I See Hawks in L.A.

June 17, 2008

THE GIANT ARTICHOKE

I can't believe we stopped at the Giant Artichoke but it looks like it's going to be that kind of day. Artichoke Soup! We Hawks Must have Artichoke Soup! And so we did. Tasty, chunky (Yes Chunky!) artichoke soup. This writer (nay, blogger) was looking for and expecting creamy artichoke soup. When the bowl appeared he was just the slightest bit disappointed, at first. But then he got into it. Carrots, celery, the hearts. This was a hearty, road-side, peasant soup. Artichoke! ARTICHOKE!!

The Giant Artichoke is in Castroville, Artichoke Center Of The World, as the sign spanning its old school main street (aka Highway 183)points out. We are driving from Paul L's mom's house in Capitola, heading for the 101, thence 46, thence 5. Home.

Yesterday was a bit of a grind, but a good day. We did indeed rise at 7:30 at the Tysons, and saintly Katherine did indeed make us breakfast on only four hours sleep, looking fresh as a daisy, we Hawks looking and feeling not so fresh.

The Tysons are mysterious. We've spent many hours with sisters Doran and Stadler. They produced our Motorcycle Mama video and Doran stars as the Beautiful Girl. We've stayed many times at the Tyson home in the fields of Yolo and written a song about it on our new CD. We've hung, drank, partied. But they remain a mystery. They have inexplicably broad influences and life experiences, from endangered poor white folks situations to deep intellectual explorations. Their bookshelves and hanging art are sophisticated and bold. We will learn more, in time, at the Tysons' magisterial pace.

And at 8:30 on the morning Sunday 15th of June with climbing sun and promises of heat for still sweet smelling summer grass fields, we climb in the Yukon, circle past the ponds and down the gravel road, another gravel road, two lane asphalt through sunflower and alfalfa, County Road 31, farewell fair Winters, to Highway 505, to the 80 west.

The gods of Northern California traffic were kind. No one does traffic jams like the two and four lane main highways radiating outward from the Bay Area. But we slide around San Jose and over the 17 and down the 1 through Santa Cruz adjacent with all the speed our loaded down Yukon can muster, arrive at KPIG studios in Watsonville with 5 minutes to spare.

It's a serious party in the converted motel upstairs veranda, bagels, coffee tea and a gathering KPIG DJs and engineers, bandannas and tie dye and it feels like home.

KPIG FM radio is a tough nut to crack. It's the most web streamed Americana station in the world, and they're bombarded with CDs. But we've broken through. We're live on KPIG, and it's a low key organic stone ground thrill. DJs Arden and Martin are witty and with it, the young engineers get a great sound, and we fly through 4 songs. We hang out a bit with great singer songwriter Sherry Austin, and head north on the 1 for Paul L's mom's house.

Teresa Lacques has high quality pizza from Pizza My Heart waiting, and we dig in, pizza at noon on four hours sleep. It's somehow exactly the right thing. A great time and much politically charged chatting with Mother Teresa, then we all crash hard on the floor, wake up in time to head out to Felton, up in the woods off Highway 17.

There have been many fires in the Santa Cruz mountains this year, and one came fairly close to Felton, but we see no signs as we pull into the little town. We set up on the Don Quixote stage. Don Quixote's prevails through a fatally flawed concept: a mawkish faux Scandinavian Alpine chalet design that's been brutally mashed into a Mexican restaurant. The cavernous interior is divided arbitrarily into sub-chambers. It's not a feel good space. But the sound man is good, and sound check is promising.

The sun drops over the firs and pines and we loiter on the Felton sidewalks, cell talks with our fathers on this Father's Day afternoon, good but kind of heavy conversations. They're old.

It's still light out and the Lakers are locked in mortal combat with the Celts on two big screen TVs in the front bar separated by glass windows from the music room. Our compatriots Mars Arizona take the stage and rock it acoustically, solidly San Francisco 1968 fiddle and dobro and harmonies filling the room.

The Laker game was hitting its fourth quarter climax as we hit the stage. A thin but enthusiastic crowd, Santa Cruz hippie girls did twist and twirl, the two steps hit a best of tour groove, and magic steeler Dave Zirbel plays especially sweet on our ballad Highway Down.

