Oleander Returns with a Defiant New Album, and a New Lease on Life as a Band

Don’t worry; you’re forgiven if you don’t immediately recall, recognize or even remember Sacramento modern rockers Oleander. Unfortunately, that’s just the way the music machine operates. The band, which got its start in Sacramento nearly 20 years ago, hasn’t released an album since 2003’s Joyride. Even more time has passed since the band had a successful single: 1999’s February Son featured the hit “Why I’m Here,” a modern rock radio staple that’s still played to this day. But in an age when content saturation—mostly online—is paramount for a band’s survival in the public eye, it’s possible that 15 percent or more of you have no inkling of what or who an Oleander is.

After a lengthy hiatus following the Joyride tour—the band insists they never broke up—Oleander have revitalized their outlook on being a band, and have taken their time to reinvigorate the rush of creativity that their first few releases inspired. Their new album, Something Beautiful, exudes that resiliency through powerful chord-mashing, heavy drums and anthemic rock ‘n’ roll. They’re ready to take the next step forward together, as Flowers discussed with Submerge from his home in Los Angeles.

Oleander has been described as underdogs. Is that a pretty accurate description of how you and the band feel?
I think the odds are stacked against any band at any given time to be able to be successful in the music industry. Very few bands get signed; fewer than that sell records. When we were coming up, we definitely had to fight our way to opportunities, and then we had to fight our way through challenges. We were fortunate enough to have achieved a certain level of success, at least once we got the first record out there. Certainly “Why I’m Here” went a long way for us. We’ve always played with a bit of a chip on our shoulder; that’s just who we are. After taking such an extended break from activity and the business, we feel like once again we’re going to need to defy some odds to reestablish ourselves. I think it’s a lot easier to come at it from a humble perspective rather than assume that you’re something that in reality you’re not. When you come at it from that perspective, you end up taking things for granted and that’s not a position we want to find ourselves in.

Things have moved at a deliberate pace for Oleander since you guys reformed a few years ago.
Yeah, we got back in the same room and back to enjoying each other’s company in a rehearsal setting, knocking the rust off of the guitars and the amps and reacquainting ourselves with some of the songs that we’ve played millions of times over the years. We slowly grew more and more comfortable with being in the room together and 15 minutes into the first rehearsal, we’d basically written “Daylight,” which is one of my favorite songs on the new album. We’re looking at each other and the hair on my arm is standing up and we realized that there’s something very special going on right now.

One of the positive byproducts of that break was that we were able to discard a tremendous amount of clutter and baggage that we’d accumulated after so many years of grinding it out on that treadmill of the industry. Constantly writing, recording, packaging, promoting, touring, again, again, again. The break really gave us an opportunity to breathe and gather our senses a little bit and get back to what we experienced with that first rehearsal where we were having fun. It wasn’t much fun toward the end before we walked away.

So it was more a series of events, not one in particular, which led to the hiatus for the band?
There was no identifiable moment. The year we started to step away for a minute was I think we’d come off about 200 days in that year that we’d been out on the road. We’d talked about taking a break for a while, a short break, just enough for us to go back home. You’ve got to imagine, when you’re living on the road constantly, we left behind our families and our friends, and we were missing out on birthdays and funerals and weddings and life all for the sake of promoting the album du jour. It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to do that for a living—don’t get me wrong, we’re incredibly grateful to have had that experience and to have it moving in the foreground again—but it comes at a cost. Before we took the break…everything we got into this for, everything we were enjoying at the beginning wasn’t there anymore. That’s not how it should be.

Did you always know you’d likely return to the project?
We didn’t know exactly when we were going to get back into the room and recommit to doing it again. I’ll be honest with you, we got home and it was really nice. The things that people take for granted or that they consider labor we considered fun. Doing dishes, mowing lawns, raising kids and having stability on a regular basis, that was kind of unfamiliar to us because we’d spent so much of our lives just getting into a vehicle, getting from point A to point B, waking up, getting ready for a show, doing press, shaking hands, meeting people, signing things, getting in the bus, taking off, going again. It took me about a month-and-a-half to get comfortable sleeping in an actual bed. I would always end up on the couch because the dimensions of the couch were similar to the bunk I’d been living in on the bus.

