The Sun in San Francisco
I was driving West on 24th Street recently. In San Francisco. Many of you are familiar with the view. The one in Spring, where things start to feel not so bad. The one where, if you’re coming off of Potrero Hill, the scope starts to tighten up and the glimpses of the towers require some labored tweaking of the neck and a slightly-blinded straining of the eyes. If it’s late in the afternoon, seeing that sun getting ready to take it’s seat behind the mountain has always felt fresh and pure. Not quite like the close of completion it actually is.
I gotta say, this Winter was rough. I won’t go in to the specific details about the troubles that can crop up in the lives of a semi-successful musician and a Master’s candidate art student but they are many and perhaps inevitable. Let’s say that we’ve often gone without since the dawn of Winter. And we’ve even been forced to lighten the load a little here and there. Despite what many people think, having been in successful bands doesn’t put always chickens in pots. Or even vegetables, since we’re on the subject.
Things are looking up, for sure. We got SXSW coming this weekend and there are so many dope people I’m looking forward to seeing out there. The Pickpocket Almanack course has another event coming right before that, and there’s tons of irons in the fire for the rest of the year, including more touring with Modest Mouse, new All Smiles songs coming very soon and bits-and-pieces-ahoy beyond any of those, some of which will be announced here shortly.
But ah yes, the sun and it’s set.
I’ve always felt and often said that tried and true, I’m a West Coast boy. We lived in Chicago and I loved it. We plan on living in New York at least part of the time starting in the next couple years. And I’d jump the pond this second for a few minutes sitting in France with some of the local wine and cheese. Regions be damned, any of them will do fine.
But there is no place where contentment resonates so pure in my body than when I’m situated within a couple hours of the Pacific Ocean. Specifically if, while facing North, I can feel the vast expanse of land between me and the Atlantic to my right and that of the mighty drink of imminent Pacific midnight on my left.
In watching that sun tuck it’s way behind Twin Peaks some days back, it finally occurred to me at least part of why that waning light feels so right. I was born here, and I’ve tried to die here a couple times, toward the West Coast. Thankfully it didn’t work. More on that later. Maybe.
Point is, a couple Friday’s back, in crystal clear clarity, I flashed on the notion that there is so much comfort for me, knowing that for this day, when I look out the window at about this time, that light is mostly spent up. Not many more people are gonna look at it and call it by the same name. By the time it reaches Russia and Japan, they’re gonna say it’s name is Tuesday.
Maybe there is a boring sort of bro-down, solipsistic, masculine pride in that sentiment; I’m the final conquerer! Apologies to the world if so, but that light dipping below the inverted surface screams to this awkward body of mine that I was there when just about everybody got everything out of that day they could. I was there until the end. It’s that simple.
To my seafaring buddies West of me, and occasional compatriots of Alaska and Hawaii and other regions far flung, a couple added apologies. I know you guys get a few more drops of that last light. Maybe you feel you own that feeling even more than I do.
But it’s a great feeling. Truly great. And one I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable knowing, if I have say goodbye to it completely.
With glimpses of Spring in my eyes and a general feeling that rebirth might be possible if I just Say Yes is the Answer, I gotta realize that things ain’t so bad. We’ll pull out of this Winter cleaner than we arrived here. Frozen and thawed and ready to bloom.
June spent in Portland, July with my beautiful friends in places and rooms I might not know. Before that, there will be more light than I can process. If when the day is done, that final dim and fall doesn’t feel too much like a fatal flaw, but more like a job perhaps poorly handled and increasingly well done, then, well; I’m gonna be alright. Til I’m not any more. Then I’ll start over.
Just like today.
Talk to you soon.
Jim
SXS Wing
I am SXSWing again this year. Heading to Austin on Friday for the annual media-industry frenzy called South by Southwest.
I think this will be my fifth time. The second as a representative of All Smiles, following three trips down with Grandaddy.