And that's it. We're done. Tourette over. We pack up, Shawn and Paul M drive to Shawn's brother in law's mountain lair, Rob and Paul L to Paul's mom's, late night further political discussions, we fade and fall asleep.

Breakfast, rendezvous, south on the 1, artichoke soup, and now, southward 101:

SN is at the wheel. PM is zoning out. PL is expertly coaxing SN into a conversation about computer software. Then our conversation drifts from the nature of racism to a meditation on the real meaning of Father's Day. It is a heavy day for each of us in our own independent, deeply personal and painful ways. But it's always groovy to chat with the brothers about the heavy issues, dig. That's one of the secret joys of being a Hawk.

We pull off the 101 beside an irrigated Central Coast field. We all jog off to pee in our own ways: PL pees IN the Porta Potty. PM pees NEXT to the potable toilet. SN pees 50 yards away, at the edge of a deep pit. RW hikes down and pees all by himself in bottom of the pit. What, if anything, is significant about these individual choices? What is revealed? Politically, it seems clear enough. PL is a Socialist. PM is a Libertarian. SN is an Independent. And RW wishes to be an assassinated political leader.

Thee days of this tour have been rich, and poor. This writer (nay, blogger) has been meditating recently on the different types of poverty one can endure in this life.
(aside: two Hawks circle off to the left)

There is the poverty that comes from having no money. That is the poverty we think of in this age when one says poverty. And of course that is an accurate meaning. But there is also the poverty that comes from being disconnected from culture. Disconnected from the foods, the music, the dances, and the rituals associated with your and other's ancestors. My life these days feels very culturally rich. I play music with friends all the time. My wife is a fantastic, soulful cook, my daughter loves to dance, my son brings the sunshine with him into every room he enters just by being quietly himself. I don't have much money, of course. And that's probably as it should be at the moment. But it'd be cool to get some sometime.

Read a poem this morning by Jim Harrison called "Theories and Practices of Rivers." Life and rivers. Water pushed along by the slope of the earth. Kind of takes the pressure off when you think about life that way.

THREE HAWKS ARRESTED

Gannet News Service

Three members of cosmic country rock band I See Hawks In L.A. (Big Book Records www.iseehawks.com) were arrested for public urination at the California Aqueduct channel crisscrossing Highway 46 between Highway 101 and Interstate 5.

They face possible additional charges of contamination of public water supply and even terrorism. Igor Putin, who replaced the late Tim Russert on Hard Ball, claims that Washington insiders believe an achievement starved Bush Administration may want to make a public example of the roots rockers and their symbolically charged display (see "12 Must Download mp3s" in June's Spin Magazine for a loopy I See Hawks apocalyptic take on a Slash Impersonator livin large at decadent Hollywood Hills uber-parties).

Also arrested on unspecified charges was their keyboardist or guitarist, for documenting the urination proceedings on his digital camera. When confronted by a Highway Patrol officer and three Crown Victoria's full of Kern County sheriffs, the band member tossed his footage laden camera into the middle of the wide Aqueduct waters. He then lay prone, face buried in the gravel, and was escorted quietly to a squad car. The camera has not been recovered.

Singer songwriter Rob Waller, interviewed from an unspecified location through cell phone by journalist Mark Follman for an upcoming Salon profile (Salon.com/weeks words/walleriseehawksinla), has a firm, and many say, convincing take on his band's purpose in urinating directly into the waters that quenches Southern California's mighty thirst.

Waller: "Let's consider a little common sense, shall we? Is urinating into our water supply ten feet from a busy highway while documenting with video anything but a social statement? I guess my response to the accusations is the same as my admonition for society: we're drinking our pee."

ACTUAL Q & A BETWEEN PL AND HIS MOM

Q: "Hey Mom, do you think we're a political band?"

A: "No, I think politics is responsible for a lot of the things that you sing about in your songs."

ROB'S THOUGHTS ON SUMMER CUISINE

(with contributions from Paul Marshall and Paul Lacques)

Keep it Mediterranean! Explore olives, tomatoes, fresh herbs, sharp chilled white wines. Here's one idea: Grilled lamb. A brusque Retsina. Berries for dessert.

Summer is all about nature's bounty. Take these months to savor and meditate upon Sun-Ripened Fruits And Vegetables.

