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TABLE OF CONTENTS VOL V M M XV I
Venice Soundwaves
The Ooks of Dogtown 3 Playing for Change 9 Captain of the M.F. Groove Ship 15 Tommy Thayer in the House 18 The Bordello 20 Profile: Lani Renaldo
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Arthur Barrow 33 Kathy Leonardo 37 Del Monte Speakeasy & Townhouse 41 Carlos Niño 47 Electric Underground 51 Radio Venice 57 VSO – Venice Symphony Orchestra 63 Finian Makepeace Sings the Songs,Walks the Walk 67 Venice Live 71 Last Look Austin Peralta Mural, inside back cover
COVER
Dogtown is the Place
Artwork © Taylor Barnes, 2016 Lyrics © Will Keane, 2016 INSIDE FRONT COVER Venice Beach Drum Circle
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR The lyrics on the cover of this issue (shown below) were written by an Irish songwriter, Will Keane, after his first stay in Venice Beach. Gentrification, crime, and political graft often color our private relationship with this place causing us to lose sight of its magic. Venice is second only to Disneyland, as a destination point in southern California, for travellers from all over the globe. Why? Our creativity and freedom of expression. Although the surroundings are changing, the core of who we are and where we come from remains consistent. Now is the time to support the next generation of creativity and the next incarnation of the Venice legacy.
—Taylor Barnes
DOGTOWN’S THE PLACE by Will Keane Skating down the boardwalk, soaking up the sun Lying on the beach or surfin’ having fun Dogtown’s the place, that’s where I long to be That’s Venice California to you and me Down on Abbot Kinney on a shopping spree Buying funky art or even funkier clothes or Dining al fresco on the street they called Rose Or sipping Fairtrade coffee in a diner or cafe I can smell and taste those hot sunny days Dogtown’s the place, that’s where I long to be Got invited to a party one October eve Live music filled the air as did that super weed Everyone was happy and glad they dropped in Artists, actors, writers and musicians Surfer dudes, IT geeks and muscle men Psychics and Tarot card readers Dog walkers, thinkers and every sort of mix Dogtown’s the place, that’s where I long to be So come down there with me n set your spirit free
Editor and Creative Director Taylor Barnes Editor Bailey Lewis Editor/Writer Sam Braslow Associate Editors Rudy Garcia Jennifer Garcia Advisory Board Laura Ragan Dita Barnes Tyrus Wilson
VOL V MMXVI 3point1-venice.com Copyright 2016 3.1 Venice is published and designed by L7studio.com. All rights reserved. Nothing shown may be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. For more information or submission guidelines: E-mail info3.1venice@gmail.com
Dogtown’s the place, that’s where I long to be I left a part of me back there, so I’d return someday Cause once you visit, you’ll regret leaving it behind Dogtown invades your body and mind Dogtown’s the place, that’s where I long to be Yes, Dogtown’s the place, that’s where you’ll find me Illustration: by Taylor Barnes, © 2016 iv VOL V MMXVI
Lyrics: by Will Keane, © 2016
CONTRIBUTORS
Katie Thomas
Allison Kunath She is a visual artist currently living and working in Venice, CA. As an artist, she is exploring the limits of simplification, and how our eyes respond by filling in the blanks. www.allisonkunath.com
Katie is a school/nursery photographer in the UK. She has been photographing seriously for about 6 years. She volunteers to work at various music festivals and this means she can discover some wonderful musical talent. cloverdalecreations@live.co.uk
Paula Chorley
Kate Chambers
Before transplanting to Venice, Paula Chorley lived in New York where she was an American correspondent for a major German television network, ProSeiben (Channel 7) for program “Taff”. When she is not writing for 3.1 she is either writing screenplays, TV shows, or working on her next art project. paulachorley.com
A social activist and freelance writer. In her free time she can be found scouring the Internet for new music from her home base in Santa Monica. kregalchambers@gmail.com
Will Keane
Jim Budman
Is an Irish singer/songwriter who loves Venice Beach because he can get quinoa and eggs for breakfast here.
Jim Budman is a Venice-based photographer, art collector and patron of the artists of Venice. jab18@me.com
Special Thanks To our people at Groundwork Coffee of Rose Avenue for keeping us caffeinated.
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THE BETTER THE REVOLUTION…
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…THE BETTER THE MUSIC 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 1
V E N I C E S OUNDWAVE S
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THE OOKS Of
Dogtown Local band represents in the music and the local surf scene of the UK
by Taylor Barnes
The Ooks of Hazzard, recently made their first excursion to the United Kingdom to tour and headline the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain. Five of the seven-piece group made the trip, including Charlie Diaz, Patrick Hildebrand, Sam Marrow, Rick Torres, and Ed Marshall. They played the Southwell Folk Festival, and attended the Wynchwood Music Festival, in addition to playing at “various local pubs and establishments,” according to tenor ukulele player Ed Marshall. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 3
One highlight was the opportunity to play with Rami Jaffee, keyboradist for The Foo Fighters, at Cafe 1001 in London. Patrick Hildebrand said about the tour, “We did make some wonderful new friends and had incredibly fun late night jam sessions with a bunch of talented musicians. Can’t wait to go back!” Playing mainly in the Southwest region, they discovered an audience that was deeply receptive to the live music experience. “I think the Brits are more appreciative than American audiences,” considered Charlie Diaz, the singer and tenor ukulele player. “They don’t take it for granted. They go out to be entertained and have a good time.” Along with their shows, the band also held workshops for interested festival-goers. They recounted their surprise when they had a great turn-out for their classes at the Ukulele Festival, and the Southwell Folk festival. “We actually didn’t think we were going to go [to the workshop],” recalled Ed. “We figured, ‘Nobody is going to show up, it’s the last day of the festival, it’s raining, we’ve already played, and nobody has ukuleles anyway.’” But there were other considerations than just workshop attendance. “We decided that we would go back because we had these free meal tickets,” Ed explained. It turns out that the English do not mind the rain and actually do own quite a few ukuleles. “[W]e stick our head in [the tent] and there were like a hundred people waiting for us,” laughed Ed, with Charlie adding, “It ended up being packed and we had so much fun. We were totally not prepared, so we just did the (Ray Wylie Hubbard) song, ‘Redneck Mother,’ because we wanted something really easy.” (Which turned out not to be a bad thing: “They actually loved it,” said Charlie.) It does not seem as if their first stint outside the country will be their last. “[We were received] way better than expected,” Ed reflected. “We’ve been asked back and we’ve already gotten an offer for one festival next year, and a couple of other ones are in the works right now.” Even after playing for crowds of 2,000 people, some of their most impactful memories were of smaller, more intimate moments connecting with locals. “Everyone we ran into, even guys just walking on the street who happened to see us, were really authentic and sincere,” said Ed. After playing in a family-owned pub in the town of Stroud, they were invited to have dinner with the family in their apartment directly over the pub. “They cooked us all a meal, eggs and ham – (‘Eggs and ham,’ Charlie said reflexively) – and everyone sat down together; you know, the kids, the family, the band.” “You make friends.”
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Photographs by katie thomas © cc photography
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“We went to a surf shop in Cornwall called The Pit, and I told them we wanted to rent boards, and they said, ‘Where are you guys from?’ I said, ‘We’re from Venice.’ ‘Italy?’ ‘No, Dogtown.’ When they heard that – it was just amazing. They ended up giving us four wetsuits, hoodies, ever ything for ten bucks a piece. They gave us t-shirts, we signed the ceiling, we took photos. And it was so fun to hear all the banter in the lineup. Ever ybody’s like, ‘Go left, Mate!’ But ever ybody’s really polite, too, so they’re like, ‘Oi, mate, I took the last wave, you go!’ Unheard of here. It was just funny, the accents in the water.” www.theooks.com
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PLAYING FOR
CHANGE by Sam Braslow
Paul Simon, the iconic singer-songwriter, couldn’t seem more different than Biggie Smalls, the gangsta rap artist. But even if “Biggie and Paul couldn’t have more opposite worlds” according to Mark Johnson, co-founder of Playing for Change, in the course of working with both musicians as a recording engineer, “I saw their joy and I always thought that if they knew each other they would be such good friends. Even though they have completely different identities, their passion [for music] is the same.” The global music project, Playing For Change, works with street musicians from across the world, filming and recording them performing the same song and posting the videos online. Johnson hopes that these global performances “show everybody how easy it is to connect if it’s in the right context.” The seeds of Playing for Change were planted when Johnson had an epiphany while commuting one day, obser ving a pair of monks busking on a New York City subway platform and the diverse crowd they drew. “I started thinking that music is the great connector between ever ybody, and it doesn’t matter your race or religion or politics.” Johnson has similarly seen how “Native Americans play to connect to ancestors and Mother Nature, people in New Orleans play to survive and heal. In South Africa, the Zulu choirs sing to forgive and move on from apartheid. In Israel and Palestine, they make music to create a
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bridge between the division and misunderstanding. The Tibetan musicians in Nor ther n India, where the Dali Llama lives play music for enlightenment.” Since the moment on the subway platform, the brainchild of Johnson and his partner, Whitney Kroenke, has taken off. In 2008, the talk show, Bill Moyers Journal, featured a video produced by Johnson, of musicians covering the Ben E. King hit “Stand by Me” which quickly went viral. Inspired by the warm reception of the video, Johnson and Kroenke began Playing for Change.
“Part of the solution is making people care more. That’s only going to happen when we stop showing kids with guns and show them with guitars.”
