that they had attempted to do one final show after recording the Eastman-funded EP (which never was officially named nor released, it was only available online for free download via the band’s now-defunct website), but that it never worked out.

This time felt different. “It just felt like a good thing,” Sparks said. “Of course he instigated it, but I think all of us had this weird lack of closure or something. We never got to just stand there one time and go, ‘OK, here we are.’”

Thanks to Eastman, whom Goings even described as “somewhat of a fifth member,” that chance is finally upon the members of Mister Metaphor. They finally will get to stand on a stage and pay respect to each other, to their supporters, to the music and especially to Eastman. “This whole thing is happening because of him,” Goings said. Since it seemed like Eastman was such a pivotal part to this story, we contacted him to ask what it is about Mister Metaphor that he loves so much. “At this point, the band reminds me of a period of my life that cannot be replicated,” he said. “The original Capitol Garage always had rad shows. The local scene was putting out amazing music, and we were all sharing an apartment and doing stupid shit in our early twenties.” Everyone can appreciate that. Hearing certain bands can take you to a different time and place. Good friends, good music, good times: the recipe to so many of our upbringings.

“I feel like the big thing beyond basically saying thank you to Frank for paying for our record is I don’t feel like we ever got a chance to thank everybody who was enthusiastic about the band,” shared Sparks as our conversation came to a close. “It’s going to be an emotional night. There were a lot of feelings invested in this band, and I can’t wait to get all that energy in one room. It’s going to feel good to celebrate that band the way it deserves.”

Nic Offer of !!! Talks About The Weather

Creative people come in all kinds. The creative environment that works for you may not work for me. Maybe you need seclusion, a familiar place, peace and quiet, or maybe you require a Scarface-size mountain of coke and a room full of half-dressed, semi-conscious admirers strewn about the floor to craft your magnum opus. Hey, whatever works, right? For their latest album, New York by way of Sacramento band !!! literally traversed the globe, committing its latest batch of songs to tape. Strange Weather, Isn’t It?, the band’s fourth album, was recorded in New York, Berlin and even right here at the Hangar in Sacramento. Frontman Nic Offer admits that though it may sound exciting this probably isn’t the most economic way to work.

If hopping continents to record the album weren’t enough, !!! also underwent a series of lineup changes around the time Strange Weather… was written and recorded. Pope exited while the album was being recorded; meanwhile, John Pugh and Justin Vandervolgen departed before writing began (compounding the tragic death of drummer Jerry Fuchs in November 2009). All of these changes mean a very different !!!, and it shows in the music. In the following interview, Offer talks about his creative process, recording Strange Weather…, hanging out in Berlin and his signature dance move.

Are you guys into a lot of the Krautrock stuff?
When we first started the band, it was right when we were getting into Can, and we heard how they would jam for 14 hours a day in some castle in Germany, and that just seemed completely unreal to us. Now, with the change of technology, we can jam for hours. We couldn’t afford to buy that much tape and hire somebody for that, but now with computers, you can jam as long as you can stay awake and not have to stop it. And there we were in Germany with the opportunity. It was like living the dream, to be there and have nothing else to do but jam.

It’s interesting to hear you say that you did a lot of jamming when writing this record, because the album is very tight. There is almost a pop-y feel to it. Did that come out of the jamming process?
There are songs on there that are from hour-long jams that we could have [written] a whole other song out of. It’s like we would jam, record it all, then make loops of the best bits, put them next to each other and listen to them together to see where people got the most excited. Lots of things we had to let go come back in later songs down the line or something. It’s a big process of narrowing down that got it down to something so pop.

Was there an inclination to make more sprawling songs? When did you feel it going in a tighter direction?
It was really a conversation I had with my friend Margo. She was complaining about how our songs were too long and jam-y. At the time, the conversation kind of hurt my feelings a bit, but I just kept hearing her voice in my head as we finished the record. If anything, you just want to make something your friends like. If your friends are listening to it, not just because they’re your friends, but because they like it, then that’s a really high compliment. That’s something we’re always shooting for. We’re shooting to make Margo happy.

So she’s sort of like a member of the band?
Yeah, she’s our executive producer.

Was that something you were feeling at all–that your songs were too long, and when she said it, it kind of backed up what you were thinking?
No, actually, that was the thing. When you get criticism, sometimes it’s like you kind of did already know it and didn’t admit it to yourself. You’ll hear it and say, “Actually, that is kind of right.” When you don’t agree with it, it’s good because it makes you work harder to get your point across. It’s like, “That’s not working for people. This is exciting me. How can I make what excites me work for other people?” It just makes you hone it better. That’s one of the really good things about criticism. My advice to any musician would be to learn how to take criticism and find someone who can criticize you well and that you trust. That’s important too, because some people just talk out of their ass, and you don’t need to listen to them. To have a really good friend who you know you can play something for and they’ll tell you the truth is really helpful as a songwriter.

