ECHO PARK RISING 2014 ZINE!

SCHEDULE • MAP • INTERVIEWS BY MMMMMMM #ECHOPARKRISING • EPR.LA

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4 MATT KIVEL 8 THE SHRINE 12 LESLIE STEVENS 16 MATTHEWDAVID 20 GAVIN TUREK 24 SCHEDULE FOR FRIDAY-SATURDAY 26 ECHO PARK RISING PARTICIPANTS AND MAP

28 SCHEDULE FOR SUNDAY AND ALL COMEDY STAGES 30 BLAZING 45s’ DANNY HOLLOWAY 34 ALLAH-LAS 38 THE GROMS 42 FROTH 46 SUBSUELO’S CANYON CODY

#ECHOPARKRISING AND EPR.LA FOR UPDATES AND INFO! INTERVIEWS AND LAYOUT BY KRISTINA BENSON AND CHRIS ZIEGLER. ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUKE McGARRY. COVER BY CHAMPOY HATE. All content © 2014 L.A. RECORD and YBX Media, Inc.

MATT KIVEL

INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON Matt Kivel may not look like he could knock you out cold with one punch, but looks can be deceiving! The former Princeton bass player and guitarist has just released his second solo album, Days of Being Wild, recorded in a boiling hot shed in Echo Park. He speaks now about music, the politics of being in a band, and the psychological aftermath of late-night fisticuffs.

You recorded Days of Being Wild in a shed in Echo Park—how did you make sure to capture the essence of the shed in your music?

I’ve never properly done an album in a real studio so I’m used to recording in a place that’s like 100 degrees—either a garage or a shed. The last record that I recorded was like ... this guy was living in his rehearsal space and it most of it was recorded there. It was with a friend living where the Elliot Smith wall was— right above Solutions. He left now, but like ... he couldn’t shower. There were a lot of drawbacks—he had a bathroom but no shower. No bed either, actually.

It was fun and crazy to live there because there was no natural light either, and fun to record because it gets pretty quiet at night. It was a nice setting. So the shed was kind of an upgrade! We had our own spot, there was a backyard, and they had a cat—but it did get really hot! Once we started recording, we’d have to turn off all the fans and it was INTERVIEW

boiling. I thought it was the nicest, easiest setting I’ve ever had for making a recording. I brought beer because I hadn’t worked out how much I was going to pay or where I was going to get the money from. So I thought it was good to bring beer every time. And I’d bring lunch every time, so we’d sit and eat and drink beer. I think we did [the record] over the course of five or six weeks but we only went into the studio like six or seven times in total.

It does not sound like something recorded in a shed—it really sounds beautiful, like it was recorded in a really fancy studio. Actually, it sounds like the first album by Michael Rother from Neu!.

I like them a lot so that’s cool—I take that as a huge compliment! I love the way it sounds really small but also really powerful. I listen to that album all the time.

What albums that you liked back in high school still hold up for you today?

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An album that I really liked in high school that we were listening to just now in the car was the Strokes’ first record, It’s as good to me now as it was then. I was into Oasis a lot in high school ... or like my whole life. That was one of the first bands I really liked and it holds up OK. The thing that gets me about those recordings is that the sound quality—the way it was recorded doesn’t hold up but the songs themselves sound really good.

What did you learn from playing music with other people that you can apply now to your own music?

I learned that this was not a productive way for me to go about doing things. I think that when you work with other people it can be fun, but it can also be counterproductive because you’re trying really hard to express your ideas so that you have an imprint on the song and make it feel that you had a lot to do with it. And sometimes that comes to the detriment of like ... the thing at the end. So when I work on my own things I don’t have to worry about someone else vetoing my ideas—or mainly telling me the idea is stupid. I can see it through more and find out for myself if it’s stupid! And maybe it is, but you’re better off exploring the things you want to do. I just make music now to basically please myself, and back then I had to make stuff that would make other people in my band to want to work on it. That’s a totally different thing.