By exposing people to a global story through a narrative other than war or conflict, Johnson believes that it will encourage people to expand their awareness of global issues. “Part of the solution is making people care more. That’s only going to happen when we stop showing kids with guns and show them with guitars. Instead of showing kids crying, show them smiling. We got to do something to lift each other up. Every time you watch our videos you feel some sense of hope.” Playing for Change has brought monetar y benefits to its performers. “Starbucks became our partner and sold all the CD’s for us. We were able to give all the royalties back to the artists. We raised over a million and a half dollars for the musicians.” Many of the musicians featured on the Playing for Change videos now tour together on behalf of the organization. “We assemble the best musicians from the videos for a worldwide touring band. It’s a ten-piece band from ten different countries. We’re going to tour with Robert Plant.” “They treat Grandpa Elliott like Elvis in Brazil,” Johnson laughed about the 72 year-old street musician from New Orleans, featured in “Stand By Me” and other videos. Playing for Change itself is a for-profit company, but Johnson and Kroenke later created the Playing For Change Foundation, a separate, nonprofit, 501(c)3 entity dedicated to fostering music education globally. “We have twelve music schools that we built, which we support through individual donations and tax deductions.” Playing For Change Day, an initiative launched through the Playing For Change Foundation, orga
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Above: Mark Johnson on location in Tibet, filming a local musician for a Playing for Change video. Below: The editing bay in the living room of his Venice Beach bungalow – this is where he makes the magic happen. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 11
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nized “450 concerts in 65 countries on the same day all for music education. Half [of the proceeds] go to our schools and half go to local schools.” Johnson wants to continue expanding Playing for Change and its impact. “We’re looking to bring home all the lessons we learned and work on more programs here [in the United States]. We just partnered with the White House for the program, Turn Around Arts. It’s Michelle Obama’s program to go to the worst schools in the countr y and turn them around through music and art. It’s in 70 schools and each one is assigned a famous artist to help them, from Forest Whitaker to Jack Johnson and ever ybody in between.” Even while increasing its presence in the U.S., the Playing for Change Foundation has continued to grow charitable efforts across the world, capitalizing on their connections and resources. “We’re doing so many other things, like getting them clean water or solar power. For the first time in 1,000 years, one of our schools has light in their maternity ward. We fund something called The Mother’s Society, which is in a village in Nepal. These women created a play and they travel on foot from village to village to the teach the community how to keep their children out of the sex slave trade.” “That’s not a music program, but it’s an extension of what we’re trying to build.” But for all of the lofty goals espoused by Playing for Change, Johnson does not pretend that music is a panacea to global issues. Instead, music offers a refuge from sensational narratives that represent the world in negative, one-dimensional terms. Johnson references an inter view with European musician, Manu Chao: “They asked him if he thought music could save the world and he said, ‘No, we need ever ybody – the taxi drivers, the fishers, the politicians – we need ever yone. But the musicians, they have the microphone and so they have a chance to say something.’”
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V E N I C E S OUNDWAVE S
CAPTAIN OF THE M.F.
GROOVE
SHIP by Sam Braslow
Behind the strangely haunting facade of the Bordello – a gargoyle festooned Venice landmark – the drummer, recording engineer, and producer Andy Kravitz helms the spaceship-like controls of a recording consul in his home studio. “I’ve been coming to Venice since 1990 when I started working with Taj Mahal, and that was for a label on Melrose called Private Music,” says Kravitz. He made his first mark as a session drummer, but since then, he has worked on every side of the microphone. Kravitz is a musician’s musician with credits on 25 Grammy-nominated projects and twelve winning projects. His first Grammy nod came at the age of 16 for 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 15
his work with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince on “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.” He is one of five drummers to have played with the Rolling Stones. Today, his career maintains its momentum, working with actors like Billy Bob Thornton, and rising musicians like Kamasi Washington and Lana Del Rey. “We had a label called Ruffhouse Records in Philly. My bosses, the Butcher Brothers, Joe Nicolo and Phil Nicolo, gave me my start when I was 16 at their studio.” He began his career in his home town of Philadelphia and relocated to Los Angeles. “The Venice community transcends hashtags,” Kravitz found. “Florida’s too hot and I burn. The angle of the sun has always been just right for me out here in California.” “Venice has been incredible to me, it goes really deep and there’s a lot of community pride, more so than any other place I’ve seen or been. People go to the mat for this place. I’ve seen them literally do that.” Kravitz has found in Venice the perfect creative community that intersects digital and music.
“I’ve been working with a lot of local talent, there’s a lot of talented folks. I’m really about going in and being a part of cultivating the new culture.”
The convenience offered by digital platforms has been a mixed blessing for the music industry. “I do believe that digital – having all these things at your finger tips – it doesn’t really level the playing field the way I thought it would. Not everyone’s record sounds the same.” “What happens,” explains Kravitz, “is that everything ever invented is there on the screen; it’s what you do with it. Once you get into it, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do everything I could ever think of now.’ It makes it an endless process. When you’re faced with a blank screen and an empty hard drive, where do you start? You have two bazillion options, first thing you do is start eliminating those options.“
The dramatic shift in how people consume music, from speakers to headphones, has also impacted the sound of today’s music. “It’s all about the end user, it always has been,” said Kravitz. “You gotta jack the levels so far up to make it compete with this distorted media. I have a pet peeve about that, because not ever ything needs to be louder than God with zero dynamics. Let’s leave a sine wave in there somewhere and not a square wave, because things get boxed out. If you look at the state of music, what it looks like on protools and what it sounds like, compared to the old, beautiful records we used to listen to, there is a big difference in qualtiy. I sound like ‘that guy’ but it’s true, people don’t know how to handle midrange anymore.” Kravitz points out that the sounds we hear are engineered even outside of music. “The nightly news is auto-tuned, I don’t know if you’re aware of this. Everything you hear, the cellphone, speech, everything is auto-tuned, so those
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are the only notes that exist as far as this generation of kids is concerned. The reason they’re auto-tuning the news is to cut down on bandwidth.” At the same time, technological changes are nothing new to music. When recording engineers switched from Victrola horns to electric recording, Kravitz says, “the guys were like, ‘No way, forget about it, man! I don’t even want to hear music anymore unless it’s made by a guy talking into his RCA Victrola or Ediphone.’ So there’s always purists,” Kravitz, said. “I’m co-producing and engineering Willie Chambers’ new record with him,” Kravitz said about the founding member of the 60s soul group, The Chambers Brothers. When he came to record at Kravitz’ studio in Venice he said, “You know what’s changed around here, man? On that corner where Zelda’s market is, you’d have a band come into town and they would play for three weeks straight nonstop, so you’d really have a chance to see a band. Nowadays they pop-up and go away.” Even so, Venice continues to thrive because of the strength of its community. Kravitz comments, “I’ve been working with a lot of local talent, there’s a lot of talented folks. I’m really about going in and being a part of cultivating the new culture. There’s a whole new generation of musicians that are busking and ever ybody’s slugging it out and I’m like, let’s raise ever ybody up. I’m not looking for any flash in the pan, just a steady rise, a steady slow burn. That’s how I’ve always looked at it: it’s not how good you’re living, it’s how long you live good.”
Photograph by Bailey Lewis
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Tommy Thayer, left, and Andy Kravitz, right, recording together in “the bunker,” Kravitz’s underground Venice studio.
TOMMY THAYER IN THE HOUSE by Bailey Lewis
I’ve known Andy for a couple years now and we’ve done a lot of projects here together. The reason I like Venice Beach and this whole area is because it’s vibey and it’s got an attitude and from a creative standpoint, you can’t beat something like this. To me there’s a little edginess, it’s not like ever ything’s too perfect, it’s vibey and we’re down here in the Bunker, which is this recording studio, and it’s ver y small and yet it’s lethal. You get the right people and a little bit of gear and you can really do some really outrageous, fabulous music. Q How does Venice inspire you? Tommy Thayer Coming to Venice – you know, at first glance, it’s a little out there, and there are a lot of people on the streets and sometimes it kind of freaks 18 VOL V MMXVI
you out a little bit. But that’s good because it kind of keeps you on your toes and it’s not too comfortable. I think that with music, and especially Rock n’ Roll, you want to feel like you’re on the edge a little bit more. Q How do you connect to music? Tommy Thayer When we were kids, we grew up admiring, loving great bands, great songs, and great instrumentalists. I started out real young, I actually played saxophone first, so I got some background and some basics from that experience. By the time I found the electric guitar when I was about 13, it just took over. It related so much to my life, and the passion for the music and the bands that I loved, because at that age you’re just overwhelmed by it, and back in the early and mid 70’s there were so many great new bands and artists coming out of that time, it just drew you in. Being a part of that, and playing guitar and actually being able to put a band together even though it was just a garage band at the time, there wasn’t anything better, because that was my passion and it was just what we loved doing. You’d get together with some friends and you’d form these funny little bands and play at the school dance or in the garage for a party, and that was the greatest thing. It was always about passion and tr ying to emulate and live the life of these stars and these great bands that you loved so much, trying to do what they do even though you sucked at first. Music is a great connector and it’s a great way to communicate and keep people together. Life is interesting though because, you know, I play guitar in one of the biggest bands in the world, but I never really thought that I was going to do that. I always loved music but I never really looked at it like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a rockstar,’ just like I want to do what I want to do and have fun doing it. It was always more about looking at the goal of something I wanted to accomplish in a month or two, in the short term, like, ‘I want to play at this place, or, I’d love to go record in the studio.’ And then one thing leads to another. 10, 20, 30 years go by and suddenly you’re like, ‘Oh my god, now I’m sitting here with Andy Kravitz.’ But I’m sure Andy has a similar stor y. He grew up in Philadelphia, I grew up in Portland, Oregon; opposite ends of the countr y but I think the same things were happening in both places. I talk to different people now, people like Andy, and it’s amazing how similar, you know, growing up and what we loved, and why we did it. It’s so similar, it’s unbelievable. 3.1 Do you have an opinion of how creative people can change the world? Tommy Thayer I think creative people and music – I think it does change the world. With the unfortunate passing of Prince and Bowie, you can see how that over whelmingly affected society and everybody, almost bigger than anything else. I mean, who else has died and makes that big of an impact. The only people I can think of are Michael Jackson and John Lennon. I think that music and artistry and just the arts and song are such a huge thing to people. It’s almost bigger than anything. I think it does bring people together, and if there’s one thing in the world that can unite and bring people together, it’s music. It did happen that way – before 1989, Russia was the Soviet Union and communist countries – really, what contributed to breaking down the wall was music. All of a sudden, they were discovering western rock music and they did some concerts over there, and they embraced it. Photograph by Bailey Lewis
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THE
Bordello
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY BAILEY LEWIS
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According to El Bordello Alexandra resident Andy Kravitz, he “can sit out front [of the Bordello] and literally meet new people. It’s a great conversation starter.” When it was bought by current owners Tony Wells and Brittany Stevenson in 2001, the Bordello was a heroin den in disrepair. Before it was a Venice destination point, the 1906 building’s wood facing had rotted, the ceiling sagged, and linoleum covered the tile in the foyer. To create its unique impression, though, Wells and Stevenson traveled to a metalwork shop in Rasarito Beach, Mexico, run by the local indigenous people. There, they commissioned imposing pieces made from scrap metal, such as statues of a centaur and Poseidon. In addition to those works, the Bordello contains a 19th centur y pump organ, an electric bass and guitar, a baroque crucifix, and suits of armor, giving it the ahistoric feel of a movie studio storage warehouse. (As a matter of fact, Stevenson’s background is in production.) But as much as there is to say about its appearance, the Bordello is only as special as its community and tenants. “There’s a lot of great, super nice people here,” says Kravitz. PHOTOGRAPHS BY BAILEY LEWIS
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Lani Renaldo
HAS WHAT IT TAKES
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After studying music, business and theater at USC, Lani Renaldo is poised to take off with her first big gig at the Shrine Auditorium, opening for Halsey’s “Badlands” t o u r, t h i s s u m m e r. S h e shares her thoughts on how it feels to be a musician on the verge...
