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July 2010

HEY, BABY

It’s the Fourth of July. Cottage Grove, in the OR. Two hawks waken in the upper floor bunks in Stacey’s doll house shaped guest house in her green and veggie filled back yard. Below us Dave Zirbel, a late retirer and early riser, has already flown, off to Portland to play the Waterfront Blues Fest with Commander Cody. We descend the treacherous and cracking ladder that’s going to gravely injure some drunk traveling troubadour in the near or distant future and pack up the Yukon. Stacey’s mom, who owns the organic espresso bakery next to the Axe and Fiddle (this town has an astonishingly high ratio of cool things), has left us a big care package of fantastic scones, carrot muffins, and cookies. They are seriously big league baked goods. We give a limitless Hawks 10+ on the HFR scale. We hit a ubiquitous Oregon-only parking lot espresso hut generous enough to be open on our National Holiday, and order cappuccinos and smoothies. We are fueled. The Yukon is fueled. Shawn Nourse, trucker’s son, is at the wheel. We find Deep Tracks on Sirius XM radio. Homeward! It’s a good start south.

PERFECT TRAVEL WEATHER. NORTH TO PORTLAND. NEW VENUE. SOUTHWARD JOURNEY BEGINS.

A Holiday Inn Express Complimentary Breakfast is not something you want to indulge in two days in a row. But it’s here, it’s free, and it ends at 9:30 a.m. So here we are. The less said the better. Yet this is our first spell of two nights sleeping in the same place. That alone is worth plenty when out on the road. We pack up and motor north back to Portland, and it is beautiful travel weather, a spattering of rain, brooding clouds, temperature just a few degrees cool of perfect. Which is perfect.

The brand new Alberta Rose Theater is in fact a tastefully done renovation of a 1920’s movie theater, with original naive deco lines highlighted in black and white in a cavelike interior. A romantic and heavy atmosphere that focuses your attention on the stage. We elect to do an acoustic show, sound check accordingly, and wander to twilight around the newly hip tree shaded neighborhood, which is in the terminal stages of gentrification/restoration itself, beautiful old homes on sidewalks stamped 1910, grassy alleys where we can peer into yards luxurious with studiously unkempt flowerage and vegetable plots. Lewey Longmire, an eccentric of indeterminate mix of parts calculation and cards dealt from the Deck of Life, belts out songs with strong and nicely orchestrated solo acoustic guitar. Cabinessence follows, laying down rich retro pop textures on bass, drums, B3 and telecaster with nice tremelo and enviable occasional fuzztone. Nice. Nice guys, too. We take the stage, proceed to do our acoustic thing. Man, vocals sound great in this big room.

Next morning Three Hawks returned to the hip Alberta Rose neighborhood for a surefire Portland enlightened breakfast, and we were not disappointed. Vita, across from the Theater, is good for breakfast; we can and will vouch for that. We rendezvous with Rob, who breakfasted with old friends newly embedded in Portland, pack up and exit the Inn des Holidays, with its trademark heavy chlorine cloud and green logo.

South to Eugene, where we do a live performance/interview on cool alternative KRVM, with equally cool alternative DJ Tim Little, with spectacular braided pony tail and a life history very similar to the narrative in our song Raised By Hippies, which we did indeed perform. Further south, narrow I-5 through replanted evergreen forests to the charming burg of Cottage Grove. Classic comedy fans with recognize Main Street as the location for the parade scene climax of “Animal House.”

It’s July 3, and all is quiet in these 19th century streets, two story brick buildings, a machine gun shop, one room museum with a pretty stunning life size plus carving of a gold panning prospector carved from a single piece of redwood, its polished curves a visual lesson in the various angles and patterns that can be cut into the growth rings of lumber. Look closely and you can see Jim Belushi dressed as a pirate swinging from the second floor balcony and riding off with the Jackie O dressed sorority queen. The River Road winding sleepy through town is the original pioneer trail running south to California. This town is a real throwback, not a lot of fences between homey old wood frame houses, couches in the side yard, peace and plenty, nestled in forested hills. A beautiful golden and green hill meadow overlooks the north end of town.

