Hawks

Don’t ask us how we know, but we know the most carefully guarded secret since George Bush met with Osama Bin Laden to plot 9/11: the ending to the Harry Potter series. Promise you won’t tell anyone, because we could get in a lot of trouble for this. Anyway:

As expected, Harry fights a climactic battle with Voldemort, a spectacular duel that plunges the pair into secret caves at the bottom of the Hogwarts lake, sends them soaring into the stratosphere where all is blue violet and twinkling stars, and summons legions of demons and good spirits from ancient millennia, in a pitched battle for the soul of Earth.Deep in a dark and phantom woods, Harry and Voldemort are thrust into solitary confrontation by unseen forces. Face to face, inches apart in the swirling mists, both strike with equal force, speed, and timing. Their wands, sparking and hissing, lock in a moment of frozen eternity, an eternity so cold that snow falls and birds drop from the sky. Day turns to night, glaciers rise like ghostly steam, crushing the forest, and Harry and Voldemort, locked in kindred hatred, shatter into a million sharp and glittering fragments . . .

Sleep, long and dreamless. Then grogginess, thick and heavy. Slowly Harry wakes to his surroundings: total darkness. The air is close and damp. Harry struggles wildly, lashing out and sending unseen boxes and bags toppling, then calms himself. He reaches out. A doorknob, somehow familiar.Harry opens the door. Light, afternoon, a hallway. Of course. He’s back with the Dursleys. Harry’s heart sinks. He lusts, improbably, for the adrenaline of mortal combat, for his lovely and terrible world of magic. He walks into the kitchen. The Dursleys greet him, coldly, as Harry might expect, but with solemnity. “Harry, we need to talk.”

The Dursleys tell Harry that they’re boarding up his closet. He’s too old for these infantile flights of fancy. They’ve confiscated his wand, and they’re enrolling him in a weight loss program in Swindon.Harry looks down at himself. He’s fat.

“After all, Harry—you are our only son.”Harry remembers. His potent fantasy, his escape from dreary suburban English life and its numbing school system, evaporates.

That night Harry realized that he was a warrior. He was not destined for this world. And if he was banished from the closet under the stairs, he was going to escape by any means necessary.At midnight, Harry smothered himself with his own tear-soaked pillow in the silence of his bedroom.

Or at least he tried. His parents found him gasping for air, and pulled him from his downy pillow’s death-grip. Harry returned to school that September, where he passed his exams. He lost 35 pounds and was rewarded with a ferry ride to Southend On Sea, where he consumed bags of french fries with mayonnaise and several butter tarts.

Dear readers: The Hawks wish to start a hobby farm and restaurant somewhere in L.A. We’re looking for a one acre lot for high density organic gardening and an oversized Victorian house to convert into a restaurant/café/performance space. Perhaps the Adams or South Central area? We’ll grow the food and prepare gourmet meals, including artisanal goat cheese from the goats grazing on the front lawn. We’ll sponsor a farmer’s market (guaranteed organic produce only) and have acoustic music afternoon weekends and evenings, and host special eco events.

The South Central farmers got the shaft, but their vision must live on. Every fallow open space in Los Angeles should be fair game for food growing. The City of Los Angeles can sponsor a program to set up irrigation and fencing on empty lots all across this vast housing sprawl.

The Hawks almost made a big culinary blunder: we’d just played WWUH, big shoutout to Ed McKeon, who did a masterful interview as we played a bunch of acoustic songs. (And just as big shoutout to John Ramsey, station manager and chief engineer, who gave Paul L two slo blo 1 amp fuses for his guitar amp.) We were driving down wide avenues past early 20th century Hartford mansions set back on vast lawns, the vision of the top of the American financial heap, and we were hungry (as of this writing, we still are).

We chanced upon a minor mall, and lo, spied a Ruby Tuesday’s in all its glossy corporate logo glory. To our own shock, we walked in. Luckily, late 80’s overproduced pop blasted us from the foyer back into the afternoon heat before we committed to sitting down. Now we’re driving Interstate 91 south for New York City, where we play in Brooklyn tonight.