Every interview you do, you seem to talk about boxing. How obsessed are you with boxing?

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I’m pretty obsessed with it in my own way. I liked to train in boxing and I was doing that for a long time and I was sparring but I stopped doing that because I had a concussion and it didn’t seem to be worth it after awhile. But I do enjoy it a lot. I really like doing it—I really love sharing it with people.

Have you ever gotten the chance to use your boxing knowledge in a fight?

Like a street fight? I haven’t really been in a proper street fight. The only thing that happened was not that long ago there was this guy at Brite Spot who was like creeping on my girlfriend so I choked him and threw him on the ground in the restaurant. But I didn’t do any boxing. He was creeping everybody out. I turned around and he wouldn’t get out of my way. I don’t know what his deal was—he had this weird look in his eye and he kept talking about wanting to talk to my girlfriend and he wouldn’t get out of my way. That really pissed me off and as Olivia Newton John once said ... I had to get physical. They threw all of us out, and I didn’t go back there for a really long time because I felt really bad about it. I feel like my first impulse is definitely not to punch somebody in the face because that’s pretty extreme. I don’t think he warranted that! But I think fighting is better in a boxing ring. There are too many variables in a street fight— it’s a dangerous world.

MATT KIVEL PLAYS FRI, AUG. 15, AT THE ECHO PARK METHODIST CHURCH. INTERVIEW

THE SHRINE INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

The Shrine look tough, but if you ask nicely, they will tell you all about the architectural marvels of mid-century Los Angeles and how a rounded pond-like backyard pool—perfect for skateboarding—will soon fade into history. When the Shrine aren’t skateboarding, they make music your big brother would have worshipped: loud, fast, raw heavy metal punk ’n’roll that could (or should) have been blasting out of dive bar jukeboxes in the late 1970s. Guitarist and vocalist Josh Landau joined me to talk about narrow escapes while skating pools in Echo Park, Silver Lake and far-flung suburbs of Los Angeles.

BEHIND THE CHA CHA: CHEERS! “Last summer was a really good summer for pool skating and we’re always looking out for abandoned apartment buildings. If the building is old and the place is not too wealthy there won’t be water in it because people can’t afford it. We were skating right behind Cha Cha and it was really rad—kind of on a completely empty hill in the middle of this apartment building people were living in, but no one was really there. It was during the day when people where working. A few trips in, some guy came out and gave us all this shit—said he was going to call the cops. We tried to explain that we were just skating the pool and what he’s got is better than a skate park, and we’re making use of this extinct piece of California architecture—it will be drained soon or filled in, and we’re taking pictures and documenting it, you know? The guy ended up sitting there watching us and ended up apologizing and bringing out beers and cheers-ing.”

KOREATOWN: OH MY GOD, I’M SORRY! “One time I knocked on a door while we looked over the fence behind the alley, and we saw that the pool was empty and dog shit was in in the yard—it was a total mess, but we see an old Peralta skateboard, too. We thought, ‘We’re in!’ So we walk up and this dog ran out and bit me in the ass! We just started running and this guy screams, ‘Oh my God! I’m sorry!’ But we just ran down the block so scared of this big dog. Six months later, I go back, and this time a lady with one leg opened the door. I explained that last time this dog bit me and she wasn’t fazed. She said they were going to clean it up and swim. Three years later though ... the yard is still full of dog shit.”

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INTERVIEW

SILVER LAKE: IMAGINE A BASKETBALL PLAYER SHOVELING SHIT “There was this house with an insane view. The people had moved out, it was boarded up, and there was dirt in the bottom of the pool—and the place stinks like shit and oil. We’re digging the dirt out of the pool and we realize half way through—this is four fully-grown dudes shoveling dirt out and throwing it on the hillside—we realized we were shoveling shit. Layers of hardened-over-time sunbaked shit in the bottom of this pool. It’s like ... can you imagine a basketball player shoveling shit out of a basketball court? It’s nuts and funny and awesome—it makes you laugh and makes you appreciate life. Maybe the people who lived there had thrown dog shit in the pool? Or it had been abandoned, and maybe some animal had been like living in the pool? Or the people who lived there had taught their dog to shit in the empty pool?”