We load our gear into the Axe and Fiddle, yet another funky luddite pleasing wood bar that Oregon is blessed with. The charming barmaid is from Cornwall and Florida, claims that Brits think she has an American accent. The Axe and Fiddle serves a hearty and complex salmon chowder and patented Beans And Greens® salad, with some great local beers on tap. Life is good, and it’s only late afternoon. Or is it later than we think? The days linger long up here.

Our portal to the cosmos, Dave Zirbel, magician of pedal steel and Life Itself, pulls up after a long drive from Sonoma, looking fresh as a daisy. We crowd our expanded Hawks ensemble onto the small stage, Fred the cool modern hippie soundman dials us up, and we retire to a hotel room and a cottage in the back of our friend Stacey’s 1910 wood siding house. Paul L hikes up the gravel road at edge of hamlet to the aforementioned green and golden hill of tall grass waving in setting sun light. A yearning for a different kind of life. Days that could have been, as Jim Lauderdale and Hunter say. Ah, but life is very good. Couldn’t be better. We’ll be back with our loved ones in 48 or 64 hours, depending on how aggressively we attack the 5 South.

Nine fifteen p.m., on this the 3rd of July in the year of 2010, on Main Street in Cottage Grove, Oregon: we take the stage and kick into an hour and a half of country rock shimmer. It all jelled among the steel strings, the voices, the groove. We veered from the psychedelic peaks of Tele and ten string to the Bakersfield wood floor of Paul Marshall’s honky tonk classics, onto the Oregon Trail and through the thirsty dry grass of the Grapevine. It was just great. Our Oregon string of small but big crowds is intact. Good vibes, good late night hang with Axe and Fiddlers and new fans, and now good night. We climb the rickety staircase up into the loft in the cottage in the lush garden behind friend and booker Stacey’s lovely Cottage Grove castle and fall to sleep in the cool and clean summer air.

PS — Dear reader, questions came up in the post show conversation with our hosts at barside: Is Nitro IPA pressurized by nitrous oxide instead of CO2? Is NO2 a contributor to greenhouse gas? Does the nitrous oxide permeate the beer, giving it the same nitrous brief marijuana-style high? If you become good friends with your bartender, is it good form for him to offer you shots of nitrous from the tank?

PPS — And–is the phrase “same as it ever was” an actual folk saying, or a modern simulation concocted by David Byrne? Paul L claims the phrase never existed before Talking Heads. Rob, Shawn, and Paul M are certain it existed going way back. Help us.

DARK PASSAGE PASSAGE

Day dawned gray of course, but the sun prevailed and kind breezes stirred the old (new) growth woods around Michael O’Neill’s beautiful hilltop acres south of Seattle and somewhere in the vicinity of Bill Gates’ Dark Lair. In the just passed wee hours of dark night on the tour bus parked in big trees, the other Hawks own melancholy had swooped into the depths, pulling Paul L’s spirit from its penumbral proneness. Misery loves company, and needs it even more. So give of your time generously to the miserable. Or don’t. The chilly bus had warmed up around 4 a.m. and we all slept well. Morning. We can see clearly now. We checked out the O’Neill chicken coop and expansive vegetable garden. Michael cooked up eggs and taught us the subtleties of hillbilly golf on his lawn, then recorded us in his studio for a radio show. A generous man. Passage is complete.

South to Portland, which has late afternoon eco-traffic that looks a lot like L.A. anti-eco-traffic. We flirt with lateness but arrive with our patented mysterious unexpected promptness©® for our show at Music Millennium record store. The record store folks are nice, the crowd is appreciative. The band attempts to get collective haircuts but the $5 stylist next door is giving a perm that will likely take the rest of the afternoon. Katie W and Rob activate their scarily efficient cyber research team through iPhone interstate communication, and guide us to a very good Persian restaurant in Tigard, vaguely near and perhaps even adjacent to Portland. The reviews accurately warn of a strict and intimidating owner but we quickly win her over with our calculated politeness and country rock charm.

Where is Tigard? What spawned its existence? Lumber? Tin? Did it exist five years ago? Did it have a Barnes and Noble and Staples five years ago? Wherever we go, there are people. Lots of them. Lots of new stuff. If we were sensitive, we might feel a mild panicky claustrophobia. But we’re not sensitive. Are we sensitive?