So then even when you got back into a room together to play you didn’t feel pressure to produce something right off the bat…
No. I don’t know if you’ve heard the record, and I don’t know what you think of it, but from my perspective it’s our best album to date. And I know every artist with every new album, they think it’s their best piece of work. But I honestly believe it. It’s a direct result of the fact that we had all the time in the world to spend every minute getting attention to every detail possible per song. We had zero pressure. We didn’t have a label over our shoulders telling us to hurry. It was just doing what we wanted to do, getting back to what we got into this in the first place for, which was just being creative. It’s very similar to what we did with February Son; we had our whole lives to write that. From that point forward, though, it was just a constant grind.

It sounds like a very resilient, uplifting album.
Yeah, it is. Something about this band and something about our experience as a band that harkens back to the underdog theme is that we definitely know what it’s like to get the shit beat out of us and to face a few options. You’re either gonna take the left turn or the right turn; you’re going to get up or you’re going to stay down. We’ve always rallied around our mistakes personally and challenges we’ve faced as a band and gotten back up. I really wanted to portray that kind of spirit and attitude in these songs, and I kind of always have. There’s a recurring theme to every album. That’s how my life’s been, a lot of ups and a lot of downs…mostly ups. We’ve figured out a way to turn lemons into lemonade.

Oleander is releasing their new album Something Beautiful Friday, May 3, 2013 at Ace Of Spades (1417 R Street). Allinaday, Track Fighter and G.O.D. open the show. Doors at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $15. Go to Aceofspadessac.com for tickets. For more information on Oleander, visit oleander.net, Facebook.com/oleanderband, or follow the band on Twitter at @OLEANDERBAND.

Bust out your best derby attire—or hit up local boutiques if you don’t have any—and head to the Kentucky Derby Buffet at Cal Expo’s Miller Lite Grandstand on Saturday, May 4, 2013. Wager in style and watch the sure-to-be exciting 139th running of the Kentucky Derby via satellite while pigging out on tons of great food and beverages. Breakfast will be served from 7:30 a.m. until 11 a.m., when it will switch to a lunch buffet until 3 p.m. Tickets are $34 per person and doors open at 7 a.m. Call (916) 263-3279 now to reserve your seat in the clubhouse or view Calexpo.com/events/kentucky-derby-buffet for more information.

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!

Folksy and poetic in the studio, Chicago’s Angel Olsen turns up the volume on her current tour

Angel Olsen’s name isn’t enormously familiar—yet—but once you hear her voice, you’ll recognize her immediately the next time around.

Olsen is on tour promoting her sophomore album Half Way Home, released by Bathetic Records and will be in Sacramento April 24, 2013 at Bows and Arrows. This is her first West Coast tour for a solo project.

The 25-year-old St. Louis native, now a Chicago resident, has been so successful that Bathetic insisted Olsen find a bigger label. They couldn’t produce copies fast enough.

Earlier this month, she signed with indie rock label Jagjaguwar, whose roster includes Bon Iver.

Olsen’s sound is distinct and raw, even more so on her first Garageband album Strange Cacti that she recorded lo-fi in her echo chamber of a kitchen. She describes her music style and dreams as “nostalgic.”

“It has a lot to do with what you’re comfortable with,” she says of why she chose this particular style. “Some people are comfortable in a certain zone. It makes sense to me in my mind. That’s real music.”

She indeed sounds like she’s from another time, invoking comparisons to icons from Joni Mitchell to Patsy Cline.

More contemporary comparisons could be made because of her folksy poet approach on some tracks—she would have fit well on the Juno soundtrack with “You Know Song”—or because of her Spanish and Middle Eastern influences, like on the track “The Sky Opened Up.”

She can quiver, yodel and deepen her voice in ways that lend her lyrics another dimension.

Her words are haunting even before the manipulation: “Deep in the nest of an endless dream, when a stranger thought becomes of me, it can slowly turn my blood,” she sings on “Safe in the Womb.”

Strangely enough, Olsen doesn’t give away any deep, dark secrets of her past in her music or in chatter. For now, she is a self-taught, down-to-earth young woman looking to make good music, and has already gained some life-changing experiences along her journey.

Look up Olsen on YouTube, and you’ll find her alongside indie artists Will Oldham, also known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Emmett Kelly of the Cairo Gang. Kelly produced Half Way Home and plays keyboard and drums on the album next to Olsen’s guitar strumming.

“We tried to keep it as simple as possible and not sound overproduced,” she says of Half Way Home.