ECHO PARK OFF ALVARADO BLVD: I DON’T HAVE TO SHOOT YOU “A lot of the time you don’t have to hop fences because you can look into the backyard with Google maps. That freaks people out. You say, ‘I saw on the map that you have an empty pool!’ It’s like you looked at them in the shower. So we were crawling around this site once to see if the map was updated, and the pool was still empty and I was stepping up some bricks looking over the wall. This dude comes out like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I explained we were there to skate and he was like, ‘Oh good, I don’t have to shoot you!’ Then he said he was filling the pool in so we couldn’t skate it. I said, ‘Hey, what you guys have is a piece of California history—they don’t build pools the same way anywhere.’ All the pools that fueled skateboarding to become big were made in the 1950s and the 1960s—those round pools that look like you have a pond in the yard. It’s completely a lost art. There isn’t a single company that makes pools the same way. The brand new ones use different surfaces, and they make the walls straight up and down with all sorts of funky technology advancements to make things look nice. So every single pool we skate, when they remodel it, that shit is never coming back. They never ever make them again, and the old pools are so much better than what the skateboarding companies could ever build. The whole point of skateboarding to me is to like ride something that wasn’t meant to be skated, it’s like such a fucking cool re-use of architecture. I don’t have the motivation to ride skateparks at all—grinding a skate park is fun and I’m not knocking it but it’s a psychological bonus to ride something that was never intended to be ridden. And the old houses we see—these old mansions in Beverly Hills—are like this classic California, old Hollywood ... just insane snapshots of this world that doesn’t exist. They tear it up and build something new. We’re the last people to see these weird homes and these weird funky designs.

THE SHRINE PLAYS ON SAT., AUG. 16 AT THE IAM8BIT GALLERY. 10

INTERVIEW

LESLIE STEVENS INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

Leslie Stevens was supposed to be a debutante, but turned out to be a hell-raiser with one of those high-lonesome country voices that sound best when the jukebox kicks back on after last call. Her former band the Badgers did L.A. and Texas proud, and after singing with new canyon stalwarts like Jonathan Wilson and Father John Misty, she’s preparing to put out a long-awaited solo album of her own.

You used to live in Echo Park—what do you miss most about living there?

Echo Park was kind of like a no man’s land. A lot of those little bungalow-style apartment buildings are there because they were originally hunting lodges.

And so you would come from downtown for the weekend to Echo Park, and the free standing buildings clustered together from the 1910s and 1920s used to be hunting lodges.

If you were going to cover a song to pay tribute to Echo Park, what song would it be?

Warren Zevon’s ‘Carmelita.’ He talks about the Pioneer Chicken stand, and the burrito place on Alvarado on Sunset—someone told me Warren Zevon used to go there for burritos.

What era Kris Kristofferson would you most want to go on a date with?

You know, he’s a handsome devil. I think I’d have to say 80s Kris Kristofferson.

Why 80s? Is it the chest hair?

INTERVIEW

I’m going to reserve comment on that.

You were supposed to be a debutante.

How did you ... prevent that?

I was raised in a household where the daughter became a debutante. When you reach marriageable age you present yourself to society and there’s a ball and you walk down the aisle with one of your father’s friends. And everyone looks at you and you are deemed ready for marriage.

Why not your father?

I’m not sure. Probably some traditional, possibly perverse reason.

And then you have a party?

Well... it’s a secret society. And there are some details that are interesting. You’re ranked as a debutante. There’s one queen and five sub-queens and everyone else is like the rest of the debutantes. I think it has to do with money and lineage. Was your great great grandfather a founding member of the secret society? You might be a princess! But I refused to walk. I just 13

felt that it was a relic of an era gone by, or that I hope goes by. The women are presented and valued for their beauty.

