Hardcore Progenitors Shai Hulud Are as Pissed-Off As Ever

There was a period of my early 20s when Shai Hulud’s second album, That Within Blood Ill-Tempered (a particularly scathing hardcore-metal hybrid in which the opening seconds of the first song features a brood of super-pissed guys screaming “Rest assured! This is sincere! This is true!”), was jammed in my CD alarm clock, set to 4:15 a.m. every weekday morning. Literally, jammed; the thing was broken, so I kind of didn’t have a choice but to listen to at least part of the album every single day.

Fox was all too full of information when he spoke with Submerge in anticipation of Shai Hulud’s Sacramento gig at Old Ironsides July 27, 2013. Here’s how it went down.

Reach Beyond the Sun is your fourth studio album; the band has endured a lot of lineup changes over the years. How do you feel that affects, if at all, creative consistency within the band?
I don’t think that the content has ever lost sight. Since the beginning, I was the one writing most of the songs. That’s not to say that other people involved haven’t contributed, because I would say that everybody that’s ever been in the band has contributed to every album we were working on at the time. I love collaboration and I love to bounce my ideas off someone and have somebody change them.

I think there’s a very strong thread of consistency throughout the music. Especially with the lyrics, because I’ve been the primary lyric writer since our first singer, Damien Moyal. When he joined, he wrote all the lyrics, and once we mutually parted with him, there was no one writing. I said I’d do it, I guess. I didn’t even know if there was anything I really wanted to say. It was kind of cool that I found out that I did. Not that I have anything worthwhile to say, but I found out that I have a lot to say.

It’s cool that it seems like it’s not a parameterbased project; that it’s malleable and you’re willing to fold things in and out.
Yeah it’s definitely malleable, and we always expand our parameters. I think we’ve done that on every album. Reach Beyond the Sun is probably our most emotional and pushes some boundaries into even hard rock. When I was in high school, Metallica was never played on the radio, now it is. “A Human Failing” I could see, maybe when things get a little more extreme on the radio 15 years from now, getting played on the radio. That’s definitely an extension of parameter for us, because we’ve never done that straight-forward of a song with really catchy parts in a rock structure. That said, I don’t think anyone’s ever gonna hear the next Shai Hulud album and say, “Are you kidding? That’s Shai Hulud?!” The flavors are expanded, but not to the point where we’d distort our original core.

You started with you not knowing if you had anything to say, and lo and behold you did. How has that grown for you over the last almost 20 years?
Geez, don’t say that number ever again… Just kidding. I would say the first thing that comes to mind is that now I won’t put anything to paper if it doesn’t mean anything. I developed into having something to say and trying to make a point, but I remember when I first started writing lyrics, as much as I hate to admit it, I could go back and find some lyrics from the Hearts Once Nourished…era and I don’t really know what the hell I was saying. I don’t know that there was really any type of point. I was just kind of putting incendiary words together and hoping that it meant something to someone. They weren’t stupid, but I didn’t think they had the big meaning.

On the new LP, you’d planned on reigning in the aggressiveness and technical aspects from Misanthropy Pure, right? What was the reasoning behind that?
I guess the goal with Misanthropy Pure was we wanted to write the heaviest, angriest, most pissed-off Shai Hulud album that we could. And making it angry had a lot to do with us speeding it up, making it heavier, making it trickier and making it less predictable. Because when something is less predictable, it comes off as chaotic. It was kind of like when Al Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth [paraphrasing] , “If you were to throw a frog into boiling water, the frog’s gonna scream and kick and jump out. But if you put a frog in water and slowly increased the temperature, the frog doesn’t really know.” That’s kind of what happened; we were so immersed in the water of Misanthropy Pure that the songs that started out as being very much like Shai Hulud songs now went, “Hey, what if we changed this part?” OK, sounds great. We’re in the water as it’s boiling, so we don’t even notice the difference. We didn’t realize that we’d taken it to the level that we did. Ultimately I think it’s our most brutal album, but it definitely lacks emotion, which is Shai Hulud’s strongest attribute, in my opinion. That’s what we’ve always gone for, and we lost sight of that. Chad noted that, [bassist Matt] Fletcher noted that, even I noted that after I took a step back with this album.