Our first Grandaddy trip was fraught with disaster and sunshine. Actually, now that I think about it, each of the Grandaddy trips was pretty damned eventful.
A few highlights include:
Our first voyage there in 1996 came at the invitation of Howe Gelb. Have I reminded anyone lately that he is responsible for each our lives in music? The Grandaddy members that is. Maybe not yours. I owe my career to Howe in many ways.
We were pleased as Spring peas to be headed that direction under the direction of such an extraordinary idol. My Dad loaned us his truck. He strapped the family camper to it. The same rig the Fairchild family drove to Utah every Summer to ride motorcycles. This time there was no motorcycle trailer on the back, but an illegal U-Haul, which we were under strict instructions not to take out of California, lest it void the insurance. We broke down in Arizona, had to stay the night in a camper-fracturing Texas windstorm, waiting for the gas station to open and played shows that I barely remember. We did play with Vic Chesnutt at the State Theater. I never met him after that, but it’s an honor that sticks out in my mind. I somehow made it back to work in time.
The second trip in 1999, we lost/abandoned Aaron in the airport on the way home. He went outside to smoke during a layover in Dallas and we bailed.
After landing in Oakland on an early Sunday evening at the end of the trip, we were back at Chateau Garcia eating Kevin’s amazing barbecue by the time Aaron hit the ground. I still feel a little bad about that. Abandoning Aaron that is. My moral standings and equivocations regarding meat sometimes waver, but that Garcia barbecue stands as good evidence that carnivory has something going for it.
We also played with Sparklehorse that year. Mark, once again, you are missed.
During the third trip in 2003, I arrived at La Zona Rosa to Abe (my very great friend and stage manager/guitar tech/Doctor of Badassery from 2000 to the present. Yes two bands. He made the transfer to Modest Mouse with me. We’re both quite happy here) telling me that my brand new guitar that the band bought me had fallen off the table it was standing on, and the neck snapped in half. We sucked that night. Chris Penn from Good Records in Dallas will tell you so. Go to the store and ask him. He’s got a beard and is one of the coolest dudes I know.
2007 saw me nervous as hell debuting All Smiles. Not much to report from that one, except for hanging out with Dappled Cities. Goddamn they’re cool. I was scared as hell to sing in front of people at that point.
The rest of the stories I must save for the book I’ll get down to writing some day.
This year I’m gonna play solo, a couple times on Saturday. I don’t feel scared any more.
I miss all our friends who aren’t around any more.
I feel lucky and and a little lonely sometimes to have made it through.
Having said that, there is so much new life out there. I’m currently producing some songs for a really great band here in San Francisco called A, B, and the Sea. Their songs are unabashedly catchy. They are fantastic musicians and composers. And they are so open to the world around them. It’s truly inspirational. Once I’ve got some physical evidence, I’ll put up some pointers in that direction.
Life is mostly pretty good.
I’ve got some ideas about the sun that I’ll put up here soon.
They involve my preference for the West Coast.
More. Just around the bend.
Jim
Mark Linkous RIP
Among many of the great memories I have of my happy times in rock and roll, one of the happiest comes from a festival in the UK in the Summer of 2001.
Grandaddy was playing on the same day as A Camp and Sparklehorse.
Members of all three bands were rehearsing a version of the Sparklehorse song “Homecoming Queen”, to potentially play during the Sparklehorse set. I think that Jason Lytle and Kevin Garcia wound up going up and singing it with Mark Linkous later in the day, along with Nina Persson. I remember how striking it was, observing Mark’s patience and joy in explaining the chords and structure to us. Mark had a beautiful and generous face.
Even better, later that night Kevin and Mark wound up stealing a golf cart from festival security. Because he had worked at a golf course before touring The Sophtware Slump, Kevin knew how to disable the fuel governor on the vehicle. Meaning that the cart would go really fast.
Mark got behind the wheel, a dangerously over-capacity number of us jumped on with him, and Mark tore through the grounds, with a smile as big as any I’ve ever seen blanketing his face.
After a few close calls and narrowly averted collisions, we finally got booted off by security, hysterical laughter preventing any consequence from being exacted. Mark’s joy was huge.
A couple years later, Mark and Steven Drozd showed up at a particularly pissed off Grandaddy performance in Chicago at the Riviera, where we were opening for Pete Yorn. We were getting fucked on soundchecks every night and Jason had had enough. Through frustration, he thought we should open with a tune called “Play Whatever You Want For About Seven Minutes.” Which we did. Made up on the spot. It was awful. Intentionally. When we got done, Mark and Steven came backstage and Mark was so stoked about the new song we played first. He got it. Or was willing to get it.
I hadn’t seen Mark in years. But I will now and forever miss that exuberance, so perfectly and fleetingly captured in the examples that passed before my eyes.
I feel fortunate to have experienced any of it and thankful to have those songs he made as a reminder of what a fine and caring person he was.
Whatever peace he wasn’t able to find here, I hope is with him now.
Spoken too late: …….. bye Mark.
Tearfully.
Jim
Weather
Hi Again.
I said recently that there would be frequent updates. For the time being I wasn’t lying. To myself or you guys.
I woke up this morning to sun in San Francisco. It felt like that first weekend in Portland when the sky is really blazing, around the end of April or beginning of May in my limited experience. Pale and water-logged after months of gloom, laying in the sun at Kelley Point with just trunks on feels as close I want to be to heaven. For now.
We went to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building this morning and it felt good outside. I love Farmer’s Markets. This is probably due to having spent a lot of time on my Grandfather’s farms in Escalon growing up. We also had a massive garden that we shared with another family on Scenic Drive in Modesto each Summer, just above the banks of Dry Creek where there’s now a bike trail. The land was free. Shit, I’m lucky to have grown up in Modesto. I remember thinking at the time that Steve (my Dad) was just trying to annoy me by making me do chores. Learning to weed and water. But I’m glad I know that stuff now and I’d whip a camel’s ass to have just another of those moments with my Mom or Dad from back then.
So, Happy Valentine’s Day, Jim’s love of produce! Today it shined like gold in the sun.
Natasha has referred to my love for produce as fetishistic. I don’t feel the least bit naughty checking out the fruits, vegetables and products gleaming and glowing in the sun; but I think I decided today that I don’t agree completely with the Saturday Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building. I’m down as hell for people getting stoked about food and paying more for stuff that isn’t trucked/flown in from who knows where. That’s the way it oughta be; Farmer’s and artisanal makers of things should be compensated justly. Tangentially, our bodies and Mama Earth will reward us for this wider financial expense in the long run.
I’m hoping it’s simply because of that beautiful pier which, essentially and gloriously falling in to the Bay like water, is expensive to park one’s space at. But aside from Heirloom Organics, whose produce is reasonably priced and they have such a great variety of roots and radishes, we cross the train tracks on the Embarcadero more than $40 lighter every time for a few days worth of produce. In these trying economic conditions, that is not easy. I was with a friend at the Thursday Berkeley Farmer’s Market last week and got a comparable amount of food for about half the price. All organic, all local.
The purveyors in the Ferry building are dope. As are most in the market, to be fair. I loooooove Recchiuti Chocolate and Far West Fungi (grow your own!). But I feel like the local and organic movement should be doing their best to make integration of a personally and communally healthy diet seem inclusive rather than exclusive. And a burgeoning foody with not much dough couldn’t afford to eat there. Then they might not gain that appreciation in turn. So to the outdoor market, though they’re not likely listening: please, figure out a way to bring down the costs and get more people living and eating locally. Not just the landed gentry.
Okay.
I like music more than before. Which is saying a lot. I’ve been listening to Gyorgi Ligeti and John Vanderslice. He’ll be involved in the course I’m teaching for a special event. And I’ve been making new songs. News on those next week. I need a little consultation with a couple trusted confidants before the announcement.
But good things are coming soon.
Tonight is gonna be social after such a week of work.
Take good care.
Jim
Cupid
Hello…
Happy Valentine’s Day. Nearly. May Cupid draw back his bow and aim it in your direction, if he hasn’t already.
Things have been on a steady simmer. In a good way.
I can say this: if half of the tasks and opportunities that are being talked about right now come to fruition or reach completion, this is going to be a cool year.
Joe and I got together at the beginning of January and worked on new All Smiles songs. With another person who lives in Portland playing bass. He’s English. Specifically. They’re turning out great, and with some luck, the three of us will get the chance to finish an album in the next four months.
I’m gonna start putting up new songs soon in some form or another. Whether they’re just me, new songs that won’t make the EP or album, or small versions of what will wind up on the official releases in larger forms, there will be new All Smiles music out in the next month.
I’m playing SXSW in Austin March 20th for the Burnside Distribution show (we love them dearly). Hopefully other shows too.
There are two big (in my mind) potential collaborations brewing for this year, for May and late-Summer. With people/bands that I am massive fans of.
Modest Mouse is going to Pitchfork in July.
And I’m a teacher now. SF MOMA has a program curated by Joseph del Pesco that is a school without walls. It’s called Pickpocket Almanack and I’m devising a course concerning the ubiquity of music. Signups begin this Monday, the 15th. You can read more about it there. I am surprised and honored to be a part of it.
Andrew Dansby, my buddy and occasional beer/philosophy buddy has embarked on an ambitious project where he goes through his entire 9,000 strong music library, listens to each album and reviews/extrapolates on some of them. He chose All Smiles for one of his writing targets . Check it.
Action is now.
Thanks for being a part of it.
Jim
Goodbye Zeros
Hello everybody.
Happy 2010 to each of you.
The zeros were quite a decade to have lived through. And quite a decade to say goodbye to in many ways.
We made our way back up to Portland yesterday. There are various tasks and duties to handle in the next week or so, but among them are getting some new stuff recorded with Joe Plummer for the next All Smiles album.
It’s our plan to have a good bit of it knocked out by the end of the month.
An album and an EP.
And then we’ll float the songs and the band out in to the ether once again.
More updates soon.
Maybe some photos of Joe, crushing…
I feel progress on the horizon.
Seems like a lot of us do.
We’ll make it all add up to something.
Happy New Year!
Jim
Other People's Places
Hello Everybody.
I made it home.
And I feel fantastic.
The solo tour was really a dream. So many rad people. So much fun with Josselin and Samuel. And goddamn, the wine, pain au chocolat and cheese still arrive in France from heaven, morningly.
Just a couple of reminders before a real long update which will come soon.
The Fall Never Fell EP is available digitally now, both here in the store section and at all digital retailers near and far-flung.
Additionally our latest full length is now being distributed by Burnside Distribution and should therefore be available in stores near you. For all you brick and mortar brothers and sisters out there. It should be in France too! If you want it here or there and don’t see it, please bug the cashier and let them know you’d like to. For all the folks who prefer shopping from the privacy of their own local coffee shop, or home, Insound has it on both CD and Vinyl.
And of course if you buy it from us you get an immediate free download, quality and type chosen by you.
Also, from now through Christmas, the album is on sale for $5 on digital, through us.
The album demos are still up there for free as well.
At the moment, while overcoming jetlag, the following tasks are occupying my time:
- My friend Eric Judy, probably the best, most creative bass player in rock and roll and my some time band mate in Modest Mouse recommended I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Marukami. I thank him for it here, before I can in person next week. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in years. The protagonists travels and travails remind me of the following:
- Figuring out the tracklist for the forthcoming “Biblical Sense EP” which I hope to finish recording before the end of the year. We tried one version of the song Biblical Sense in Omaha with the band and a version of it in Chicago and Los Angeles with Nik Freitas and I. Ultimately, neither worked completely, so they didn’t make Oh For The Getting and Not Letting Go or Fall Never Fell. I’m trying to get those two drastically different versions done correctly now and get a few more tunes done for a new EP to come out in the early new year, hopefully around February. Both versions of Biblical Sense will be on there, with the aforementioned “other tunes”. Whatever they may be. Ironically my good buddy and occasional co-conspirator “Danny Seim”: http://www.myspace.com/lllackthereof of Menomena and Lackthereof took a liking to the song and recorded a Lackthereof reggae version of it that is better than anything we’ve come up with so far. His stab at it is gonna wind up on a comp that Coke Machine Glow is putting up some time before the end of the year. So though this EP was already in my mind, that’s a damn good reason to get it done; when your buddy gets one of your tunes right before you do, it’s time to hone it in.
- Getting ready to go to Portland for a couple days to practice for the Modest Mouse tour. Somehow we leave for that in just two weeks. Really looking forward to closing out the year in such powerful fashion.
- Finishing up the songs for the forthcoming third All Smiles album. Which has no provisional title at all. But which could be called “Otter’s Songs”. And certainly won’t be. I hope to have it done by the end of January. I think that it’s mostly written. Someone else might be better able to answer that eternal query than me. I think I know who’s gonna play on it. Who I’ll ask anyway. Who has been talked to about it. Maybe a few surprises in store for that. And some familiar faces and fingers as well.
Oh, my alliterative wit strikes me with it’s fatal force.
Off to the broom, sweeping away the detritus of two weeks away.
Be Well.
Love Jim
Good afternoon from France
Rennes to be precise. The tour has been one joyous experience followed by another. We are encountering such generous hospitality from each of our hosts. There will be an entire recap at the end of the tour, but let’s just say that the food, crowds and company have been extraordinary. And there are very few people in the world who, upon finding out at 1 AM that a person was without lodging, would drive to their 18th century farmhouse a half hour away from the city, let you in, provide breakfast fixings and then drive back to the city to open the store in the morning. Yvon and his beautiful Wife from Dialogues Media in Brest are two such people.
Here’s the deal:
I am very pleased to announce that the Fall Never Fell EP is now for sale in the store section
We started recording it over two years ago in Texas, following an overnight drive from Phoenix. The band then was Nik Freitas, Dave Osborne, and Alance Ward. Over the course of the next two years, me and the above dudes as well as Chico Jones, Solon Bixler, Rachel Stolte, Joe Plummer, Danny Seim, and Mike Cresswell worked on the tunes as time permitted. It was made in Austin,Chicago, Los Angeles, Modesto, and Portland. In studios and bedrooms and everything in between. That part is actually funny to me. The full length found a way to finish itself while being made in only two places. And it’s twice as long with more color. But I am really so happy with how this turned out. It’s available here a week before other digital stores for $5, which includes a jpeg of the artwork, by Natasha Wheat and lyrics. By me.
I hope that you enjoy it.
Take good care.
Jim
Safe and sound in Toulouse.
Following more than eighteen hours of stop and start travel. The severely restrictive budget we’re operating on for this tour necessitated a less expensive ticket with the following routing: San Francisco to Charlotte, NC, Charlotte to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Toulouse. At the end of the journey I felt certain there would probably have been a way for me to make up the couple hundred dollars difference for the ticket more direct.
I forced myself to stay up until 11 PM the night I landed, which meant that I’d been awake for 32 hours. I felt a little like a drunk Doberman on a chihuahua carousel. Surrounded by opportunity with no wherewithal to do anything about any of it.
To bed then. Asleep for four hours, I awoke to my hosts knocking on my rooms’ door, followed by quick entry, me lying in bliss, half dead.
The only thing I could make out in my haze from their frantic message was that there were three cars on fire outside the apartment. Sirens and lights followed. Somehow I fell back to sleep amidst it all. I definitely wasn’t going to evacuate, consequences be damned. It was raining and I was, as Nik Freitas would say, zorched. That’s the way to beat jetlag: beat your body to the point where it’s gotta sleep to survive. Never anticipating you might not survive the sleep.
Evidently cars are often burned in Toulouse, whether as a matter of protest or celebration. I have not confirmed this statistically, it’s only been mentioned to me by a couple locals. I do find it slightly at odds with the experience I’m having here. Three cars being set fire to in a private, fenced lot just away from the city center. Everything seems friendly, civil and positively chocolatine.
The new photo at the top demonstrates what was left after the three cars were burned up and towed away. Very little as it turns out.
The first show at the Fairfield Cafe felt great. A good number of sweet French folks turned up, especially given that we have no releases here. But I’ve been blessed in always having had great support from the French audience, starting in 1997 when Grandaddy had just released Under The Western Freeway. I aim to respond in kind.
Now to Bordeaux. And a few more after that, leading to the early digital release of the Fall Never Fell EP next Tuesday, November 10th, right here in the store section of this very site.
Sleep well. Wake better.
Jim
Fall Never Fell EP
Hello Everybody.
Happy Autumn. And happy wedding to Genevieve and Abe.
I’ll get to that in a second.
I’d like to extend a hearty thank you to everyone who has checked out the album so far.
It’s still available for sale here and is now available from our friends at Insound as well. They’re offering 10% off the new LP and CD until November 8th. Which will come in real handy especially if you’re doing other shopping.
It is also for sale at Good Records in Dallas and Permanent Records in Chicago.
And in monumental news for our little Small Aisles label, we’re now being distributed by Burnside Distribution out of Portland, Oregon. They’re great. So it oughta be physically available in lots more places on November 17!
Prior to all that, we’ll be putting the Fall Never Fell EP up for sale here the first week in November, and selling it at shows on CD. Mike Cresswell finally mixed it, following it’s long gestation.
Speaking of shows, there’s ten of them, all solo, posted in the tour section now, mostly in France. I’ll post the forthcoming Modest Mouse shows soon as well, but they’re mostly sold out already.
And don’t forget to head to the store section and click on the pink button that says “free demos”. It will give you access to exactly that; free demos of songs from Oh For the Getting and Not Letting Go that were recorded while that album was being figured out. I’ve been playing these solo shows and people sometimes ask whether there’s recordings of the songs in those versions. So five of them are there for you to grab at your leisure. They are one take, one microphone. Charming. Or something.
Okay…
If any of you have ever seen me play with Modest Mouse or Grandaddy, you may have noticed a big fella with red bushy hair and beard who checks on stuff on my side of the stage, sets it up, makes it all work perfectly, hands me guitars…generally turns chaos in to functionality. From not knowing how to tune a guitar nine years ago, he has graduated to stage manager in Modest Mouse. He takes the finest care of all of the shit that Tom Peloso, Eric Judy and I have. Check out what that means live or on YouTube some time. It’s really a darned big job. Well, his name is Abraham Davis. He is one of the kindest and funniest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and also one of the hardest working and most talented. I love him dearly and consider him among my closest friends in the world. I’ll tell the full story of Abe Davis through my eyes here in the coming months. But for now, I would like to congratulate him and his badass new bride Genevieve Bardini, as they were married in the field behind their house in Oakdale, California this past weekend. When Natasha and I were walking away from the Outside Lands Festival a couple months ago, Natasha said “Genevieve is Abe’s perfect partner”. That fact is so apparent on first glance. May their badassery reign eternal.
Okay, I promise to write more soon. There is so much going on right now. Preparation for all these shows with both bands, the new EP coming out, packing all the CDs for Burnside and oh shit, starting work on the new album. And some stuff with Project Grow during the tour in France. It’s gonna be a good end to the year.
Thanks for being here.
Jim