Let your tongue linger on the sharp flavors. Save Winter for creamy sauces, stews, and cooked-through vegetables.

Get romantic! Marry sheep's milk cheeses with your leafy greens. Toss in balsamic vinaigrette, toasted nuts and ready to burst cherry tomatoes. From Neptune's spice cabinet: sprinkle where you will with Mediterranean sea salt, the seasoning of Zeus and his Gods.

But don't toss your trident unless you're willing to keep the catch.

SORROW BE GONE

We have a live radio performance today, at sunny 1 p.m. This is our only link to career mindset, for we have severed all other adult responsibilities and are deep in rock and roll on the road. It didn't take long. Wheels are still our means of transformation. Only a short mantra of highway whine and we are on the other side. Whiskey seals the deal. The other side is the place to be, if you can get away with it. Multiplatinum sales, fearlessness, or innocence will keep you there.

At chez Waller on the hill over the harbor Rob makes eggs from no apparent ingredients, the first confirmable Miracle of the tour. We pack, descend in Yukon from Tiburon, south across the Golden Gate into The City. Rob becomes a San Franciscan, guiding us solidly through the labyrinth. We're greeted at the building on 2nd just south of Market by Tim Lynch, KPIG AM host, and his lovely assistant.

Upstairs all is groovy young energy. Tim is a super cool and super pro personality, all that you could wish for. He sets up Neumann condensor mics and SM 57's for our performance. He asks real questions (doesn't bash L.A.) and makes us feel good, and the music flows. Tim's young acolytes applaud enthusiastically after each song. This feels fresh and different. The energy of the sun.

The other side is keeping us in the zone where good things happen. A quick stop by the summer sublet of Hawks friend and resident geologist Sara for hamburgers, burritos, and brownies and we're on our way. We roll on various variations of cement ribbons designated with 80 in one way, then another. Finally Eastward.

We are in the Central Valley. The air is just shy of smoky, and there is talk of recent and
current fires. This heat doesn't feel as good as Marin, but it's all right. North from 80 and then a series of farm roads, dry fields and ripening orchards. To Winters and its water tower, its authoritative Mexican food, and its music hall: The Palms.

Which today breathes cool as we open its glass doors, a welcome cool filling two 19th century floors, and the lovely theater room. Dave Fleming greets us with his inimitable low key kindness and wisdom. We load in, sound check with a great new sound man, Carl. Sounding very good. We greet the Loose Acoustic Trio in the parking lot and they walk into sound check. We head over to enjoy the gracious hospitality and laid back agrarian sweetness of the Tyson Estate.

The Tysons have done it again. White wine, an assortment of Hawks-themed beers, shrimp cocktail, lox and capers and fresh bread. Doran and her mother are just too nice. We put our feet up, sit back, enjoying conversations with old friends and new on the wide veranda as evening comes down over little pond. It's perfect.

After quick showers and fresh clothes we head over to The Palms. The room has filled up nicely and the Loose Acoustic Trio is sounding great. Their harmonies are bigger, their songs sound light and free, floating over the crowd and lifting everyone's spirits. Paul L sits in on jawharp and dobro, and Shawn on snare. Brotherhood and smiles, and the crowd loves the whole thing. Sorrow Be Gone, indeed. Richie Lawrence's ethereal Flying song takes on a new and different life that floats from the stage into the shadowed theater audience. This is a special night.

The Hawks take the stage. With Dave Zirbel along the band feels complete. Something is happening here. The grooves feel tighter, the orchestrations richer, the sonic peaks and valleys more guided by the unconscious, we're letting the game come to us, as they say. We're not forcing it. It's just happening. The crowd is with us. "Yolo County Airport" feels like a genuine triumph. Richie sits in with his magical accordion. A guy in the front row keeps calling out for Humboldt. Hold tight brother, it's coming. "Good and Foolish Times" lifts off, "Grid" delivers a gut punch, "Never Alive" is a stately waltz. This is a good musical time. Music! Oh magical music! What wonderfully restorative powers you can unleash when all is a right and the groove is tight.

Back to the chill Tyson pad. A few nightcaps and it's off to bed. Tomorrow will be our longest day of the tour, and it starts in four and a half hours. But we can handle anything now.

