News & Opinion

Recording our new CD continues at Paul Dugre’s studio in Burbank, at what must be described as a leisurely pace. Where did March go? Between guitar overdubs, Paul L. has taken to puffing on Dugre’s classic tobacco pipe after seeing Rob enwreathed in a thick and fragrant cloud of smoke, quite a sight. Electric guitar, Rob’s lead vocals, backgrounds, dobro–the Hawks are almost done. Then it’ll be on to nitpicking, i.e. mixing.

Tommy Funderburk, reknowned session vocalist now kicked upstairs to executive at Sovereign Records, did several background vocal parts and some heavy metallizing on “Jackpot.” Cody Bryant and Rick Shea dropped by for a live recording of banjo and acoustic guitars with the Pauls and Rob, three takes of “Golden Girl” in a half hour and these scary pros were done. Rick also added some righteous acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and old time mandolin on “Byrd From West Virginia.”A few days later Dave Zirbel drove down from way up north and laid down his classic pedal steel lines on a number of Hawks songs, went on a hike with Paul L. in startlingly green and waterlogged Griffith Park, got back in his truck and powered home on the 5.

Next came our Sovereign labelmate Chris Hillman, who showed up at noon on the dot with his new Gibson mandolin and nailed “Golden Girl,” “California Country,” and “Hard Times” in two hours. The guy can play. At one point Paul L. realized he was giving direction to the man who wrote “Sin City” and got a little lightheaded, but recovered, hopefully didn’t appear too starstruck. Live shows have been sparse but good, including a show with Mike Stinson at the Echo in Echo Park, Coles with the always scary Kip Boardman and Tony Gilkyson, a March Coles show with equally scary Lisa Haley and her rockin acoustic Cajun band, and a great house concert at Jeff and Paddi’s Highland Park aerie.

April arrived and the four Hawks drove to Santa Monica and signed with Sovereign, in a business meeting/yukfest that promised a September release of the new Hawks CD. We were considering “Kill Whitey” as album title, now thinking about others. Suggestions from the people?

We love our drummer Shawn Nourse but by his own admission he needs a new stage name. What do you think his stage name should be? Send your entry to Name Our Drummer Contest. Our panel of judges will trim the herd down to three choices and a final online vote will take place Workers of the World Day, May 1st, 2005. The winning name author will win a dream date with the Hawk of their choice as well as live on forever in Hawk’s history.* So send those entries in!
*conditions and restrictions may appl.

It’s been a rainy January, and the Hawks have been in semi-hibernation, emerging only for a few Coles shows with Mike Stinson and Carlos Guitarlos, a fine Coffee Gallery evening with Rick Shea, and an electric Lava Lounge excursion with Molly Howson–but Lo:

And it was Tuesday morning, the second of February in the year of aught five, and time to begin the new I See Hawks In L.A. record. Our good pals at our new label Sovereign Artists (http://www.sovereignartists.com/pages/newmusic.html) gave us the green $$ light, and The Two Pauls and Rob trekked to the Third Paul, producer Paul Dugre, in modest flatland Burbank, loaded our guitars into his studio, and tuned up. Paul D. placed gigantic 1950’s RCA microphones in front of us, and ancient wooden baffles signed by Hal Blaine, and we commenced to sing and play. Paul Dugre is using ancient pre-amps and compressors glowing with tubes and VU meters, but feeding the sounds into Pyramix, a super high resolution digital recorder, ProTools on steroids with a morphine drip for smoothness.

We recorded the guitar/dobro/acoustic bass of the first three tunes live, including vocals: “Hard Times Are Here Again,” “Byrd From West Virginia” and “Slash!” We listened back to several takes of each, were well pleased, and returned to our respective Tujunga, Highland Park, and Atwater Adjacent abodes, and Paul Dugre went deep into his computer to ponder the cyber consequences of what we had done.The next day we returned with our drummer Shawn Nourse, and stuck with our acoustic instruments. Shawn set up his kit in the main studio room in a cramlet between the mixing board and the wall, played brushes on kick and snare, no toms, and first overdubbed a drum part on “Byrd From West Virginia,” taking multiple brilliant drum ideas from the four non-drummers egging him on. Starbucks break (it’s the only game in northwest Burbank), and we returned to chez Dugre and recorded: “Golden Girl,” “Midnight In Orlando,” “Raised By Hippies,” and “I Am Not A Donkey.” The last song sounded more jarring than in its planned electric version, so we’re going to keep it all acoustic. Our only long day (we’re mostly doing five hour days, very civilized and no one gets cranky), all keepers, and we drove off into the rainy night.