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3.1 So a lot of things have been happening to you recently. What are you preparing for right now? LR I’m doing one show and then I’m going to release my EP. There’s also a bunch of contracts in the works. We’ll see what happens from there. 3.1 You’re about to play at The Shrine. That has go to be the biggest venue you’ve ever played. LR It’s weird going from thirty people to – playing at the Special Olympics, which, there were maybe like 100 people – to going to 6,000 plus overnight. 3.1 You’re a living example of the phrase, “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” You owe a lot of your recent success to a chance encounter with the musician Halsey. How did you meet her? LR Halsey – I call her Ashley which is her real name – I don’t know how to properly repay her. She’s given me what every budding new artist wants, which is to say, “Hey, here’s this kid, I know you haven’t heard of them but I trust their vision, I trust their music, I’m all about them, go listen. Even better, let me introduce them to the world.” You don’t get that opportunity very often, if at all. I’m in the luckiest position in the world. I work at USC’s radio station, KXSC and my general manager messaged me one day on Facebook asking if I knew who Halsey was. I was like, “Yeah, I know who Halsey is, of course.” And she was like, “Samsung wants a student musician for their panel. Do you want to go do it?” So I’m just like, sure, you can give them my information and hopefully they’ll call back. Two days later I get a call and they’re very secret about everything. They’re like, “Can you come to the venue at this time and bring your songs. Just come by and we’ll chat.” I’m like, I have no idea what’s happening. The video that’s out right now is very true to everything that ended up happening. I’m in the middle of singing and she walks into the room – 3.1 What video is this? LR There’s a video on Samsung’s youtube. It’s part of a series that they do called, “Samsung level music lab.” 3.1 And so she walked in while you were performing? LR Yeah. She’s like, “Wow, you have a voice,” and I’m just trying not to flip out. It’s funny because you go to the comments of the video and people are like, “Why is this girl so laid back about it? I would be flipping out.” And I’m just trying to keep my shit while this girl is listening to me sing. She’s one of the hottest acts out right now, she 28 VOL V MMXVI
PHOTOGRAPHS BY J3 COLLECTION
PROFILE just finished playing Coachella. I’m just trying to keep my cool and have fun. We really hit it off. She’s a very smart person and someone I’m very lucky to have as a mentor. Later on that evening she asked, “Hey, do you want to open for me?” At that point I just broke down crying and didn’t know what to do. 3.1 That’s amazing. LR What’s amazing is if you backtrack a week ago from that day, I was in the food court at USC eating with my friend and I was bawling, saying, “I’m not sure if I’m ever going to have a career in music.” A week later I’m opening for Halsey. 3.1 Do you think you’ll do what Halsey did for you and produce other people?. LR It’s definitely something I’ve thought about. Working on the industry side you find yourself A&Ring and finding new talent all the time and I’ve gotten to know some amazing musicians. Specifically female musicians. That’s really where I want to work, to move more women and women of color into the industry. 3.1 Let’s get some background. Music – when did you first start playing music? LR My earliest memory of getting a guitar is like 3, 4 years old. I asked for one for Christmas. I started playing drums at 3. Music was always in the house. My dad played saxophone and drums, so I picked up the drumming from him. My mom – does not sing and we ask her not to sing, but she played Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, and Mariah Carey. Soon I was taking drum lessons and teaching myself how to play guitar. 3.1 You taught yourself how to play guitar, but did you ever take formal lessons? LR I made a deal with my dad. He said, “We always get you a bunch of lessons and then you stop taking them so we’re not going to get you guitar lessons until you’ve taught yourself for a year.” I was 12 and spent the next year teaching myself. Then at 13, I took lessons. That’s also the same time I wrote my first song. 3.1 As far as writing music, do you experiment across genres or stick to one? LR I started off writing a lot of pop music because that was all I knew. For my most recent EP, the whole idea of it came to me after Coachella last year, watching people like Alabama Shakes, Hozier, and Father John Misty – just this very poetic, very deep, very rich song writing. So I listened to as much as I could and at the same time, started listening to B. B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan – all this blues music – and the songs just started pouring out.
…After Coachella, watching people like Alabama Shakes, Hozier, and Father John Misty – very poetic, very deep, very rich song writing… I listened to B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn – all this blues music – and the songs just started pouring out. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 29
PROFILE
I don’t think you can ever give up on your dream. Even if you’re 30 you can’t give up. There are so many people, especially today, that break at any age. 3.1 You went to Crossroads, which is a ver y artistic school. Did you perform while you attended? LR I did a lot of theater inside and outside school. I’ve been groomed for this since I was a kid without knowing it. My parents were not stage parents at all, I was a really shy kid and so they were like, “You’re brother and sister are in acting lessons, why don’t we just put you through them as well,” and I ended up falling in love with it. 3.1 At USC, what have you been doing there? LR I study music industry. I decided that I didn’t want to learn how to perform. I think that performance is one of those things that you either have or you don’t. When I got to USC, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to study and for the first year, I wasn’t even in the music department. I thought I wanted to be an actress, so I was in the Drama department. But now I’ve been studying music industry, learning the business side of things. It’s a very crazy world and things are constantly changing and so I thought that it would be better to understand the business before entering it as a performer. 3.1 Hypothetically, if you were 28 or 30 and still hadn’t made it, what do you think you would do? LR I don’t think you can ever give up on your dream. Even if you’re 30 you can’t give up. There are so many people, especially today, that break at any age. Father John Misty is like, what, 34, 36, and Andrew Day is in her 30’s. 3.1 We know that you started playing at a young age, but what has been the biggest shift from student to professional? LR I think it was going to college and understanding that there’s a huge music market out there. You can be cute as ever, really successful in high school, and have X, Y, and Z producing for you, but there are other very good musicians doing the same thing. You look at Spotify and see such and over-saturated market. You have to take yourself to the next level to grab people’s attention. 3.1 There is an underlying misogynistic attitude among music executives that sex sells first and talent is just an added bonus. How do you deal with that? LR I think you have to be aware of it, know that it exists, and that you might face it. For me, there are two ways to think about it. You can show your body and be flirty and sexy, or stay true to yourself, don’t get a big deal and turn stardom down. Are you going to 30 VOL V MMXVI
PROFILE be ok with the independent world where you may not sell as much, but you’ll have your authenticity? Or, are you going to sell out and show your boobs but then get to a point where you’ve made it and say, “Hey, I’m not going to do that anymore.” Once you have a reputation, you have leverage. I definitely feel the pressure because I am a new artist and there are so many different ways I could go, but for me it comes down to authenticity. 3.1 How has it been as a person of color starting out in the music industry? LR I had somebody ask me the other day, “Is it weird for you being a person of color doing pop music because a lot of people of color do R&B?” Well, first of all, a genre is a genre and anybody can do a genre. Also, let’s talk about where Rock n’ Roll came from. I identify as multiracial. When I go out, I get called “exotic,” and when anyone asks me what I am, I just tell them I that I’m human. My mom is Italian with fair skin and my dad is black. It influences my music but it doesn’t define my music. It’s weird if you’re doing rock because traditionally that’s not what you’re supposed to do, but this is a new age and there’s a new generation that’s making music and we don’t want to be defined by our predecessors. 3.1 Where do you want to go in the next five years? LR I want to do the festival circuit really badly. I love music festivals and I think the energy there is really great. I’m such a hippy. I want to come out with another album. This show gave me the kickstart that I needed. I want to get signed, I want to put out more music, and I really want to do this seriously.
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V E N I C E S OUNDWAVE S
ARTHUR BARROW HE KNOWS MUSIC FROM
A TO ZAPPA by Sam Braslow
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“W
hen he spotted me, he looked me right in the eyes for a couple of seconds without smiling or anything, just an intense stare, as if he were sizing me up. It felt like he was peering into my soul, looking to see if there was anything good inside of me.” This was the first time that Arthur Barrow, then a young musician starting out in Los Angeles, met his idol, Frank Zappa of “The Mother’s of Invention (Freak Out!).” It would be two more years, in 1978, that Barrow fulfilled his dream of playing bass for Zappa, going so far as to assume musical directorship of the band. “When I got to L.A., I just got lucky and kept meeting people from the Zappa Universe,” Barrow said about starting in Los Angeles as a musician aspiring to play with Zappa. Barrow, who has ran a recording studio in Mar Vista for the last 20 years, heard Zappa was auditioning bass players and jumped at the opportunity. “I told [Zappa] that I learned the melody to this rather complicated tune called ‘Inca Roads’ on the bass as an exercise. I think that maybe he didn’t believe me – I had picked it up by ear – so he goes, ‘Oh really? Well, do you know the middle part of Saint Alfonzo’s? Learn that for me.’ So over the next week, I got out my tape recorder and played it at half speed so I could pick out the fastest notes. At my audition, I introduced myself and I said, ‘Well, here’s that thing you asked me to learn from Saint Alfonzo’s.” I whipped it out and payed it for him and he said, ‘Well, there were a few wrong notes in there but I think you have potential.’” Along with his work with Zappa, Barrow has worked with musicians including The Doors, Joe Cocker, and Diana Ross, in addition to current rising artists. “For the last couple of months, I’ve hooked up with a guitar player who moved here recently from Chicago named, Marcus Rezak. He’s a really good guitar player. Educated at Berklee [School of Music]. In fact, I’ve done a couple of gigs with him, including one just last last Wednesday in Hermosa Beach. Through him and another guy, I met the guys from a band called, Unfreeze McGee. I had never heard of them before but they’re a successful jam band. Really sweet, nice kids. I didn’t see any of that ego bullshit at all.” Barrow has also composed scores for films and done residencies at The University of North Texas and The University of South Dakota.