When you were recording out in Berlin, did you spend a lot of time in the clubs?
We tried to as much as we could. You have to keep it together and not get too wasted so you can do something worthwhile the next day. We were going out as much as we could, really–or some of us would. Some of us went out more than others.

Did what you hear in the clubs play into what you were jamming on in the studio?
Yeah, for sure. It’s a really good way to work, when you’re working all day, and then you go out to the clubs and hear the kind of things that you were working on and how they’re working live, and how they’re affecting people. It makes you pay attention to things differently.

During the making of this record, you had a few band members leave–two before and one during–how did that affect how you guys worked?
It was kind of something we rolled with. It was an unlucky break when Justin left, because he produced the last record. He really played referee between a lot of our fights and really understood us. He was in the band, so he understood where we were coming from and where we needed to be pushed. He had a technical head that a lot of us didn’t, but we just brought in another producer. You try to use what you’re given to work with. We tried to use the advantages of having a fresh producer to get a different sound. That’s all you can do. You make the record from where you’re at instead of lamenting where you were.

Did you enjoy having someone outside the group, Eric Broucek, produce this album?
Yeah. Sometimes it was a bit difficult, and sometimes it felt like he was a little too outside the group and coming from a different perspective, but listening to the record now, after all the fights are done, I think he did some really good stuff on it.

Was there combat between you and Eric?
Yeah, but there’s push and pull between everyone. It’s like he just becomes a member of the band eventually. He’s just becomes another person to fight with [laughs].

Is the fighting an important part of your creative process?
Uh…yeah. I wish it wasn’t. I don’t want to say that it’s the ultimate creative tool and that all bands should fight each other to make a record, but I think if you can learn from the fighting and learn how to fight better so you’re not hurting each other’s feelings and saying what needs to be said. If you’re letting the record be made, and you’re not criticizing it, and you’re not saying what needs to be said, the things you’re afraid to say to your band mates, they’re going to read in the press anyway, so you might as well say them now. I do believe fighting can be a powerful creative tool.

Getting ready for this interview, I saw a lot of videos of you on YouTube just losing it on stage. Do you have a go-to dance move? I noticed the one where you have your arms down at your sides and you kind of shimmy, I guess.
Yeah, I’ll have a lot of people come up to me after the show and say that they can do my dance, and they’ll bust into that one. That seems to be the one that people have glommed onto the most. People from all over the place, unconnected, would call it “The Penguin.” That works for me. That’s cool.

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.”

Sister Crayon to Release Its First Album as a Full Band

When Submerge spoke to Sister Crayon’s Terra Lopez, she and the band were mired in Southern California traffic. Currently on the road on the Broke Bitches tour along with fellow Sacramentans Agent Ribbons, Sister Crayon weren’t holed up “in a big van” like their tourmates. Instead, Lopez and company were situated in a cozy station wagon—a red Volvo.

Genaro in The Crawdad, a reliable yet cramped tour vehicle. She got us to where we needed to be

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Lopez says of Sister Crayon’s modest transportation. “But it’s been really good overall.”

Sister Crayon is still relatively young. The seeds for the band were first sown three years ago when Lopez’s prior band broke up and left her performing solo. She went on alone for about a year until she met Dani Fernandez, who plays drum machine and synthesizer for Sister Crayon. It was through this pairing that Sister Crayon’s sound began to take shape. Lopez says that when she was on her own, her music was “very quiet”—just Lopez and her guitar. Though she had used loop pedals and beat machines in her previous band, it wasn’t until she started working with Fernandez that Lopez began pooling all of her influences into her music. Lopez says that she and Fernandez “just clicked” and the two began incorporating hip-hop elements into Lopez’s not-quite-folksy singer/songwriter material.

“We both love hip-hop, but we like just all kinds of different music,” Lopez explains. “The first song we wrote together was ‘Lavender Liars'”¦ I played this weird organ and she just played beats over it, and it just stuck. We figured out that was what we wanted to do. When I met Dani, that’s when things changed. I was like, ‘I finally met someone who could help me out with the sounds I had.'”

Chelsea Wolfe and I at the Smell in L.A. This show was with VOICEs VOICEs
and had Keith Haring murals!