ARE THE HAWKS REDNECKS?

We buy a bottle of Eagle Rare small distillery single cask sophisticated bourbon at the government liquor store ruled by a sour faced mom and pop clerk team. Rob picks up a proven bottle of screw top french red and a smoked Gouda at the recommend local Whole Foods-lite. We hit the road south in the long northern twilight and hit Eugene late, check in at newly constructed Holiday Inn Express at the freeway exit. Eugene is close to the 45th Parallel, this is as far north as the Hawks go. It’s our first night not in the company and kindness of hosts, and we intend to revert to our crude hotel lifestyle of bourbon, herb, bad TV, and public farting. But the flesh is weak, and this band is beat. Long drives, many gigs, too much social stimulation. A few sips of 51% corn based intoxicant in plastic Inn cups and we’re snoring while Harry Potter pouts and conjures on the flat screen TV.

We awake in an outer (inner) ring of Eugene, rife with ARCO (which by the way is a BP subsidiary, tip for you righteous boycotters) and Denny’s, far from hippie coffee grooviness. What the hell–it’s free, it’s here, and it ends at 9:30 a.m. We succumb to the Holiday Inn Express Complimentary Breakfast: omelettes of suspicious terroir, with even more suspicious provenance cheese-like filling, cinnamon buns warming in their plastic carton on the hot buffet cart, cereals pushing their preservatives to the edge of decency in big plexiglas dispensers. This is where Paul L gets a bit desperate. He knows we’re in a town bursting with hip homey boho breakfast joints. So near and yet so far. The guitarist threatens to revive his 24 hour losing streak with an act of self loathing on the level of a voluntary visit to Quizno’s–here’s a little recipe from a man who needs help: fill smallish paper bowl with generic raisin bran; slice bananas onto cereal; pour hot coffee with half and half and honey onto the cereal; take hot cinnamon bun, crumble and sprinkle over cereal; top off with quarter carton of soy milk. As delicious as it is wrong.

Half a day to explore Eugene. Rob at the wheel of the Yukon, GPS triangulating iPhone in right hand, threaded the kind small town Eugene inner grid to a modest and excellent coffeehouse, with expert young bearded baristas. Cappuccinos and strudel can provide great energy and mental acumen in a delightful package. Try it sometime. We drive westward out of Eugene outskirts and along a winding wooded narrow highway to a trail head in tall trees and trekked a series of trails, tunneled by glowing green vines and shaded above by redwoods, to the top of Spencer Butte. The view was spectacular in a soft and nurturing way, like a County Kerry vista. (Or Calvin Klein jeans.) The town of Eugene is not pretty from above, flat roofs in a grid extending west, but it’s a small annoyance in 360 degrees of rich riverbottom green fields, intriguing still wet (dry) farming plateaus and downslopes to tree lined streams, dense woods crisscrossing fields and covering upper slopes, hills of green turning to blue soft hazy mountains in the far distance, visibility enhanced by the cloud filtered light. This could be the best urban adjacent hike we’ve ever done.

A late afternoon nappy nap (bookie wook) and we’re off to Sam Bond’s Garage, which was indeed a car garage for Model T’s in Eugene’s Age of Robustness — when American men worked on their cars, not on their tans. (Coincidently, that was the never-used title or RW’s PHd dissertation in American Studies before he dropped out of the U of O). We meet an older gentlemen who did in fact know old Sam Bond. Sam Bond is real. The club is right up our alley, kinda honky tonk of the woods with sophisticated and well executed organic food, local beers of esoteric intent on tap. Our friends from Bend and good old friends Nick and Klara from the glory days of Cole’s walk in, to our grateful delight. Nick and Klara are architects, creatures of light in a darkening globe. Despite our long absence from Eugene,* we have an enthusiastic crowd. A good sound man, beer flowing like wine, new tunes, and life is good.

*And a local newspaper writeup that is faint praise epitomized, but does nicely confirm a pattern in our reviews history: when a writer says there are no hawks in L.A., they’re guaranteed to be flummoxed by our music.