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At The University of North Texas, Barrow directed a class of student musicians performing Zappa’s music. “Ever y one of those kids were just great. I loved doing it. They have this beautiful concert hall, it’s not some dingy club. You have your choice of three concert pianos, two Steinways and a Bösendofer, and all the percussion stuff is right across the hall. You can really get a full sound and do it right.” Directing music is not foreign to Barrow. In Zappa’s band, he held the position of “clonemeister,” a term invented by Zappa – equivalent to musical director. “For the first part of rehearsal, [Zappa] wouldn’t be present and it was up to me to run things. We would go over the songs from the last day and drill them until we had it the way he told us to do it. Then he would come in and start changing it all.” An alumnus of North Texas College of Music himself, Barrow believes strongly in musical education. “I think the more you can learn about music, the better. Sometimes I sort of laugh – you know, I have a lot of musicians and people come over here and some singer-songwriter will say, ‘Oh, music is just the most important thing to me. It’s everything to me.’ I’ll ask, ‘What chord is that you’re playing?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I don’t know the names of the chords. I don’t want to learn anything about music, it might ruin my creativity!’ Yeah, it really ruined Bach and Beethoven and Mozart – they couldn’t write a thing when they learned the lines and spaces. “Don’t tell me it’s the most important thing in your life but you don’t want to learn anything about how it works.”
Below: Arthur Barrow playing bass guitar with Frank Zappa. He recounts his experiences working with Zappa and navigating the music industry in his autobiography, “Of Course I Said Yes!”
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KathyLEONARDO From Broadway Baby to Venice Vixen Kathy Leonardo has all the genres covered with her musical style. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 37
KathyLEONARDO
ART
“B
orn and raised in New York City. You know, Broadway,” Kathy Leonardo said before launching into a perfect Ethel Merman impression, “There’s no business like show business!”
Leonardo has enthralled Venice crowds for almost a decade with her fearless commitment to showmanship and pizzazz. Not only was Leonardo born in New York, she began her career as a singer and performer there. “I toured around the countr y when I was 24 with Anthony Newley. I did an opera with Charles Strouse where I was the comic lead. [In that show] they used to call me Broadway Baby because I wasn’t a real opera singer and I played a mechanical bird.” Her creative curiosity and versatility enable her to perform a wide range of music. “I have five bands I play with. I like to work in a lot of styles.” We cover everything from Blues to Holiday music. She is as comfortable doing the Nancy Sinatra hit, “These Boots are Made for Walking,” as the Peggy Lee standard, “Fever.” Her dance training is evident, no matter the style – a country two-step in full cowboy boots or swaying around a mic with Jessica Rabbit-finesse. Most of Leonardo’s music catalogue includes standards and covers and she admits, “I get paid more singing covers. Everyone wants covers and for years I fought it. When I finally started, that’s when people went, ‘You can sing!’ People just didn’t realize that I could sing until I did covers.” Leonardo writes and records original music as well. “I have two CD’s out – ‘Here I Am,’ which is older, and ‘You Don’t Know.’ I’m kind of like Taylor Swift in that I get back at all my men through my songs.” Her studio work spans genres, with ‘Here I Am’ embracing a pop, acoustic folk-blues sound and ‘You Don’t Know,’ gravitating towards a mixture of blues rock and honky tonk. Through it all, her voice takes center stage. Leonardo’s musical idols are strong women that command the attention of their audiences. “I love Etta James. I’m really going to age myself with this, but Ethel Merman. Jennifer Holiday. Lena [Horn]. I love swing. I love blues. But I also love Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls. I mostly love lesbian singers,” she joked. “K.D. Lang, she’s an amazing singer. But, oh, no – Bonnie Raitt is not a lesbian.” Kathy Leonardo has been performing for over 30 years, including 8 years in Venice, and has noticed changes in how business is done. “They’re asking a lot more people to do stuff for free and it’s really pissing me off.” She feels that, requests for free performances trivialize her career, equating it to a pastime or hobby. “It’s like saying to an accountant, ‘By the way, would you do my taxes for free? Is that okay?’” Kathy Leonardo is philosophical about the regenerative cycle of artists. “You can’t really keep art down. The older people get burned-out, but the newer ones come in and inject fresh vitality and the older ones say, ‘Yeah, I can do that!’ I always have young musicians come and play with me. It’s good for everybody.” As Ethel Merman says, there is no business like show business.
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Louie Ryan, owner of the Townhouse and Del Monte Speakeasy, displays items from the prohibition era, including a 100-year-old bottle of whiskey and a “Carrie Nation ax� used to smash bottles during bar raids by the temperance movement.
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DEL MONTE SPEAKEASY&
TOWNHOUSE by Taylor Barnes
Louie Ryan and his wife Nettie, are the owners of the famous Del Monte Speakeasy and Townhouse bar, on Windward Avenue. The building was designated by Abbott Kinney to be a tavern and is the second oldest such building in Los Angeles. No small feat considering earthquakes, rising real estate prices, and a general lack of appreciation for the city’s architectural histor y. As an Irishman from Dublin, Ryan has a special love for a grand pub and has placed this establishment firmly at the center of Venice Beach culture.
3.1 This building used to be a speakeasy, is that right? Louie Ryan A guy called Cesar Menotti was an italian immigrant bought this lot and built this building but he bought it from Abbot Kinney and Abbot Kinney himself had earmarked it for a tavern – he wanted a saloon here. So, Menotti’s was born in 1915. Prohibition was enacted in 1919 and enforced in 1920 and Cesar Menotti had a problem on his hands because he couldn’t serve liquor anymore, so they put the bar in the basement – where we’re sitting today – and put a grocery store upstairs to mask it and hide it. I know that the cops and the politicians were down here, too, so he got tipped off whenever they were gonna get raided. That went on till 1933. This became quite a scene down here, it was well known for great musicians and dancing. Charlie Chaplin and all kinds of people attended this great room. In 1933, when prohibition was abolished, he ended up having two floors – the original speakeasy where there was dancing and entertainment and then the saloon back upstairs.
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for all places like this. There might have been a fourth in there but all of the research and checking I’ve done, there was two owners before me and I’m the third.
During the Prohibition Era, the Townhouse Bar was used as a grocer y store. The original signage and some of the store fixtures have been preser ved to retain the history of the building.
The part that I really love about this room is this was the hub of the distribution point for all the illegal liquor in the area. Mainly Canadian whisky boats, big schooners, came down and– it was called the “rum line” back then, and they had to park three miles offshore to be outside the legal limit, and then they waited for the sun to set. They sent in smaller boats underneath the Abbot Kinney pier, which was at the end of Windward here. Very cleverly and coincidentally, Abbot Kinney had built utility tunnels because all of the buildings back then were heated by steam. So he had these steam pipes running underneath all these tunnels, but these tunnels were big enough for a man to stand in so that’s where all the booze came in through and then it was delivered to all the taverns and hotel… 3.1 You’ve owned the Townhouse since 2006. How did you end up buying it? Louie Ryan Third owner since 1915, the records say. And remember, there are no records 42 VOL V MMXVI
Frank [Bennet], the older gentleman [and previous owner of the bar], died in 2003 and he always told me, ‘You see the walls in here? What color are they?’ And I’m like, ‘White.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, that’s ‘cause it’s like a hospital and I’m gonna die in here. So stop annoying me and if you buy it you might buy it off one of my kids if you’re lucky one day.’ So anyway, his son inherited it after he passed away and I called on the right day and I had probably written a hundred letters and I had probably called 40 times, and one day, John Fremont [my commercial real estate agent] called on my behalf and his son picked up the phone and said, ‘Funny, we’re just thinking about listing the place because we’ve been getting offers. Why don’t you tell your client to come down and talk to me?’ … [We sat down to talk and] he said, ‘What are you going to do [with the bar]?’ I said, ‘I’m going to honor your dad’s legacy, I want to keep it the same,’ because a lot of people wanted to take it and rip it apart because they couldn’t see past the damn blue walls and the mexican cantina they built during a movie set and kept in place. I went home to my wife and said, ‘You know, I think we’re going to get the Townhouse, the biggest dive in Venice.’ This reminds me of home in a big way. It’s full on Americana and not Irish but I do feel the bones of the place like I do when I go into the great establishments of Dublin. 3.1 I’ve never been to it, but I hear you have a special celebration on December fifth. Louie Ryan We celebrated our hundredth year anniversary December fifth. December fifth is the day that prohibition was abolished and I don’t truly know the real anniversary here [but] I’m pretty sure that was a day of celebration. Every year we have a pig roast and entertainment on both floors and it goes all day and we roll the prices back to what they were in 1920’s for one hour, and we don’t tell anybody when that hour is and the place gets packed. Everybody keeps asking, ‘When are they going to ring the bell?’ There’s a bell behind the bar upstairs and once that thing rings, it’s bedlam in here ‘cause it’s dollar Manhattans and
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Negronis for an hour and it’s phenomenal. With the pig roast and the music and jazz and it’s the place where everybody gets dressed up. 3.1 You’ve been very involved in the Los Angeles music scene ever since you moved here. How did that start? Louie Ryan I don’t know if you know, but we owned the Temple Bar in Santa Monica for ten years, and Zanzibar, and The Little Temple in Silver Lake-- so we’ve booked live music for the last decade in this town. We chose, for want of a better description, sort of the same format as KCRW – not because we listen to KCRW and we said, ‘Let’s open a club and play that music,’– because when my wife and I first came from New York, and I owned the Rock n’ Roll bar in New York in the Village called the Scrap Bar when I was 23 and I first came from Ireland, I worked for a couple of guys that made me a partner of that funky little bar on MacDougal street, and that was full of musicians, but that was like, if you played at the Garden or the Ritz or the Cat Club, you came to the Scrap Bar afterwards to party, all the musicians hung out there. So I always find myself in venues that facilitate musicians. So when my wife and I came to Los Angeles together from New York in ‘91, we worked in various establishments but we were looking for the perfect venue. Long story short, there was an English guy who had a venue that had failed over and over again. Big place, very successful, and a lot of great careers came out of there, but then it was defunct for years during the 80’s and 90’s, and then I walked in. I have Dublin balls so I just went in and I said to him, ‘Look, if you give me 50 percent’ – it was very bold – and I ended up talking this English guy into letting me come in, book the place, redesign the place, rename it, restaff it for 50 percent, and for once I got everything on paper and was a legally a half owner of this place called the Temple Bar. We opened in 1999 and it quickly became a really popular place… [After I bought the other half of
Temple Bar] the whole place just started to soar, and as you know, became a nationally known small music venue. A lot of great people came out of there and played there, it was just never a bad night there. 3.1 What kind of music did you play and has the live music scene changed since you started? Louie Ryan The beauty and pride of booking at the Temple Bar was a lady named Megan Jenkins who was a singer-songwriter herself and still is – [she] came in and had no experience really but between my wife, her, and me… the booking was so rich and so good and the kind of music, it was like World Jazz, Soul, Conscious Hip-Hop, RnB-- we stayed away from Rock n’ Roll, not that there wasn’t a Rock n’ Roll band every now and again, but everybody else was doing Rock ‘n Roll and we embraced this kind of World music and this hip-hop that was emerging and soul and funk.
You have to have a certain personality to run something like this.… I grew up on the rough streets of the North side of Dublin so I can talk to the gangsters and the bankers with the same respect.
PHOTOGRAPHS by Bailey Lewis & TAYLOR BARNES
So to answer your question, that was the kind of music that we embraced, and that has definitely been eclipsed – like, if I still owned the Temple Bar today, I realize that I would have to book it differently in order to get the crowds. There would be more electronica and more indie. 3.1 What do you think makes a good bar manager? Louie Ryan You have to have a certain personality to run something like this. You have to be streetwise and you’ve got to be educated at the same time. I grew up on the rough streets of the North side of Dublin so I can talk to the gangsters and the bankers with the same respect.
The photos on the opposite page show the details of the design of the Del Monte Speakeasy and The Townhouse. From the 100-year-old bottle of whisky in the cabinet of the Speakeasy to the Prohibition Era posters extolling the evils of alcohol, the history of the building is everywhere.
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NINO
PHOTOGRAPH by rbma radio
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V E N I C E S OUNDWAVE S by Sam Braslow
I
f you have been fortunate enough to catch Australian quartet Hiatus Kaiyote, Algerian band Imarhan, or jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, chances are that you owe some of your luck to Carlos Niño. An accomplished musician, producer, radio D.J., and music director, Niño has programmed music at venues around LA since the late ‘90s featuring music he describes as “neo-soul, hip-hop soul, and world music.” He has worked closely with local business owner Louie Ryan, programming for Ryan’s Westside venues including Temple Bar (no longer under Ryan’s ownership), the Townhouse, and the Del Monte Speakeasy. In his 15 years partnering with Ryan, Niño has worked to create a space for new and rising genres of music. “With the Temple Bar,” Niño said, “before a lot of the ‘neo-soul,’ ‘hip-hop soul,’ and ‘world music,’ that has been popular for the last ten years, in the ten year span of the Temple bar a lot of the programming focused on those kinds of artists. They didn’t have other places to play so we developed something that was not really happening in L.A.” A Los Angeles native, Niño is well-versed in the musical history of Venice. “I was born in ‘77, so imagine me by the mid ‘80s in Venice on a regular basis: concerts in the graffiti amphitheater, the drum circle.” Even with his interest in contemporary genres, the programming at the Townhouse and Del Monte Speakeasy dips into the musical history of the spaces. “We have music that would have played in 1915 playing down there; we have music that would have played in the ‘40s and ‘50s; we have music that would have played during the psychedelic ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s all represented in our programming on a regular basis. Then, music that’s really progressive and new plays down there as well, from experimental electronic music to various dance music to new Rock n’ Roll.” The roster of musicians who play at the Del Monte Speakeasy include both local and international acts, from the Venice group Insects Vs. Robots to Parisian musician Naïm Amor. Niño’s current booking philosophy dates back to his time at Temple Bar. “The motto of Temple Bar was ‘Diversity through music’ and Louie and his wife, Netty, were really into the idea of being a part of a global music scene here in LA and it really wasn’t very prominent at that point.” With the anonymous atmosphere of a dive and the A-list quality of the performers, the Speakeasy facilitates encounters between the already established and the up-and-coming. In one such encounter, Niño recounts, the Algerian band Imarhan was doing a soundcheck for a show at the Speakeasy. While they went through the motions of fine-tuning the equipment, the pop artist Usher, his posse in tow, stole away into the basement venue to avoid a crowd of followers. (Niño had run into the group earlier and, recognizing one of the members, invited them to watch the band). “So [Usher’s] whole group comes down and what you have is [Imarhan] looking at him once they recognize him, going like, ‘Oh my god, we want to get pictures with him.’ But then you have Usher and his whole group, and they’re all artists of various kinds, filming the sound check because they’re blown away. They haven’t seen those drums, they haven’t heard music like that.” 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 47
“That kind of stuff,” Niño reflected, “happens at the Del Monte speakeasy often, not just every once in awhile, it happens often; where people feel like they can be anonymous in the Townhouse, they feel like they can come to a show at the Del Monte Speakeasy and not be sweated by the paparazzi because it’s Venice. And I’m talking about a-list celebrity musicians, movie stars, etcetera, and then they end up doing stuff with us.” The shoulder-bumping among the stars and the ordinarily-known is not a new development, according to Louie Ryan, the owner and manager of the Townhouse and Del Monte Speakeasy. During prohibition, “This became quite a scene down here, it was well known for great musicians and dancing. Charlie Chaplin and all kinds of people attended this great room.” (In addition to not a few politicians and police officers who would let it slip whenever a raid was planned, Ryan added).
“I’m hoping that there’s more great things that come to Venice to expand its diversity so that it becomes more of an international community… ‘cause I’ve always thought of Venice as a place of cultural intersection.”
In addition to its position on the Westside, “I feel like the special things about the Townhouse and Del Monte Speakeasy are its history,” said Carlos Niño. “It’s the second oldest bar in all of Los Angeles, second to Coles which is in Downtown. It is the original speakeasy of Venice Beach. It is very likely the oldest bar with a stage in all of Los Angeles, so not necessarily the oldest theater but the oldest venue.”
Niño and Ryan observed a reversal in trends among the crowds at Temple Bar that has continued at the Speakeasy. “[A]side from it being a real rarity on the Westside – and I say that because it had a nice Westside following of people from Santa Monica and Venice and even Malibu– it also attracted a lot of people from the East side. That’s a very hard thing to do. The Del Monte Speakeasy also does that, which is something that we don’t try to know the formula for.” Looking towards the future, Niño expresses an optimism about the role of Venice in the global music scene. “I’m hoping that there’s more great things that come to Venice to expand its diversity so that it becomes more of an international community and not just a community that’s based around the various businesses that come in, ‘cause I’ve always thought of Venice as a place of cultural intersection.” In programming new talent, Niño is not interested in seeking out novelty for novelty’s sake, or in planting a flag on emerging music just to say that he got there first. His formula has never been concerned with competition; instead, “if we do something first, that’s naturally where we’re at and what we’re interested in.” He lets his tastes guide him, “Then as it starts to emerge and blossom, we grow with it. That brings the next generation.” To him, it’s never a matter of, “‘I don’t know what we should have next or what’s coming up next.’ It’s always already here.” His role isn’t to innovate, but to get out of the way of innovation. “The future is now, let’s open our doors to it now.”
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V E N I C E S OUNDWAVE S
ELECTRONIC UNDERGROUND by Paula Chorley
People of Venice! No need to drive all the way to Hollywood or Downtown to dance your brains out to EDM. After all, some of the best acts live right next door. Within Venice, a cadre of talented D.J.‘s make up a burgeoning underground house music scene right here at the beach. They support each other, collaborate together, and give back to the community in the form of marrow-deep beats and community-connecting shows. Of that group, musician Eduardo Manilla, aka Loboman, explains, “There’s a beautiful community here in Venice and an uplifting spirit of collaboration. Most promoters work with each other and there is no sense of competition at all. We all work towards bringing the community together in different ways and support each other events. It is one of those special things that you can possibly only experience in Venice.” Dersu Rhodes, of the duo Peace in Noise, agrees with Manilla, saying, “I remember someone reached out and apologized for promoting a party the same night as our party and I was like, ‘Who cares?’ We all promote each others’ events, even if it’s loaning out gear. There is not a lot of ego and everyone is trying to help each other out.” All this goodwill is not without a personal agenda. “We cultivate a party for a bit of selfish reason,” Rhodes admits, “so that we could play our music.” Thankfully, though, this is a win-win situation. The audience and the performers both get to save on gas and everybody gets to spend more time in Venice. “[I]n Hollywood,” he continues, “often times people just don’t get the music, but when we play here people get it and are stoked. It’s still LA but it feels like you have traveled somewhere else. You get a cool crowd in this area who really feel the music which is a lot more mellow and sophisticated musically like you find in other places”. Rhodes explains that there are not as many Westside events because of the limitation of available venues, but some promoters have noticed the lack of musical opportunity this side of the 405. Event organizers are starting to host on the Westside, such as Jameson Re, whose company, Deep Down Under Productions, holds events at the Custom Hotel, the Lincoln Speakeasy, and on the Santa Monica beach. Also on the scene, The Venice Tribe has thrown large-scale Fourth of July beach parties open to the community for the last four years. These events have given a stage to many of the musicians that make up the Venice crew. The creativity and spirit of Venice has long fostered global musicians. Without an accessible platform though, Venice could miss-out of the very music that comes out of Venice. But D.J.’s like Loboman, Peace in Noise, and others are ensuring that there is space for the people of Venice to dance like no one is watching, together.
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Marques Wyatt House music legend Marques Wyatt is recognized as a pioneer for transporting East Coast and Chicago house music to his hometown, Los Angeles, back in the mid ‘80s. He has played and promoted some of LA’s most notorious underground house parties like BBC, MAC’s Garage, and Does Your Mama Know, and for last 16 years has run LA’s longest standing weekly house event “DEEP” – a name that refers to that particular subgenre of house music. Wyatt is still one of the most sought-after artists in the genre and performs locally, domestically, and internationally all year round. He was voted “Best DJ of 2014” by LA Weekly, and recently, No. 2 of “The 20 Best DJs in L.A. Right Now” by the same publication. The website Time Out Los Angeles included DEEP on its list of the “Best LA Dance Parties With an Underground Feel.” When asked to explain his music, he said, “I see my music as an aural juggernaut of deep rhythms and sounds, aimed at elevating all inner vibrational frequencies of those present. An amalgamation of my life’s journey in music, channeled with the purest intention to connect and unite all souls on the dance floor with their fullest unfiltered self.” Wyatt was born and raised in Santa Monica, spending time in various parts of LA before settling in Venice 15 years ago. He said he “has no plans to leave the West Side anytime soon.” He has recently expanded DEEP to his side of the city, holding the event “Venice gets DEEP” at the Venice bar, Townhouse. DEEP takes place a few times a year, usually on special occasions or holidays, and Wyatt attracts a level of attention both from fellow veterans and younger musicians which reflects in the diverse audience he attracts. He plans on holding more DEEP events (“To be announced soon,” he said.) at Westside locations in the very near future. When asked what he likes about living in Venice and hosting DEEP on the Westside, he said, “Growing up here, Venice is such a big part of who I am. I’m from here and I live here so when we can do an event like this it’s like having a real neighborhood party. I see people from Cafe Gratitude to the juice shop and yoga. I see everyone from the community.” He then mused, “And I like how close Venice is to the airport.” 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 51
LOBOMAN/EDUARDO MANILLA From behind his D.J. equipment, Eduardo Manilla (stage name, Loboman) transmits a positivity that is as obvious in his personality as in his music. He is an integral part of the Venice EDM scene, but can be found playing at Burning Man, Lightening in a Bottle, along with gobs of smaller underground festivals and local events. His music is “an eclectic selection of sounds, from Latin/World Music to Deep and Bass House. It depends on the vibe of a party or ambiance that needs to be created, but if I have to pin it down to one genre I’d say Loboman is a Disco House D.J.,” he says, referring to himself by his stage name. Manilla is a resident D.J. at Townhouse every second thursday of the month and rotates through three different shows: “902onelove,” a dance party featuring live music; “Howl,”a wild D.J.’ed dance party; and “Techlepathic,” a deep house music night with his brother, D.J. Massio, and D.J. Mr. Smith. Manilla co-founded with Henry Pope (musician, producer, and D.J.) the festival Genius Loci, which take place every June just across the Mexican-American border on a remote stretch of beach outside of Manilla’s home town of Ensenada, Mexico. About 200 people attended the gathering the first year, and, with its cozy and intimate reputation, attendance is mushrooming every summer. In its most recent year, around a thousand people attended the yoga classes, environmental workshops, surf lessons, and non-stop music on the private stretch of beach in June. There are five surf breaks within a ten minute walk of the main stage so this event is as much for the electronic music fan as it is for surfers and paddle boarders alike. Everyone involved in the organizing of this festival is from Venice, and they also hold many preparty and after-parties in and around Venice before and after the festival. Manilla is also the Community Officer for the Venice Art Crawl. He produces local events like the Venice Beach After Burn, a Burning Manthemed street party with original art installations, music, and dancing. When speaking about Manilla, Carlos Niño, the prominent Venice musician and music director for the Del Monte Speakeasy, said, “He’s a good Venice D.J. ambassador.” 52 VOL V MMXVI
MICHAEL STACKHOUSE If you don’t recognize his music, you might recognize Michael Stackhouse by his signature construction hardhat, which serves less for protection than, as Stackhouse puts it, “the symbolic meaning of wearing a construction hat as being someone who is working, constructing, building something.” That being said, there is a good chance you have heard his music at least once. Stackhouse is a fixture of the Venice music scene, playing at Townhouse and Del Monte Speakeasy, Bank of Venice, and the Venice Art Crawl just to name a few. He has a regular weekly residence at Venice Ale House where, instead of a typical one or two hour set, he has been known to play up to six hours. Right now, Stackhouse is organizing his own music festival, called “Pismocean,” with musicians Cameron Lee Young and David Bertolami, which launches this coming November in Pismo Beach, CA. Two sound stages will be placed right on the beach, one for live rock and funk bands, and the other for underground electronic dance music. The event will also include recreational activities like yoga, surfing, camping, stand up paddle board, volleyball, and horse back riding. Then, for the less active and more contemplative, there will be self-improvement workshops and celebrity speakers discussing the environment and conservation. Additionally, all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles will be permitted access. A portion of proceeds will be donated to local environmental nonprofit organizations. Stackhouse thinks of music as a “vocabulary to tell a story and to create an emotion for my audience.” For his shows, Stackhouse dips into a rich and diverse catalogue of music, often pairing two dissonant songs with surprising effectiveness. “I consider myself to be an open format D.J. I love melodies, deep base lines, vocals, tribal world music, indie rock, instrumental percussion. I love combining things and mixing things and enjoy that challenge of finding ways of playing things that normally wouldn’t be played or heard together to create something new or have a synergy.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM BUDMAN
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HENRY POPE Henry Pope is not only a classically trained bass player and a well respected D.J., he also writes, produces, records, and collaborates with other acclaimed Venice-based musicians (like Parker Ainsworth, Stanley Burns, and Keaton Simons). He describes the music he is currently focusing on as a “deconstruction of house beats tempos with some world, bass music, and hip hop added in.” As a D.J., his resumé lists big festivals like Coachella, Burning Man, and Lightening In A Bottle, in addition to smaller, local venues like the Standard, Sound Nightclub, and Couture Club. He is also an intricate part of the Venice crew of musicians who play at local events and venues such as Townhouse and the July Fourth Venice Beach Party. Along with local D.J. Eduardo Manilla, or Loboman, he co-founded the Genius Loci festival in Ensenda, Mexico. Often times, he pairs his tracks with live percussive accompaniment, elevating the shows from a typical D.J. set to a live performance experience. This combination, in addition to Pope’s signature attention to his audience, elicits a trance-like response from listeners. “I would describe what I do,” he said, “as a cohesive, sexy blend of genres that always keeps the dance floor moving.” When asked about playing in Venice he explains, “Our crowd is a musically educated dance floor and I can really play a super wide array of genres. This influences and translates into what I’m doing and I really appreciate that Venice is really open to that. Other parties in LA are super genre specific. No borders, no genre is important to me.”
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DERSU RHODES / PEACE AND NOISE Dersu Rhodes, Design Director at Vice Magazine, and his partner in crime, Kenny Parmelee, Director of West Coast Brand Partnerships at Soundcloud, recognized that there were other Westsiders tired of trekking to Downtown for good music and dancing. Two years ago, they decided to throw an underground Halloween party in cahoots with fellow Venice local Bradley Martin, an event planner on the Westside for over 10 years. Rhodes and Parmelee’s expectations were greatly exceeded when twice as many people showed up as anticipated, all rocking their finest Halloween regalia. This confirmed the existence of an untapped demand for Westside happenings and the two formed Peace in Noise, one part musical group, one part party thrower. Following the Halloween event, they kicked things off next with more parties, including the “Beach House Summer Series,” at the the Mobli Beach House on Ocean Front Walk in Venice. They continue to host local events at Tacoteca and Gravlax, and they threw another Halloween Party at Brakeman’s Brewer y last year. They are planning on holding events at Soho House and the Custom Hotel – both of which are slated for August, so keep your calendars open. Their events host established D.J.’s like Hoj (also a Venetian), Deep Jesus, and Patricio Motto, and both Rhodes and Parmelee are D.J.’s in their own right (the team spin together at each of their own events). Rhodes and Parmelee contribute different yet complementar y sounds to Peace in Noise (a dynamic suggested by the name itself). Parmelee explains that their music is a “delicate balance of Dersu who comes from an odd, obscure, spaced out sound – what I would consider to be inorganic to myself, who tends to pull more from funk and soul but done in a deeper house beat pattern. When you mix these two together its almost like this salty and sweet thing that goes back and forth and kinda of a recipe for why I think people like the sets.”
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V E N I C E S O U N D WA V E S
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RADIO VENICE 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 57
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TUNE INTO RADIO VENICE by Kate Chambers
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sunbaked vase, or “urn,” as Michael Jost describes it, sits half filled with “string caps” from old guitar strings on a window sill in his Ocean Front Walk apartment, at the Venice Beach Suits and Hotel. “When you change the strings on your guitar, you usually have these little ball-things at the end,” explained the guitarist, composer, and producer. “All the strings I’ve ever played in my life have been cut up and put in here.” Although Jost and his guitar have traveled across the world, from Australia to Germany, the urn has remained in the community that has been his muse for the last 22 years. From his apartment, Jost broadcasts the live music webcast Radio Venice, with the mission of showcasing “the unique blend of music that passes through Venice Beach,” according to its website. On Sundays, at the specific time of 4:20 p.m., Radio Venice streams performances by local and non-local artists for free. “In the summer the whole world comes to Venice. We’re going to hook them up and say when they go home, ‘Hey, listen to Radio Venice. Get a piece of Venice.’” And Jost does just that; he records the shows with his windows open. The ambient noises are just as much a part of the soundtrack as the musicians themselves: the call of seagulls, the crash of the ocean, and the arguments between locals. “It’s all part of it. It’s in one particular song,” Jost said. Jost has been in Venice for 22 years and he firmly believes in the city’s creative influence. “People come here when they’ve lost the music and they leave with a melody that wasn’t there before,” he explains. “I don’t know what it is. Sometimes when I play here late at night, and I’m making music, I don’t know where the hell it comes from.” Radio Venice was created by Michael Jost with fellow local musician Roy Edwards. Jost’s logic is simple: “I’ve got this place and I make music with a lot of people. There are a lot of people recording. I always liked the idea of going out and playing the music that you don’t only hear locally but getting out to a greater audience.” 58 VOL V MMXVI
Michael Jost and singer, Suzy Williams at a Radio Venice event.
Jost is inspired not just by his passion for music, but also by Venice itself. He mused, “How people work and how different kinds of flavours come together here – even on this couch, people have come from all over the world in all shapes, colors, sizes, to sit there and come together to make music. I thought this is a beautiful thing.” Radio Venice started small with performances by Jost’s friends and acquaintances. Now in its third year, the program features up-and-coming artists and established acts, showcasing a diverse range of ages, genres, and geographical areas. Although most of the musicians have recorded with him, Jost has streamed performances by well-known artists he has not recored with, as well. “We’ve had Michael Nelson here. I’d like to have Lucas Nelson, his brother. And then Willie Nelson, of course. Maybe they’ll come by and play a couple of songs.” Jost cares less about celebrity than about quality. Everyone featured on Radio Venice must have “a great soul, a great heart, and a special message.” His efforts to spotlight “the crazier, the more eclectic, the [more] far out,” have brought him into contact with musicians from Biorhythm, a music and performance art collective,” to The ReAktion, a Chilean and Canadian electro rock group. “I would say in 90% of the cases it works. Sometimes you have a little bit of something that doesn’t work quite well. But that’s part of it, too. You’ve got to take some risks,” Jost said. His risks seem to be paying off. With its positive reception in the Venice community, Jost expects Radio Venice to grow in the coming years, especially as it expands its event offerings. For instance, late last year, Radio Venice hosted their first rooftop show, and more recently, it set off a series of concerts, Radio Venice Presents, at the Townhouse bar. The focus on community is essential to the vision of Radio Venice. “You could make a million records and put them on the internet but no one’s going to listen to them,” Jost said. “You need the community.”
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Malia Lewis works on a painting of Suzy Williams during a “Live Draw” at a Radio Venice event.