Even when Lopez was performing on her own, she recalls that she always felt as if her music would lend itself to a bigger sound.

“When I was playing by myself, I liked what I was doing, but I always heard more,” Lopez says. “I always wanted more.”

Sister Crayon’s sound became even fuller with the addition of keyboardist Genaro Ulloa-Juno. The band operated as a twosome for about a year until Ulloa-Juno entered into the mix. Lopez says that the multi-instrumentalist was an easy fit into the band’s dynamic.

“It came together really simply, actually,” she says. “I asked him over to my house one day to listen to some stuff and see if he could add any thing, and we just hit it off.”

The band grew even further only just recently. Nicholas Suhr hopped on board only a few months ago. Hailing from the Bay Area, Suhr is now Sister Crayon’s drummer, adding a visceral snap to the band’s ethereal electronic beats.

Dani at a mansion (literally) 5 houses down from Snoop Dogg. Crazy story how we ended up staying at a mansion but it was by far the best night on tour. Thank you Pomona, Calif.!

“It’s really awesome to have a fuller sound,” Lopez says.

Suhr’s drumming came at a crucial time for the band as they were preparing their first proper CD release. Lopez released a Sister Crayon album, Loneliness Is My Mother’s Gun, earlier in 2009 via Chicago indie label Juene Été Records; however, she says their upcoming effort will be more indicative of Sister Crayon’s current sound.

“That album is just my stuff; they’re bedroom recordings,” Lopez says of Loneliness”¦. “Dani’s on a couple of tracks on that as well. I never intended to put that out. I was just going to sell that for $5 at shows”¦but the label contacted me and they were like, ‘We really like what you’re doing. Can we put this out?’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’ They paid for it all, so I was like, ‘Sure.'”

On the other hand, Enter Into Holy (Or)ders, Sister Crayon’s upcoming release, features the entire band—including Suhr, who had only joined the group a “week or two” before they went into the studio.

Chelsea Wolfe, Nicholas Suhr and I passed out after the house party in Pomona, Calif. We were up until 5 a.m. with the most amazing new friends we met earlier that night.

“He had to learn and write all of his parts while we were recording,” Lopez says of Suhr’s kind of trial by fire. “It was really cool that he was able to do that, because we had all been playing those songs for months, and he had to learn everything in the studio.” Lopez called the recording sessions for the album “intense,” saying that the band was logging 14 – 18 hour days at The Hangar, where “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded, produced by the band with help from Scott McChane, including “really long practices.”

The intensity with which “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded is reflected in the music. Though Lopez says her lyrics and vocals are important to her, she says the album’s focus was more on the music.

“For me, for this album, I wanted the music to be the main focus because it was finally getting more intense, which is what I think we all wanted,” she explains.

Though her lyrics may have been more of an appetizer than “¦Holy (Or)ders‘s main course, Lopez believes the force of the band’s music has definitely rubbed off on her lyric writing. She says that her lyrics may have been more personal when Sister Crayon was a one-woman show; and though they still pull from her private life, her writing has become more aggressive. She says that the lyrics she wrote to the songs on “¦Holy (Or)ders revolve around the events of this past summer: including a relationship she’d entered into and a book she had been reading by controversial 20th century French writer Jean Genet. In fact, the title of the album is taken from a line in one of Genet’s books.

“He was one of the first French homosexual writers,” Lopez says. “His writing is really dirty and really aggressive. That kind of intrigued me.”

Performance-wise, Lopez is also no longer the quiet singer/songwriter with a guitar. She says that now that she has the power of a full band behind her, she’s had to become more assertive on stage.

“I sing a lot louder than I used to,” Lopez says through laughter.

Blessed with a stirring and soulful voice, a louder Lopez can only be considered a good thing. The band should be back home from the Broke Bitches Tour by the time this issue hits the streets. However, the band won’t be able to relax once they’re back in Sacramento. Lopez says Sister Crayon will quickly return to The Hangar to finish mixing “¦Holy (Or)ders so that it’s done by their CD release party on Aug. 21. Further on the horizon, Lopez says the band is hoping to have more of a nationwide tour, and in January, the band will perform in Spain, where their album will also see release.

Hardly Sleeping All Night

It wasn’t that long ago that a batch of pissed off, combat-booted, plaid-clad debutantes from the Pacific Northwest began creating racket in the garage, siphoning the marrow of blues, classic rock, psychedelia, punk and metal into a new kind of artistic fibula. The media called it grunge, but it was nothing if not a clean break from what had become a stale but ever-steady flow of rock-lite. To say that Sacramento’s Prieta is resurrecting the ghosts of grunge’s past would be wrong, and it would be incredibly stupid to boot. Which is why I didn’t do it”¦sort of. While the band has garnered (not unduly) comparisons to (insert genre here, anything but grunge) pioneers Soundgarden, the band isn’t out to emulate or revive a scene that died out pretty much exactly when it should have.