DARK PASSAGE

Paul L couldn’t shake the ticket. It haunted him. As Paul M took over the wheel and powered us, at reasonable and legal speed, to Seattle, Paul L brooded, considering and reconsidering the $287 fine in all its permutations and implications. Let’s see, that knocks my probably take home considerably. No, just amortize it. When’s the last time you got a ticket? In Texas, again trying to gain time and distance for the Hawks. Those damn Hawks. They’re going to kill my driving record. Why am I out here? Everywhere we go there are suburbs and Barnes and Nobles and Targets. We’re a pimple on the obese corpus of American biomass. Two hundred and eighty seven dollars.

Seattle is blanketed in thick clouds, normally just the way the borderline morbid Hawks guitar player likes it, but this time the gray turns black. A sweet parking spot in the überhip Ballard section of Seattle, terrific home style progressive Oaxacan fare at Carta next to the club, a nicely turned cappucino in a thick planked woody espresso bar–all to no avail. Sitting in with our friends Mars Arizona, a well received Hawks set, late night country funk from American mover and shaker Michael O’Neill–all through a glass darkly. Late night shooting the shit at Dick’s vintage burger stand, 2 a.m. caravan to Bremerton and back roads, a private berth in Michael’s deluxe tour bus–all is darkness. And now it is actually dark. Pitch black, kinda chilly, and quiet out here in the woods of Bremerton. Two eighty seven. Must sleep.

And now, for a more balanced view of what in fact was a fine evening, our resident positive thinker Paul Marshall:

Balanced?…Perhaps. Yet still steeped in the gathering gloom that invariably accompanies the sight of a patrolman’s helmeted and sunglassed face right at your window. Having dozed off in the Navigator’s Chair, I awoke to the bump of the highway’s shoulder, a resolute slowing, and PL’s mournful declaration: “They got me fair and square.” The balancing act began. On one hand, commiseration for a colleague’s calamity. On the other, the efforts to shake it off, and bring the Hawks soaring into Seattle with our customary ferocity.

The Sunset Tavern. Friends began to appear. Verne, a fellow member from my first signed and recorded band, The Beauchemins. Bud, who brought a spectacular, vintage Strawberry Alarm Clock concert poster from 1968. Morgan and Matt and his lovely wife who had all been faithful attendees of our legendary Cole’s shows. All welcoming us to the Northwest’s metropolitan edge. “Thanks for coming to Seattle.” Hey, maybe we can shake this thing.

Mars Arizona plays. They sound good. Really good. The soundman here actually knows what he’s doing. Dave! The mix is good, the guitars are clear, the vocals are clean and cut through. The room sounds good. The Hawks play. PL sounds fine. Is he agonizing? I can’t hear it. What a pro. You do this for 30 odd years and some sort of ‘The Show Must Go On’ ethos must kick in unconsciously. Some weird combination of dedication and survivalism, like a salty sea, rise beneath us, buoying us upward and onward, and we do get through, and wind down to the well mixed sounds of Michael O’Neill, hanging and chatting with our old friends, new friends, and a welcoming road that will take us tomorrow to our next stop in Portland. At 55 mph.

Outside looking in — and proud of it

I See Hawks in L.A. is where it wants to be — swimming against the stream

BY SERENA MARKSTROM
The Register-Guard
link to full article

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. The reality is this: For the songs on I See Hawks in L.A.’s January release, “Shoulda Been Gold,” to actually have become mainstream hits in this country, the whole culture would have had to change.

Not that the members of the Los Angeles-based alternative country band would mind a bit of a revolution. But the title for the album, which is about two-thirds songs from previous recordings and packaged with five previously unreleased songs, contains a little wink.

The band deals in dense, witty, tuneful, subtle, clever and harmonious country-folk songs. Of course they aren’t going to have mainstream hits.

On musical merit alone, maybe these songs should have gone gold. But it is often the case that the music-buying population and the opinions of professional reviewers do not match.

The band’s previous albums have been reviewed in Spin, Village Voice, USA Today, Uncut and High Times, a news release says, indicating that the band has been on the critics’ radar for some time.

Lead singer Rob Waller said his band identifies with outlaw country and folk. He’s of the opinion that what passes for country music these days is really pop music.

“We write songs about things that are on our minds,” Waller said.