Can you talk a bit about how the dynamic of yourself, Chad and Fletcher manifested itself during the recording and writing of the new album? Since you’ve had that history together, what was it like to revisit that chemistry?
Chad didn’t come into the full picture until we went into pre-production. Although sometimes, I would send him complete songs and he’d say, “Let’s expand this…” or, “Oh, I like this line, we definitely need to repeat that line.” He’d send over his lines. On a side note, that’s the interesting part about working with a producer. A producer, as far as I’m concerned, can be anybody. It’s just somebody with an opinion. It’s a matter of whose opinion you want to let in. That’s what we let Chad do, for sure. I hadn’t hung out with Chad for years at that point. I had no idea what it would be like working with him again. When we were last in a studio, he was a young kid and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. So we told him, “do this, do that” and he was 15, so he did what he was told. Now he’s a 32-year-old man…and he’s got opinions and he knows what he wants to do, and when he likes something. Even though I expected that, I never experienced it before. We argued like a family, and there were times when we very much disagreed and it was frustrating, but that’s happened between everybody. We went through it pretty smoothly and the dynamic of our personalities gelled so well that the result was the product that we had both hoped for.

His voice just mashes on the record. It’s an awesome thing for New Found Glory fans, for Chad Gilbert fans and definitely for people who have followed Shai Hulud for whatever amount of time. To hear Chad return is a pretty exciting thing. It worked out better than I anticipated.

Shai Hulud plays Old Ironsides Saturday, July 27, 2013. Opening is Early Graves, Summit and Soma Ras. For more information, please visit Theoldironsides.com.

Artist Susan J. Silvester finds a nurturing home in Sacramento

A blue-faced bunny girl clutching a limp, stuffed toy launched an entire series of artwork for Susan J. Silvester that she—and a growing number of fans—adores for its dramatic reflection of her dark, feminine voice.

Animals, imaginary lands, costumes, facial expressions and unusual body forms combine to represent Silvester’s self-proclaimed creepy genre.

The audience doesn’t really know if these forlorn, timeless beings are humans in fuzzy costumes or part human, part animal.

“They are sort of the same,” Silvester says from her home in Sacramento, where she does her digital work when not painting in her Verge Center for the Arts studio space. “I didn’t know that was going to happen but I’m a big fairytale and sci-fi fan (I love Dr. Who), so they’re human but they’re not. It’s creepy. It’s sort of based on medieval costumes that I saw and I learned how to sew. I do them kneeling a lot, so it’s an odd pose, because it’s kind of religious but kids do that a lot.”

Silvester’s first solo show, at Gallery 2110 and the Sacramento Art Complex, will be available to view next month and represents a psychological realm, another space that has to do with deep emotion and feeling. Think Pan’s Labyrinth meets 16th century portraiture.

At first, the art seems so sweet and delicate, and it is, but then it also conjures up feelings of entrapment and childhood confusion.

“I have a female voice, but then, I am a female,” says Silvester. “I just see that in the work, it expresses me. Even though these [faces] are not me they are me, because they are aspects of my personality, pieces of me.”

The first bunny girl was a result of a bad review she received while working on her master’s in painting at Sacramento State.

“Basically I got slammed in my review at school, and I got sad so I decided I’m going to draw people how I want to, and so I did,” she says. “I like people as animals. But it’s faux fur, it’s not real. I’m a vegetarian.”

The campus trees, squirrels and overall environment worked as a muse, as did Silvester’s more than 30 years of experience that ranged from Web design to art fabrication and replication animation.

Some of the particulars of these jobs are incredible. Silvester has built massive fiberglass sculptures for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, created objects like children’s toys for comic strip Family Circle and designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.