Café Nine is a real bar, with brick walls and a crudely walled stone basement and brick floor. Upstairs is a small stage and long bar with Bass and Guiness on tap, and posters of the top second tier Ameicana acts: Dave Alvin, The Iguanas, Los Straitjackets, Big Sandy, Robbie Fulks, and even BR549 have played this tiny room. Because it’s got that undefinable American classic barroom vibe. We’ll play there even when we’re turning down Conan O’Brien. As a matter of fact, just to feel empowered, we’re hereby officially turning down Conan O’Brien. Conan, we love you. You are very funny. But we’re going to have to say no.

The Café Nine night began with a good crowd, all a bustle with the anticipation of country rock. At 9:45, something strange happened. An earnest young man took the stage and sang an a capella version of an old slave song. He then brought up a keyboard playing friend and they jammed. The audience watched. The Hawks fled the room. Which was a big mistake, for the noodlers noodled unsupervised with self-empowered fury.for a solid hour.*By the time Tony did his set and the Hawks set up it was midnight. We played seven songs and the bartender announced last call. Good night, New Haven. We’d love to come back, if you bag the opener.

*A series of comments on the opening act:Improvising is not for the beginner. The most successful improvisers are arguably the jazzers, who are highly trained and have played complex tunes a million times before they are free to do what their inner voices dictate. When you know one or two scales, you should wank at home. — Paul L

It sure made me wish that samplers were never invented. – Paul MOr delay pedals. – Rob

Jon Brion can do this kind of thing. – Paul LSo then he played this bad part that he looped, and I’m hanging with it, and then he plays this part—de deee deet deet deet dee dee dee deet deet—completely unmusical, and that’s when I walked out of the room. — Paul M

We should have kicked his ass. Paul L and I were on the verge of kicking his ass outside the club. Sort of when the two writers beat the shit out of Dan Rather on the street, as an artistic act. They were wearing masks. – RobWhat do you think about a u-ey here? — Paul M (we’re lost somewhere in Connecticut near New York)

The two brothers later wrote this book about how they lost their family’s entire fortune gambling on the riverboats in Tunica, Mississippi. – RobBrothers? – Shawn

They were white guys. Shawn, you got any ibuprofen . . . bitch? — RobThere’s this guy in L.A. who always loops stuff, and I say to him, why don’t you just play it? –- Shawn.

End of conversation. We’re at the Athenian Diner in Milford, Connecticut, and it’s time to eat. Kind of hot outside.

There’s a Little Italy in New Haven, Connecticut. On one side of Wooster street sits Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria. On the other, Sally’s Apizza. For decades the lucky residents of New Haven have debated which pizza is better. Well, we didn’t get the chance to try Pepe’s but I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. is very seriously considering awarding its highest honor to Sally’s Apizza. Final votes are yet to be tallied but it looks likely that Sally’s could be declared the Best Pizza in America by these very Hawks.

What is it that makes this pizza so perfect? you must be thinking. First off, there is only one thing on the menu at Sally’s: pizza. No salad, no garlic bread, no pasta dishes. No parmesan or even red pepper flakes to adulterate their flawless formula. The menu is one page where you choose your size and toppings. That’s it. We ordered three Labatt’s Blue beers to round things off. They arrived and we waited for the pies. We chose a PL vegetarian pizza of mushrooms and black olives and a classic pepperoni, Old paintings of Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy looked down at us from their places on the wood paneled walls among framed newspaper articles praising Sally and his fine pizzas. We settle in, arriving just in time to watch the line form outside the door as each booth is now filled. The pizza arrives. Each pizza comes on it’s own rectangular cookie sheet. The pizzas are not exactly round, they are thrown roughly into the natural near-circles, appearing like flattened stones. There’s nothing fancy going on with these ingredients. There’s no goat cheese or stupid whole wheat crust. It’s just thin traditional crust, sauce, mozzarella cheese, chosen topping, but it’s perfectly executed. The crust is crispy around the edges and on the bottom, but just barely crispy. These pizzas have been cooked in a very hot oven for a short period of time. The pizzas look beautiful. How will they taste?

With the first bite, the pizza is still too hot. How often this happens, a pizza or two arrives, everyone dives in unable to hold back the anticipation, only to find it’s just too hot. Luckily none of us burn our mouths, it’s not that hot. And it still tastes good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s clear in a couple of minutes the pizza will be the perfect temperature for eating, the temperature where all the distinct flavors and textures can be fully appreciated. And so that time does comes. The Hawks grow quiet and focus on eating this deliciously simple and complex pizza. We feel a artistic kinship with Sally and his apostles. This is what good art is: a complex idea expressed in clear and simple terms with a respect for tradition and genuine culture. No short cuts. High quality ingredients. A deep connection to the land beneath one’s feet. We celebrate regionalism! Thank God for pizza like this.

As North Korea waves its impotent (taepo-)dong at the world, we’re driving boldly northward on I-95, America’s drug running corridor, not running drugs of course but running country rock. Country Rock! Country rock for America! Original country rock in defiance of North Korean missiles! If we stop playing country rock the terrorists are winning. Come to us ye merry Americans! We call out to you in harmony of tone and spirit with wings and arms spread. Our hearts are wide open for you. Do with them what you will, but be gentle, be gentle for we hold a dead man’s hand of Aces and Eights, waiting for a bullet in the back. Two pair, but not just any two pair. What was the fifth card and what will it be?

We’ve got a quarter jar of Wilkes County, NC moonshine sitting in the cupholder, spreading good vibes through our Suburban interior. Moonshine molecules float through our mobile enclosed space, tickling our nostrils and our country rock fancy. So–we flew in direct from LAX to Washington D..C yesterday in a brand new Boeing 777 leased and operated by United Airlines. Each seat had its own individual television with 50 cable-tvish channels. There was a great shark program on, as there usually is, called “Air Jaws.” Off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa great white sharks sim straight up from the depths at speeds approaching 30 mph. With prey locked in their jaws they shoot into the air, breeching fully above the southern waters. These prehistoric missiles, (not missals – the Catholic prayer book, and unlike the North Korean dongs) thrill and terrify us all.

Will Garrison Keillor address this latest Korean missile crisis in his next radio broadcast? Perhaps, but this hit or miss Robert Altman of the radio waves could just as easily ignore it altogether. He’s gotten bolder in his critique of America’s madness, veering into Martin Luther King territory, that area where the speaker must duck when a car backfires. When will someone stand up and pelt this writer/broadcaster, the soul of highbrow middle America? Perhaps, like the Simpsons, he’s under the radar and over the heads of the vicious beast that got JFK It’s 4 p.m. in DC adjacent Virginia. Not very Virginia up here. Jassa, our Sihk cabbie, whisks us away from Dulles International but quickly he realizes he’s made a wrong turn due to being distracted while trying to program his new GPS unite. We get back on the right track then lost again. The GPS is a step behind, recalculating as The Sihk gives Paul Lacques his map. The GPS proves to be extraordinarily accurate and even prescient, predicting our arrival in Leesburg and replotting the directions with our brave turbaned warrior abandons a clogged commuter artery. We make it to PL’s brother Gabe’s house in historic Leesburg, Virginia, within two minutes of the GPS prophecy.

We invade Gabe and Deanna’s basement, haul up our amps and drums, reload, sip moonshine, and drive to Vienna, VA, another DC bedroom community framed by trees, canals, and swamps yielding to Suburbia Americana. Jammin’ Java is in a mini-mall with a generous roadside parking lot. It could be the new roadhouse, as funk vanishes from the roads. Pierced and dyed young women in black smoke cigarettes on the concrete walkway. Some of them work at Jammin Java and direct us around to the back. The mini-mall isn’t so mini, it’s a long drive to the back entrance, and the interior of JJ is huge, brick walled, and mysterious. It doesn’t match its anonymous exterior. Very cool.

Tony Gilkyson and Rob Douglas greet us. (Kip is a newlywed, congrats, and subbed out till we go to UK in August.) Paul L puts new old stock 1950’s GE 6V6GT tubes in his amp, which promptly blows a fuse. You’d think Paul would have learned from past Ebay purchases, but no, he hasn’t. He puts the old tubes back in, and the amp works fine. Rolling the dice, he replaces a smaller 12AX7 tube. This one works, and the amp sounds great, rejuvenated. It was getting tired on the first leg of the tour, and now it’s frisky, even brash.It’s another small but wiry crowd in the dark halls of Jammin Java, but a good time is had by all. Gabe and Deanna, their cute and bright as a penny near one year old Carlin, Deanna’s mom Bonnie and her man Jake are full of enthusiasm and good cheer, hang for the Hawks and Tony. Jake’s excited, appropriately enough, by Tony’s barn burner instrumental “Late for Jake.” Two fellow Mayo Spartans from Rochester, MN surprise RW. The vibe is alright. The Java sound man and intellectual waitresses are great, and we want to come back.
Load up in the misting humid late night, bye to baby Carlin and keepers, 2 hour drive to Elksburg, MD, arbitrary stopping point discovered by Paul M in his hotel booking stint. A Hampton Inn bordering a woods and mosquito pond, comfy, with cookies and tea at 2 a.m. But it’s only 11 p.m. west coast time, and we’re not burnt at all. Watch France beat Portugal 1-0, and crash out.

Paul L was hoping for Germany vs. France. Nostalgia.We’re on east coast country rock time next, day, wake at 11 p.m. and load up. Rob and Paul L sprint the 100 yards to the Waffle House, a country rock exercise regimen that we can probably adhere to. Eggs, hash browns smothered (and capped for Paul M), two orders of cheese and eggs, and we drive north on the 95. Paul L accidentally averts a toll exit, driving blissfully through an EasyPass only lane. Will an expensive east coast traffic violation ticket be arriving in the mail?

The New York City Skyline rises up on the horizon. The first thing you notice is the missing World Trade Center towers. The band debates the Freedom Tower. Should it be built? What, if anything, does “Freedom” mean in this context? Stalin’s freedom, or Townes van Zandt’s? NYC gets the Hawks jacked every time. We cross the George Washington bridge and our pulses race. It’s so public. There’s the high rise tenements with the homies on the wall, and the elegant old smaller brick co ops where you know the yuppies grind their beans fresh. No anonymity, and thus anomymous. We’re listening to 1980 Mink DeVille, the perfect east coast soundtrack. She’s a mixed up shook up girl.

~ By RON GARMON ~
L.A. City Beat
June 29th, 2006

Anchoring a corner in one of Sunset Boulevard’s less tony strip malls, Safari Sam’s already feels like a cool drink at the well to this transplanted Appalachian hillbilly. Indeed, pull down the mezzanine (but leave the wreckage), and this spacious box-with-stage looks like a twice-scale model of the Wagon Wheel, a long-defunct West Virginia country-cooze honky-tonk from whose bar I lifted my first illegal beer. Here last Saturday (June 24), by the twos and threes, crept in the elderly hippies, the part-time rednecks, the Inland diaspora, tattooed girls in tight print dresses, hipsters-with-ears, and aligned buckaroos of all ages, both genders, and every ethnicity – yeah, the whole Hee Haw gang – for L.A.’s greatest practitioners of the high-lonesome tonal art, I See Hawks in L.A. and Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men. Looking about me at this friendly, flirty assemblage, I could see a Red State glowing in every heart.

When last I checked on ironists I See Hawks, they were pursuing a nice line in astringent, cannabinoid C&W, with but the merest hint of the cozmik choogle they throw down now. Their third album, California Country, can be filed alongside The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Burrito Deluxe as evocation of the acidhead West; a land of purple trees and hard times, of loss, predation, circling helicopters, and second-generation hippie chix shaking their asses. These Riders of the Purple Booj make honky-tonk sweetness out of this welter of good and bad and worse, with Angeleno THC meditativeness standing in for the beery familiarity of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and the Bakersfield sound.