And there’s something to me that’s a little bit repugnant about, you know, valuing women in that way. You’re twenty—very young. I could never imagine twenty-year-old men being judged in that way. And it just felt like something controlled very much by the patriarchy.

And it seemed I needed to rebel against that because it was one way in which I had a voice. I didn’t want to be a part of whatever it was that this meant. It felt creepy to me. And there are like three thousand people in the audience! It’s crazy! The custom dresses, the parties are like fifty grand—it’s crazy! And it was hard for me to understand the reasoning behind it. I’m not married, and I don’t know that I ever will be. I love and value lots of traditions, and I think tradition is important but I definitely don’t understand the roles of gender.

I’ve seen your music described as the ‘new Laurel Canyon Sound.’ If a book was written thirty years from now about the new Laurel Canyon Sound, how do you think you’d you fit in?

Oh my gosh—I would be so honored if someone put me in a book about that!

I’m not really sure—I’m in good company! I got to work with Jonathan Wilson on his EP for Record Store Day. I admire him a ton. And he produced that Father John Misty record I sang on. And I’ve done these amazing Christmas benefits with him. And this Christmas I got to 14

sing with Mike Campbell and Joe Walsh and Dawes and Father John Misty, too. I love and admire what Jonathon is doing and I’m happy to have the opportunity to work with him—I feel really lucky.

I know you liked the Grateful Dead— what do you miss most about the Dead now that they’re gone?

I think it would be really great if there was still like a big concert experience that had a lot of bluegrass or Americana.

My favorite Dead is the more bluegrassy stuff, and a lot of the bootlegs from the late 70s. It would be cool if there was a big stadium or large venue experience that was kind of like ... downhome. I never actually had a chance to go to a Dead show. And I did get to go to some Phish shows when I was a teenager—at that time I think there was a lot of crossover between the two. A lot of girls in backless dresses doing chicken dances.

That was fun that there was that community. And if you didn’t want it to end you could travel with them and go to the next show and keep it alive. My cousin ran away from home with the Dead for awhile. I remember my aunt and uncle being really upset. They said ‘Your cousin ran away!’ ‘He ran away? That’s pretty impressive!’ ‘He ran away with a band— the Grateful Dead.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, he’s fine!’ I was like thirteen, and I even knew then: ‘That’s not running away— that’s getting away from YOU.’ LESLIE STEVENS PLAYS SAT., AUG. 16, AT THE ECHOPLEX. INTERVIEW

MATTHEWDAVID INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

Ever since he was a little kid living in the south listening to his parents’ record collection, Matthewdavid always wanted to make music. His most recent release, In My World, mixes beat, funk, and new age influences and glows with unrestrained authenticity as it bounces from ecstasy to darkness and back again. The Brainfeeder beatmaker, dublab DJ, and Leaving Records founder talks Star Trek, the best new age record in the world and the joys of being a new father.

We have this theory that you can never escape the music you grew up listening to. No matter what you make, it’ll always be part of you. What do you think about that?

I heard that theory from other people too. I was watching some dumb TV show on the Sci Fi channel—some psychology stuff—and there’s a lot of truth to that. I grew up listening to my mom’s records and they were raised in the 60s in the South and they loved black soul music, I was introduced to hip-hop through that stuff, honestly.

Those were some of the first records I sampled. But I try not to be dogmatic in my vinyl collection. I think that’s why my record is a weird futuristic R&B record. I’m paying homage to the music I grew up on but in a weird futuristic context.

Speaking of futuristic ... I know you love Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Why aren’t you as into the original series?