Her artistic ability and dark humor came in handy when she worked on Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios. Perhaps more impressive, however, was her work as an art fabricator in New York—her home state—for leading pop artists Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Marisol and Lynda Benglis.

“As an artist, especially in New York, you just survive,” she says of the experience. “That was all sort of dark and wacky, so my work is still playful and dark.”

While working on the Back to the Future ride, Silvester decided to go back to computers and stop making large models as she had been for sets and other artists.

“I probably created enough toxic waste to last 100 million years,” she says. “I made a set that was 30-by-70 feet out of that foam that never breaks down and it was huge and disgusting. There were these huge bugs that came out of it. It was horrible. I said that’s it, I’m done with this, and then transitioned into computers. It was a good call.”

Silvester feels her digital work is almost more difficult than painting because she sees every flaw magnified.

“It’s really labor intensive and a lot of people don’t understand but this is all hand drawn,” she says of her digital work. Sometimes I’ll scan in my drawing but then I still have to paint it. I touch every part of that freaking piece. And when you flatten things (in Photoshop) then you have to fix it. I’ll still print something out and will see something and no one else will but I know it’s there. When I started painting, I kind of missed the ‘undo.’”

Silvester paints using mixed media, acrylics and oil. She has also recently incorporated her sculpting skills into her solo genre, sculpting bunny girls using clay and covering them with felt. If she completes the pieces, she may also include them in her show.

“I’m trying to show where I started and where I’m going so it’ll be interesting and help round out the show,” she says.

When she’s not in her studio or feverishly fixing every line and dot on her digital drawings, Silvester is teaching at the Art Institute, a job that has helped her go beyond “just surviving” as she did years ago in New York.

“Now I can do my art because I have that [the teaching],” she says. Silvester teaches color theory, drawing and design at the institute and also instructs senior classes at the Natomas Art Center in Folsom.

The art scene in Sacramento is also more her pace, Silvester says, after honing her career in both New York and Dallas.

“Since I moved here in 2001, the art scene has changed so much,” she says. “It’s expanded but it’s still a core group. I like knowing the different artists and seeing what they’re doing.”

She adds that attending school in Sacramento and having a studio at Verge has also positively affected her work and given her the confidence and feedback she needs.

“It has been a good place for me and we just kind of share ideas and critiques, so it’s really great for artists.”

Check out Gallery 2110 this July to see more of Silvester’s creations. A reception will be held July 13, 2013 from 6 to 9 p.m. Visit Susansilvester.com to follow her work.

After a heat wave as intense as the one we just had, we’re looking forward to enjoying more than two dozen DJs and live bands over two days along the Sacramento River at the first-ever Splash Music Festival, taking place at Rio Ramaza Marina and Events Center (10000 Garden Hwy), on Saturday, July 13 and Sunday, July 14. Splash will not only feature international headliners mixed with regional talent, but there will also be a gigantic wading pool, slip ‘n’ slides, misting systems, water cannons and plenty of other ways to keep cool while the following DJs and bands blast through a world-class sound system: Darth & Vader (all the way from Brazil), Krafty Kuts (from England), Luminox, NiT GriT, DJ Dan, Trevor Simpson, Dyloot, DJ Billy Lane, Diamond Dez, Who Cares, The Frail, Element of Soul, G.A.M.M.A., DJ Whores, Atom One and so many others. Considering the level of talent, tickets are a steal at just $40 for a two-day pass. Single-day passes will put you back $30, so we say go for the two-day and make a weekend of it (limited camping and RV spaces are available, too). There are also backstage and VIP packages available; visit Splashmusicfestival.com for more information. Bust out your board shorts, bathing suits, tank tops and flip flops, because Splash Music Festival is sure to be a wet and wild time. Don’t forget the sunscreen!