You might also find video of her in camouflage pajamas as a shrieking reincarnate of German singer Dagmar Kraus, part of an Oldham side project called The Babblers.

The experience benefited her music and musician connections, more so perhaps than when she first entered the scene as a teenager.

“For a hot minute, yeah, I was in a ska punk band and into reggae, in the late ‘90s early ’00s,” she says. “It was a weird moment in my life. We had a good time, but at that point I was just singing in the band and writing lyrics. I still listen to reggae.”

Olsen has yet to achieve her dream of a future steeped in nostalgia. She wants to be part of an old school rock ‘n’ roll band, the kind where everyone is a part of the process—everyone sings and writes honestly and is critical of each other, she says.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s a dream. And once it occurs I’m sure there are weird dynamics and other stuff that would have to be worked out,” she says. “Now, people have to be everything on their own—they have to be sexy and dance—but all you really need is to just be able to play music well.”

This earnestness has paid off in the form of fans and raving reviews, and Olsen is a little closer to her dream with her current setup. Though she performs solo for parts of her shows, she also brings a full band: cellist Danah Olivetree, drummer Joshua Jaeger and bassist Stewart Bronaugh.

“We don’t play the same way the album was recorded,” Olsen says about the tour, which started at the beginning of April. “We practiced together for only four days and now we’re on our fifth show and it’s going great. I get to change the songs a little bit, and they’re adding different things.”

Olsen says to expect a louder band than what might be expected if you’ve heard her recorded music.

“It’s been really fun to work with a group of people who have been patient with me and let me direct them,” she adds. “I’m learning a lot.”

Catch her if you can at Bows and Arrows, 1815 19th Street, before she heads overseas to the Land of Guinness.

Angel Olsen will play Bows and Arrows in Sacramento on April 24, 2013. It is her last U.S. date before heading overseas, so be sure to give her a proper send off. Villages and Olla will also perform. Tickets are $10 at the door and $8 in advance, which can be purchased through Bowscollective.com. Learn more about Olsen at Angelolsen.com.

The Mondavi Center at UC Davis is the only venue in Northern California where the Joshua Light Show will perform with visually stunning effects perfectly synchronized to the music of ’90s jazz trio Medeski Martin and Wood. Director Joshua White is known for creating what he deems as “liquid light” and is renowned for his psychedelic appeal and credibility. Light has lit the way for notable band performances including The Who, The Grateful Dead and even Jimi Hendrix during the ’60s and ’70s in New York. Tickets start at $35 and the show begins at 8 p.m., but what’s more is this psychedelic event just so happens to take place on April 20 (aka 4/20). Far out, man. Visit https://www.mondaviarts.org/ for more information.

Black Mackerel’s brand of metal is a musical punch to the gut

Music has gotten progressively safer since the ‘90s—even metal. Nifty programs like ProTools have smoothed out a lot of the mistakes that used to make records sound more human, and the heavy use of effects have made guitars into sorts of musical science projects. These aren’t necessarily bad things—just another step in the constant evolution of rock music. Still, that’s why it’s refreshing to hear a band such as Black Mackerel, Sacramento’s grungiest and most primal metal band.

Black Mackerel’s frontline consists of Rotten Scotty Gardner (vocals and guitar) and Scott Clayton (bass and vocals), a couple of working class guys you’d be hard pressed to find a photo of without beers and cigarettes in hand, they say. They have day jobs and responsibilities—Gardner has an 11-year-old daughter—but armed with their instruments, the duo is capable of unleashing unholy levels of whoop-ass through their music. On Feb. 28, 2013, Black Mackerel released Fight or Flight, the band’s first album, which is adorned with a beheaded chicken on its cover.

It’s just eight-tracks deep, but it’ll only take a quick listen to realize the cover image is quite fitting. Songs such as opener “Poison Death Motor” and “Good Friend” are grueling, bottom-heavy grinders sure to get your gut rumbling and your head banging. Powerful riffs, brutal bass hooks (“Evilkenevil” is as catchy as it is heavy) and the full-throttle drumming of Slade Anderson punctuate what is sure to be one of the most memorable local releases of the year—in any genre.

The intense interplay of Gardner’s guitar work and Clayton’s bass playing stands at the forefront of the album. It’s a sort of sludgy stew—hot, chunky and wholly satisfying. Clayton, a guitarist by trade, brings a guitarist’s mentality to playing the bass.