Next day, Thursday, we decided to stay with the acoustic instruments because it felt right, and we were getting a good driving feel with two acoustic guitars playing rhythm. Paul M.’s bass sounds grand, the father figure of all fundamentals, and tightrope walking producer Paul Dugre is recording Shawn’s drum kit with one (1) microphone only. Oops, we gave away his trade secret! The playback is getting us very enthused, as the drums sound detailed as can be, and big. It’s our best sounding record, and we have just begun to groove. We launched into the harder stuff: “Last Man In Tujunga,” “I Did Go Back To Jackpot Again,” and cut a quiet, reflective “Take My Rest,” with Paul M. on quiet reflective lead vocals.Friday arrived, and we did a Sharky’s (organic tofu tacos!)/Starbucks run, came back pumped and tore into two songs Rob and Paul L. wrote with Paul’s brother Anthony: “Barrier Reef” and “Houston Romance.” These are intended as full on country rock, sound very cool with Shawn’s increasingly amped up drums and our acoustic guitars, Paul M. switching to Fender bass. In between takes and goofing around we posed for pictures with Katie and Lecie, and Paul photographed a Rob W. art project that is as yet unnamed, but involves semi-nudity, Paul Dugre’s pool, a hallucinegenic San Carlos cactus, and two steel balls found in Paul D.’s shed. Next we cut a Waller/Lacques/Marshall brand new song called “California Country,” about watching concrete pour in the high desert. We finished writing the song a few days ago, Paul M. came up with a bridge melody today on the spot, we arranged it in the recording room with our headphones on, and cut it. Always an exhilarating process, try it!

Saturday we came in knowing we had our album done, cut two more for fun: a Tujunga style funk version of “Hunger Mountain Breakdown” (written with our good pal Carter Stowell in Vermont, about Vermont) and another brand new one, “I Tried To Ride With The Motorcycle Mama (But The Motorcycle Let Me Down).” More photos for Rob’s art project, a quick home movie of our dynamic fivesome frolicking across the chez Dugre backyard, and we were done. More Sharky’s/Starbucks, and we came back and listened to a song or two. Shawn drove east for his gig in San Bernardino, and the Three Pauls and Rob kept a-listening to our five days work, pleased as we could be. On to overdubs!The next week Rob came in and soldiered through lead vocals on all fifteen songs, and Paul L. started electric guitar overdubs, using his Deluxe Reverb, Peavey Classic 20, and a 1950’s tape recorder Paul D. dragged out of the closet–no pedals except the same Phase 90 Paul used in his 70’s country cover band (in the 70’s, really!). Paul finished Jackpot,” “California Country,” and “Barrier Reef,” which is now officially psychedelic. .

We’re #2 on X COUNTRY on XM satellite radio, and need your help to hit #1.

Even if you don’t have satellite radio, we’d love it if you could call 1-866-964-8439 or email xcountry@xmradio.com to request your favorite song off “Grapevine.” Listen in on XM channel 12, Cross Country.Thanks for getting us up this high.

                       W.M. Smith, No Depression 

                       Philip Van Vleck, Village Voice                       Freeform American Roots DJ Poll (#7)

                       The Music Never Stops, Barry Smolin, KPFK                       Bliss, Pasadena Weekly (#1)    

                       The Miller Tells Her Tale, SpydaRadio (UK)                       WNCW Listener’s Poll  

                       Insurgency Country (Germany)                       Lost Saloon, WRIR (#1)

                       Music Without Boundaries, KPRI                       Freight Train Boogie Listener’s Poll
                       Kay Clement, Don Grant, Freight Train Boogie.

FREEFORM AMERICANA ROOTS DJ POLL
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

1. ELIZA GILKYSON: LAND OF MILK AND HONEY (Red House)2. James McMurtry: Live In Aught-Three (Compadre)

3. Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose (Interscope)4. Buddy Miller: Universal United House Of Prayer (New West)

5. Steve Earle: The Revolution Starts Now (Artemis)6. Tom Russell: Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs (Hightone)

7. I See Hawks In L.A.: Grapevine (Western Seeds)8. Chris Stuart & Backcountry: Mojave River (Backcountry)

9. Neko Case: The Tigers Have Spoken (Anti/Mint)10. Dave Alvin: Ashgrove (Yep Roc)
http://www.accd.edu/tcmn/far/far_best2004.ht.