Los Angeles as a dirty word

These songwriters think about such topics as “Byrd From West Virginia,” about the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, who famously spoke against the war in Iraq.

“He was the one senator who got up and spoke against it,” Waller said. “I remember going to war protests and there was nobody there. Very few people were saying no.”

People here in Lane County protested the war, but Waller said he did not see much of that in Southern California. In fact, the band’s name alludes to having an outsider’s perspective while living in La La Land.

People there tell him there are not hawks in Los Angeles. But he and his bandmates see them.

“We witness the wildlife. We connect with it,” he said. “In other places, people will get mad at us for being from Los Angeles.

“Sometimes, it turns people off about us that we have that in our name.”

The group’s eponymous song has the lines “If you see hawks/ Then maybe we should talk,” referring to like-minded people getting together.

Band members live in Southern California because they find plenty of session work, and they have friends and family who live there. And Waller, having grown up in the Midwest, relishes the beach and the warm weather.

As he did this phone interview, Waller was sitting on his porch watching blue jays, doves, sparrows and maybe a woodpecker crawl all over his bush-like fig tree. It was an idyllic, 75-degree day.

“There is a baby hawk in my neighborhood,” he said. “We feel like (the hawk is) our omen, talisman.”

Grasping for the genuine

The band formed in 1999 and put out its first CD on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Sept. 11 release date turned out to be an interesting tone-setter, because the band regularly has been critical of the government.

“Country music, for a long time, was the place for freaks and outsiders,” Waller said. “It was the music of the unwashed masses. … Murder ballads about killing their girlfriends, getting drunk and things that they are ashamed of.

“I don’t hear that intimacy (anymore), a genuine looking at yourself.”

In their bios, band members get a little playful with their role as music industry outsiders.

“We thrive in the margins and tour the secondary routes and blue highways: Chattanooga, Winters, Mariposa, Sebastopol, Johnson City, Knoxville, Eugene, Montpelier, Lafayette,” it says.

Perhaps you caught the group’s Thursday show at Sam Bond’s Garage. On Saturday, the band flies down Interstate 5 to play the Axe & Fiddle.

If any of you are living in the hills of south Lane County, perhaps even as off the grid as you can manage, you might want to head for downtown to catch this band.

It didn’t make the group’s greatest hits, but it has a song called “Ever Since the Grid Went Down,” which imagines life without organized utilities. The song is not conclusive that it would be a bad thing.

“We’ve always been kind of an apocalyptic band,” Waller said. “Maybe (if the grid went down) it would be better. Maybe it would be more local.

“Maybe it would be an end to this corporate tyranny.”

CONCERT PREVIEW
I See Hawks in L.A.
What: Alt-country and psychedelic
When: 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Axe & Fiddle, 657 E. Main St.
Admission: $5
Copyright © 2010 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA

NORTH TO ALASKA (WELL, ALMOST)

Day five. We are rolling once again after being nabbed by a copper outside of Salem, OR. Damn, it always stings when the fuzz bring the heat down, turning your mellow morning drive into a steaming pile of regret.

But let’s not dwell on it. Let’s just fold the ticket up and tuck it away out of sight. It never happened. IT NEVER HAPPENED! Could they really charge us $287 twice? Once for the 80 in a 55 and once for expired proof of insurance? $287 appears twice on the ticket in two different spots marked “Base Fine #1” and “Base Fine #2.” They couldn’t do that, could they? Maybe it’s just $287 including the expired insurance card. Yes, that’s it. It must be. But anyway, donations to the Hawks Speeding Ticket Fund are tax deductible and can be made easily through Paypal to: info@iseehawks.com

And we were really falling in love with Oregon before that ticket. We turned off I-5 yesterday in Weed, CA and took US-97 up through Klamath Falls stopping for a tasty Vietnamese meal of Pho, Curry Noodles, Beef with Lime Leaf, and Spicy Tofu Soup. If it wasn’t for the bossy, over-bearing waiter the meal would’ve been perfect. Then it was up to Bend for an evening with PM’s old friends Sue and Brian. They have a lovely home on the lava fields below Mt. Bachelor. The air was so thick with pine it was disorienting. We Angelenos just are not used to breathing in this much oxygen. Giddiness overtook us.