“I keep the bass on the bottom end…but I totally play it like a guitar,” he says. “I just treat it like it’s a four-string rhythm guitar. I can slap-pop and do all that shit with my fingers. I could probably be a real bass player if I wanted to, but that’s not really how I want to play. I want to be rhythm guitar on the bass.”

“Scott is like the lead on the bass, and I’m more of the rhythm,” Gardner interjects. “We do everything a little bit backwards.”

Forwards or backwards doesn’t seem to matter, whatever they’re doing is working. But Black Mackerel almost didn’t make it this far. The band actually formed back in 2004, but with the passing of original drummer Kenny Mackrel, the band’s namesake who took his own life back in 2007, Black Mackerel’s future seemed unsure.

“We were going to quit, but Kenny’s brother Dennis told us don’t quit, keep it going,” Gardner says. “We went a couple of years with another drummer, and it was good, but it was kind of stagnant.”

Enter Anderson, with whom Gardner and Clayton also play alongside in thrash-punk forefathers Condemned?, a band that holds the distinction of having one of the first releases on venerable metal label Nuclear Blast. Gardner says that Anderson is “one of those drummers who won’t stop playing in practice.” This left Gardner and Clayton with two choices, “get mad or just start jamming,” Gardner says.

Gardner credits Anderson with getting the current incarnation of Black Mackerel up and running.

“I don’t want to stroke him too much, because when he reads this, he’s going to think he’s the bee’s knees,” he jokes. “He was kind of the catalyst for everything we’re doing now. Everything just started to pick up songwriting and gig-wise. He just started to pull it together somehow.”

“Slade’s been in every band there ever was,” Clayton adds. “It certainly didn’t take that much to make it work.”

Gardner describes Black Mackerel’s writing process as “open ended,” in which everyone has a say as to the direction of the songs. Given Anderson’s always-be-drumming mentality, and Clayton and Gardner’s eagerness to keep up, new songs can happen at any time.

“These guys will write something while I’m in the bathroom sometimes,” Clayton says. “Those two are just going off while I’m taking a piss. I’ll come back and I’ll hear a song, I’ll be like, ‘Don’t stop doing that!’”

Gardner even wrote a song on a short-scale Fender guitar belonging to his daughter, who also sings and plays violin; however, she has yet to develop an ear for metal.

“She’s into New Direction, or One Direction or whatever the fuck that is…Nicki Minaj and all that. I’m hoping she’ll get over it, but whatever,” he says. I don’t care what she’s playing as long as she’s into something good like music.”

Gardner says that a lot of songs Black Mackerel has written since Anderson joined the group didn’t even make it to Fight or Flight, though they may be released at some point down the road. And Clayton adds that the band is looking to write more songs to progress their sound even further.

The band’s immediate future, however, will involve playing shows here and there to promote Fight or Flight.

“We all have bills and day jobs, so we can’t take off more than four or five days at a time,” Clayton says. “We love going on the road. If they’d pay us, we’d be doing it all the time.”

He says he hopes Black Mackerel will make a run up to the Pacific Northwest soon, but in the meantime, the band will play a special show with Kill the Precedent and Murderlicious on April 12 in Sacramento at Blue Lamp. The show will be a benefit for their friend Tricia Duncan, who was badly injured after a fall. Duncan suffered some brain damage from the fall and lost her job and apartment as a result. Proceeds from the show will be donated to Duncan.

Music may not be Gardner and Clayton’s only concern, but having family obligations or day jobs hasn’t been a death knell for Black Mackerel. If anything, those things have enhanced their drive to create music.

“I think it keeps us in touch with reality,” Gardner says. “It gives us something to write about. You can’t love or hate anything unless you’re exposed to it. Dealing with people and everything every day, that’s where I get some of my influence. People piss me off, so I write aggressive songs about it and get it out, and then I feel better later. It’s therapeutic.”

Clayton adds, “It does keep us grounded. I would quit my day job if I could and just go play music for a living. It’s kind of tough to juggle, but you do it. It’s a labor of love. If I didn’t play, I wouldn’t get up to work in the morning. I’d probably be a miserable drunk by the railroad tracks.”

It may be a juggling act, but the guys in Black Mackerel are handling it really well. The band may be something of a throwback to a wilder time in music, but they’re putting forth a sound that’s just as vital and stirring as ever.

“I just wanted to do something different,” Gardner says. “There aren’t too many bands in Sacramento like us. I wanted to do something heavy and loud.”