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It’s just hard for me to sit down and stay focused on the the original stuff because it’s so campy. But the sole reason is coming back to what you just talked about—stuff I grew up on. The Next Generation was on every week in my house for years. And I love the movies because if you’re a Trekkie you gotta get down with all the movies and learn all the stories—how integral those pivotal parts of the movies play in the whole saga. Also I love Patrick Stewart. Dude is a huge cosmic mentor in my dreams.

Captain Picard! Shatner never did that for me. But we’re on Voyager now and that’s a whole other thing, Voyager is good—Deep Space 9, not so much.

Is this the first record you’ve really sung on? And who do you look up to as a singer?

My Outmind record had a lot of my vocals on it, just sort of buried and disguised. But this record is sort of the first time I’ve made that decision to let it be prominent. I’ve been using my voice INTERVIEW

since I was a little boy, I’m grateful for my family being in music. I love Panda Bear’s vocal style and Brian Wilson’s— maybe Stevie Wonder’s vocals with Brian Wilson with some psychedelic effects added to that? And with R. Kelly.

This album has so many layers, I’m picturing like twenty tracks in Ableton.

How did you know when to quit?

It’s a struggle with my production process—and it’s always been a struggle to know when to stop. I’ve had a lot of mentoring and friends and advice from fellow producers and composers to help me understand knowing when to stop and when something is complete. And you said twenty tracks—girl, it’s sometimes 50! I’ll be like at 50 and bounce all that down to a tape and then I’ll add to that. That’s how I get that texture. That’s something I’ve been doing for awhile, experimenting with tape and getting digital-sourced sounds sounding more raw or whatever. Once that part comes and shows itself, then I render all that stuff out and look at it as one thing. And if I’m happy with it I can dangle more stuff on it—elaborate on it. I’m always trying to elaborate on it. But that’s a big critique—that it’s very dense. So I’m trying to make music now that’s more minimal. I’ve been called a collage-style artist but this album is the most minimal I could get it!

When you talked to us back in 2011, you said you were trying to write folk songs on guitar—whatever happened to those?

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My guitar broke! I was covering like Todd Rundgren songs and I’d pick up and dabble with so many instruments all the time. I get really obsessed with self-taught style and mantric meditative techniques and then friends show me chords and I’ll get really into writing. I’ve written a lot of songs for my baby girl, I haven’t recorded any of them, but that stuff is beautiful and we sing them to her.

What are the songs about?

The songs are about love and her. It’s so great because her name is Love, and you can write all these songs with so many different meanings about her and play with those meanings, and it’s all about this little baby! Songs like ‘I Found A Baby’ or ‘We Made A Baby And We Named Her Love,’ and it goes on and on. It’s good!

If you were trapped in an elevator with one new age record on repeat for 24 hours, what record would you pick?

Michael Stearns’ Planetary Unfolding, it’s a holy grail masterpiece of cosmic electronic composition. Everything else pales in comparison. I’ve had awakening, rejuvenating experiences with that, under the influence and sober from start to finish. It’s very cinematic but not so overly cinematic it’s cheesy. It tells this beautiful story of the universe unfolding and then folding back in on itself. The best record I’ve ever heard—I’ve yet to hear a better record.

MATTHEWDAVID PLAYS ON FRI., AUG. 15, AT THE ECHOPLEX. INTERVIEW

GAVIN TUREK INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

You probably first heard Gavin Turek—a trained actor, dancer, and vocalist who has been studying the arts since the age of 6—and her gorgeous, vulnerable vocals on Tokimonsta’s otherwise instrumental Creature Dreams EP. In the years since, she’s collaborated with Com Truise and Paper Diamond, released a mixtape based on the music of Giorgio Moroder, and put out an infectious solo single called ‘Remember,’ produced by Harlan Silverman (Mayer Hawthorne). She speaks now about working out next to Mark McGrath and the joys of making music in her underwear.

How did studying dance in Ghana influence the way you approach your performance now?

It had such a huge impact on me as a performer and me as a person. When I went to Ghana, I wasn’t very secure in my body. I fell in love with their traditional dance. It’s extremely active and it’s so difficult but we had teachers that really took us under their wing and I danced almost six hours a day for two months when I was there, just learning and learning and learning. And when I got back home I was just different. I felt like I found my form of self expression through dance. I was never the best ballet dancer or best modern dancer or had the best technique but I’ve always been a performer—so it spoke to me and inspired me. Right when I got back is when I started working on my first EP, and I had my first show— actually at the Satellite—and I was trying INTERVIEW

to figure out what I was going to wear and how I was going to perform these new songs. I was really nervous! My sister was like, ‘Why don’t you wear something that accentuates your dance movements?

You have to move, right?’ ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right! I gotta move!’ So I ended up wearing this dress that was kind of reminiscent of the sacred garb when they do specific dances in Ghana and I felt like it opened up the floodgates. Soon as I put that on and decided not to wear shoes, it just took everything to another level.

I can’t imagine performing now without that type of garb. It’s fringe but it emulates what I wore when I was in Ghana.

And then if I wore shoes it wouldn’t be the same at all—it would just be a completely different Gavin!

How do you not get out of breath?

I run and I sing my set. My neighborhood must think I’m the biggest lunatic.

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Probably three or four times per week I run through the streets and sing at the top of my lungs and I go through my whole set. And that is the only way that I can build up my stamina. I feel so crazy when I do it and I look so crazy. I was in Chicago for a show a few weeks ago and I was like, ‘OK—I gotta work out!’

I told the guy I was staying with and he said the only place really for you to run that’s close is straight through downtown Chicago, and I was like OK! So just picture me running through downtown Chicago singing ‘Remember’ at the top of my lungs!

The first time I heard you was on a Tokimonsta track. What have you learned from working with her?

Probably just to trust my instincts. She’s amazing, and she sent me what turned out to be ‘Darkest (Dim)’ and ‘Little Pleasures.’ It was kind of out of the blue.

‘Hey, if you like these tracks, feel free to write to them.’ So I wrote both of them within like just a few days. Back to back.

I just fell in love with them. I was kind of sick when I wrote and sang the original vocals to both of those songs and it’s just such a testament to trusting yourself and not judging your art so much that you wouldn’t share it. When I sent them to her I was like, ‘Hey, these are scratch vocals—I don’t know about the lyrics. I was kind of feeling vulnerable and a little sad. I think the vocals probably need to be re-recorded.’ Just making a lot of excuses and critiquing it so much—which I do with everything I do, like any artist!

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And she was like, ‘No, these are beautiful! I really like what you did!’ And those are the same vocals, the same cut—the same demo vocals version that I did on my computer!

Really? Just on your computer? It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that someone recorded like … in their bedroom in their underwear.

I think I was in my underwear in my bedroom! I record everything on my bed and I have a little Mac book and a little microphone and yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. I’m in my underwear a lot in my room. It was very natural! And because of the reaction to those two songs specifically—I don’t think I’ve gotten a better reaction from anything I’ve ever put out. It’s a testament to trust your instinct, and be willing to be vulnerable. It’s a very naked song.

What’s your most unexpected Los Angeles celebrity encounter?

I work out with Mark McGrath all the time at my gym! From Sugar Ray? He works out—I call it the People’s Gym, it’s the most horrific gym in the world. This gym has one bathroom for women. One. Bathroom. One stall! One bathroom!

Enough said, right? It’s the People’s Gym! It’s really not a good gym at all. I go every day and Mark McGrath is always there and I’m like ‘Mark! Hi!’ I mean I don’t say hi to him, I really don’t. But I feel like we’re buddies.