Sonny and the Sunsets to appear at Second Saturday Art Walk

Sonny Smith speeds toward Youngstown, Ohio, for a Monday night stopover with enough songs in his pocket to make The Ultimate Fake Book blush. He is accompanied by the Sunsets, his band and primary musical accomplice, now the co-authors of four LPs and a slew of goodies in between. Armed with an array of stand-up routines for the hi-fi (“Maria Bamford, Louis C.K., Patrice O’Neal, Hannibal Buress, David Cross—it’s almost better than music,” says Smith), the ramshackle pop outfit from San Francisco is enjoying business as usual: touring off the latest record. This time around that record would be Antenna to the Afterworld—11 songs of death, love and sci-fi that mark a return to the tumbledown rock ‘n’ roll poise Sonny and the Sunsets evinced on the likes of Tomorrow Is Alright and Hit After Hit. Submerge caught up with Smith for a bit of the old how’s-your-father in anticipation of their stop at Second Saturday’s THIS festival on July 13, 2013.

I read an interview you recently conducted with San Francisco psychic Jessica Lanyadoo. You spoke at length about her thoughts on death and the afterlife, which seemed fitting given much of the content on Antenna to the Afterworld.
I’ve always been interested in death, to be honest. My songs aren’t macabre or anything, but there are a lot of lyrics, in the past records too, that are about death. I’ve had a couple people die [in my life], and it wasn’t something that made me sad or depressed; it was something that made me curious.

A morbid curiosity?
I guess literally speaking it’s morbid curiosity. But not only the afterlife or the afterworld, but all those things we’ve thought about as humans but really don’t [understand]—dimensions, other universes, alien life; all that shit. And as far as my beliefs, I kind of believe in everything. Although I wouldn’t bat an eye if none of that existed either.

So is this psychic a close friend or just somebody you happened to chitchat with?
I was bought a present from my band to visit her. I had no idea she’s also a medium. So within the session she said that I had a visitor and would I like to talk to this visitor. She described this visitor, and it pretty much fit this woman I knew who had died—an older woman that I wasn’t incredibly tight with, but knew her as a fan.

The psychic said she had some things to impart…something along the lines of “don’t wallow in loneliness; live, because I didn’t.” She’d had a son that committed suicide at a young age, and she was very depressed for a couple years and then died in her sleep. If you’re a romantic, you might think she died of a broken heart. Now, I have no idea if that stuff is actually happening, and if a medium is actually contacting the dead. I don’t profess to know anything, but I left the meeting just being inspired to think about the afterlife and afterworld.

Can’t hurt for songwriting content.
It was just really impactful. It’s not like you walk home and go, “I’m gonna write a bunch of songs about this.” You’re just kind of excited and interested in something and then naturally six months later you realize it’s worked its way into what you’re working on. My fascination with the afterlife was just a natural tie-in to my fascination with sci-fi… It just all kind of fit and became this record. Even the title, I didn’t make that up. A friend of mine was laying down a guitar track and he wasn’t happy with it. He said something like, “I need another beer or two for my antennas to go into the afterworld.” And I [said], “Man that is so beautiful. Can I use that?”

One song on the new record that grabbed me lyrically is “Natural Acts,” in which you profess “I was a freak, I was a dog” in the “graveyard of my youth.” Who were you as a kid?
I don’t know who I was. I think there’s a part of me that feels like I was and always have been a bit of a misfit. I would stop short of saying outcast, but I was one of those kids that always had that feeling, you know? In high school I was one of those stoners who kind of hung on the fringe with two or three people and didn’t mix. And before that there was some sense that I wasn’t a joiner, even though I was on soccer teams and stuff. Growing up and being an artist, sometimes I’ve kind of felt within a room but alone. A lot of songs are about being a dog, or being from another planet, or being a freak.