If that’s the case, mission definitely accomplished.

Check out Black Mackerel, Kill the Precedent and Murderlicious at Blue Lamp in Sacramento on April 12 at the Tricia Duncan Benefit Show. In addition to great, heavy music, there will also be raffles and baked goods for sale. Entrance is just $10, and the money will go to a very worthy cause. If you’d like to listen to and purchase Fight or Flight, go to http://buriedinhell.bandcamp.com/releases.

Local singer/songwriter Justin Farren talks about his music and latest album, and why touring pushes his boundaries, in the best way

Introversion arguably produces the best artists. Those who can spend hours holed up in isolation working on a project often emerge with a gem. Land them at a party or social gathering, however, and they’re quickly making a beeline to the nearest bathroom or unoccupied space.

Justin Farren is an exemplary introvert. If he’s not out backpacking or camping, then he is keeping busy on a project—fixing up his yellow truck, woodworking or writing an album in his garage. For this local singer/songwriter, touring means treading outside his comfort zone.

You might not know it if you saw him perform, but it is nothing short of a challenge.

He was in fact on tour as he was explaining this over the phone, camping with some friends in Bellingham, Wash., and prepping for a show that same night.

Touring, he concludes, is good for him. Given any other circumstance, “I’d want to just go hide,” he says. But after a show, he has no choice but to open up and talk to people.

After three or four more shows along the North Coast, he returns to the Sacramento area for his April 6 CD release show at the CSA Event Center, celebrating the release of his album Another Bluebird Day. Then he’ll continue down to Southern California to promote the album.

This is Farren’s third album. With the exception of his friends Brian Rogers on drums and Emily Kollars singing backup vocals, the album is all Farren, from the guitar, bass, keyboard and shakers to the samples of him pounding aluminum cans. This project sums up his last six months, which were spent recording and mixing the entire thing in his garage-turned-studio at his house.

There is nothing obscure about Farren’s songs. Over immaculate finger picking and slide guitar, he sings with lighthearted honesty about life’s tougher blows, compacted into three to four minute folk pop, storytime songs.

“It has these kind of heartbreaking ideas, and I think that the whole album hopefully places these in a light of appreciation,” he says. “Stand in those moments where it would be easy to be depressed, and just appreciate that you got to have those experiences.”

Farren grew up in Elk Grove when it was nothing more than fields, long before it overdosed on suburban steroids. There are no known musicians in his family, though he says there’s talk of a bad-ass accordionist amongst his ancestry. But somewhere along the way, Farren taught himself how to play music, and he’s been at it ever since.

Within the last five or six years, he’s even been able to make a living off it. He’s opened for the likes of Hot Buttered Rum, Matt Costa and Jackie Greene. He was voted “Best Lyricist” in 2010 by Sacramento Magazine and “Best Musician” in 2009 and 2010 by the Sacramento News and Review.

Farren released his last album, Songs from Spare Rooms, in 2008. Those songs were all written in the two years he surfed couches while his house was being built. (It’s worth mentioning that Farren and his now-fiancée built their house in Oak Park from scratch, inspired by a trip they made to Alaska in 2004.)

“We thought, well, let’s just build a house and not think too much about it,” he says.

It’s where the two currently reside, with three dogs, two of which are lovingly named Pickle Breath and Mr. Pig. Indeed, they have been sources of inspiration. Pickle Breath inspired the song on the album, “Sometimes I Like to Kill Things Too.” Go on to Farren’s music page on Facebook, and you will see several flattering photos of Mr. Pig (who, by the way, needs a new happy home).

“Mr. Pig, the one in all the pictures, is maybe the nicest dog I’ve ever known,” Farren says with utmost sincerity. “So I can’t take him to the SPCA, I have to find him a home.”

Other than Mr. Pig, here is an excerpt of more interesting things that came up in the conversation.

So we were talking about your place in Oak Park, how long ago did you build that?
We started in 2005. It took a couple years, we moved in in late 2007.

What prompted you to do that?
The summer before, in 2004, my girlfriend and I went and worked in Alaska in a really tiny little town called McCarthy, just as something to do. We drove up and we worked in this little town, and a lot of the people up there build their own homes. Over the five or six months that we were there, we were talking to a lot of the locals and kind of getting inspired, like that might be some cool thing to do. We decided we wanted to try it when we got home.