Richie Lawrence, President, Big Book Records

RANCHITO NICASIO

There's no business like show business. Indeed. Day three of the Hawks tourette brought the Hawks into the gentle yellowing hillsides of western Marin and the hallowed hall of Rancho Nicasio, nestled in a flat valley near a poignant old wood church with archetypical steeple and cross, little valley surrounded by rolling hills with cattle, burros, and rusting barb wire fences. The Rancho started as a stagecoach stop in the 1880s but it still retains the 1950s supper club style it has carried along now for half a century. White linen table clothes and little crystal candle holders.

And the promise of backline. A gig that was originally booked as a Lacques doubleheader, with Matthew's band, Nearly Beloved, opening for I See Hawks In L.A. in the psychic center of Not L.A. Would the brotherhood embodied onstage flow out into the assembled throng and break down the interstate love barrier? Not this time. Tony Joe White became available to play that night, so he became the headliner, and Hawks the opener. Bye, brother. But, no problem. We like playing with legends.

"Don't move the drums." "You can't use the bass amp for bass. That's for Tony's keyboard player, it can't be moved." Tony's road manager is peeing on the fence. Uh, oh. Is this going to be not fun? Well, Tyson, the keyboard player turned out to be cool. At least the amp sharing is going to work. We get a brief but efficient soundcheck. Let's rock.

Should we rock? They're all eating dinner in a well lit room under wagon wheel chandeliers. Time for our wedding-dinner set of soft jazz and pop standards? We ease into Hitchiker. They like it. Maybe we can leave a little love here after all, and take some back with us. We build to a restrained peak, more like a well rounded large hill, and the crowd is with us. We finish our set and clear off the stage. Out into the green yard of a rancho flat in the sweet valley, oh yes, we are in the bosom of Marin. We throw horse shoes, hang with family and friends, laugh and catch up in the cooling night. Rancho Nicasio. The sun makes a discreet exit, behind oaks, fences in shadow, and shadowed ridge.

Tony Joe White has appeared in his chair center stage as if spirited there by swamp magic. His Fender Strat crackles and spits, snarls and sneers, and his voice is a bear's growl from the deep recesses of a cavern. Tony Joe is an American Blues Singer from the South. Then he does the big ones: "Rainy Night In Georgia," and "Polk Salad Annie"; dancers crowd the floor, and an owl screeches at Rob Waller as he walks under a tall tree in the darkness outside.

June 14, 2008

THE EVENINGING OF THE DAY

We are coming down fast yet gently from our Area Of The Bay day's adventures. Shawn visited his drummer good bud Rob in Glen Albyn. Is that Welsh? Scottish? Rob was off on a secret mission, no doubt attempting to retrieve the scattered pieces of his soul, seeking Horcruxes long forgotten in his old San Francisco haunts. Paul L went on a hike in the very dry Marin hills with his brother Peter and Pete's girlfriend Patti. It was a reconnection with the joys of heat. It was hot on the dusty trail. It felt good. Poppies were scattered among the dry grass, yellow cheery survivors among the tall dead.

Fairfax is a wonderful little town. Its unofficial self description, on bumper stickers in the tourist shop, is "Mayberry On Acid." And it's undeniably Mayberry on this hot Thursday afternoon. Peter and Patti know everyone on the streets, from the deeply tanned and serenely deranged 1965 original bacchanalian to the Euro botanist who knows every plant species from here to the ocean, to golden youth lying on grass in the redwood shaded little park, a perfect little park, like we all should have idylled in in youths spent instead on anxious concrete, with background noise. Yes, parents love their children everywhere, but here the children seem to get what they need.

Fairfax has it all. World class organic ice cream shoppe. World class coffee small roaster, where 70 year old trail bikers pound down espressos before their 29 mile hill ride at 7 a.m. The Good Earth store, not the restaurant chain that gave health food a bad name in the 70's, but a store that Whole Foods could be if they cut their profit margin and all the bullshit. The best smoothies ever, anywhere. Fairfax, thou art blest. May you not grow. May you not develop. May you maintain your love affair with limits.

Paul L jammed with his brothers Matt and Pete, like they've done since 1974.