What were you listening to back then?
Well that part of being a kid was incredible. I had these extreme phases that would last maybe eight months. If it was fourth or fifth grade me and my buddies all chose our own band. Matt Penwell had Ratt, and Shawn McGuire had Mötley Crüe, and I had Iron Maiden or something like that. We’d be so into it we’d write “Ozzy” on our fingers. And then a year later I’d be into Thompson Twins and all that new wave stuff; we had a very distinct year of Howard Jones and General Public and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. And then a year later that was over and I was on a breakdance team and had a breakdance name. We were listening to Nucleus and Daft Punk and Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” I was one of those kids that was moving through these identity phases all the time. I don’t do that anymore [with] my identity, but artistically it’s why I like to move through phases.

Longtime Companion, if you’re talking about phases for the Sunsets, is a good example. You were into country at the time. You did it, and now you’ve moved onto something else.
Exactly. I want to have a band where people are like, “Yeah, did you ever hear that third record they did, that country record? That’s a trip.”

How do you feel about the scene in San Francisco and how it compares to other spots around the country?
Um, overrated? I know there are a lot of creative people in San Francisco, but I don’t always know why one city gets shined a light on and others don’t. There’s been times when Austin is thought of to be this haven for this, or Detroit is this place for that, but I went to Melbourne and I saw all these bands that were slaying just as much as when I play in San Francisco, if not more. Or I end up on a bill randomly with some band from Cleveland and they’re incredible. San Francisco gets a lot of attention, but most of the bands in San Francisco live in Oakland. San Francisco is such a city of affluence and influence that it’s kind of just sucking up the people around it. There’s certainly great artists and bands in San Francisco because people go there and it’s kind of a snowball effect just like New York; but there are great artists in so many places, I always feel weird thinking that San Francisco deserves some sort of extra credit.

Sonny and the Sunsets will perform on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at THIS, a new Second Saturday summer series block party that goes down on 20th street between J and K Streets (outside the MARRS Building). The event is free, runs from 4 to 9 p.m. and all ages are welcome. Opening on July 13 will be Kisses, Extra Classic, Brown Shoe and DJ Roger Carpio.

Stay thirsty and be sure to come hungry because the seventh annual Raley Field Brewfest not only boasts more than 60 beer venders at this year’s event, it’s also presented by Wing Stop. On Friday, June 7, 2013, starting at 7 p.m. the Raley Field outfield will transform into an all out smorgasbord with vendors laid out in a quarter-mile semi-circle, plus a stage set up near second base. Breweries include everything from Trumer Brauerei to Track 7 Brewing Co., and even featured ciders range from the Ace Cider and Fox Barrel Cider companies. Tickets start at $30 in advance or $35 the day of the event, yet there’s always VIP. For just $50, VIP ballers, or ticket holders, will receive 18 tastings instead of the 10 offered and allowed an hour early entrance. Whatever package fits the budget, visit Raleyfield.com for tickets or simply stop by the box office. Bottoms up.

How local graphic designer and poster artist Jason Malmberg came up through the ranks

If you look at a Jason Malmberg poster and you’re unsure at first of what you’re looking at, if you need a minute to stare and process, if things seem off balance, if for a moment you feel like you are looking at a worksheet out of a German school book—don’t be alarmed. This is just the effect the local graphic designer is going for.

In the ‘70s, even public service announcement posters were psychedelic, Malmberg remembers, including one he’ll never forget. It was of a sobbing child throwing his arms over his head in horror, except his arms were 13 or 14 snakes. The poster read, “Why you shouldn’t take LSD” and went on to list what happens in the first 15 minutes, and in the second.

Take a look at the poster Malmberg made for the Foals show at Ace of Spades last month, and in the midst of colliding geometric shapes, you’ll see two intersecting male arms, each turning into the head of a snake from the elbow up.

Malmberg sampled two to four hands, arms and snakes to put together that image alone. “I don’t like hacking on other images,” he explains over the phone from his home office. “I want it to be more my own.”

So he salvages bits and pieces from historical images and online library archives public libraries, sometimes drawing on top of them, to recreate entirely new concepts, often with a ‘60s and ‘70s feel. Then he’ll lay out some type—and as a self-proclaimed typography nerd, this is key.