I read that you consider yourself a little bit of an introvert, so I was wondering if touring was a challenge.
Oh yeah, it’s a huge challenge. It always has been and I think it always will be… The more tours I go on, the higher my threshold gets. I am able to comfortably sleep on a stranger’s couch and wake up and make them breakfast, and have a morning conversation with someone that I don’t know. Fifteen years ago that would have been mortifying and terribly difficult for me to even imagine doing.

I think maybe that’s the best thing I can do as a human being, is hopefully raise that threshold. Because the threshold is higher, I’m able to learn from more people and be around new ideas and broaden my horizons. So touring represents all of that, all at once to me, because I’m out and I’m sharing something that’s so important to me with people who have no idea who I am a lot of the time. It forces me to swallow my pride and just do my best and play the song, and hope someone gets on the page and buys a CD or whatever.

Do you generally write first-hand accounts when you write songs?
Yeah, in general. There’s a lot of first-person and talking about stuff that is affecting me. I’ve always admired writers who can read a book and write a song about a character in the book. I feel like I’m a selfish songwriter in that way, I’m always just writing about myself. But that’s kind of all that I have, that’s what comes out all the time.

It’s an outlet, then?
Yeah, it’s the outlet. It’s an outlet, and I try to think of the songs as a byproduct of living, and I want to live a really fun, interesting life, so that I can have fun, interesting songs.

Your music was featured on Laguna Beach?
Yeah, one of the songs I wrote was featured. It’s from the first album. It’s a song I wrote about my band breaking up. I had a piece of shit car, and I didn’t have much going on in my life. And they played that song during a scene in Laguna Beach when they were complaining about their car, and they were driving some fancy Escalade or something, and they were talking about how their car sucks. It’s an awful show. It’s terrible.

What is your least favorite song in the world of songs?
Oh my God, least favorite song in the world? I have to think about it, because that’s such a huge question. There’s just a dense forest of songs that I hate so much. I feel like it’s maybe the biggest question that we’ve talked about. For me to say that I hate it, I have to really mean it.

Justin Farren will celebrate the release of his latest album Another Bluebird Day at 7 p.m. on April 6, 2013 at the CSA Event Center, located at 1275 Starboard Drive in West Sacramento. For more info and to order tickets, go to http://justinfarren.com/ or http://www.csaeventcenter.com/

15 Years, 11 Tracks, 11 Vocalists, 2 Bandmates: Tel Cairo

Words by Joe Atkins

For the last 15 years Cameron Others and 7evin have been working on their material, laying out beats, loops, archaic recordings of bedroom beatbox compilations and reworking that material into new orchestrations. In the last two years it’s all come together, and now, as Tel Cairo, Cameron and 7evin are set to release their debut full length, Voice of Reason. The album itself has been part of the long process of self-discovery for these two electronic musicians. Their sound, their relationship to composition, their knowledge of technique and technology have increased with each singular endeavor, and the result is a precision track listing of rattling low-end bass and twinkling high-end melodies.

And I’ve yet to mention what, for me, is the most impressive part of the album: its list of local MCs and vocalists who dominate the lyric and lead portions on the majority of the project. It’s a list of past, present and future Sacramento stars, artists whom have been working the scene for the last two decades trying to lift the city up with their own talents and careers. There are individual appearances from Aurora Love, “This Is Not”; Agustus thElephant, “Music Box”; and Mic Jordan, “Electro Knock.” On “Twelve Paths Toward Movement,” Sister Crayon frontwoman, Terra Lopez appears alongside hip-hop local TAIS; Mahtie Bush spits verse after verse on the track “Illicit” and the unknown, yet powerful, Stephanie Barber holds down the hook. Lest we find ourselves stuck in the lady sings the hook cliché, Paper Pistols new lead, Juliana Lydell sings the verses to the high pitched chorus of Caleb Heinze, from Ape Machine and Confederate Whiskey; and Task1ne, Voltron reference and all, flows over the verses of “Evening Push,” before local legend Jonah Matranga gives his signature falsetto to the hook. It’s a list that’s both diverse and impressive, and it makes for an album that highlights the many dynamic qualities of music in Sacramento.

Breaking from some highly competitive Wii, 7evin and Cameron sat down with Submerge, and we talked about Sacramento, influences, genre, processes of songwriting and recording, skateboarding, musicianship, Ira Skinner’s beard and the talented slew of lyricists they worked with on the album. In addition, Submerge exchanged a few emails with the lyricists, and, likewise, we share their thoughts on working with Tel Cairo.