The band took some time out of their no-doubt busy schedules to talk to Submerge about, well, basically everything having to do with their band.

There’s an unmistakable late ’80s/early ’90s spin on blues, classic and psychedelic rock of the ’60s and ’70s in your music. It seems to remain almost exclusively true to that sound, with little modern embellishment. When you began, were you reticent to experiment with that to modernize it?
Alex Ayers (vocals): I assume you are talking about grunge. Which is a common thing mentioned to us, but none of us are huge grunge fans. We like select albums here and there, but that goes for any and all genres/decades. We have never even addressed the question of modern vs. vintage. There was never any expressed decision made in regards to our music. When the band was forming we would just sit around and jam out things that were easy to work as a group on. Our first batch of songs was absolutely not classic, so when the “classic” question comes up, we are kind
of dumbfounded.
Brian Breneman (drums): The part of the grunge thing I can understand is this: a lot of those bands took a decidedly less flamboyant, more back-to-basics approach to blues-based rock than what had been popular up to that point in time. But a unique take on the blues is nothing new. Bands from Deep Purple to Soundgarden to Queens of the Stone Age have all tapped into the same attitudes and musical conventions. I feel like we embody some of those principles.
Mat Woods (guitar): Everyone still likes Sabbath. Everyone still likes Creedence. If there was any decision made it was more along the lines of, “Let’s emulate bands that did a great job,” not, “let’s emulate bands that are doing new things.” But that is still a big “if.” All of the things I have written have been written because of something I was feeling or something I wanted to feel, and it really ends there.

In what ways did the band progress musically, and in your approach to recording, with your new EP, Sleep All Night?
AA: Preproduction: a concept we have to work harder and harder at every time we go into the studio. The goal of every recording is to, for lack of a better word, embarrass the last recording. We are learning right now. Yes, we perform. Yes, we record. But until we get label support, we are
at school.
BB: I think we’ve managed to make our sound even more focused. We were really trying to make a record that sounds like us playing in a room together. The less production, the better. Our heroes didn’t need a lot of technology to sound good. They wrote great songs and performed the hell out of them. From a recording standpoint, we just need to capture it.
Ian McLachlan (bass): All in all, it is the same as it has always been for me. As far as the new recording goes, I tried to not nit-pick the bass lines; work more off the cuff and allow a little more experimenting with amps and basses. We got to use a lot of different equipment.
MW: We figured out that the less we internalized things and talked about them the easier things were. We don’t talk about songs, we write them. Our most solid songs were written surprisingly fast.

What do you feel sets you apart from the retro rock revival, so to speak, so inherent in bands like Wolfmother, whom you’ve been compared to. Is your music meant to be an ironic homage?
AA: Not at all. As we have said before, our music is a result of many things; a sense of revival is definitely not one of them. If there is any irony around our band it is the fact that we keep getting compared to rock revival bands that we don’t even know about. It may seem like a small thing, but look at us. Only one of us has long hair, one of us types in an office all day, none of us have “style” we cling to. There is no image or sound we are going for and that right there is enough to set us apart from other dudes, other dudes that shop exclusively at their father’s closet. It isn’t us.
MW: Seriously. No frills. We are just an honest-to-god rock ‘n’ roll band.
BB: It’s just about the songs. I’m here to give something back for all the music I’ve enjoyed throughout my life. Sometimes it can be kind of a turn-off to see bands actively encourage people to not take them seriously, to stand behind a wink and not be giving 100 percent of themselves. I think it takes far more conviction to be able to honestly say that you don’t need to control how people understand your music. If it is real, then people will connect with it.

What has been the band’s response to such a quick ascent into the local spotlight?
AA: It has been quick, I agree, but we are nowhere near the spotlight. There are thousands of people in this town alone who have no idea we exist. We’re fuck all at this point.
BB: Thanks to all our fans! We’re glad you like it. It’s only going to get better.
IM: Any ascension is completely welcome to me. I am ready for it because I have been in a lot of bands that have received little or no attention. It’s not like it fazes me in any way. I have been hungry for this for years.
MW: It’s been a little unnerving. People think we have been around for years when we haven’t. We are just beginning. We’ve got a lot of shit to do.