For the last 13 years, Malmberg has designed posters for just under 100 shows, including mainstream acts like Mos Def and the Violent Femmes as well as indie rock band Foals and former underground pop band Luna. Next month, he will showcase some of his pieces in his second-ever poster art show, Modern Lehzure, at Cuffs in Midtown.

Visit Decabet.com and you will get a taste of Malmberg’s work. Yes, decabet, as in Dan Aykroyd’s 10-letter alphabet on Saturday Night Live.

Poster design is Malmberg’s ultimate outlet. What he hasn’t been able to get away with in his day job, he has gotten away with in poster art.

Within the last year Malmberg landed a job with a branding agency in Washington, D.C, where he is now developing his Web skills. Before that, he worked in print, as an art director for a handful of local publications, like Sacramento News & Review, Sactown Magazine and MGW.

While he was with Sactown Magazine, one of his designs popped up on T-shirts at Nordstrom sometime in 2007. You’d never know it, he says, and that’s probably all for the best. Unfortunately, his unique filigree design somehow became a part of the douche bag national uniform, he discloses.

Regardless, life wasn’t always peachy for Malmberg. If anyone has earned the seat they are sitting in now, he certainly has. It took a lengthy series of events to get him here.

To put it bluntly, “I’ve worked every shitty, low-paying job you could imagine,” he says.

This includes working fast food joints, at an eyeglass factory, in furniture assembly and smoothing down edges of windshields for eight hours a day.

Malmberg’s beginnings took place in Omaha, Neb. His teen years preceded Saddle Creek Records.

“It’s still not really cool to be from Omaha, but more than it was when I was there,” he says. “Now Omaha is sort of like a mini Athens kind of city—not Greek obviously—with their hipster cred. I was there in 1999, when it was a terrible wasteland and our claim to fame at the time, which everyone is still trying to live down, is 311.”

He studied under a “hands-off” kind of art teacher in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue, who provided Malmberg with just the right amount of guidance that made him successful. He had gallery shows before graduating from high school and went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Unfortunately, along with admittance into one of the best art schools in the country came unlimited pretentiousness.

He was surrounded by art students. To his dismay many of them were kids desperately attempting to fit social roles and convince the world they were someone other than themselves.

He quickly came to this realization: “I love people who make art, but I hate artists.”

He also realized that the Art Institute was not for him.

“I was making less art than when I was just a bum working at Taco Bell,” he remembers.

So, a year into it, Malmberg did what many students who find themselves in similar situations don’t have the courage to do—he left.

He returned to Omaha at 19 and began designing T-shirts for his friend’s skateboard gig. It seemed like a good idea at the time he said, but it didn’t last long. Then he took on the factory jobs. After that he spent three years as a rave promoter in Omaha. The last rave he threw was in 1997. It was going to be a huge party, outside. Tons of people were going to be there. This was the one that was going to lift him out of poverty, he thought.

Not quite. But it did result in him getting work laying out classified ads for a small local publication called The Reader. It started out as work to repay a debt. Up to that point he had never used a computer to design.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” he confesses.

The bus only ran twice daily between his place and the office, so rather than go home he would stay all night at the office and teach himself how to design. Eventually he was bumped up to art director.

Within about 18 months he redesigned the publication, drawing national accolades. Sacramento News & Review took notice and offered him a position as art director. He took it, and moved to Sacramento in 1999.

In 2006, he connected with the editors of Sactown Magazine when the publication was in its infancy. He became their art director, and helped create the look of the publication from its inception in 2006 until last year.

It was only a matter of time before he ran into local promoter and legend Brian McKenna in the early ‘00s. Next thing you know, Malmberg was designing posters for local shows on the side.

As his designs have improved he has become more selective about which shows he designs for. If he’s designing a poster for a show, it’s because he’s a fan of the band on the ticket. He doesn’t get paid much, if anything, for his work. He designed the Foals poster out-of-pocket. Hearing back from the band, however, is excellent compensation.