What brought you to Sacramento? What are the best and worst parts about this city?
7evin: I moved here about eight years ago to work with Ira Skinner, a good longtime friend. Sacramento has an amazing group of musically talented individuals. We like what’s going on here. The cost of living is amazing; you don’t have to feel so pressured. The bad part is that there is almost no monetary value for art here.

Can you describe your songwriting process?
7evin: A lot of times we start off with analog, a guitar, drumset, bass. We get in there and start doing electronics. We don’t do samples. We do our own tones and MIDI controlling. There’s always one part, and we shoot it to the next person until he can’t work on it anymore, and he shoots it back. We’ll meet once a week and we’ll work on that song. We made 32 tracks for this album and 11 made the cut.

What sort of influence did Ira Skinner have, working with him as a producer?
Cameron: Ira let us figure out who we were. He took all the things we’d been layering for so long, and we’d forgotten what we started out with, and made them sound amazing. Some of these things were already done. We’d put so much into it. We needed to step away a little bit.
7evin: He is so chill in the studio. He let us fumble around to find a niche, and the second he hears something that’s good, he’s like “Wait, go back! Let’s do that.” We have the first word, bounce it off to someone in collaboration; we get the second word, and Ira comes in; and we get the final word.
Cameron: In between there was also a lot of growth and learning on our side, with the programs.

Of the two of you, who’s the biggest perfectionist?
7evin: We’re never happy with it.
Art is never done. We just move onto another song.
Cameron: We look at things a little differently. I’ll hear things differently that he might not hear. Technically, I think he’s the perfectionist, making sure everything is lined up. I’ve tried to watch, and I’ll fall asleep for a little bit.
7evin: We tag team it, recording. I’m 20 percent deaf in my left ear. I don’t hear high end, I hear mid-tone and bass. You can see that and feel that live. [Cameron will] come in and stick this melody here. He brings the beauty to my dirtiness. I’m a gutter-punk; this guy comes in, and he’s playing 12-string guitar. We’re very similar but we’re like the Alice in Wonderland, Looking Glass Mirror versions of each other.
Cameron: We get inspired at the same time from different things. We get a feeling. It could be DJ Shadow, it could be anything, a country song; our creative juices start, and we just sit down and see what comes out. When we work together we balance each other’s ideas.

I know that every collaborator brings a different set of skills to the studio, the songwriting process. Who impressed you most while recording?
7evin: Mic Jordan is one of the smartest people in the world. He’s brilliant. Just kicking it, he’d expand our minds in so many ways. When he came in, we worked an experimental song; it’s not a typical hip-hop track. He rose to the occasion.
He has like four different cadences, and it’s beautiful.
Cameron: Jordan, for sure. Caleb [Heinze], I’ve known that dude for a long time, and I knew he could sing. The way he nails that chorus is genius.
7evin: He has a range that no male should have. We weren’t sure what to do with that track “Nirvana,” but Juliana [Lydell] approached it off of his vocal, like the ghost of the guy she lost her virginity to.

What was it like to work with Jonah and everyone else? How’d you get them to collaborate on the album?
7evin: They were all our friends, except for Jonah, though Jonah’s now friends and family. Jonah’s someone we looked up to, someone we’d seen as kids growing up, going to shows at the Cattle Club. We had mutual friends so I hit him up.
Cam sent over “Evening Push” and he just ran with it. He was so kind and gentle of a person to work with two guys he didn’t know. We sent a lot of emails backwards and forwards. We haven’t got a chance to do it live with him as far as performance. But we’re doing that on April 4, everyone on the album is performing. It’s never going to happen again. It’s like one shot.
We definitely took a Gorillaz approach with this. Terra [Lopez and Cameron] are damn near best friends. I knew Stephanie [Barber] from helping her and her sister with their restaurant, and that girl can sing. We locked her and [Mahtie] Bush in my bedroom with us, and it was like a Seven Minutes in Heaven kind of thing, writing a song on an SM58 microphone.
Stephanie Barber [who is quietly present during most of the interview]: It was really creepy and productive.

