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Los Angeles Public Library’s collection is full of songs about California, reflecting the progression of the region and its identity.

By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

May 29, 2013

Like postcards that wished you were here, the song titles are as alluring as the full-color covers of the sheet music they adorn, each a melodic tale of the Southern California of the imagination: “Strolling ‘Neath the California Moon,” “I’ll Pick Myself a California Rose,” “Where the Mission Bells Are Chiming Down Beside the Sea.”

And then there’s one called, simply, “California,” whose songwriter is “burning for a spot where hearts are true/T’ward the west, toward the best my eyes are turning/For I’m yearning so for you/California.”

Part of the Los Angeles Public Library’s vast collection of old sheet music spanning from 1849 to the present, the individual pieces are but quaint ditties about the California dream. But gathered en masse, the songs spring to life and accompany a fascinating story of the city and its budding culture.

“Sheet music was there — every step of the way,” says Josh Kun, professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC and editor of a new book on Los Angeles’ aural history. “Its songs and cover designs were the musical mirrors and musical engines of a city on the rise.”

Although the writers and (mostly anonymous) cover illustrators didn’t know it at the time, their work helped set themes — about easy living and the region’s carefree spirit, but also shifting personal identity and busted dreams — that were carried on through the century by artists such as the Beach Boys, the Eagles, Randy Newman, Snoop Dogg and Best Coast.

In fact, judging by the art for “Pajama Girl,” a 1931 “melody fox trot,” the song could be an ancestor to the Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl” 30 years later. The cover illustration features a woman, clad in “beach pajamas,” standing in the sand holding a ball. Behind her, men and women frolic in the Pacific.

For Van Dyke Parks, famous for his collaboration with Brian Wilson on the Beach Boys’ “Smile,” the project is long overdue.

The cover for the 1931 sheet music “Pajama Girl,” composed by Louis Vrooman. The sheet music is part of the new book, “Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: Sheet Music From the Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.” (Los Angeles Public Library Sheet Music Collection) More photos

Parks, who contributes an essay to Kun’s book, “Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: Sheet Music From the Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library,” says the effort, underwritten by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, “flies in the face of what Los Angeles seems to be obsessed with, which is the progress of profit and the expendability of everything that was so yesteryear.

“This is looking back and embracing a cultural heritage that deserves to migrate into this digital age.”

New York’s classic Tin Pan Alley has been well documented, as has musical San Francisco, which long was the music publishing capital of the West. But the song-making that soundtracked, and helped to define, L.A.’s early growth is a mostly undiscovered realm.

“There’s never been any history done on 80% of this,” Kun says. “Every book that’s ever been written about Los Angeles music doesn’t mention this stuff. It’s crazy.”

Rob Waller, co-founder of L.A. country band I See Hawks in L.A., was surprised by the connections he felt when looking over the lost music.

“We have a lot of songs about California and L.A. — it’s in our band name,” he says. “And then to discover through this project all the other people who did this a hundred years ago or more, and explored some similar themes.”

Over the summer, the library will celebrate this music with concerts, free MP3 downloads, a gallery show of songbook covers and more. As part of the project, Waller’s band resurrected a song from the book, “In the Valley of the San Joaquin,” written in 1904.

Los Angeles must be found out. It doesn’t somehow stick out. And I think that’s true with its music too.”— By Van Dyke Parks

“It’s nostalgic for the lost Garden of Eden of the San Joaquin Valley,” Waller says, adding that his band has a song called “California Country” with a similar theme. “Both are sort of longing for the Garden of Eden, the beautiful, natural state of California, now lost.”

The sheet music helped build the music business before the advent in the early 1900s of recorded music. It served popular tastes, chased trends and evolved just as rock, hip-hop and electronic dance music do today.

The difference: Instead of trading in MP3s or compact discs, or broadcasting online or on the radio (which hadn’t become a national medium yet), songwriters sold notated songs to be played by bands, orchestras or amateurs in concert halls, parlors or private homes.

Even this paper had a piece of the action: From 1901 to 1910, The Times gave away free sheet music in some daily editions.

Kun calls his team’s discovery “audio versions of orange crate art,” referring to the idealized tableaux of Southern California flora that decorated fruit boxes exported to the East.

Like orange crate art, the music’s not the most sophisticated, artistically speaking. In late March, Kun sat down at a piano with composer and arranger Parks to see what they had.

Recalls Kun: “He just put sheet music up on the piano and started playing. He’d say, ‘Ah, that’s no good,’ or, ‘Why would they choose a D instead of an E? That makes no sense — that must be wrong!'”

Parks says that even if the songwriting was sometimes lacking, it was still a world he wanted to inhabit.

“I want people to learn what a beautiful place this is,” he says. “It’s like the architecture of L.A. to me. It’s not something that a European can come and immediately appreciate. Los Angeles must be found out. It doesn’t somehow stick out. And I think that’s true with its music too.”

This shot of early Southern California culture, filled with what Parks describes as “propagandist art,” was realized by a convergence of commerce and boosterism, which combined to suggest paradise found; many songs were commissioned by the citrus industry, the railroads and the budding travel business.

The cover for the music to a song called “Chiapanecas” connects it to Cafe Caliente, an early downtown Mexican eatery, and a singer named Elenita who used to interpret the song during dinner hours.

“One of the first Mexican restaurants on Olvera Street opened as an Italian restaurant,” Kun says. “They quickly wised up and realized they were going to be on the main street of Mexican Disneyland and had to change. This is one of the first things I saw when we started going through the collection. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.'”

Aside from documenting the birth of the West Coast music industry and the seeds of an assimilation that has come to define the region, the survey uncovered fascinating stories, some nearly lost to time. Consider the narrative of “Princess Indita,” an early L.A. artist who used her ambiguous ethnicity in service of her stardom.

The self-proclaimed Princess Indita Rivola Hinodi Bennessee Meaning was featured in a 1917 story in The Times, in which the princess explained that her name, translated, meant “Little Indian Maiden With an Empty Stomach.” In other guises she was “a famed snake charmer, a vaudeville star, an assistant filmmaker and something of an aviation enthusiast,” USC Annenberg Fellow and doctoral candidate Inna Arzumanova writes in one essay.

As a snake charmer, she competed in an act called the Dance of Death, and at various times over her career claimed she was either Sioux or Hopi Indian — and, near the end of her career, white. Her contribution to the California songbook? A humble piece called “The City of the Angels.”

Music also was key to the city’s most important business: the first work, Kun believes, “specifically written and marketed to be a hit song in a movie.” It’s called “Mickey,” and was performed by early movie star Mabel Normand for a 1918 film of the same name.

The cover for the sheet music “Make Your Mind Up to Wind Up in California,” composed by Fred Howard and Nat Vincent. (Los Angeles Public Library Sheet Music Collection) More photos

This vanished world in the early 1900s existed throughout the city but mostly within the downtown entertainment district, with Broadway housing the largest concentration of movie theaters in the world. Woven among them were sheet music shops, instrument stores and song publishers. By the 1910s and ’20s, the latter were working with songwriters trying to place music in movies.

“You had Southern California Music Company on Broadway, the Bartlett Music Company on Broadway, the Platt Music Company,” Kun says. “All of these music companies who sold pianos, sold sheet music, were hubs for musicians to come and gather, all mixed in with the theater district.”

Just up the street was the Central Library, which not only offered old and new hits but featured practice rooms in which to learn them. Patrons would check out sheet music, take them to rooms with pianos and work out tunes before heading to a recital, gig or party.

Kun and his researchers started dusting away the library’s collection of sheet music in 2010 after a conversation he had with Library Foundation President Ken Brecher. Housed within the library’s Art, Music & Recreation Department, the subset of California songs are part of holdings that include 51,000 songbooks and 67,000 songs, as well as more than 50,000 song sheets.

Though not all of it circulates, the sheet music section in branches throughout the library system remain a vital tool for Angelenos involved in entertainment, whether session musicians looking for arrangements or members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic researching repertoire. The variety includes classical scores (2,700 pieces for orchestras), folk songs, musical theater works, pop songs and jazz.

Young composer and songwriter Julia Holter, who grew up in Los Angeles, used to roam the Central Library when she was a music student learning repertoire. For “Songs in the Key of Los Angeles,” Kun asked her to record a song from the collection. She chose the century-old “Where the Mission Bells Are Chiming Down Beside the Sea.”

She loved the artwork on the cover, but it was more than that. “It was just mysterious to me,” she says. “And it was pretty. It felt mystical.”

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New and old Hawks listeners will be struck by the chances taken in this latest phase of the Hawks journey – mixing serious country cred (members have played with Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, John Denver, Hazel and Alice, and in every honky-tonk from Mississippi to Malibu) with wild lyricism and surreal story telling. Audra Schroeder of the Austin Chronicle calls the

Hawks: ‘Americana, traversing the landscape of the Golden State like Didion on horseback. It’s a divine fusion of humor and twang that’s definitely high, but not that lonesome.’

I See Hawks In L.A. were founded in 1999 by Minnesotan turned Echo Park dweller Rob Waller and California natives Paul and Anthony Lacques and have been named ‘the city’s premier roots band’ by the Los Angeles Times and ‘trance-inducing, the stories transfixing, the vibe completely Californian’ by alt. country bible No Depression.

Mystery Drug, the band’s 7th release, cuts a wide swath of post-Gram Parsons California country music, with surreal musings on commerce as love (‘My Local Merchants’), desert marriage rituals (‘One Drop Of Human

Blood’), and the vanishing of spirits and aquifers of the American west (‘Sky Island’). Honky tonk and cowpunk grooves, a Celtic musing on death and ancestry, three memorable love ballads, the signature Hawks harmonies, and lots of cosmic acousticism make Mystery Drug a complex and varied voyage, full of wit and surprises.

Balancing this Joycean density are kickass performances by drummer Shawn Nourse (Dwight Yoakam, James Intveld), cosmic pedal steelers Rick Shea (Dave Alvin, Wanda Jackson) and Pete Grant (Grateful Dead, Rodney Crowell,

The Dillards), psychedelic bass from Paul Marshall (Strawberry Alarm Clock, Hank Thompson) and big league harmonies and burning electric and slide guitar from the core Hawks crew.

Hawks records have always mixed traditional bar room musings with tales rooted in geography: mating dances of whales; the life of Senator Byrd from West Virginia; a Humboldt pot grower’s flight to Tibet; boom and bust

in guitarist Lacques’ Mojave Desert homeland; wandering hippie caravans; the imminent collapse of suburban Houston. In 2002 the Hawks were decidedly ahead of the curve in condemning the Bush administration’s drums of war.

Despite this out on a limb perch, I See Hawks In L.A. have been embraced by legends of contemporary country, requested as an opener by Lucinda Williams and Chris Hillman (who plays on ’06’s California Country), hitting the Americana Charts, #2 on XM radio’s alt country, and three #1’s on the Freeform American Roots Chart. They’ve toured the U.S. many times, and are returning to Europe & the UK for the 4th time from May 22-July 8.

Check out the dates of their UK tour:

June

Weds 19 Dingwall, Scottish Highlands, Square Wheels House

Concert

Thurs 20 Glasgow, Woodend Bowling & Lawn Tennis Club

Fri 21 Kinross, Perthshire

Backstage at The Green Hotel

Sat 22 Perth, Solas Festival

Sun 23 Inverness, Eden Court

Mon 24 Shrewsbury, Henry Tudor House

Tues 25 London, The Slaughtered Lamb

Weds 26 Farnham, Surrey,The Barn (Lazy Bishops Music Night)

Fri 28 Cardiff, Boomswinger Bluegrass Club at The Mackintosh

Institute

Sat 29 Bedford, The Ent Shed at The Gordon Arms

Sun 30 Cropredy, Oxfordshire,The Brasenose Arms

July

Tues 2 Stroud, The Prince Albert

Weds 3 Hempstead, nr. Saffron Walden, The Bluebell Inn

Thurs 4 Southport, The Atkinson

Sat 6 Easton, Suffolk, Maverick Festival 2013 at Easton Farm

Park

Sun 7 Birmingham, The Kitchen Garden Cafe

Mon 8 Brighton, The Greys

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‘Mystery Drug’-  Label: ‘Blue Rose’ –  Genre: ‘Alt/Country’ –  Release Date: ‘1st May 2013’-  Catalogue No: ‘BLUDP0611’
Our Rating:
I See Hawks In L.A. are a group of psychedelic country rockers that formed way back in 1999, and this is their seventh release.There are several different vibes going on in there, although the predominant genre is country music, there are elements of blues, new wave, Celtic flavours and psychedelia, which all go to make this an extremely interesting melting pot of ideas and styles. The lyrics are a blend of witty observation and direct comment which hits hard, such as ‘Stop Driving Like An Asshole’, a song that is extremely topical, what with the newspapers displaying a daily dose of deceased on our roads. this has the ability to make people stop and think. The song is wrapped up in a country style electric strum, with guitars to the fore, however it’s the lyrics that hold the imagination, especially the lines: “Stop driving like an asshole/ You know who you are/ Did you think when you cut me off it would help you go farther? / You’re an accident waiting to happen, a flipped over SUV/ On the 405, at six o’clock, your carcass on TV.” The band also touch on subjects such as the human condition on tracks like ‘Mystery Drug’, a country style ballad that is primarily played out on acoustic guitar. Once again however, it is the lyrics that have the power to grab you: – “I am a lonely primate, craving drugs to soothe my mind and body/ I am alone/ I am a lonely primate, shunning any social group that could give me peace. I am sorry.” This band isn’t just however solely based around social commentary, however. They detour into classic country mantras such as relationship break ups, such as on ‘Yesterday’s Coffee’, a song that would fit easily alongside any by Gram Parsons: – “Yesterday’s coffee sits by the window/ Nobody really wants yesterday’s coffee/ And I know you’re thinking, thinking about leaving/ But every morning I’m still hoping – I’m here, I’ll do/ But you’re feeling something new.”	The band also dip their toes into the new wave genre with ‘My Local Merchants’, a song that races along at a breakneck pace, a la Ramones, however, whilst the majority of songs on the first Bruddas album were uniformly negative, this is a song about how the people working in your local store have the ability to lift your mood: – “My local merchants cheered me up tonight/ My local merchants made me feel all right/ On a cold bitter night, that found me questioning my sanity/ I truly dug that little contact with humanity.”The band will be touring the UK throughout June and July this year. Further information and CDs are available from I See Hawks In L.A online This is definitely a band worth investigating.
	author: Nick Browne

Check out our version of the classic Grateful Dead song “Friend of the Devil” up today on the official Dead website at: http://www.dead.net

or go directly to the video here on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6boeo3HB-w&feature=player_embedded

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It’s November 2 in the last year of the Mayan calendar and therefore the last November 2 we’ll ever experience. So we’ve got to make it count. Like every day between now and the end of time (12/21/12), we’re going to live it to the fullest.

And what’s better than piling into the gracefully aging Yukon, with its non-opening doors, its tailgate that only Rob can open by summoning his dad’s surgeon skills to manipulate unseen levers inside the pried open plastic panel, its oil sipping engine and brakes that need to be woken from a deep chronic slumber. There’s nothing better, that’s what.

The Ireland/UK crew of Rob, Paul, Victoria and Doten (as Marc Doten is most affectionately known) always have a good time, even in trying situations. Whatta ya got, road? We’re ready for it. And the road this time out is mellow, a dry fall day with very dry brown hills as we 210 it to the 5, 46 it to the 101, and then–a break in the routine.

We’re playing in Carmel Valley, inland from the magic and expensive Carmel coast. New territory. Google maps says drive to Salinas and backtrack, but there’s an intriguing back road out of Greenfield. We take it. Through the small farmworker truck with shiny pickup trucks, west through fields towards soft old mountains that guard the coast. The narrow road leads into a long narrow river valley with high narrow mesas packed to the edges with vineyards blazing fall yellow in the low sun. Sedimentary rock beds turned straight verticle, one lane iron bridges, mysterious oak stands, infiltrated with cottonwoods and sycamores as we wind up and closer to the summit and lush coastal moistness. Thirty seven miles of forgotten California, and we pray for its continued obscurity. It’s nice to know the hills the Indios roamed are still untamed.

We spy squatting on a power line a hawk so huge that we stop and gawk. Oh, no, thinks the hawk, another eco tourist gawking vehicle, and lumbers off the line and out over the steep valley walls. Bigger houses and shiny new cars start to appear in the shadows of trees. We’re within commuter distance of Carmel and Monterey. We roll up a last rise into Carmel Valley, the town, nestled in oak covered hills. Olive oil, wineries, money.

At five p.m., uncharacteristically right on time, we reach Plaza Linda, a low brow high end Mexican restaurant. And there’s Paul’s mom Teresa, just driven down from Capitola and ready to rock. Sound check, large meal, the locals and some long traveling Hawks fans settle into tables, and we rock acoustically through a single PA speaker. It’s good. We’ve retained our tour tightness, and the crowd loves it. Kiki Wow, our host and music queen of these valleys and hills, arrives, introduces our second set, and this one’s good, too. We hang with friands (friend fans), sign CDs, talk over a return with Kiki, and hit the road. Paul and Victoria drive back with Mom Lacques up the coast to Capitola, and Rob and Marc motor out to the coast and a bit south, caravanning behind Matt, a Hawks fan and ranger who’s hosting the Hawks at his cabin on Point Lobos State Park land.

Matt’s cabin is offroad, up a winding dirt road over soft earth skirting unseen cliffs, the sound of surf pounding faintly far below. The caravan pulls up to the cabin in pitch blackness. Matt leads Marc and Rob, not into the cabin, but down a narrow trail through towering trees. Marc and Rob can’t see a thing. Follow your heart vision, advises Matt, and they gamely stumble forward. Matt stops abruptly on a wind whipped cliff’s edge. Jump, he commands. Marc and Rob stand frozen. Gotta jump, says, Matt, and he pushes Marc and Rob off the cliff. They plunge blindly downward, tumbling, a scream trapped into their throats. Whap! They hit ice cold Pacific Ocean, claw desperately to the surface, only to be pummeled by a series of small, unseen waves. Matt laughs, faintly audible up on the cliff’s edge. Two glowing orbs float on what might be rocky shore. Marc and Rob swim towards them, choosing unknown something over unseen nothingness. They clamber, stiff limbed and shivering, onto big flat rocks. The orbs belong to a black bear, who attacks. Rob and Marc tag team the bear, wrestling for their lives. Rob picks up a big flat rock, smashing it down on the bear’s skull. The bear lurches sideways, collapses to the ground, breathing heavily. Down, but not for long.

It’s November 3. Only 48 days till the end of the world. Live, people, live! Victoria and Paul and Mom grab breakfast at Linda’s, an in demand Santa Cruz breakfast joint filled with hippies of indeterminate age and provenance, and the food is damn good. Coffee at Coffeetopia, Paul’s Mom catches us up on the latest Santa Cruz county corruption scandals and plans for overdevelopment, business as usual. Meet the Yukon back at Mom’s house, and we’re on the road, 1 north to 17 and perhaps the 880 to 580 perhaps, heavy traffic that Northern Californians deny that they wallow in al la their neighbors to the south, and finally we’re free of Bayarea commutation and into the Central Valley.

The Palms Playhouse in Winters is our next stop.  Old friends Kate and Dave are there when we arrive, Richie and Katie too.  We do a sound check with new friend and soundman Warren.  Then it’s off to a quick dinner before the gig. Paul’s sister Madeline and her ultra cool husband Joaquin join us, tell us tails of their son Gabriel and his girlfriend Andrea, who are on a WOOF tour of Latin America that’s turned into a true epic wandering, gone over a year and now in Colombia. We hope they write a book when they get back. Madeline and Joaquin are flying to meet the errant young ‘uns in Ecuador.

The show goes quite beautifully, Richie adding ever more masterful accordion, singing his own Sorrow Be Gone with wife Katie coming up to share vocals. Marc’s vocals add to a new seamless blend now, with our 23 show overseas rehearsal paying off again. Doten wows the smallish but very enthused crowd with his version of “Into The Mystic.” Victoria’s rock of the world snare is nicely cranked in the monitors. We do a couple of encores, fond farewell to Dave and Kate of the Palms, farewell, sis, and head back to Richie and Katie’s in Sacramento for our customary midnight scotch and cheese tasting.

Next morning we take care of priorities, head straight out, groggy and a bit whiskey soaked, through the flat streets of Sacto to a groovy coffee house, animated discussions of solar panels, backyard gardening and how to fight the massive development that will abut the charming 1900’s neighborhood. And we’re off. Farewell, kind Sacto tribe. We power south on the 99, take the intriguing Highway 41 at Fresno that angles due south to the 5, no time saved but a fascinating cross section view of some smaller farms and signs of rural America collapse. The ups and downs of unlimited backyard space. Do Europeans exhibit their abandoned trucks and backhoes?

Sunset. Nightfall. We’re back in Highland Park. That was a good one.

We’re headed for Leyton in east East London, close by the new Olympic games complexes. The Games are 10 days away, but we’re worried about traffic. We take the outer ring motorway, and it’s a smooth sail, until traffic stops cold. Six lanes of gridlock, with oddly pastoral fields to the right, between us and the legendary metropolis somewhere south in the distance. We get off the motorway, into suburban gridlock, quickly get back on. If we don’t get the rentacar back by 4 p.m. we get gouged a fee of unknown size and scale–rental companies have a wild imagination when it comes to missing deadlines.

Traffic picks up, and we exit for the high road heading south into Leyton. We’re in the outer realms of metropolis, rolling south in slow lumbering traffic through unending canyons of three story flats with business fronts. But this is pure entertainment. Every people on earth is living here, in veils, beautiful robes, cheap suits, hip suits, Euro Americana knockoff t-shirts and jeans, all ages, from Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East. The streets are a bazaar, shop signs profuse in polyglot tongues, spices of the world waft into our idling car, the sidewalks are packed to bursting with human traffic. This is the crossroads of the world.

Our high road lurches and bends and turns southward, through harrowing roundabouts. We’re barely moving. An hour of life’s rich pageant out the window, and we reach Leyton, take side streets through quiet poor neighborhoods to our destination: The Birkbeck Tavern.

We load in through the side door in great haste, and Paul and Rob pile back into the car and race south, more teeming humanity on the high road, to the docks area and the striking brand new Olympic Village, onto a long pier and a deserted rentacar complex. We leave the car on a desolate dock, undinged despite roundabouts and lorries, hand over the keys triumphantly ten minutes before the deadly deadline.

The duo is feeling a weight lifting. We’re in London, we’re out of the car and into the best public transportation system on earth, staying in the same place we’re playing for the next three days. This feels like a vacation. We take a double decker bus back towards Leyton, enjoying the slow crawl from the upper level, then hoof it the last couple of miles, part of the sidewalk stream of humanity, mark the scrubby pub claiming to be the birthplace of Iron Maiden with Instagram photos, stop off for a pint of Jamesons in a shop, sip it from a paper bag on our meander. This is the most leisurely we’ve felt in three weeks.

Back at the Birkbeck Tavern, we meet Steve the tough and cool N. Ireland expat and his even tougher Yorkshire wife Ali, with charming tough accent. These hippie wanderer pub managers put on the What’s Cookin’ series in the bar, which draws established and even famous acts from all over the world. What’s Cookin’ is cookin’. We grab our rooms upstairs: PL and VJ settle into spacious matrimonial suite overlooking a lovely garden; MD and RW struggle to inflate two airmats with their own shrinking lungs in a living room where the family smokes.  Invigorated, the band grabs some food and checks out the very good opening British folk act.

The Parsonesque electric country rock band The Snakes hits the stage next, and they sound great, jangling guitars and good singing. We use their gear, do an electric show, and rock the house. The Hawks are a touring machine, our 21st show in 19 days, and the crowd is with us.

We hang, sign CDs, quaff pints, and eventually head upstairs.

We have a piece of the rare and precious nugget handed to us in Leicester. It’s our second to last night of a long journey so we fire up. Even Victoria’s going to take a hit, her first in years. The windows are nailed shut, it’s a tough neighborhood.  But there’s a big ashtray filled with butts. So it it’s cool to spark a J in here, right?  Sir?  A mellow evening in our upstairs den awaits—ah, but for England’s draconian pot laws. Our hostess Ali comes in to turn down the beds and smells the herbal essence, kinda really freaks out. We feel like teens in mom’s basement caught red-handed. She claims it’s a serious bust for the Birkbeck if the cops come around after smelling our sweat leaf. Really?  Sorry, mates. We’ll try and make up for it. We’re from mellow California, where the weed flows like wine. God save the CCTV.

Next day, gloomy of course, or nurturing, as a desert dweller might notice, we roust ourselves and take the tube out to Barry Everett’s House Of Mercy, west and north of Birkbeck but still in vast east London, on an old tree lined street of brick flats with ancient small parks and ruined churches decaying with dignity. Barry and crew are great, show us around, set up a video cam and mikes and we have a great live show/interview. Barry’s lived the full UK to US Concorde 60s 70s counterculture lifestyle, and we hope he writes his memoirs and sends us a copy. Fascinating guy.

It’s only noon and we’re in London, well rested and jacked up by the emanations in the air, as the center of western civilization preps for the Olympics. We grab the tube for Covent Gardens, a kind of Grove at Glendale if it were built hundreds of years ago, of massive brick and beautiful stone. The place is rocking, intriguing markets and outdoor food vendors, street performers, packed with tourists, including the guitar toting Hawks. Victoria lived in London for three years, and she guides us through the mazes, finds us a spud stand, where we gorge our suddenly starving selves. Bacon, butter, chives, mushrooms, we do it all. Damn. Rob and Paul find a tobacconist, buy a silver tin of snuff. The male Hawks sniff, our lady abstains. What a fantastic buzz. You’re alert, relaxed, in love with life’s rich pageant. We wend our way through packed people, back to the tube, bouncy ride underground back to Leyton, half mile walk through flat land to the Birkbeck.

It’s our last show of the tour. This is it. Our straight-edge vagabond hippie hosts have set up a great acoustic show that we’re headlining. We dig the young old timey band, uh oh, pretty damn good, tough act to follow, lots of energy and free spirits. They lead the crowd outside into the garden, where blue competes with gray in the heavens above, shout micless into the open air. The crowd loves it. We start our set indoors with mics, oh yeah, we win the crowd over quickly. Steve then leads the crowd and bands outdoors, where we do a couple of acoustic songs and then jam with the other musicians, 12 of us belting out Ring Of Fire, jumping up on the big wooden table to sing verses. Gentle long English twilight commences as we pack up, embraces all around, long chats with new friends and fans.

We’re done. Next day we scatter over London, Rob meeting his sister, Marc a cousin, Victoria and Paul exploring Brick Lane, where Victoria’s English born grandmother lived in gray poverty before emigrating to America. The ghosts of want are still in the air, even as the area has become a hotbed of British optimism and new commerce. Hip couture, an actually excellent espresso bar, an architect’s school showing off student final projects in an old warehouse space, Rough Trade Records, where we’re pleased to see the Blue Rose release of our new CD in the bins. Victoria spots Zooey Deschanel walking down a wide lane. We meet old Coles compatriots, young and happening architect and Cole’s Alumnus Chuck and his wife Georgia, an immigration lawyer, who show us their cool flat, fill us in on local lore, tell Victoria she can get UK citizenship because of her grandma, and take us to a phenomenal Vietnamese restaurant.  Life is, once again, very very good.

Next day we scatter. Rob and Marc tube it to Heathrow and America, Victoria and Paul roam London for a few more days, good food and food for thought, tubes and walking, films and culture, the global feast as the Olympics loom and flowers are planted while the city carries on.

Every tour must have a low point. There are scientific and linguistic/logical principles that insist upon this. And so, Swindon. For fans of the ”The Office” (the real one — not the gutted, unwatchable U.S. imitation) Swindon is the nearby rival to Ricky Gervais’s Slough paper products branch office. In the real Swindon, a ten story gray 70’s office building with most of its windows shattered rises as a sort of town centerpiece. It was built to replace a handsome old brick college building, but the modern experiment failed.

As low points go, this one is higher than most. Perched atop the town’s steepest hill, stands a cool little pub, The Beehive. As we wind through tightly parked cars up the narrow residential road, it begins to look familiar. Two story row houses packed together with bay windows and garages below. You’d think it was Potrero Hill if you didn’t know better. Six years have fogged our already foggy memories.  As we walk in Paul wonders, was it kind of a bummer playing here last time? Maybe. Rob remembers the little dramatic video we shot here entitled “Exeunt Pub.” That was fun, right? Maybe the Beehive has changed. Or maybe we have. Perhaps our expectations have risen a bit for the places we expect to play. And that’s a good thing.

But we’re country rock soldiers, people. A funky pub is not going to get us down. We know how to deal with this. Paul and Marc get to work setting up the sad P.A. and backline. We all swallow hard as we discover the meager money deal. The accommodations are stinky sofas scattered in the flat above the bar. Now, we’ll sleep just about anywhere, and have, but this is beyond our funk limit, mostly because of the cigarette butts filling the large ashtrays scattered about. Rob and Victoria hit the streets and luckily find a cheap and very cool B&B a short walk away. Whew.

Brightened by the newfound digs, the band takes position and digs into the first set. The gig is okay, could have been worse. Paul overcomes his recurring sullen fit about the backline amp, tonight a giant Traynor with the tone of a, well, Traynor. There’s a group of bearded hippie types gathered near the front. Thank god, the Deadheads have arrived! There’s even a tapir. An Irishman in the front row seems to be singing along. We’ll later learn he skipped work to be at this show, a fan made six years ago on a night not unlike this one. These gigs are the ones that turn you into a band. While some of the crowd would obviously prefer Stevie Ray Vaughn tunes, we find our most innovative and free rock sound of the tour. Victoria plays a rock solid train beat that fits perfectly with all our two beats. But in her drummer’s heart of hearts she’s a groovy melodic indie rock drummer. We turn each song into a jam, Paul turns his overdrive to 11 to disengage Traynor tone. We rock, stretching songs way out. The crowd responds. They’ve been waiting for some action and the action has arrived. The night ends well, the kind owner flowing us a generous bar tab. So it’s a wash, not bad for a low point. Good night, Swindon!

We amble down the road to The Swan B&B. We hang in the Doten-Waller suite watching British game shows, drinking tea, and smoking our first joint of the tour out the window. Finally, someone has hooked up the band–thank you, intriguing mysterious cowboy in Leicester. And it’s actually not bad stuff, even for these spoiled California stoners. We set our alarms for the early free breakfast. That’s the trick of the B&B. You’ve got to be able to get up for that breakfast no matter what. Marc rises first. Then Rob. They knock on the slumbering couple’s door. Shocked and dismayed, they too muster. Bacon. Orange juice. Tea. Cereal. The morning is gray. We are in England. The end of our tour is here, a tour which has, as we suspected it would, passed in a flash. Prepared as we were, we’re a little bewildered and hurt. It’s over? We’re not ready for it to be over. But the end is nigh. Flashes of harsh desert air, desiccating chapparal, billboards and reckless driving on vast freeways intrude into the soft green vistas before us as we motor east toward London, windshield wipers clicking hypnotically.