When Malmberg designed a poster for Luna’s show at Harlow’s in 2005, the band liked the design so much they asked to repurpose it as a limited edition sale item for their final show in New York. By the third show they sold out of 250 posters. The following year they used the design again for the DVD cover of their farewell tour.

Regardless of who he designs for, he makes it a point to represent the band properly through his design. For each band poster he designs, he’ll listen to the albums to come up with a theme. Each poster should have its own feel.

“You don’t want to be one of those guys who’s basically just churning out art prints and tacking band names on them, because that’s not cool,” he says. “If the bands don’t sound the same, the posters shouldn’t look the same.

“I don’t try to be literal or narrative,” he says.

That’s how he ends up with posters that look like German ice cream bar wrappers from the ‘70s, like the one he made for the Naked and Famous show. Both fun and grotesque, what looks like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wags its tongue beneath the noses of two interlinked revolvers.

Malmberg explains the look on his website.

“With the band’s bright candy-colored-yet-tasteful aesthetic in mind, I had the idea to try to make something a little European and a lot of odd,” he says. “I started out wanting to make something bizarre in the Polish movie poster vein but ended up with something a bit more like a German ice cream bar wrapper from the ‘70s. A little pop-art, a little glam, a lot of odd.”

Check out Jason Malmberg’s Modern Lehzure at Cuffs in Midtown (2523 J Street, Sacramento) on May 11, 2013. The event is part of Second Saturday. You can learn more about Malmberg at Decabet.com. While you’re online checking out his rad designs, why not check out Cuffs’ home on the Web at Shopcuffs.com?

The PedalHard Team documents their coast-free ride from Portland to San Francisco

Eight hundred and four miles in seven days, 26,000 feet climbed and about 44,000 calories burned were all well worth it in the end for cyclists Shawn Remy, Adam Beltz, Darin Morgan and Josh McCann. Their starting point: Chrome Industries in Portland, Ore., with San Francisco as their ending location. During their endurance-heavy journey, the guys rode track bikes (or fixed gears), meaning constant pedaling remained the only option mile after mile. Coasting was out of the question. PedalHard team manager, Remy, organized the idea and wanted to document the group’s experience, so he enlisted the filmmaking skills of 22-year-old Bobby Gee. With a GoPro taped to the hood and a handheld Cannon T3i, Gee captured Remy, Beltz, Morgan and McCann’s entire venture up and down the Pacific Northwest coast, forever cementing their achievement in the short documentary No Coast.

“When you have a track bike, you deal with what you have in front of you,” explains Remy. “It’s your push and your motivation to make it on that single speed. For me, [cycling] is more mental. It’s just a passion that I have. I am so intrigued by how it makes me feel.”

The whole project began with Remy’s urge to ride 200 miles from Sacramento to San Francisco last July. The ride took him a total of 11 hours and 20 minutes with him starting at 5 a.m., arriving in San Francisco by 1 p.m. and getting home to the PedalHard headquarters (1703 T Street) by 7:30 p.m. that evening. After the miles were logged, Remy, now inspired to ride further, began organizing a bigger plan and a longer trip with No Coast.

“It’s just a small documentary. It’s not super long,” says Remy. “It’s just to share what we’re doing in Sacramento and how good of a thing we have going. It was just a group of friends that went out and worked together as a team and made something really cool happen; positive things.”

After arranging bike races to raise money in Land Park, gathering sponsors like Chocolate Fish coffee roasters, American Icon Wheels, Cadence Cycling in Philadelphia and hand picking his team, Remy says the financial and major detail worries of their trip finally melted away as soon as they arrived in Portland. During the film, Gee, who also happens to be a mechanic at The Bicycle Business (3077 Freeport Boulevard) and driver Jordan Yee, both followed the four men in an assist vehicle, lending a hand with broken bicycle chains, flat tires or general first aid if needed.