One of the ways I’d describe your sound is electric, post-grunge, skateboard culture, all grown up. You happy with that?
Cameron: I’m cool with that. That’s what I do every day, [skate]. Skate videos have helped me listen to different things. In old Toy Machine videos, Ed Templeton uses a lot of Sonic Youth. I watched them hundreds of times. It made me want to experiment with my own guitar.

Would you say your music belongs as the soundtrack to the cinematic build up of a riot or the post-riot moment of optimistic melancholia, where a new world briefly exists but won’t last over time?
7evin: Afterwards, definitely. After everything’s been destroyed, and we’re rebuilding. There’s healing process in these songs. There’s hope. Your heart gets demolished, but you can grow and
move on.

Tel Cairo will celebrate the release of Voice of Reason at Midtown BarFly, 1119 21st Street in Sacramento, on April 4, 2013. This will be perhaps your only chance to see 7evin and Cameron Others share the stage with all of the vocalists who appeared on the album. For more info on the show, go to https://www.facebook.com/telcairo, or hop over to Midtown BarFly’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/MidtownBarFly.

4 Questions with Mic Jordan, Mahtie Bush, Task1ne and Juliana Lydell!

How was it to work with 7evin and Cameron on your track?
Mic Jordan: They played me a skeletal version of the song they wanted me on and set me loose with no real guidelines. I definitely had input into its final outcome, but I also felt like, “OK, everybody here knows what they’re doing, they trust me do my thing lyrically, so I trust them to do their thing sonically.”
Juliana Lydell: They’re really open-minded, supportive, and enthusiastic. Creating with them is a lot of fun.

Can you tell me about the process, e.g. did they have the song done and let you do vocals over it, or was it more of a collaborative process where you aided in the musical composition?
Task1ne: They trusted my expertise and let me just record the track like how I usually do it with no problems. It was a blast. I fell in love with the track instantly. I’m a fan of all types of music, so it was great to get to experiment on something different.
Mahtie Bush: They built the track right on the spot, and as they did that I was writing to the beat. It just happened; we were on the same page. The vibe was ill.

What makes Tel Cairo vital to the local scene?
Mic Jordan: The fact that they are bridging the (artificially separated) electronic, alternative and hip-hop communities. Ultimately, what sets Tel Cairo apart is the fact that their music defies easy categorization while somehow sounding authentic no matter what territory it’s venturing into.
Juliana Lydell: How excited they are, how much they believe in community, and what a team effort they make out of the act of creation. They think big. It’s contagious.

How long until Tel Cairo achieves world domination?
Mic Jordan: Who’s to say they haven’t already?
Task1ne: A better question is, which one is Pinky and which one is the Brain? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Make sure you’ve got an empty stomach and clean palate on Saturday, April 6, because you’re going to need it at the Festa di Vino, going down at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center (6151 H Street) from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Taste wine and food from some of the area’s best wineries and restaurants while enjoying live music from Mind X. Just some of the wineries involved are Bogle, C.G. Di Arie, Michael-David Phillips Vineyard, Sierra Vista Vineyard and more than a dozen others. Participating restaurants include Enotria, Blackbird, Café Vinoteca, Il Forno Classico, Iron Steak and many others. If you get a sweet tooth, you’ll be satisfied by offerings from Cupcake Cravings, Divine Gelateria and Frosting Queens. If you find yourself needing a jolt after all that vino and food, fear not, Peet’s Coffee and Peerless Coffee will both be on hand for your caffeine kicks. Tickets to Festa di Vino are $45, but before you start complaining about how expensive it is, keep in mind this is a charity event raising money for Sierra Forever Families, a Northern California non-profit whose mission is to transform the lives of children in foster care by building and nurturing permanent families. To learn more about the event and to purchase tickets online, visit Festadivino.com and to learn more about Sierra Forever Families, visit Sierraff.org.

A couple months back, some girls repping the newly launched local clothing brand Be Eternal unexpectedly stopped into Submerge HQ and hooked us up with a couple T-shirts and some info about their launch party (which went down on Jan. 31 at District 30). We were immediately drawn to the laid-back, California-inspired designs and especially by the quality of the garments. With T-shirt weather here (don’t you dare, April showers!), we’re stoked to support this new local brand. According to their website, http://beeternalbrand.com/, their mission is “to inspire creative self-expression through our exposure to all art forms through the delivery of premium quality and authentic fashion products.” Their spring line, which features both men’s and women’s products, can be viewed and purchased online. Hit up their website and click “shop” in the upper right hand corner.