In the evening we drove a magical back road through rolling pastureland frozen in the 1920's, heartbreaking in its fragile grace, that moment in world history when nature and the things of man were in glorious harmony.

Yes, that moment existed. Don't deny it, or deny that the moment has passed. Grace and balance are in short supply, and when we see it, we yearn, we sigh, we breathe deeply. The moment was long and langorous. Bison painted on a cave. Giant stones standing. The pyramids. The well. Cliff dwellers. Canyon de Shelly. Stone cottages in the Pyrenees. Turf fires from chimneys along Slieve League. Notre Dame. The wood palace and gentle curve of river to the port of old Osaka. New Orleans. The ten acre tobacco patches and farm houses of North Carolina. White walled Seville and Toledo. Ardara and Ardgroom. All misery is forgotten. Only memory, and remnants of grace, remain.

The magical back road led us through Petaluma to an industrial park, wherein was housed renovated rail cars, within which was radio station KRSH, outside of which we parked and into which we loaded our guitars and selves. The Hawks played two live songs over the airwaves, like we've done a hundred times before, but this time with a twist: the DJ attacked us for the offense of being from L.A.

Scattered among the good folk north of San Luis Obispo are those with a now overripe and festering contempt for the culture and turf of Southern California. Thirty years ago there was a genuine rivalry between the two Californias, fueled by the Dodgers Giants feud, when baseball really mattered to people. Really mattered, not just when you found yourself on the big screen at Dodger stadium emoting for the camera, which you didn't because there wasn't one, but when you were alone in your bedroom under the covers with your transistor radio hanging on Vin Scully's every word, when you lived and died with every throw of Sandy Koufax's tortured arm. When Juan Marichal clobbered Johnny Roseboro with a bat, the culture war was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.

But for Los Angeles, transformed by newcomers and its own weird alchemy brought forth by critical mass into something completely new, this feud is dead. No one cares. San Francisco? Yeah, it's cool up there. I used to live up there. The feud? No one remembers it.

Until reminded by the oddly self-stereotyping moralizing Northern Californian, such as our DJ host, who shall remain unnamed. Let's call him, say, Grande. At 8:01 p.m he introduced us, and asked us if we were really from L.A. Yes, we are. How can we stand it down there? asked Grande. This opening salvo was followed by multiple rounds, weapons of condescension, pity, and accusation. We tried to defend ourselves. Grande, let's call it a truce. The war is over. Grande, we all drive cars, don't we? Finally came naked hostility. "Thanks for stealing our water," Grande muttered as we left the studio. We are not making this up. Yo. Grande. Peace. Peace out.

The Hawks backed Matt Lacques on his super nice and sad ballad, then jumped in the Yukon for just down the road to Bill Frater's Freight Train Boogie radio show, in an anonymous industrial park much like the previous. We grabbed our instruments as twilight enveloped the parking lot, and fresh cut alfalfa from an adjacent field wafted its soothing scent over us. Enchanting. A wall of smoke from the Humboldt fire guarded the horizon from the sunken sun.
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Bill Frater is a man who sees the big picture, gracious and equipped with a major good vibe. We had a fun packed radio performance, played a bunch of songs and theorized in between about the madness of fiddlers and pedal steel players, about our pals in the L.A. country scene, and many other fleeting topics. A good time was had by all.

Southward to Marin. Tea. Darkness on the wood deck overlooking the harbor of Tiburon, big ships far off in fog serenading each other like a meeting of whales. And to bed.

June 13, 2008

JUNE OF DRYING CALIFORNIA

June. June of the 21st century. June of a drying California. Yellow hills from Highland Park through the Grapevine, relieved by one strange hillside of mottled blues and greens, and a steep slope blackened from a fire, like a burnt hunk of bread. We're on the 5 north again. How many times have we done this drive? The same thoughts are triggered by the same monuments:

Gorman. A 1968 family trip into the deep hills, Indian artifacts, a spring, an Old Californio family ranch. Lebec. My aunt Chinky and her single wide full of sons. The 5/99 divergence. Mystery. The 99 not taken. Systems collapse. Mesopotamia was green. As were we.