From the diary of James Taylor at New Lexington, Ohio, July 4th, 1876:
“One hundred years ago to-day, the sun in his course looked down
upon no spot of earth more picturesque and lovely than the territory
now known as Perry county. The entire area from east to west, and
from north to south, was covered with the primeval forest, “planted by the Lord at creation’s dawn”–a wild paradise, an untrained and unpruned Eden, to which our first parents, condemned in just retribution for their disobedience, to spend their day and centuries of life amid the arid deserts and on the barren hills of Asia, would have been glad to have gained an entrance. Here the Arcadians could have tended their flocks on greener pastures, in a happier climate, and in more impenetrable shades than in their native land; here could have been found the realization of the poet’s conception of a “boundless contiguity of shade”; and here, if man had remained in his fabled simplicity and purity, Utopia might have found “a local habitation and a name.”
The valleys, slopes and hilltops bore unmistakable evidence that the
tenth, and perhaps the fortieth, generation of trees was then standing, each of which had withstood the lightnings and storms of a thousand years. Upon the summit of the water-shed between the Muskingum and the Hocking, where now stand Somerset, Bristol, Oakfield and Porterville, there then stood white oaks, and perhaps other trees, which may have been in the green before the enunciation of the Sermon on the Mount, and before Paul preached on Mars Hill; which were goodly trees prior to the battle of Hastings; and which were giants among their fellows before Columbus dreamed of or discovered the western world, and before John Cabot set foot on the shores of North America.
From April till November the ground was covered with wild pea
vines, which afforded pastures as green, as luxuriant and as nutritious as our best fields of clover. At the approach of winter it dried up, retaining its foliage and nutritious properties, so that in summer it afforded pasture, and in winter hay and grain for the herds of buffalo, elk and deer, as well as food for swarms of wild turkeys, pheasants, quails and pigeons, which fed and fattened on the wild pea, and the fruit of the juneberry tree, the black and the red haw, the wild cherry, the dogberry and the gum, the beechnut, the chestnut and the acorn; the birds sharing their fruit with the bear and the beaver, the raccoon, the opossum, the hedgehog and the woodchuck, and gray squirrels, equal in number to the promise of the seed of Abraham. Nature prepared the food, and the herbeating and graniverous beasts and birds fattened themselves to fatten the panther, the catamount, the fox and the wolf, the eagle, the hawk and the owl; while the feathers and skins of the latter were made to do service in adding to the comfort and adorment of the cabins and persons of the wild men of the woods.
In summer and winter, at morning, noon and night, the forest was
vocal with the chirpings, twitterings, calls, cries and songs of birds, of which there was almost an infinite variety, and in numbers beyond calculation or estimate—eagles, hawks, owls, ravens, crows, robins, bluejays, anteaters, tomtits, woodpeckers, thrushes, sparrows, snipes and swallows. From May to August the night air seemed to vibrate with the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill; throughout the year, and all the night long, the laughing and talking owls (species now extinct in this region) met in companies to chatter, laugh and scream, imitating the human voice in conversation, in laughter and the Indian war-whoop; orioles of many varieties, with plumage of orange, blue and gold, abounded everywhere; and myriads of flying squirrels, inhabiting the cavities of trees, excited the wonder and admiration of Europeans and inhabitants of the trans-Alleghany States.
In spring the blossoms of the wild plum, the crabapple and the
grape, perfumed the air, and in autumn brought forth their green,
golden and amber fruit for the use of the red man and for beasts and
fowls.”

Super 8 Motel, Yucca Valley Gramfest 2004, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Oct. 4, 5, 6

We’ve come to celebrate the death of Gram Parsons in the great California desert. It’s a short trip but a trip nonetheless. The Hawks are back on the road. Not much has changed in the last few weeks. John Kerry and George Bush are still staring each other down meaninglessly. Gas prices are higher than ever. The war in Iraq continues to spiral downward into a bloody pit. America is busy trying to forget it but, folks, we’re knee deep in guts and it doesn’t look likely to end anytime soon or not soon. On a brighter note, it looks like Mount St. Helens is going to blow up again. Steam and ash are escaping that old crater. It’s like ’81 all over again. Gramfest night one was a mildly cursed series of near hits and misses that were actually okay. Paul L’s amp blew up again, there’s a deep electronic ghost in the Deluxe tube maze. Rob lost his ATM card and his garage door opener. So he couldn’t bring CDs, his sweet California Blonde acoustic guitar amp, or get cash at will. On top of that, it was a terrible food day.