Radio Venice gravitates towards less produced and filtered music, preferring music that embraces the sounds and energy of the beach community. “We take good care of the sound, but it’s a little rough around the edges,” Jost said. “And I think that gives it a bit of charm. I like that I never know exactly what’s coming.” The “music and dynamic” of the outside world influences Jost’s own work as well. “There’s the LAPD flying over, there’s seagulls, there’s crackheads,” Jost said, describing his compositions as a big sound collage. “It was, for me, just amazing to put on my headphones and hear everything. I like to make music and play just one instrument very pure and create something like this in a studio, but you can use the studio as an instrument as well.” Classically trained, Jost’s musical taste spans eras, genres, and geography. “I got into more modern composers like Stravinsky and all that. Then The Beatles, Hendrix, and Pink Floyd. I’m a big fan of Pink Floyd. All those old records,” he explains. While many fear the influx of new residents that have come to Venice with the recent tech boom, Jost remains optimistic even as he has watched dramatic changes within the city over the last two decades. “What is money without art?” he asked. He does not believe that the newcomers foretell the end of creativity in Venice: “Huge money is moving in, but maybe you don’t have to set it up as an enemy. Maybe you can make it work for all us. We provide the lifeline of Venice. We are Venice. We are the music. We are the art. Art is what Venice should be about. All the money is nothing. With all their swimming pools and all their Aston Martins, it’s not going to work. So just keep that going.” “We can stay positive about it” Jost said. “There are a million reasons to give something up. When I first got here everyone told me to get a real job. I’m happy I didn’t. I’m happy I tried it. And for all the experiences, I’m happy I did it. With all the pain, with all the fuckup’s, if sometimes you don’t fail, then you have nothing to talk about, to play about, to sing about. It’s the story, it’s the journey. ”
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Isaac Irvin and Michael Jost perform live at a Radio Venice event, at the Del Monte Speakeasy and Townhouse in Venice. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 61
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VSO VENICE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
While he was living in Atlanta, Wesley Flowers felt stagnant. “I was touring, living comfortably, paying my bills, but just not getting other things done, and losing drive, and staying out too late, and sleeping in every day – and that’s just not being productive. I didn’t want to be 50 and in the same position. My rent was easy but I just didn’t do anything,” Flowers said. The choice came down to New York City, Nashville, or Los Angeles, and once the self-taught musician saw the West coast, his mind was made up. “I thought, ‘This is really nice,’ so we stayed.” 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 63
After relocating to Venice, Flowers founded the Venice Symphony Orchestra (VSO), a non-profit group dedicated to teaching music to the underprivileged and performing music for the public. Their repertoire includes classical pieces, jazz standards, and covers of contemporary songs, and although technically an orchestra, they use both traditional instruments like cellos and violins alongside modern instruments like keyboard synths and drum kits. Flowers sums it up succinctly: “There’s two things that it’s all about: education and free concerts.” Along with members of the group, he has traveled to every elementary school in Venice by his estimation, exposing children to potentially unfamiliar music (or, familiar music in unfamiliar ways). Then, by playing in accessible and free spaces, the Orchestra similarly advocates for a greater presence of live music in the public sphere. In its fourth year, VSO sustains itself through donations and at-concert concessions. “We always do free shows and then, luckily, in LA County, as a nonprofit, you can get an event liquor license, so we’ll have a bar open, normally serving beer and wine, and occasionally, we’ll go in for the hard stuff. Everything is still cheaper than a bar. You pay five bucks, you get a beer, and that’s your donation to the orchestra.” “We make doing good easy,” Flowers laughed. And whether it is the music or the libations (it’s the music), the Orchestra has built up a solid following. “We have a steady hundred, hundred and fifty people coming in there now; once a month we do an event.” The proceeds from these events go to compensate the musicians for their work and to fund the educational component of the group. Flowers’ musical background is not what you would expect from the founder of an “orchestra.” When asked if he received formal training prior to moving to Los Angeles, he responded by saying, “Beatles and Beach Boys records.” But for the VSO, this is not anomalous, which makes the group even more of an anomaly. “We 64 VOL V MMXVI
combine players who don’t read music with musicians who do, so there’s a lot of Rosetta Stone translation on the spot,” Flowers explained. The group is split “two-thirds classical, and then the foundation – the drummer, the guitar player, the bass player – that’s folk, Rock ‘n’ Roll, big band style,” said Flowers. Flowers is self-taught which hasn’t seemed to narrow his range of musical interests. “I’m more like a Rock ‘n’ Roll musician, but I’m also a Miles Davis and Tchaikovsky nerd.” To him, the essentialism of musical genres ignores the fundamental similarities between them. “The idea that [music is] different is funny to me. I remember thinking that way, but when I started to learn it, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s all the same, basically.’ Only difference is do you have an Italian word to tell you to stop or do you say, ‘Stop’?” Going for ward, Flowers has big plans for the VSO. “Ultimate dream, there would be a performance space in Venice that would be our home or a shared home,” he said. He also can see the Orchestra releasing music of its own, in addition to collaborating with musicians across the countr y. Flowers also intends on furthering the education goals of the group. Although acknowledging the ambition, he says that “I’d love to provide free lessons. If you’re 80 or if you eight, and you want to learn the violin or the piano, you sit down and you have a professional teach you. That professional is getting paid a market rate, and you walk out of there and you didn’t pay for anything.”
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rom the subtle protest of early blues to the bullhorn activism of the civil rights movement, music has been used as a tool to expand the social consciousness of its listeners for over a centur y. It’s no surprise, then, that musician Fin Makepeace would be just as passionate about environmental justice as his music. Along with his band, Revel Makes, Makepeace is one of the founders of Kiss the Ground, a nonprofit that teaches regenerative farming techniques to improve soil health and efficacy.
Photo COURTESY OF FINIAN MAKEPEACE
FINIAN
MAKEPEACE SINGS THE SONG &
WALKS THE WALK
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The Kiss the Ground garden project in front of Beyond Baroque on Venice Blvd.
Makepeace has played in a band with his brother, Kieran, for 11 years, first as the Makepeace Brothers before forming The Makes which turned into Revel Makes in March of this year. Makepeace describes Revel Makes as “more of a rock n’ roll project.” “This band, Revel Makes, is very new and we’ve played a few smaller festivals but nothing on the major network,” Makepeace says. At the moment, as the brothers pause their music to address personal conflicts, the band has taken a temporar y break. Which isn’t to say that Makepeace has free time – his work with Kiss the Ground has kept him amply busy. “The ultimate goal is for people to include soil and agriculture… as a large part of the climate change equation. The climate change equation has been dominated by reducing emissions, which is very important, but unless we’re talking about sequestering carbon and bringing excess carbon that’s in the atmosphere already back down, we’re already over the hump.” Among nature’s self-regenerative capacities, carbon dioxide, a primar y culprit behind climate change, is naturally and slowly absorbed into soil, removing it from the atmosphere and increasing the fertility of the land. This process can be encouraged through certain farming practices. “But, we’ve assumed that farming can’t be regenerative; we’ve assumed farming to be degenerative. Why? Because of the way we’ve been farming.” “The great news,” Makepeace says, “is that thousands of farmers all over the world are increasing their soil, building soil and organic matter, pulling massive amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere to build this back up and helping become more fertile as time and production go.” On a personal level, Makepeace struggles to find space for both music and activism, the two passions in his life. “Finding the balance is tough,” he admits. “People have said, ‘Oh, if you focus on your music you’ll be able to message what you want when you want it.’ 68 VOL V MMXVI
Photo by bailey lewis
But despite the importance of music, Makepeace is driven by the urgency of the global climate situation. “So sometimes I’m like, okay, yes, there’s potential, there’s possibility that music could catapult me into a spotlight where I’d be able to have that type of attention. It’s possible… and there’s a possibility that it wouldn’t work and I could spend the next five years trying to develop something” that doesn’t go anywhere “and if you look 60 years down the road and it’s the question of, ‘Did I take this opportunity to pivot the world,’ I have feeling right now that it might be more crucial that I’m partnering up with people who are already very famous, giving them the talking points, working a little more behind the scenes. So it’s been tough. Very tough on my soul. It’s been a trip because music is such an integral part of my life.” Compromising between the two priorities in his life has not diminished his gratitude for the life he has led. “For a majority of my life, from the age of 23 to the age of 32, I had a lot of my life where I was living strictly off music. I wasn’t making millions of dollars which I’m fine with but it was a gift. I can’t be like, ‘Oh man, I didn’t make it,’ or whatever. I didn’t necessarily get my records on any top charts or anything but I got to give people that music and that’s what’s fun.” “And now, my wife’s big a big proponent of digging into that other side of myself,” Makepeace continued, referring to contributing the title track to a short film, “Pale Blue,” written by and starring his wife, Abigail McFarlane. “I think the interesting thing about it was having my wife ask me to get out of my comfort zone of what I normally do,” he said. But Makepeace discovered that the same rules that hold true for agriculture also apply to music and that, in order to grow, you have to embrace change. “[I]n the process I got the chance to explore a new side of my music that I never have and probably never would have gone into and now I’ve found a lot of freedom in exploring that.” Photo COURTESY OF ‘PALE BLUE ‘
PALE BLUE PALE BLUE Short Film Pale Blue is a psychological drama about a woman named Ally who finds herself in an unsettling state as she tries to adjust to her difficult pregnancy. Ally, played by Abbie Makepeace who also wrote the script, makes an even bigger discover y during a routine ultrasound appointment. Pale Blue won best short film of 2016 at the SOHO International Film Festival. The film stars Abbigail McFarlane, Ian Harding, and William Rothhaar. Pale Blue was written by Abigail McFarland Makepeace, directed by Alex Burunova, produced by Courtney Thomas, and with music by Finian Makepeace. 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 69
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Photo story by Bailey Lewis
A conversation with Isaac Irvin, the host of Open Mic Night at Larry’s in Venice. He has his finger on the emerging talent of Venice and shares his ideas the current live musci scene. 3.1 How did you start doing the open mic? Isaac Irvin A friend of mine, by the name of Geoffrey J., invited me to The Bank of Venice because he’d heard they had Open Mic Night there. We showed up and a girl named Morgan Ovens, who had just moved to Venice from Nashville, had started it a few weeks before. Needless to say Morgan, Geoffrey and I ended up playing all night. It was an incredible vibe and great to play all my original material to strangers. A few weeks passed and the manager asked me if I would like to be the host because Morgan was about to go on tour to China. I said, “hell yes!” That began my journey of hosting the best open mic on the west side. 3.1 What have you seen from the musicians that travel through the open mic? Isaac Irvin There are so many stories to be told because when I started there was just a few of us that would play every Wednesday and slowly after much promotion and dedication to the night, I started to see more and more people coming in to play. One guy in particular, a Venice local, would show up, play, and half way through his song he would stop, yell at himself, and then get off the stage. I understood where he was musically so I just made sure he knew I appreciated him coming out. He still comes to Open Mic 2 1/2 years later, but now he plays complete sets and rocks the house. I give everyone the opportunity to express themselves, as long as they respect me and the establishment, we are good. I’ve seen all walks of life come in to play, from homeless people to rock stars that play in Vegas. You just never know what will happen on any given Wednesday night which, is why I love it! 3.1 How do you feel about watching musicians blossom from their start at your open mic night? Isaac Irvin It makes me feel awesome. I have a good friend, Drew, that I met through open mic when he moved to L.A. from Petaluma, CA. He drove here with everything he owned in a soccer mom Van and I was the first person he met in Venice. He plays keys and when he first plugged in and started to warm up, the bar was silenced. “Who the hell is this guy?” I said under my breath. He played three original tunes and the crowd was blown away. He play here for over a year, made friends with other musicians, and formed a band. His band, The Proof, has been featured on KCRW radio, has had a residency at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, and are about to play The Troubador. I’m not saying this open mic will make you famous...but it’s one hell of a good place to start. Another amazing person, and really great friend that I met through open mic, is Cristina Vane. She is another prodigy’s to look out for. If you haven’t seen her live do yourself a favor and come out to an open mic. She plays every Wednesday night and in my opinion she will be the next one playing The Troubador. I am humbled, excited, and thankful that I have this opportunity to host such an awesome show with talented musicians. continued on page 72
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PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN LEVITAN ©2016
ISAAC IRVIN
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3.1 Is there anything special about playing music in Venice as opposed to other places? Isaac Irvin I went through a rough patch in my life when I was scared to play in front of and audience and would sit in a garage, practicing and thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if one day I could play all these songs and people would listen to them and enjoy it? One time, I was riding my beach cruiser down speedway and I had just lost my job. I was on my way to Danny’s Deli to have a beer when along the way I saw a good friend of mine, Michael Jost. I told him about losing my job and he said, “You know what… for ever y day you’re unemployed you should write a song.” That really hit home and inspired me so much that I actually turned my bike around and wrote one of my favorite songs “Walk Away”. The Venice community is what keeps me going.