Rob has a new cell phone, the Sony Ericsson. It delivers email, FM, XM, video, has a guitar tuner, and an on call suicide watch. It's a gateway device to the iPhone. Rob is sitting in the back seat of the Yukon, programming Sony Ericsson, reading the manual, with the calm that only people born after 1970 can manage. He hasn't called tech support even once, and we're halfway to Berkeley.

Paul M sits next to Rob, paying his bills, renewing his membership in NORML. Shawn is driving and talking on his cell. Paul is wired on chocolate infused trail mix, hence this blog.

To Berkeley. Where we're playing at Strings, a private music joint and living remnant of hippiedom, like a Gaeltacht village clinging to a Donegal cliffside. The pastoral nature of Strings is effectively concealed by a down and out San Pablo Street storefront, but inside await Moroccan pillows, vibrant art and drapery, a green and cool inner courtyard, and good good good good vibrations.

Rob's nostrils are burning from the infamous CCC (cow concentration camp, aka Kauschwitz, Kracow, Bergen Bessie). Beef. It's what's for dinner.

Nothing is happening. We're driving. Let's drop in on the Hawks conversation. Right now it's all about life coaches. An alarming trend. The Lakers and Celtics. It's a dirty series going on right now. Both teams want it bad. Paul L is trapped in a horrible Lakers dilemma of his own making. He loudly announced at a coffee fueled family breakfast several months ago that the Lakers would never win a championship as long as Kobe was on the team. Did Paul's sardonic nephew Emilio remember this overbroad broadside? Time and circumstances will tell. Very soon. The day of reckoning is coming.

Gas prices, of course. We put $120 into the Yukon, and it's not full. Broccoli. Broccoli at Pappy & Harriets. Goebbels. Which L.A. country rocker next is moving to Austin? Stealing pillows from hotels. Rick Shea at the Buccaneer. Rick Shea can rock. The verbing of the noun. This is the era of the verbing of the noun. It started with "tasking." Now it's out of control. Tears Go By 2008 style: "It is the eveninging of the day."

White smoke rising from a distant dry ridge to the west of Santa Nella. Brush fire. Why does Paul L love fire? Do we stop in Santa Nella? Jack Off In The Box, SubstandardWay, hist! A Split Pea Andersen's. We're stopping. We crawl behind a big rig on the bustling frontage road. Paul M reminds us that Split Pea Andersen's now sucks. We decide on Del Taco. Uh oh, it's a mini-Del Taco. Does it matter? Del Scorchio?

Del Taco has remade itself, with the focus group arbitrariness that a giant corporation can command. The look du jour is bright cheery primary colors, one upping the McDonalds playground area for its entire interior. Paul L's Veggie Works burrito was delicious. Shawn's fish taco was not up to the standards of Taco Fiesta on Figueroa near Avenue 40 in Highland Park. Rob feels he's been through the culinary equivalent of jerking off. Paul Marshall's stomach is full and his heart is empty.

We're excited. The Arco across the street has $4.31 gas. God, that's sweet. Life is good.

Okay, we're rolling. The Arco didn't work out. It wouldn't take our cash or credit plus $.45 processing fee. Okay, for you, BP/Arco. Your profit margin just shrunk, perhaps noticeably, considering the Yukon's massive thirst.

We're listening to XM radio. The left (westward facing) side of the Yukon is roasting. Newman Exit 1 Mile. Johnny Paycheck's on XM. The California aqueduct snakes under our wheels, so wide and vulnerable, severe order imposed on a once and future wild valley.

That's it. I got nothing. I turn desperately to our drummer, offer to type everything that comes out of his mouth: "I don’t have anything to say. That's it. That's it. This place is--what is that? Is that trash? Up against the fence? What?"

Paul M seems to know every obscure chestnut, every country flotsam and jetsam washing out of XM's satellite studio in the sky. Is there enough time in a lifetime for this? Time is mysterious.

It's 4:35:22, and we've started the Bluegrass Marathon. What? Rob ends it, shutting down XM after only about 20 seconds. It's a new Marathon record.

The Hawks discuss when their last cigarette was. Paul Marshall's last cigarette was 30 years ago--Camel Filters with the occasional Tareyton. Fifteen years on, 30 off. Shawn's last cigarette was a month ago, perhaps an American Spirit bummed off Dave Gleason. Rob's last was at Pappy and Harriets last year. Paul L's last full cigarette, not counting puffs trying to look cool with his friends, was probably his brief flirtation with Bidi's, the deadly Indian tubes found in a sketchy liquor store near you.