We did an early set at the lovely and intimate Hi Desert Theater, right on the highway, with San Diego drummer John Kuhlken, who did a fine ESP job. Our set ended before Victoria could rock on “Humboldt,” but tonight might be a different story. The Burrito Brothers alumni band was similarly a disjointed experience, couldn’t hear Sneeky Pete despite crowd urgings to turn him up. But it was good to tread the sand and breathe the 2700 foot high air. The Gramfest poster is amazing.Yes, it’s Gramfest night two, Saturday, and we’re hanging at the Motel 8, about to head out for a hang with our band pals and our hopefully not later than 2 a.m. show. Victoria and Paul had a good little hike in Joshua tree, had a picnic and were visited by a huge white hawk which symbolized PLs untimely, Gram Parson’s-like death, bats flitting around their heads, a very fast and paranoid jackrabbit, and two big coyotes who wandered by, looked up solicitously to their rock perch for a meal and a cup of coffee, kept on walking when they didn’t receive. The signs say don’t feed them, and PL reluctantly agrees. We don’t need another species on the mass grid.
Like always, we’re watching the weather channel with the sound off. It’s 43 degrees in Cleveland.

[continue reading…]

Hempfest and the Seattle sky presented the Hawks with a cosmic gift:  as we finished our last song, “Wonder Valley,” the skies opened up and the rain did fall.  Pleased not to be electrocuted, we jammed out to a stadium rock conclusion, feeling like stadium rockers, and then the sky really dumped, and we scurried offstage, the crew covered the gear with sheets, and that was it for live music for the day.  We wandered around the very stony fest, and at 4:20 the crowd gathered for a smokeout:  thousands of furry freaks huffing at bongs with all their might, and a THC cloud hovered above the Seattle waterfront lawn. 
 
Victoria had a nice chat with Eddy of Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens, world’s largest (and busted) medicinal herb garden.  The Hawks wandered the lanes and byways of Hempfest.  Rob donned a plaid blanket that transformed him into a Redneck Superhero, and he and Shawn handed out the new Hawks sticker to Festgoers.   Paul Marshall stopped by the Kerry Edwards booth and bluntly asked them if Kerry was going to decriminalize drug use, and the Dems hemmed and hawwed as only a modern Dem can do.  Go, Ralph! 
 
It was time to leave.  We packed up our damp equipment and caravanned to the Continental Hotel, overlooking one of Seattle’s many waterways, and had a fun hotel campout with brother Hawk Dave Zirbel.  In numerous skits performed in the party room, Shawn revealed himself as a brilliant comedian/improviser, available for TV/film through this website.  Thanks to Matt Lacques for an excellent bottle of 100% Agave tequila anejo, you rule, hermano.
 
When Paul and Victoria took off the next morning, their fellow Hawks had flown the coop, somewhere far down the 5.  Sad.  P & V hung out with the distinguished Jack Slater and wife Deborah, saw the bohemian sights of Seattle, and headed south.  Wandering roads took them through infinite blackberry patches, rain with the sun shining, rivers and riverside farms, and a smoldering forest fire’s black soil and hillsides, smoldering still under a torrential rain.
 
Ashland is civilized.  Highway 99 gives you roadside fruit stands and crazy junk stores, 5 gives you speed. The choice is clear. 
 
Paul M. and Shawn powered to Marin, dropped off man of Steel Dave Z., powered next day all the way home, meeting Sherrie at the 152. RW dissappeared at dawn, onto a jet airplane, and back to his secret life somewhere deep in the geographic center of Los Angeles.
 
Sacramento has accordionist extraordinaire Richie Lawrence, wife Katie, and magical family, and damn good coffee.  Modesto has scary tofu teryaki and a slacker espresso bar where the kids hang around and buy nothing.   The south end of the San Joaquin Valley on 99 is a bit sinister, strange industrial smells and mysterious big machinery among the fields, the loneliest sunset you’ll ever see.   Past Panama Lane south of Bakersfield, Paul L’s O’hare family homestead since 1870, now crowded by creeping subdivisionism, and it’s into the home stretch.
 
A last trip over the Grapevine, psychotic driving resumes at the L.A. County line, right on schedule, and the Hawks are back.  See you at Coles.