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ALICIA BLUE I started singing eight years ago after realizing poetry wasn’t enough. I was cleaning an apartment, helping out this old Soul singer in 2008, Malcolm Hayes Jr., and I found some of his tapes and records with his name on them. I took them home to listen to them and they blew me away, he sounded like Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye mixed. I never thought I could sing, so I asked him if he could teach me and he said, ‘Yeah, but you have to go all the way with it.’ I later found out he had toured with Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix was his bandleader at the time. He was great to my ears, so I thought if I could listen to him, I could be great, too. I’m still working on it. I stay in Venice because there is just a creative vibe that I love and I feel that is unmatched anywhere else. I was on a run once on the boardwalk, and there was this old black lady, Starla. She was scatting to some jazz and I had wanted to improve my own scatting, and she let me sit in on a song. A minute into the song, this young trumpet player comes walking out of the fog and plays the solo and not much later, we had a show. I’m still in touch with them today. That is Venice, it oozes creativity and creation.
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AVILA SANTO Music is spiritual, it keeps me sane. If I don’t practice, it really takes a toll on me, so on one hand, it’s an emotional expression, connecting with other people in a way that’s just not through language and speaking, which is so necessary, because most of the time people are only able to communicate through talking. It’s also education. The more I learn, the more I feel like I have an understanding of the world and histor y. It keeps me open if I’m in the mindset of learning, tr ying to get better at things, it makes me feel more open with others and myself. It’s definitely magical. It’s also about reimagining what music is. I can just listen to birds and trip out on how in control they are of their voices. When I make beats, I take sound from all different places and layer it.
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HAILEY DEMIAN Music is a blissful feeling that cannot be compared to anything else. When you play something that is spontaneous and fun, and it works perfectly with what ever yone else is playing, it just gets you on – I almost just want to call it a musical high. And I feel like ever y musician has it, and it’s what anyone experiences when they are playing music and they stop thinking about anything but the music and they just experience it. You can play for six hours and it feels like thirty minutes. It’s kind of like Frank Zappa: You have a plan, but the fun part is when you ditch the plan. If I were to take two things that I really love from past artists that inspire me, its the technical prowess that Zappa brought into the arena of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and also the energy that Black Sabbath brought Rock ‘n’ Roll. I got started playing because my dad has always played. From the earliest age onward, I’ve been at his gigs, whether I was playing a fake instrument that didn’t make any noise, or banging on a Congo drum off time. I only became a serious musician about two years ago. You practice at least six hours a day and you enjoy every moment of it.
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CRISTINA VANE I have a lot of hobbies and interests that I’m decent at, I like almost ever ything that I get into, but music was the only thing I do where no matter what’s going on, I feel good. Or even when I feel bad, I feel good while I feel bad. And its the only way I can really get all of the dark things that you don’t say to people, or that you don’t even say to yourself, sometimes they just come out in a really weird way in lyrics, which is another part that I really love. Writing my own music just seemed natural, and that was the first step. It had always been a part of my life – that part I can’t explain to you. My parents said that when I was a toddler, I would undress myself in the crib and sing myself to sleep and they would hear it over the baby radio. About 3 years ago, guitar became the thing that I just couldn’t quit, I couldn’t get enough. The first time I played on the boardwalk, I was sitting their practicing and people started giving me money, and I realized that I could probably make this useful. When I go out there now, it’s great to make money, but even when nobody is giving me anything, it like, you’re out here and you get to sing and connect with people.
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MILO GONZALEZ There’s a lot of interesting people here that are experiencing a lot of crazy emotions, and I think that music is a reflection of our emotions, and to have grown up in such a strange and unique place with so many bizarre people and emotions, it’s definitely very inspiring. Also, just being by the ocean is a unique balance of being near nature and city. Having grown up here, street performing on the boardwalk is definitely ver y inspiring. I’ve done traveling and there’s definitely nothing like Venice. I’m a contortionist and I work for local circuses doing hand balancing and back bending and acrobatics. I’ve done it on the boardwalk, too. Sometimes you make a grip of cash and sometimes you put your ass on top of your head for hours and you make pennies, but it’s beautiful. I miss the drum circle happening till late, and it’s so much smaller than it used to be, it was like eight times bigger than it is now. I think the freedom of being able to street perform on the boardwalk is massive, it really keeps Venice alive, music or not. Being able to sell your art or kind of do anything down there is really valuable and important. The boardwalk is free.
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RUNSON WILLIS III Being from LA is really important to me, there’s a lot that’s happened, riots, Lords of Dogtown, great bands. We got to watch these bands as we grew up and they became parts of our life. It’s a blessing to be a part of that. So many people come here with different aspirations and dreams, if there are a couple more people willing to share their art form, not solely to show what they’re doing but to teach and inspire others to use their own art form, that does something to people. Several times I’ve been asked who my favorite guitar player or musician was, and it took me a while to answer and, you know, all I could say was God. I had to be naked, open and honest in a couple songs and that changed the course of my musical journey. Those couple songs were about suicide and death, songs about me coming to a reawakening. These were all through my own time and I would pray and ask God to use me as a vessel – that’s why I’m here, because I don’t want to do it for myself, I want to be doing it for us.
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RICHARD SHERWOOD I think the sheer adrenalin-mystical-God-stuff that I call music, it’s beyond a word, that’s why I love it so much. As a kid, I had so much energy and was hyper, and I had to play on pots and pans, and anything I could find. I don’t know why I love music so much, but I think it’s because I can express myself in a full way. I’m not using words but it feels like complete expression. Also, if I was angr y about something when I was a kid, I would just go play drums, and that was very helpful. But now, I just love the feeling of connecting with other musicians, it’s a deep form of communication. Sometimes it doesn’t feel good if two people are on different levels, but when people are listening to each other, it’s just so fun. It’s hard to put into words, what inspires me about this mystical life force called music. When I was a little boy, I’d go to my friends’ houses and go to their kitchens and pull out their pot and pans, and I’d just start playing on them, and I would play on phonebooks too. There was a teacher that came in 5th grade and taught everyone a drum beat and that was it for me. I had to start taking lessons. I’ve always had to play music, there was not a plan B. It’s just what brings be so much joy.
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SKY STERN Music is a human experience unlike anything in the world. It’s a communication gateway without words. You’re out there in space totally letting go; you don’t know what’s going to come next. You are putting yourself out on a stage; anything could happen! I guess the thrill of being able to talk to other musicians simultaneously through sound, and feeling, and body language. It’s like knowing another language. My dad bought a little drum set ad I started playing drums in 1994, when I was 4 years old. My twin sister really helped me break out the drummer in be as well. Venice is so eclectic, there are so many different people coming in and out, that brings different cultures as well and, it just makes you a lot more open. It’s a source of every kind of music and ever y kind of person. You can walk down the boardwalk and find someone playing the ukulele, walk five more blocks and someone that you know will have a sitar, or some other gnarly instrument, and everybody is jamming. That’s what really keeps me grounded here as a musician, you feel like you’re a part of a club and it helps me write music.
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SUNNY WAR I think I play here because I grew up here, so I’ve been hanging out since I was, like, 13, so I feel more comfortable here than anywhere else that I could be street performing. The boardwalk, to me, is where I learned how to skateboard and unicycle. Everyday, I know I’m going to see at least 20 people I know and I feel safe here even though it’s sort of dangerous, I feel safe because I know most of the vendors and performers, so I know that they’ll notice if I’m slipping, they’ll ask about me and visa versa. It’s a community. It’s nice to meet people from all over the world. Venice makes me feel happy and upset at the same time, depending on the day. Everyday is a different experience, and you never know what is going to happen. It’s definitely a lovehate relationship. If I leave LA for a while, I do miss it and I can’t understand why – it’s a family here. I have to see everybody on the boardwalk. I can’t go too long without coming back even if I don’t play, I still have to come down here just to say hi to people. I get inspired by Crosby, another girl that plays down here, because when she learns new stuff it inspires me to learn new stuff and we talk about writing. We are both concentrating on writing songs, and passing ideas back and forth with another person helps a lot.
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Last Look... IN MEMORIAM AUSTIN PERALTA Mural by Jules Muck Austin Peralta was a brilliant young jazz musician and a son of Venice. (Oct. 25,1990 – Nov. 21, 2012) 3.1 Venice Magazine 3POINT1–VENICE.COM 83
“Biggie” by Allison Kunath © 2016 84 VOL V MMXVI