Now Shawn is reading his Sonar recording system manual, which has been festering in the Yukon library for six months. So dull, yet so riveting to a man trapped as deeply in his recording system as Shawn is. Sonar is the unloved cousin of ProTools.
Let's survey the contents of the Yukon library, which is meshing attached to the back of the front seats: A Hawks/everybodyfields poster from February 6. Team America DVD. Wild Ducks Flying Backwards by Tim Robbins, unread and unloved. Current issue of the L.A. Daily News. Musician (AFM 47) Magazine with a hot young female singer on the cover. Tiny sunglasses. A diaper. Trucker's Connection with an article on the vanishing bees. That's it. Not much depth right now in the library.

Is this a tiresome ultra personal blog like a million and one self involved blogs that cost little, yield little, matter little, and yet never vanish, preserved in cyber reality as long as there's a server and a wind turbine to feed it? The writings of Babylonian kings, druid priests, Russian scientists, sufi philosophers, Knights Templar, Albigensian heretics, the Weather Underground, are lost forever. But not this little nugget. It's here to stay.

Now the Del Taco's feeling weird, says Rob. The toxins are seeping in. A vast brown field and big power line towers fill our horizon.

Up next: Blogger vs. writer. What's the difference?

June 09, 2008

RELEASE

A grand time was had by all at our CD release party yesterday evening at the Grand Old Echo, thank you Kim and Pam, hostesses with the mostessness.

Our big day started a bit too early for comfort: we met Watusi Rodeo radio host and L.A. roots music kingpin Chris Morris at a Miracle Mile coffee shop at 8:15 a.m. for some desperately needed caffeine. Paul L opted for green tea instead of coffee, then decided he had to have a chocolate cookie, for which he was mocked by aforementioned radio host. Paul M and our old acquaintances the Mother Truckers arrived simultaneously, with a sleep deprived Rob chugging past in the soon to be obsolete Hawks Yukon, seeking parking.

The caffeine buzz was mild at best but the adrenaline kicked in just as Chris finished up a Bo Diddley tribute medly, and we leaned into the big mics and sang our hearts out. Witty banter with the witty Chris, some more songs, long treks down labyrinthine halls of the gleaming Variety building, and we were out of there, back into the still still morning air of Los Angeles in the first decade of the 21st century.

Some of us napped, but not Paul M, who drove to Irvine for an outdoor party gig. The man is made of iron, and he comes to play.

We all arrived late for our own party of course, quickly set up our gear at the Echo with the sun still burning in the west. Old Californio blazed through a set of their irresistible songs and good vibes. Mike Stinson did his lone troubadour acoustic show, the last hero standing in the honky tonk.

Photos by Rena Kosnett

The goddess like if not actual goddesses Chapin Sisters mesmerized the room with three songs, backed up by the Hawks. See it captured in print by the L.A. Weekly blog and in video by whenyouawake.com

Then we were by ourselves and slowly but surely lifted off, from a rush of energy by the packed out crowd. It passed as if in a moment, a few encores and we were swamped by our very good friends and family. What a night.

June 02, 2008

Hallowed Ground #1 On FAR Chart

The Hawks new album Hallowed Ground hit the big #1 on the Freeform American Roots chart in May, narrowly beating out folk goddess Eliza Gilkyson and Texas standard bearer Hayes Carll. FAR charts are compiled from maverick roots country DJs around the globe, the ones that play exactly what they feel like playing.

Far left of left lefty Paul L and his further left mom are quite pleased at this review that appeared in Counterpunch:

Robins Weep

By RON JACOBS

Some days I wake up and the music I hear in my head is the chorus to Hank Williams' “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.” All day long I hear that lonesome whippoorwill until night finally falls, the midnight train whining in the distance. It's not that I'm lonely or anything, mind you, yet that haunting chorus becomes the day's soundtrack.