Sophisticates may sneer (with or without surgery’s aid) and Westsiders squirm, but, like everything beautiful, such numbers as “Motorcycle Mama” and “Houston Romance” provide their own justification. There’s something of Haggard’s whimsical toughness in Rob Waller’s voice, and the songs evince some of Randy Newman’s knack for gone-dead Goya caricature. The eternal Huck Finn penchant for the wistful (“Raised by Hippies”), the tall-tale fantastic (“Slash from Guns N’ Roses”), and the fatalistic (“Jackpot!”) are stylishly indulged on disc, but they’re thrown down like a rock ‘n’ roll barn dance live. Patrons sweated and gripped each other as room temperature rose and outer garments peeled away.

June 24, Safari Sam’s with Dave Alvin

It’s late June, the longest day of the year has passed, and the Hawks are laying low. We’ve played almost every night, Phoenix to Richmond in 21 days, and didn’t escape 100 degree + weather till the last week of the tour, but then the humidity stepped in. We’re lounging with the wives and families, resting up for Tour round II. The Hawks reunite on Saturday night in the Southland, our maiden voyage at the brand new Safari Sam’s in East Hollywood, and we’re curious. West on Los Feliz, south on Western, oops, east on Sunset, just past the mega-99 Cent store and into the parking lot, park at the giant Tiki face and load in.

Safari’s Sam’s just might be the best club in L.A. It’s big but not too big, dark with many dark corners, funky but with good sound and lights. Steve Zepeda is a long time booker and a musician’s friend (not to be confused with the Guitar Center magazine, which local wit Doten has rechristened “Musician’s Acquaintance”). He knows how to treat bands and thus has a great lineup on the calendar.We’re opening for Dave Alvin, who has kindly requested us, and his gear is set up, soundchecked, and ready to go. We do our humble opening band tribute to a sound check and head for the beers, hanging with Drac in the back, as the public pours in. The sun is still setting. Ah, summer.

If time on the road teaches you anything, it is to ignore hideous onstage sound and keep playing. Don’t whine, don’t grimace, even if the monitor is feeding you ear splitting midrange sludge. Which greeted our first song, but we plowed through, and the packed house was perhaps none the wiser. Soundman got it together, and we got a great reception from the roots rock audience, packed with vets of L.A.’s first golden age of clubbery, the late 70s/early 80s when X, The Blasters, Plugs, Los Lobos, and many semi-forgotten but great bands played Wongs east and West, the Hong Kong, Cathay de Grande, Blackies. Young people went to Flip and Aardvark and bought thrift store suits and jackets and 50’s dresses and packed the clubs. If hippiedom was dead, this wasn’t such a bad alternative. And these folks are still rocking, with an infusion of youngsters in the crowd.

Rick Shea (whose name means “hawklike” in Irish) added his soulful pedal steel and then guitar to the Hawks set. It gets hot in Safari Sam’s, hot and dark like Austin or Memphis, and that’s a good thing. A great L.A. welcome home.

Dave Alvin and his mature Guilty Men hit the stage and played with fire. It’s Dave’s record release party for his brand new West of the West album. The crowd was borderline worshipful for such a hardnosed bunch, and Dave’s lead guitar was stinging and on the money. The Hawks mingled with old and new friends. A shoutout to our publicist Susan Clary, in attendance with her artiste husband Hudson Marquez, the guy who buried the Cadillacs in the middle of the Texas prairie and called it Cadillac Ranch. In America money buys you not only justice, but press coverage, and Susan has been kind enough to help us out at her Second Tier Country Rock rate, because she loves music and odes to altered consciousness.More greetings inside and out Sam’s, to the Coles family (rumor has it Coles is no more more! Alas! Alas!), Jeff from Santa Barbara, Chris Morris, Randall and his rocker mom Evelyn (“I know this sounds ridiculous, but have you seen my mom?”), as Dave and Men cranked out the hits of bygone California, including the best of the night, Dave’s own “Fourth of July.” Get yourself a copy before the weekend.

