Uncle Francis is Gunfighting at Dawn

I took a drive today with Uncle Francis. He's a longtime Oakland resident and a retired therapist. Back in the day, he was hired by various bay area schools to work with at risk kids. One of his mentors worked with drug addicts back in the '60's and conducted the therapy sessions sitting on a park bench--the drug addicts natural habitat. That put them at ease and communication started to happen. In his wisdom, Francis decided to put a killer stereo system in his car so that he and the hard to reach at risk kids could cruise around and listen to Tupac and Biggie Small. Somehow this worked. Released from school for an hour, ride around in a rad Lexus with a killer LOUD ASS stereo and go to McDonalds. Sounds like fun to me (except the McDonalds part). The kids started to communicate with him and the parents and teachers began to see a positive change in their kids.

Francis is a hardcore music fan. We bonded over music about a million years ago when we first met. So today we drove roundtrip from Oakland to San Rafael with the sole purpose of listening to Felsen's new album, I Don't Know How To Talk Anymore. It was a real treat to listen to the album on such a great stereo. I LOVE BASS and that stereo has got some serious low end! For a 72 year old guy, Francis likes to listen to music at a very high volume (bless him). God so do I and I think he likes to listen to music louder than me. And he really listens. I'm so totally narcissistic about Felsen's music, that if you ever suffer the unfortunate great displeasure of having to listen to any of that stuff with me, I will need your UNDIVIDED ATTENTION. Turn that cell phone off. Clear your schedule. Your world now revolves around ME, at least for the next unsuspecting 40 minutes of your life. Francis obliged me with great attention and focus. Verdict: good album to listen to in the car. I wouldn't argue with that.

I haven't listened all the way through in a while. I've had a few months away from it. We play the songs on stage and we rehearse, but that's different. The album is it's own animal. It was nice to come back to it with fresh ears. And it made me reflect on making the album and writing those songs and some of the personal price you gotta pay to make art. I'm not talking about the major hassle it is to get something completed, funded, etc...or the personal havoc it may wreck upon you and your family or personal life being so obsessed with something that vehemently consumes your time, mental energy and money. No I'm not thinking about that, but rather the life you gotta pour into it to make it real. Kinda hard to describe. You gotta earn that stuff and it doesn't come cheaply. You have to go live a little bit, experience some of life's joy and sadness, love and loss, life and death and while you're at it, go smell a new born baby's head; this all somehow mysteriously morphs into songs. And it's still no less mysterious a process to me all these years later. Maybe it's a mystery now more than ever. The more you know, the less you know.

Uncle Francis really liked Gunfighting at Dawn. He said it kinda reminded him of Leonard Cohen. I'll take that. I'm real proud of that tune. It's about Katrina and the great flood and all those people stranded on the bridge (shame on us). It must have felt like judgement day for them. Police officers from nearby Gretna, LA blockaded the bridge, preventing thousands from fleeing NOLA. "Meanwhile I'm stranded on this bridge now three days. Across the overpass a well-armed militia's waiting for me." "If you got a weapon to use dear Jesus, use it on your enemies." (That's right. You read that one correctly.)  Although their crimes against the gulf didn't come for another few years after Katrina, I name check British Petroleum too, just for good measure. Uncle Francis really liked all Dylan's guitar playing on this one. I think Dylan was mad when he was playing the guitar that day. At least it sounds that way to me.  Gunfighting is an easy one for me to get worked up over.  It feels real good to sing on stage and get a whole room of people singing along.

Need to work it out?  Feeling a need for some group catharsis and drinking a few beers on a Friday night?  Please join us Friday January 3, 2014 at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. Francis, you in?  This is how Felsen conducts OUR therapy sessions thankyouverymuch.

Gong Hits anyone?

A few years ago I got a lovely Han Chi gong as a Christmas present from my family.  I love this thing and I always wanted one.  At the time, I was putting together a band to play a bunch of Led Zeppelin tunes for a benefit concert with my dear friend Jo Ann “Mama” Pacho.  What self-respecting drummer playing Zep tunes would perform sans gong?  I used the gong on stage with that band and I have since used it on stage with a few other bands, but have also used it many times on different recording sessions.  It’s on two Felsen albums--Breaking Up With Loneliness and I Don’t Know How to Talk Anymore.  

Ear buds in now please.  And while you're at it, turn the lights down low.  You can hear Han Chi especially in the intro and also the very last sound at the end of Gimme Shelter for the Devil from our new album.  This is how i like to use the gong.  Kind of shimmering quietly and slowly not really bugging anyone.  No big clang "dinner is served!".  Subtle, spacey, spooky perhaps.  Polite, charming, decent, lovely.  Ambiance I say!

Recording the gong was a beautiful moment for me and Felsen bassist alumni Cristian Hernandez. Cris was kind enough to masterfully record and mix the entire album (at no cost to us, thankyouverymuchdearfriend) this past spring at his old house in San Lorenzo, CA. Recording in his house was a real pleasure, a dream come true really as we weren’t constantly staring at the clock wondering how much time and money we were spending and therefore could allow ourselves the luxury of experimenting and fooling around with interesting sounds, mic choices and instrumentation. When you’re on a tight budget at a bigger studio, you often end up taking the Henry Ford assembly line approach to recording and the creativity can get really squashed.  With the freedom of experimentation, I played Han Chi real lightly throughout the entire song.  It kinda ebbs and flows, beautifully shimmering in the background, like ocean waves breaking around you.

Work on the album began last Christmas with me sending out demos to Cris, Art and Dylan. No real songs were written at that point. Some of the songs were just little embryos, some more song like, but none were really "done" per se. The first time we all played Gimme Shelter for the Devil was at the Felsen hurt locker (rehearsal space) in West Oakland in January.  As we did with all of the new tunes I wrote for the album, we huddled together with just acoustic guitars and a snare drum with brushes.  Everyone played real quiet.  We knew we had something really special.  It's quiet, like non violence.  America: lay down your arms, surrender to the void, relax and float downstream.   We kept at it and by May 31 we had a recorded and mixed album of 12 new Felsen songs. We had copies in hand around July 1. We pulled that one out of thin air!

We’ll be playing Gimme Shelter for the Devil on stage at our CD release party on January 3, 2014 at the Rickshaw Stop in SF. Please join us and sing along at the end of Gimme Shelter for the Devil. It's easy. You'll know what to do.

December 2013 Portland Shows

Sunday early afternoon driving through snowy Oregon winterland, listening to Rogue Wave and heading up into the mountains now for our return trip to Oakland after a few days on the road.  These were Felsen's last dates of a very busy and productive 2013. We played 2 shows in Portland this weekend.  

The original forecast of 0% chance of precipitation for Friday kept getting more and more grim as the week went by.  We decided to leave Thursday night for Friday's show.  Somewhere on the drive the 20 degree cold really hit me for the first time at a rest stop on our way to spending the night in Redding.  I couldn't stop shaking. Being a long-time Bay Area person, I've lost my ability to deal with cold weather temperature despite my lake-effect snowy Indiana upbringing.  A troupe of pansies we've been called by a cold weather tough gal.  Unusual cold all the locals said. Driving conditions on Friday in the mountains were pretty bleak.  What should have taken 6 hours took 10.  We lost about three hours in a 20 mile stretch of snowy mountain pass clogged with jack knifed trucks and cars being pulled back onto the interstate and trucks stoping to put on chains.  

We got to the Ash Street Saloon for our 9pm set at 8.30.  Good times.  Needless to say we were pretty frazzled from the drive and also just tired.  Typical Griffin, I barely sleep under the best of circumstances, getting ready for a few days on the road meant a few nights of minimal sleep. When we got to the gig on Friday I was tired, stressed out and hungry.  I hadn't eaten well in a few days either.  Despite all that, we had a great sound check and were pumped to play.  The sound system, stage and lights were totally pro.  I'm essentially a drummer who plays some guitar and can sing a little bit.  I got into this Felsen front guy thing by default, without making any plans.  It just kinda happened and has slowly engulfed my lifetime of playing drums. The gear aspect of playing guitar is still a bit of a mystery to me. Hell, half of my gear is borrowed.  what can I say? I have a sugar daddy.  Amazing how everything works during the sound check and then you come back 20 minutes later to do your set and voila, you got equipment issues that shut down your show.  All you gotta do is smile.  Remain calm.  Pull it together kid.  I cobbled together my rig and muddled through the remainders of the set. My rig crapped 2x during the show.  We decided to finish with one of the quieter tunes on our new album, Gimme Shelter for the Devil, perfect as my sugar daddy's amp mysteriously wasn't putting out much volume.  Despite that, playing that song quietly was a beautiful moment that made us all feel somewhat vindicated for an otherwise clumsy show.  Friday we had our gal pal numero uno Dara Ackerman onstage with us singing backing vocals.  She killed it. The felsen gender barrier has been officially been broken!  

I play drums in Dara's band.  She's returning the favor.  win win.  This weekend was actually a whole crew of east bay musical misfits on the road bringing it to the good people of Portland (you're welcome!)  Saturday's show was a house concert or at least that was the original plan.  The party givers decided to move it to a venue that was rented out for the show, Bamboo Grove Salon.  Really neat place.  Dara pretty much organized the whole thing.  Also joining in on the fun was our pal, Scarth Locke --I'm also his drummer. Dara sings with Scarth and vice versa.  My dear friend and beloved bay area bassist Pete Canton came up to do double duty playing with Scarth and Dara.  (Pete played bass on Felsen's Accidental Drowning album). It was nice to be with friends and bring this crew of people i work with together with Felsen.  Scarth and then Dara each put in real nice sets.  The small crowd gathered in the room listened attentively.  Felsen eased into our set.  Rock and Roll's Not Dead, All you Gotta Do is Smile.  The energy and enthusiasm were starting to ramp up. people were starting to dance during Tokyo Electric, which was sounding really great and groovy at both shows this weekend, thankyouverymuch. The show was real easy from there on out.  I gave a special shout out to my niece, a recent portland arrival, who at about 3 AM on only her 3rd day in town, managed to successfully evacuate her entire apartment building which was soon to be engulfed in smoke and flames.  May she never have to pay for another beer as long as she lives in Portland!  We focused mainly on the new songs:  Gunfighting, Lorazepam and absolutely crushed it with Better Thoughts.  We had a posse of goofy solid gold dancers by the side of the stage.   The extended outro "Better Thoughts will keep you happy and alive" became a mantra that the whole room got into.  that's powerful juju to ward off evil spirits and keep out the bitter cold.  We finished the night off with Gimme Shelter For the Devil.  Which for me, might have been the musical high point of the whole road trip.  It was really deep and spiritual and cathartic to sing that song. I'm still not exactly sure what it's about.  fear of death...fear of life..growing old...trying to just keep your shit together...loving your enemies.  I guess all of those things.  Who isn't going through something complex and crazy right now?  needless to say it felt really good to sing that one.  I had Scarth up on stage too singing the outro.  The whole room sang along.  thank you portland.  what a fun really beautiful freezing cold weekend to warm up the collective heart of this troupe of pansies.