“We were lucky to have the assist vehicle with the cameras,” says Beltz. “If we ever had bike trouble, we could get in touch with them and Bobby and Jordan were amazing in the sense that any time we had a flat or a bike issue, they took care of it. All we had to do was relax and eat food while we were stopped and get water. That was really helpful.”

Ask the guys what day proved the most difficult and all will agree—day one. But not because of hundreds of miles logged or steep elevations. Try 20 MPH head winds and seven hours worth of storm to welcome the beginning of their expedition. Still, Beltz describes the remainder of the trip full of light winds, sunshine and temperatures ranging from 65 to 75 degrees instantly changing any doubts the riders developed.

“We wanted everyone who started to finish,” says Beltz. “Most of this ride is climbing or descending. I can count on one hand how many times I remember riding just a stretch of flat. We would spend half the day climbing something and the rest of the half of the day going down it. We were on the bike like six to eight hours a day.”

The documentary is filled with landscape shots of both cities, architecturally pleasing buildings and moments where the four ride across bridges. There are both sunrises and sunsets as backdrops, and dramatic slow motion shots displaying the gusty weather blowing against the cyclists’ gear. All of this was filmed by Gee mostly hanging out a window recording every aspect of their story.

“The things that I like about shooting and filming is just detail, it has a lot to do with detail and bicycles have a lot to do with detail,” describes Gee. “I like showing people what I see. I don’t like to communicate with people. I don’t like talking. I just like to look at stuff and observe.”

The screening is set for 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 11 at Hot Italian (1627 16th Street). With this day nearing, all involved in No Coast stress they aren’t looking for pats on the back or praise for finishing over 800 miles in seven days. Instead they simply aim to educate viewers about track bikes and share a story of four friends accomplishing a goal that began with a small idea, then a bigger idea, which eventually evolved into their finished product.

“The film itself isn’t about, ‘Hey, look what we did, we rode our track bikes from Portland to San Francisco, wow we’re so amazing,’” explains Beltz. “That’s not what it’s about. There are a lot of people that go and do that. It’s more about if you love cycling and you love the Northwest coast, you’re going to see both of those and it’s going to be put together in a beautiful way. That’s what it’s really about.”

For Remy, the greatest moment experienced was riding across the Golden Gate Bridge, his friends behind him and knowing their last destination was now only five miles away.

“I just get the biggest high from cycling and accomplishing a big ride like that,” says Remy. “My endorphins just went off… For me, it was like, ‘We did it.’ It was just like that nice peaceful moment of silence and I was just staring off into the Bay, I was going across the bridge and I just wanted to cry with happiness and laughter.”

Check out the official premiere of No Coast at Hot Italian on May 11,2013 at 9 p.m. Admission to this event is free! If you’d like to learn more about the PedalHard Team, visit their headquarters in Sacramento (1703 T Street) or online at Pdlhrd.tumblr.com.

Amy Schumer is easily one of the fastest rising female stars in comedy. Her girl-next-door looks meets raunchy comedy routine has worked out well for her. She’s been on all the late-night talk shows (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Conan, etc.), featured in the biggest publications (Rolling Stone, The New York Times, etc.) and her one-hour stand-up special, Mostly Sex Stuff, was Comedy Central’s second-highest rated special last year. On April 30 her own show (also on Comedy Central) premiered called Inside Amy Schumer (you can watch the hilarious first episode at Comedycentral.com/shows/inside-amy-schumer). For the last couple of months, Schumer has taken her act on the road, and on Thursday, May 2, she’ll be at Crest Theatre, located at 1013 K Street in Sacramento. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $32.50 before fees, available online at Tickets.com. This would make for a fun night out with a group of friends or a great date night, although probably not a great first date as most of Schumer’s material deals with sex and other generally awkward topics that might just be too weird for a new couple. Or, heck, maybe it’ll be a good show for new couples to attend. Might as well just get those morning-after-pills-jokes out of the way early!