After staying out way too late, next morning Hawks Paul, Paul, and Rob gathered at a coffee house at Wilshire and Hauser, greeted by Chris Morris, pillar of L.A. rock criticism, who’s also the salvation of Indie 103.1’s Watusi Rodeo, taking over the show with wit, encyclopedic knowledge, taste*, and enthusiasm. Chris escorted us upstairs and led us through a charged up interview, despite having half the sleep we got (last night he taxiied over to Cinema Bar to catch Randy Weeks and get his dose of Tony Gilkyson guitar–FYI, it’s a $40 dollar ride). We played “Raised By Hippies,” “Grapevine,” and something else and were told it sounded great. We’re still waking up from that one.

It’s almost 4th of July, and then we hit the road again.*Overfunded westside “public” radio station DJs, take note.

For more on the Alvin/Hawks show check out what these fine publications have to say:Daily Variety

L.A. City Beat

by William Michael Smith

You might judge I See Hawks in L.A. by the company they keep. Rick Shea, Dave Alvin’s guitarist for the past half decade, sits in with the group as often as his schedule permits. Fiddler Brantley Kearns, another regular in Alvin’s band who played for years with Dwight Yoakam, is essentially a fifth member of the band. Chris Hillman adds mandolin to three tracks on I See Hawks’ latest disc, California Country, its title betraying the band’s debt to Hillman’s trailblazing work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Shea says the Hawks lie somewhere on along the California musical continuum “from Sweethearts of the Rodeo to Captain Beefheart.” The three-part harmonies between guitarist Rob Waller, multi-instumentalist Paul Lacques and bassist Paul Marshall have become a distinctive element of their sound. Drummer Shawn Nourse, who’d previously played with Yoakam and James Intveld, rounds out the lineup.

Lyrically, the band has become know for stoner songs such as “Barrier Reef” — “the keeper of the leaf is the barrier reef to my sanity” — and “Humboldt,” a vivid ode to designer pot growers in northern California: “I’d be glad to plant corn in the ground/ But corn don’t go for three thousand a pound.”

With many Los Angeles country-scene players having communal ties to I See Hawks, the shuffling “who’s available” lineup lends a supple “how will it sound tonight?” flexibility to their shows. On their 2004 album Grapevine, “Humboldt” received a traditional big-beat Burrito-esque country-rock treatment, but a website live version sounds like a psychedelic electric bluegrass raga band playing after-hours at the Grateful Dead house.

Shea calls frontman Waller “an amazing singer — strange, sad, poetic, crazed, controversial. And any lyric, when he sings it, makes perfect sense, like you’re sitting around getting high talking to a good friend.” Waller, a creative writing instructor at USC, and Lacques, a successful playwright and comic strip creator, began to write together in Lacques’ Echo Park apartment in 1999. They issued their self-titled debut disc in 2001, with Kearns contributing fiddle.

Their songs are rife with mournful social commentary, environmental tragedy, wily humor, outsider guile, and political undercurrent. The title track of California Country elaborates on the eerie late-night cover photo of a lonely gas pump island along some Golden State commuter alley. The angst at the loss of California’s natural beauty to population and progress sends a message that is simultaneously spiritually uplifting and politically bitter.

Elsewhere, on the gently sarcastic “Hard Times (Are Here Again)”, Waller wryly bemoans, “There’s no ink in my printer/ It’ll be a long, long winter,” while the hilarious and surreal “Slash from Guns N’ Roses” drops a bunker buster bomb on Hollywood pretension.

Asked about the occasional political nature of the band’s material, Waller is bemused. “We’re not a polemical band, not right-wing or left-wing or any of that,” he says. “We’re just trying to react honestly to the madness of politics today in a way that’s not dogmatic or affiliated with any political group.”

And the marijuana anthems? Waller shrugs. “Ah, the misconception that we’re a ‘pot band.’ In a way those songs are political too, just a big ‘screw you’ to everyone who thinks pot is a crucial issue compared to all the horrific stuff going on.”

Waller is similarly cagey about the Hawks’ musical identity.” We knew it was going to be country, but that’s about all the ‘What kind of music is it?’ strategy we put into it,” he says. “We tried to write interesting songs and eventually found that Hawks sound. Paul had a very successful play in the ’80s about an egomaniacal polka band leader, so I sensed a kindred spirit. As we worked together, we came upon this common strangeness in each other that we both enjoyed.”