There's a band out of southern California that renders music as uniquely forlorn as any Hank Williams tune. The name of that group is, somewhat mysteriously, I See Hawks In LA. Composed of founder Rob Waller on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, guitarist Paul Lacques, former Strawberry Alarm Clock bassist Paul Marshall and percussionist Shawn Nourse, I See Hawks In LA bring experienced musicianship (and many experienced guest musicians) to their work. Echoes of the Byrds and Gram Parsons and even The Holy Modal Rounders inform the music this group makes while its lyrics touch on themes of war, peace, freedom, family and that greatest topic of all, love. Sometimes the lyrics are full of humor and sometimes they are full of sadness. Sometimes they sing of the counterculture and sometimes one hears ironic commentary on today's commercial culture of brands and empty meaning. Waller's vocal delivery is a countrified alto that capably evokes whichever emotion the song hopes to convey.

Click here to continue reading ROBINS WEEP

Bye, Bo

Bo Diddley has passed on. Another giant enters the great unknown.

I was fortunate to get to play and record with the man in the mid-1980's, as part of The Bonedaddys. Arguably the first World Beat band in the U.S., The Bonedaddys fearlessly mixed African, funk, New Orleans, hillbilly, Cajun, and Zydeco rhythms and original songs. We got to open for a dazzling variety of international and American roots legends, and became road buddies with Burning Spear and The Neville Brothers, among others. We got a lot of schooling out there.

Our lead singer King Cotton introduced Bo Diddley to the Bonedaddys, and we played several packed out shows together in Phoenix and L.A., at the late great Palomino and the Music Machine, and on the Joan Rivers Show.

At our first and only rehearsal, Bo's road manager, a towering man in a suit that no doubt few said no to, stopped me and Phil Gough, the other guitar player, in mid-song. "Bo don't play that no more." He was referring to the famous Bo Diddley beat.

What were we to do? It soon didn't matter, as the rehearsal consisted of very brief run throughs of the hits, and then a long jam.

In concert, it was one long improvisation, kicked off by a guitar line from Bo, and we'd fall in behind him--not just hard driving beats, but often spacey, dreamlike wanderings that had the audience and the band transfixed. Bo was clearly an artist, stretching his own boundaries, with no interest in looking back. When we played the hits, we did indeed sneak in the signature clave on guitar. It seemed cool. The scary manager was pleased with the wild crowd reaction and spared our lives. Us Bonedaddys were in hog heaven.

We wrote and recorded a song with Bo, called "Say, Bo" that's finally come out 20 years later, about the long river from Ghana rhythms to American funk.

Several of us went into the studio with Bo to record tracks for the movie "Tapeheads," which is hopefully in the vinyl bins at Amoeba Records. Bo showed us the features of his latest trademark square guitar, which was loaded with internal electronics, including a phase shifter, and weighed a ton. Between takes Bo was sketching constantly in his pad. We recorded Bo's "Surfer's Love Chant," and some other tracks. Bo nodded at me to play the fills and solos. Me? Are you sure? Well, okay.

Bo signed my metronome. He didn't need one. He was one.

-- Paul L

p.s. this was just posted on YouTube, Bo & Bonedaddys on the Late Show, 1987. I was on the road with my polka band Rotondi, watched it from a hotel room in Buffalo, that's the great Larry Knight subbing for me, check out young and pompadoured Juke Logan on the harp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

June 01, 2008

DESERT IN BLOOM

The word was out that it was a good spring for desert flowers, and so Paul L and Victoria hit the road on an early March dawn, surprising ourselves at such a disciplined departure. We were breakfasting amidst the rock climbers and hard to pigeonhole hipsters at The Crossroads in Joshua Tree by 8:30 a.m. What a treasure is The Crossroads, enabler of high desert gentrification though it may be. And who are we, after all, if not the gentry?

Eastward, northward through 29 Palms and the Marine bars and tattoo parlors, eastward on Amboy Crater Road, past The Palms bar, so strange to see it in morning sun, and wondrous to see the wildflowers, for they are indeed lining the cracked asphalt and blanketing the sands among the scrub. We turn left at the big curve, then miles straight northward through desert hills and eerie salt flats, distant booms from artillery drills, and we behold:

Amboy Crater, with a dusting of green, surrounded by fields of flowers. It's all true.

We drove north into the East Mojave reserve. This is the Old Mojave Road, an ancient Indian trail used as a wagon trail, then a truck route through the 1950's: