News & Opinion

Before this interview, I See Hawks in L.A. and L.A. RECORD co-founded the Four Guys for Peace organization, which is dedicated to promoting friendship and brotherhood worldwide by combining strangers with beers. The first meeting was held in Union Station. I See Hawks are marking their tenth anniversary as a band—as the band which spent years playing elevated California country in the side room at the old Cole’s—with a not-hits-but-still-greatest compilation called Shoulda Been Gold out this month. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Do think there are other dimensions where I See Hawks is colossally, globally successful?
Paul Lacques (guitar): I’ve had a very schizophrenic life. Creativity fills anything—it goes with anything.
Rob Waller (guitar/vocals): Especially if you have to pee. My wife has a theory—every bottle in the highway median is a piss bottle. On our first tour outside of California in ’03 or something, we were in dead-stop traffic on I-40. We were driving all the way across the country to North Carolina for our first show, then play all the way back. The first week was just this hard-ass drive. In a 1994 GMC Yukon.
P: In which we could fit everything. Four members and all gear—electric and acoustic. Probably our finest achievement.
R: We’ve done amazing packs never recorded by history. The world will never know we pack a vehicle better than any band in America. There should be a Grammy for that! For Best Independent Vehicle Pack! So traffic comes to a dead stop and we’re just sitting there with the car turned off and the windows down … and we see a piss bottle. Like a plastic quart bottle full of piss.
P: Allegedly.
R: So we had to test the theory. Paul ran out to get it, and I would open the cap and sniff it. And confirm or deny.
Wouldn’t you need a bigger sample size?
P: Than one? One was enough.
R: I just put my nose over it and took this big sniff—and it was the worst most acrid stinking acidic smell—‘Ah, no!’
P: There was genuine horror in his eyes. There’s no faking that.
R: And I’m not a weak-stomached guy. I have two and a half children. I can wipe somebody’s ass while they’re puking. I don’t care!
P: Then you’ll never be out of work, son!
Did you write ‘hit the bong / hit the bottle / Shaquille O’Neal / is Aristotle’ because of Shaq’s Twitter?
R: I signed up to follow Shaquille cuz I knew enough to know that would be a good idea.
P: I refuse to use Twitter—who has time?
R: The two of us are the bloggers of the band.
P: Rob’s mom thought we actually got arrested for peeing in the California Aqueduct [a classic iseehawks.com tall tale—ed.] and she goes, ‘Good! He needed to be stopped!’
R: ‘I’m glad they finally got him!’ That’s what my mom said after discovering I’d been ‘arrested’ and ‘was in jail.’
Is she much of a criminal herself?
R: ‘Yes’ is my answer to that question.
P: You certainly have a common understanding of each other.
R: We understand each other better than anyone else. The dark side of each other. You can’t communicate with my mom in a way that’s not dark. The minute you communicate with my mom, you’re in darkness.
What were your birthday parties like growing up?
R: She didn’t throw any birthday parties. Ah … my mom.
Who does she wishes I See Hawks sounded more like?
R: Jimmy Swaggart!
P: My mom loves everything I do. She’s very supportive. One time one of my bands was on tour and the singer goes, ‘I’ll give you $5 if you stick your nose between my toes.’ Why not? So I do it and someone takes a picture—I’ve been set up! And they’re over at my mom’s and they lay it on her and she says, ‘But Paul looks so HANDSOME!’
R: We have opposite mothers. Maybe that’s why our writing collaboration works.
P: She’s dark, but she lightened up. Except politically. My mom’s darkness is in politics. Any conspiracy comes along, she’s right there. Art Bell is too mainstream.
What’s the closest brush with death I See Hawks has had?
R: Paul almost drowned on tour!
P: I don’t know if I really would have drowned. We were on a little inlet and I’m not a very good swimmer and halfway across, I realized I’m not gonna make it. So I just start floating and it’s going really fast. ‘Am I gonna drown? No, I can just float.’ And I see our drummer and our eyes lock and I realize he thinks I’m dying! He was just frozen! But you can tread water all day, so I just treaded water. And floated for a really long way.
R: That’s the best way to go through life! One of the only good things about aging—the process of aging—is realizing, ‘I’m not gonna make it! I’m not gonna make it to the other side. So I might as well just go slack and let the current take me.’
P: ‘I can prolong the experience as long as I remain calm.’
R: People don’t want it to come, but it’s a very good moment.
P: Death? No it’s not!
R: No, the moment when you realize not to struggle.
P: But you’re also into death. Rob is like, ‘I bet it’s great!’
P: Paul is very afraid. I’m kind of oddly welcoming.
Epicurus said, ‘If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear death?’ Does that help?
P: No, but I like that! I’ll grab on to any life raft!
You said once that I See Hawks songs are about three things—places, animals and defiance of death.
R: We might have expanded a little bit.
P: We sort of have kind of political and social commentary.
R: But woven into it.
P: Not like ‘War is wrong.’
Because war is right?
R: We had a song called ‘Kill the Rich.’
P: We never did it—it seemed like tossing a violent pebble into the river.
How come that’s not on the new compilation?
P: We never recorded it.
Is this I See Hawks’ private reserve?
P: We have a lot. We were thinking of putting them on the website. We have insane songs.
So what would the dark side version of Shoulda Been Gold have? ‘Shoulda Never Been Heard’?
R: There’s ‘Run Osama Run.’
P: We just wrote one on the train ride: ‘Hitler Needed Oil.’
R: ‘Morphine Is Good for You.’
P: It’s a lullaby.
Do you ever play these?
P: We played ‘Run Osama Run’ at Cole’s one time and it was great. Our bass player keeps us from doing a lot of these songs. He’s the moral rudder. Rob and I are children who pick wings off of flies and don’t know we’re causing harm. We’re pleased by our own clever turn of phrase, and he’s like, ‘Goddamit, you can’t play that!’
R: He just says he won’t play on the song, and he sings and plays so well that we want him on it, so …
What do you think of the new face-lifted Cole’s?
R: I hate it.
P: I haven’t gone in. I don’t wanna see it. It’s pretty heartbreaking. The guys wear garters on their sleeves. It’s ‘shave and a haircut, two bits!’ But there is something I’m happy about. The room we played in is gone. Sealed up. The vault has been sealed. We played there every week for three years. It was great—it really allowed for the creation of the band in certain ways. If you play every single week at the same place, it just develops a life of its own. And it was a laboratory for us.
R: And for our fans. It was easy to pack—a fairly small room—but it was packed every week. And the fans did not care what you did. If you fell on your face, they loved it!
R: You’d play every night and be like, ‘Wow, we’re fucking great!’
P: And then go do a real gig—
R: All of a sudden you’re in Athens, Georgia, and Beck is at the Georgiadome. And you’re like, ‘Oh, shit …’
Is the Cinema Bar your new Cole’s?
R: It’s a different spirit.
P: But you can do whatever you want. Cole’s was our little private … Ali was kind of doing it for fun.
R: Or family. But Cinema Bar has a place for good spirit.
What has departed L.A. forever and is never coming back?
R: My wife’s restaurant at Mr. T’s is gone and I miss it dearly.
So free food?
R: I certainly worked for my food there! That’s something I miss. Shaquille O’Neal. That era of the Lakers I enjoyed. 2002-2003.
Have you ever participated in a Lakers-related civil disturbance?
R: Not near any particular epicenter. But when Robert Horry hit that three-pointer against Sacramento, I was part of a spontaneous act of violence.
When you played the Mariposa County Fair, you said, ‘We believe in America. We love fairs. Corn Dogs, the Demolition Derby, funnel cakes and Ferris wheels.’ What do you still believe in about America?
R: Funnel cakes.
P: I think we were pretty specific—did we leave anything out?
R: Is that a trick question?
P: It’s almost ‘Do you support the troops?’
What’s the last nice thing you did for the troops?
R: I gave an acting serviceman a CD. He tried to pay for it and said he was in action in Afghanistan and I said, ‘Dude, take it.’
P: I stopped donating to Al Qaeda. I realized, ‘Wait a minute—this could be harming our troops!’
And now you’ll never be able to board a domestic flight again.
P: They won’t let us on anyway!
What are the three greatest American inventions?
P: The Shop-Vac is phenomenal.
R: The dildo.
I think that’s from ancient Greece.
P: ‘Dildo’ sounds Greek.
R: The electric vibrator.
Not the electric guitar?
R: Same concept.
P: I would say pedal steel. A phenomenal thing.
R: The cotton gin! The steam shovel!
P: The atom bomb. We’ve done a lot!
R: Haven’t we? It makes me proud! I’m proud we got the nuclear bomb first—aren’t you? I’m proud of the stealth bomber! I was a bartender at the 1996 Superbowl—Packers against Denver—and it was like the first time the stealth bomber was released to the public and they flew it over the Superbowl.
And no one could tell it was even there?
R: No one had ever seen it! Everybody was just silent like, ‘Oh my God …’ Cuz it looks like a flying wing of death coming to kill you. So everyone was like, ‘Ooh, it’s scary!’ 80,000 people scared! This huge wing goes WOOOOOOSH right past and then everybody is like, ‘… YEAHHHHHHHH!’ So fucking psyched! And I was too! ‘Yeah! This is ours! This is our weapon!’
P: It’s so primal. People make fun of the Soviets for parading the tanks but …
They should have dropped some kegs on the field.
R: The ultimate!
Is that what you thought of when you played the county fair?
R: We played at the Irvine Spectrum in the early days of the band. We got booked by the mall at the mall. Our job was to stand and set up all our shit—we’re telling all our humiliating stories! ‘We’ve had some good gigs—like the time we played the Spectrum!’ We go through the back entrance and they’re really hardcore about not drinking, so we went to McDonald’s and got a coke and filled it with bourbon. And they set us across from the Opera Café, and we were playing acoustic music and they got these speakers on the fake patio so we had to sing into the opera music. People would walk by like going to the movies—
P: —with no reaction. ‘Is that a fire hydrant?’
R: And then girls would come up and start talking to us—while we’re playing—and they wanna get on the mic and start saying ‘happy birthday’ to their friends. Which we let them.
P: Good times. Like ‘Flight of the Conchords.’ Playing to nobody for no reaction.
There’s purity there.
P: There is. For yourself.
R: It takes courage to face that cultural wave that’s gonna wipe you out.
You said before that country music is pragmatic above all else, and that makes people like Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson truer in a way to country than the kind of throwback music I See Hawks makes.
R: We’re freaks and relics and we’re something else as well. But it’s weird how we tend to do better in remote areas. We have sort of a remote area mindset. I think it’s borderline survivalist. There are people in the world who still wanna rock. But it is weird. When you do this thing in this era—we’re releasing this record of basically music we’ve written and played for the last ten years. A decade of music as we’re coming to the close of a decade, and we started right at the beginning. An interesting way to mark time. It’s almost like geographical regions don’t matter. People can dial in to whatever taste is wherever. It’s spread way out. But you go there and have these kind of more rewarding experiences with people because they genuinely like what you’re doing and you genuinely appreciate them and they know it. Genuinely! You stay at their house and they make you dinner. It’s a strange experience and different than being a rock star. We sort of had that idea before, but when you are sort of just existing and playing music and connecting with people, it’s a totally different experience.
Does this connect to anything you’ve said about the death of regionalism?
P: Everyone has access to everything at the same time.
R: People hunt authentic experiences like people hunt exotic game. Hemingway shot elephants and now people get an iPhone app to find an authentic Mexican restaurtant. ‘The Authentic Guide To American Cities!’
P: That’s good! Authenti-city.
R: The second big website we’ve designed today! It’s great! Go to a bowling alley, check into a flophouse—
P: —I lost a finger! That real enough for you!?
So after all this time, people still kind of don’t want to be lied to?
R: They wanna be lied to and they don’t wanna be lied to. They wanna be lied to by the president but they don’t wanna be lied to by a country rock band. They welcome lies by the president. Maybe it’s easier to tell? When someone sings a song that’s bullshit, you walk the fuck out. You can’t sit there and be obliterated by it unless you’re heavily medicated. Unless people are!
So the solution is to let country-rock bands run the country?
R: There is no solution! But we will all die happy!

I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. WITH GINA VILLALOBOS AND HAYMAKER ON FRI., JAN. 22, AT THE PUKA BAR, 710 W. WILLOW ST., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / $7 / 21+. MYSPACE.COM/PUKABAR. AND ON SAT., JAN. 23, FOR THE HIGH DESERT CD RELEASE PARTY OF SHOULDA BEEN GOLD AT PAPPY AND HARRIET’S, 53688 PIONEERTOWN RD., PIONEERTOWN. 7:15 PM / FREE / 21+. PAPPYANDHARRIETS.COM. AND WITH MATT THE ELECTRICIAN ON SUN., JAN. 24, FOR THE L.A. CD RELEASE PARTY OF SHOULDA BEEN GOLD AT McCABE’S, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 / $15 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. I SEE HAWKS IN L.A.’S SHOULDA BEEN GOLD RELEASES TUE., JAN. 26, ON COLLECTOR’S CHOICE. VISIT I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. AT ISEEHAWKS.COM.

Link to full article here

By Wade Tatangelo in Q&AsWed., Jan. 20 2010 @ 3:00PM

I See Hawks in L.A. have spent the past decade making stirring alt-country with a 1960s-era California sensibility marked by influences like the Byrds, Merle Haggard​ and Buck Owens. The LA-based band enjoys a loyal following on both sides of the Atlantic and have garnered rave reviews in publications ranging from the Americana bible (alas, now online-only) No Depression to our sister paper LA Weekly, which profiled ISHILA in 2008.

On Jan. 26, the band witnesses the releases of their first retrospective, the fittingly titled Shoulda Been Gold. The album is advertised as a “17-song greatest non-hits collection including five previously unheard songs.” Unlike most such records, the new stuff, especially the title track and a cover of “Bossier City,” are as good as the “hits.”

To celebrate the album’s release, ISHILA are playing a bunch of Southern California dates including a stop Friday, 9 p.m., Puka Bar, Long Beach, $7. I called lead singer Rob Waller recently at his home in LA’s Highland Park. We discussed the new album, how to do deal with meth-head oil workers in Wyoming and that hilarious picture.

OC Weekly (Wade Tatangelo): So, how does it feel to have your first best-of released?

Rob Waller: It feels pretty good. It is sort of an odd marking of time. We started at the beginning of the decade. It’s hard to believe we’ve made four records over the past 10 years. We’re happy with the songs and it’s kind of nice to pick what you think is our best and put together on a record. But it kind of makes you feel a little bit old, too. It’s like, “Oh, shit, a decade.”

How have your relationships within the band grown or changed over the years?
We don’t really fight anymore. It’s like in a relationship. In the beginning, you’re staking out territory. That rivalry happens for three or four years and those lines are drawn and those boundaries become solid and everything is stabilized. Paul [Lacques] and I are kind of the main songwriters. We used to struggle more but then we kind of found this third person in the room with us when we’re writing songs. It’s an odd thing. We write our blog together, it’s about from traveling around to touring across the country, and when I read it I don’t know where he was writing and I was writing.

Unlike, say, Austin, Tex., LA isn’t exactly known as a hotbed for alt-country acts. What first drew you to the genre?

I grew up in Minnesota. The rest of the band is from Anaheim and Burbank and Pacific Palisades. Being from Minnesota, I didn’t listen to country. It was classic rock. Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. Then I lived in San Francisco in the 1990s. My wife’s dad has this insane record collection and would make us all these different CDs and mix tapes. That’s when I started getting into Gram Parsons, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, those classic California artists. I just really liked and was pulled in.

I see among the previously unreleased tracks on the new disc there’s a cover of David Allan Coe’s “Bossier City,” which the outlaw country singer recorded for his 1974 album the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. What drew you to that song?

That was one of the songs on mix tape that my wife’s dad made me a long time ago.

Editor’s note: This where we got into a lengthy conversation about the classic cult documentary Heartworn Highways, which, it turns out, Waller and I both love. Eventually, we got back to talking about “Bossier City.”

We were on the road one time driving through Louisiana and stopped in Bossier City. I remember there was this elementary called Waller Elementary School. The sign said “Where children come first” [laughs]. That solidified my memory.

After a decade of touring locally, nationally and internationally, what’s the craziest situation you’ve been in?

There’s a lot. One that comes to mind was we’ve driven from California to Vermont on this epic tour playing 38 states in nine weeks, six nights a week-plus. And we’re playing this little bar Lander, Wyoming.

Wow, no man’s land.

Right? So, we’re playing to some a serious oil worker crowd. Dudes who do meth and drink and work 20-hour shifts for two weeks and then get off and go crazy. But they’re kinda into it. We dig up some covers to please the crowd,keep on ’em on our side, y’know? We’re doing four sets. In between one of them, we step outside and hear somebody just beating on the drums. We go rushing back inside. This dude is just wasted, a methed-out oil worker beating the shit out of the drums. Being the guys that we are, we didn’t want to start a fight.

Probably a smart decision considering you were highly outnumbered in a room full of meth-head oil workers.

Exactly. Our drummer goes to the guy, “You’re being rude.” That’s it. Oddly, it worked. The guy was like, “Oh, I’m sorry.” When we went rushing in I’m thinking we’re gonan fight. Instead our drummer berated him like a misbehaving schoolboy. I still can’t believe it worked and we didn’t end up against a roomful of drunk oil workers.

Tags: Buck Owens, David Allan Coe, I See Hawks in L.A., Merle Haggard, Rob Waller, the Byrds

Never mind their clear-as-country-water name. Formed by Rob Waller and brothers Paul and Anthony Lacques, I See Hawks in L.A. was established on an Echo Park front porch in 2000. Now, four albums into their music making career and garnering attention from publications such as SPIN, USA Today, and Village Voice. The band is on tour, spreading their sound, filled to max capacity with lyrical longing and the comfort of Southern soul, in promotion of their upcoming album, “Shoulda Been Gold.”

By Randall Roberts

It takes something special to make country rock in the 21st century and not have it sound like the millions of others who have done the same in the past 40 years. I See Hawks in LA have been making truly memorable twang rock in this city for the past decade, drawing on the Bakersfield, Nashville and Los Angeles versions of the sound to create solid, smart and hummable music. The title of their new collection Shoulda Been Gold, 2001-2009 rings true, to a certain degree. Shoulda? Yeah, maybe. But, alas, probably not going to happen unless I See Hawks in L.A. does some sort of extreme makeover. Hopefully that’s not gonna happen.

Read the full article here.

How uninspired, all the obligatory end-of-year rehash — the Best of 2009 This and the Top 10 Yada-yada of That. It’s all so… last year. But, the good news: This dog from the future just did a quick dash to December 2010, and I’ve brought back with me the easy winner for the Best Album of Next Year. It’s already here.

One of the benefits of having your own blog (aside from some capacity for time travel) is that you can favor whatever you want, with impunity. Even so, that the acclaimed psychedelic-country-folk-rock band I See Hawks in L.A. are good friends of mine has nothing to do with the fact that their forthcoming album, “Shoulda Been Gold,” takes the aforementioned honor. Hands down. It’s a dazzling collection from their deep trove of music produced and performed over the past decade — a greatest hits record, as they like to put it, that contains no hits. It comes out officially on January 26 from Collector’s Choice Music, but you can be one of the first to get a hold of it right now, right here.

And you most definitely should. The album contains 17 tracks of vivid aural history, its harmonies and insights drawn from an American decade of relative desolation. The Hawks are one of the great original bands you shoulda heard by now, if you haven’t already. Don’t just take my word for it, you can look ‘em up on The Google: There have been volumes of critical acclaim for their four albums dating back to 2000, from the Los Angeles Times to Spin to USA Today. (The latter notably sidestepped cliché in praising the band’s “versatility, variety and power” and “intriguing dystopian science-fictional bent in the lyrics” — that is, this ain’t your garden variety country-rock band, folks.) There are cult favorite non-hits here such as “Humboldt” and “Highway Down,” but I’m particularly partial to several of the new and newly released tunes, among them the plaintive yet incandescent title track “Shoulda Been Gold” and the Cajun-inflected twirler “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulet.” You’ll definitely start your new year out happy if you get your hands on this stuff.

In a newsroom scandal sure to rock the L.A. Times to its foundation, the article on the recent American Music Awards that esteemed pop critic Ann Powers actually wrote has surfaced. We offer it here as a comparison to the heavily edited version that appeared http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/11/ladies-night-at-the-amas.html in today’s L.A. Times. Here’s real story; thanks for the courage and vision, Ann:

Pop & Hiss
THE L.A. TIMES MUSIC BLOG

Roots Rockers’ night at the AMAs
November 22, 2009
Sure, the shallow pretty young things performed on the show Sunday evening, but it was the veteran roots rockers who blazed.

Are the Idol Factory-produced hotties even making relevant pop music right now? That’s a ridiculous question, obviously, but after Sunday’s American Music Awards telecast, it seems almost reasonable. Though plenty of over-groomed and under-contentalized twenty somethings performed during this roundup of both trending and reliable chart toppers, the show’s heat emanated from the grizzled/embittered Los Angeles roots music veterans sphere.

Kip Boardman playing a blazing piano, Rob Waller and Mike Stinson giving touchingly rough-edged vocal performances, a startled Tony Gilkyson grabbing the top prize from the spectral grip of Michael Jackson — this show wasn’t just another over-emoting diva night: It marked a notable shift in American pop music.

Kip Boardman tears up the keys

The AMAs always offer spectacle, in part because the awards themselves feel less meaningful than either the Grammys or more genre-specific fetes like the Country Music Assn. Awards. Won in a public vote after nominations are made according to highly manipulated and corrupt radio charts and ever dwindling retail sales, these prizes always have seemed somehow less prestigious than those determined by industry insiders or artistic peers.

What’s been fun about the AMAs is the breadth of the show, as top draws in many genres work to generate the most glitz in what amounts to a pop free-for-all. But this year was startlingly different.

This year, rock bands such as U2 played and sang earnestly, and Will Smith (assisted by 50 Cent) rapped at the top of his game. Yet these moments felt like standard fare on a buffet overflowing with more scintillating choices.

It’s not that vapid pop manufactured by accountants and hack producer/songwriters hiding behind their massive ProTools rigs no longer speak to the mainstream; Taylor Swift’s album rather quietly became one of the year’s bestsellers, as did the latest from Kings of Leon, who were nominated for artist of the year yet chose not to perform Sunday evening when they were demolished in the final vote by instrumental guitar slingers Double Naught Spy Car.

But pop’s current mood — hooker-glamorous and faux-emotionally open, crotch-busting and calculated — reflects qualities associated with the creepy music executive’s view of the feminine. Authenticity and rawness, songs written about something, guitars played with feeling and originality, drums unconstrained by editing, vocals that haven’t been pitch-corrected into marketplace-approved sterility — for years these have been overwhelmed by costume, dance, processed singing and highly stylized, melodramatic confession.

But at the AMAs, the most successful performances came from (mostly) men who are pushing 40 and even beyond. Several — including the one-named wonders Stinson, Janisch and Waller — combined Neil Young-style dance routines with elements that were both futuristic and grounded in good old-fashioned musicality. Literally, in Mike Stinson’s case.

When he moved from his more dance-centered first song into a ballad, he did so by smashing through a glass wall and sitting down at that fiery acoustic guitar, where he proceeded to crush Coors Lite silver bullet cans as he sang. (Now, that’s heavy metal!)

Cliff Wagner stepped off of a carnival-style Wheel of Death to tear into his banjo instrumental medley; Double Naught Spy Car led what looked like an army of cyborgs as they delved into low end heavy unison riffs that merged into pure glorious noise as they shook their collective trademark hips. And though Dan Janisch didn’t execute his big comeback number that successfully — he took a tumble while performing his new single “Humboldt,” setting the Twittersphere afire — give him credit for trying on an androgynous and newly tough style in his boxer’s outfit and Neil Young-style hairstyle.

The night’s most exciting new face (and voice) was also hopelessly outside the sphere of hooker hotness. The Pasadena singer and songwriter Rich Dembowski made a fierce and sultry duet partner for Dave Gleason, debuting Old Californio’s new single “I Don’t Have A Computer”; Dembowski overshadowed the song’s third vocalist, Joe Berardi, not an easy task for a newcomer.

Joe Berardi puts the heat on Rich Dembowski

Other artists worked hard but didn’t make such a fresh impression. Carrie Underwood sounded great on her middling single “Cowboy Casanova,” but her bordello-inspired routine was too much like the one she recently did on the CMAs. Janet Jackson, opening the show, seemingly lifted a medley from her recent tour (and obviously lip-synched). Following actual badass singers The Chapin Sisters and their ungilded vocal majesty, Underwood and Jackson seemed suddenly as dated as a Big Mac left in a greasy bag overnight.

Mary J. Blige and Kelly Clarkson both kept things relatively simple and were histrionic as always, but calculated spectacle isn’t always memorable when it follows genuine music as generated by the SoCal roots upstarts at this year’s AMAs.

The artist who made the biggest splash — one that risked being a belly flop — was American Idol’s latest product Adam Lambert, who closed the show with a very sexy, rambunctious reading of his single “For Your Entertainment” that included tongue-kissing, crotch-grabbing and plenty of orgiastic dance moves. Lambert startled the audience with a notably spontaneous confession before leaving the stage: “You know, I’m grateful for the new house I just paid cash for in Los Feliz, but I’d give it all away just to study songwriting with I See Hawks In L.A.”

Lambert’s vocals were sometimes off (picture an offstage pitch correction engineer being given his walking papers as Lambert made his exit), but his all-out plunge into erotic exhibitionism was very entertaining and pretty freaking rock ‘n’ roll to this jaded, shallow, and thoroughly unqualified rock critic. Eminem and 50 Cent uttered obscenities that were bleeped out on the telecast; it wasn’t possible to hide Lambert’s in-your-face routine. His startling post-song I See Hawks confession was edited out for TIVO broadcasts.

It was a love-it-or-hate-it moment in a night full of them. But one performance was wholly admirable: Christina Ortega’s delivery of the ballad “Death to Capitalism,” from the comeback album that’s sure to return the original blockbuster diva to the height of her glory.

Standing still at the microphone, as if to resist the pull of all the gyrating younger women who’ve moved into the pop spotlight, Ortega sang without assistance from the cowering pitch correction engineer trembling just offstage. At one point, she paused, as if to cry — and then called on the rotting music industry, and the media sycophants who forstall its inevitable and welcome collapse, to kiss her ass. It was a truly old-fashioned diva moment.

And it was timeless, reminding everyone present that even a pop alpha female must show depth within the glitter she generates.

ann.powers@latimes.com

I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. will be showcasing at the Folk Alliance conference in Irvine, CA the weekend of Nov. 6th – 8th.

For more on the FAR-West conference visit their website: http://www.far-west.org/

“FAR-West exists to foster and promote traditional, contemporary and multicultural folk music, dance and related performing arts in the Western states.”

Here’s our schedule:
FRIDAY
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie spotlight, open / Hawks
4:00 pm – 4:30 pm BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie / Hawks

*****************

8:15 p.m. SALON – “The Golden Bear” premiere showcase 1/2 hr Hawks

11:10 to 11:40 THE CRAZY COYOTE SHOWCASE Hawks

11:45 PANIOLIO Hawks, 15 minute set!

12:30am BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie / Hawks

1:30 am LONG & SHORT OF IT

1:55 am ACOUSTIC VORTEX

SATURDAY

2:30 pm BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie spotlight / Hawks (Tony G follows at 3:00)

3:30 pm to 4:30 pm BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie / Hawks In L.A. (Rick Shea
follows at 4:30 pm)

*******

10:45 pm BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM Richie / Hawks

11:00pm BIG OLD TUMBLEWEED

11:30pm Bodie House Music Guerilla Showcase Room – Rm 361

midnight DESERT HIGHWAY ROOM 338

12:30am BIG BOOK RECORDS ROOM

1 a.m. Amilia Spicer’s songs in the Round with Tony Gilkyson, Amilia, Hawks

Amy Farris would have turned 41 today. We still don’t know the details of how she passed, and aren’t in a hurry to find out. Our angels and demons wait in the shadows to escort us all. We hope Amy’s already jamming with Eck Robertson or Chubby Wise, or in Stravinsky’s orchestra. We loved you and we love you, Amy.Amy did dozens of shows with us, when Brantley couldn’t make it, and sometimes when he could, and the two of them would grin at each other over twin fiddle lines and their own common ground of subtly subverting a familiar phrase. We never rehearsed with Amy–well maybe once when we first met. She was quick and fearless and always dug in. Never did she not sing her heart out.

Our fondest memories are the nights in the back room at Coles Bar, 6th and Main downtown, where for three years we hosted a weekly acoustic series, a combination music lab and bacchanal, with 9% Chimay and whiskey opening the doors of perception for the bands and the audiences packed at our feet.

Here’s Amy and the Hawks from a night at Coles, probably 2005–lo fi, ragged, careening, and a good time was had by all:

Pretty Dresses: Download file

Grapevine: Download file

She’s More To Be Pitied: Download file

See you on the other side, sweet sister. And yes, we often did “Pretty Dresses”
when you weren’t there.

Photos by Alyssa Archambault; Coles Bar photo montage by Mark Lowrie

Greetings, Readers of Our Blog. It’s been a bit slow of late, and there are no government conspiracies for us to unravel for the moment, so we’ve been neglecting you, dear Readers. L.A. got its first rain since, when, February? We were walking in Pasadena and a two year old looked up at the strange drops falling from the gray sky.

We’ve finished our CD, Shoulda Been Gold, which will be out on the American Beat label in late January. And Earthworm Ensemble, a children’s CD spearheaded by our drummer Shawn and his wife Sherri, is also at the manufacturer’s, coming out on our own Western Seeds Records label next year. We’ve been sitting at computers, looking at artwork, sitting stupefied at mastering sessions, having meetings. We had the privilege of using Joe Gastwirt on the new Hawks CD. Besides every Grateful Dead record, Joe has mastered The Ramones, Talking Heads, and Henry Mancini. Not exactly a lightweight, as Walter Sobchak put it. Rob hung at the mastering session and reports that Joe is supercool, the kind of analog icon you want young people to meet, his studio packed with esoteric gear with large knobs and few readouts. We emerged from our darkened rooms for an action packed weekend that started Friday night in Alhambra. Our friend Damon, who managed Carlos Guitarlos for years until he realized CG is manager-proof, booked us for St. Therese’s parish fall carnival. St. Therese’s has the requisite Catholic school blacktop surface for its playground (perhaps Christ’s desert roots made him unfamiliar with grass?), and tonight it was packed with carny rides, meat heavy food stands, and lots of screaming kids and their parents. And priests in medieval cowls. Kinda Jedi-like, padres, but go with what you like. It’s all good.

The Goin South Band, with Paul L on dobro and jawharp, Rick Shea on guitar, and John Zeretzke on fiddle, hit the tented stage after a cheerleading demonstration, and Paul M and Shawn from the Hawks drove the normally acoustic group hard, a cool blend of folky and rock. John Z and Rick stayed on stage and formed a Hawks supergroup, two hours of long psychedelic fiddle jamouts and folkier than usual Hawks tunes. The whole thing was an L.A. roots tribe event the Hawks are always eager to put together. Big thanks, Rick and John. On Saturday we hit the freeways eastward again for our high desert home, Pappy & Harriets in Pioneertown. The hot afternoon was mellowing out as we hit the long grade up the 62 into the desert mountains, and the air was positively magic as night fell, Orion and the Seven Sisters gazing down upon us. The Shadow Mountain Band was doing their solid bluegrass old timey thing and the place was packed. It was long longtime waitress Abby’s last night and there were dozens of lasses wearing Abby’s trademark old fashioned dresses and Minnie Pearl hats. The Hawks backed up opener Susan James, newest member of our tribe. The Hawks are the studio band on Susan’s upcoming CD, and her husband Fulton Dingley mixed the new songs for Shoulda Been Gold. Rob stepped up for a sexy duet with Susan, the 70’s CB phase shifter classic The Bull And The Beaver.

We were a tough act to follow, but follow we did, and it was one of the best Hawks shows of the year, achieving liftoff with Wonder Valley Fight Song, and our new 60’s flashback ballad Dear Flash. Jesika Von Rabbit (von Gram Rabbit) joined us on Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down and we rocked on late into the evening. Rob W is in the grip of a minor fugue brought on by 1) Obama’s receiving the Nobel Prize and 2) Obama not having the class to turn it down (because he hasn’t done anything to deserve it). It was vintage Waller on the wee hour tables behind Pappy & Harriets as the bikers and pickup truckers listened for a moment then chugged off into the night, and we all joined the rant, collectively charting a new course for America. A Brand New Direction. Stay tuned, Americans. Coming soon. A Brand New Direction. For America. It’s going to happen. Brand New. We trudged through the sands 100 yards south to our cozy rooms at the Pioneertown Motel, chugged last beers with a couple staying at the motel and crashed out. Susan and Fulton own the elegant yet funky joint, 20 rooms in two long bunkhouse style wood buildings, and it’s a special bonus to get rooms there. Next morning Susan dragged out a big propane grill and the Nourses, Wallers, Victoria and Paul, Susan, and her cool friends put together a big old American breakfast. Most of the Hawks motored westward home, but Victoria and Paul went up with Susan and her daughter into the hills north of Pioneertown, to visit land that Susan’s friends Ryan and Judith had bought, down miles of dirt roads and backed up against BLM land, never to be despoiled. Ryan and Judith are very creative types, and their son and Susan’s daughter are drawn to rock climbing like mountain goats. We did a magical trek into rockpiles as spiritualized as Joshua Tree Monument, with sky islands of gnarled pinon pine, and was that a bristlecone pine on one rock? We drove back into a particularly ominous red L.A. basin sky, satisfied and ready for whatever comes our way.

P.S. our one regret is missing Mary-Austin Klein’s new paintings at True World Gallery in Joshua Tree http://www.trueworldgallery.com . Catch it before it closes!