GAVIN TUREK PLAYS SAT., AUG. 16, AT THE TAIX MAIN STAGE. INTERVIEW

FRIDAY AUGUST 15 THE ECHOPLEX

Little Joy

RISKY VISION DJs (on Echoplex Patio) Evan Mellows Doja Cat, Tower Liphemra, Spazzkid Matthewdavid Mystery Skulls De Lux, GoldLink

Lunch Beers DJs

THE ECHO Vision Dream Boys Colleen Green Froth, Thumpers Skygreen Leopards Avid Dancer Kevin Morby Dante vs Zombies

CHAMPAGNE ROOM AT TAIX SESAC presents The Echo & The Sound Kera and the Lesbians Oddience The Ten Thousand Roses (ex-Abe Vigoda) Dub Thompson J Litt, Spazzkid

IAM8BIT GALLERY Heathered Pearls Lusine, Shigeto Michna

LOT 1 CAFE Mateo Katsu What Hands Are For Tulips, Iris Joseph Christian Gárate, Virginia Reed Seasons

ORIGAMI VINYL Tennis System Emma Ruth Rundle Luther Russell Vug Arakas, Bür Gür

ECHO PARK METHODIST CHURCH Tramp for the Lord Banta, Paul Bergmann Veronica Bianqui Matt Kivel, Yoya

LITTLE JOY Wide Streets Pastilla Drinking Flowers Adult Books TrapsPS The Blank Tapes

ORIGAMI VINYL Island Boy Tashaki MIyaki Omid Walizadeh Bouquet Mynabirds

ECHO PARK METHODIST CHURCH

ECHOES UNDER SUNSET

Wild Awake Ampersan Girlpool A House For Lions

Stay Cool Forever L.A. Girlfriend Cutty Flam, Mexico 68

EL CENTRO DEL PUEBLO

TAIX MAIN STAGE Allah-Las, Woods Crystal Skulls Cherry Glazerr Santoros

The World Dodgeball Society (a.k.a. WDS) presents Gangplans The Mo-Odds CP3

SATURDAY AUGUST 16 Lineups are subject to change without notice. For updated schedule, event information, VIP ticket availability, and an interactive list of participating venues visit epr.la/fri or epr.la/sat.

THE ECHO Sinners Sinners Ian Newman Crown Plaza Lawrence Rothman Feels Isaac Rother Babes Flaamingos Habits Morgan Delt

ECHOPLEX Cheers Elephant Strange Babes Stag The Moth & The Flame Leslie Stevens Aaron Embry Thee Rain Cats Quitapenas Babies On Acid togetherPANGEA

ECHOPLEX PATIO HIT & RUN silk screening

ECHO PATIO Grand Ole Echo—lineup TBA!

PABST BLUE RIBBON STAGE AT IAM8BIT GALLERY Skapeche Mode Very Be Careful The Hard R, The Groms Street Walkin Cheetahs Death Valley Girls Mr Elevator & The Brain Hotel Obliterations The Shrine

LOT 1 CAFE Lucy & La Mer The Pristines Arms That Work Gun/Her BCGs, Creeps Sunshine Mind Terminal A Panthar, Feral Kizzy Wild Pack Of Canaries Ballerina Black Mars & the Massacre

ECHOES UNDER SUNSET Hobart Fink, Noah Litt Line & Circle

PILATES & ARTS CMG + We Are The Night Moons of Mars Brown and Blue Girlpool, Novi Split Jake Bellows

SHORT STOP Blazing 45s DJs

CHAMPAGNE ROOM AT TAIX Buzzbands presents Cinderella Motel Pisces Wartime Recitals Dreamland, Howls Washing Machines Monogem, Banta The Dead Ships Tapioca and the Flea

TAIX MAIN STAGE Myron & E Gavin Turek Mexico 68 Sex Stains Meatbodies Gothic Tropic Dirt Dress

SUNDAY AUGUST 17 Lineups are subject to change without notice. For updated schedule, event information, VIP ticket availability, and an interactive list of participating venues visit epr.la/sun.

THE ECHO: LOLIPOP vs BURGER BATTLE OF THE BANDS! June Holiday Dante Elephante Gateway Drugs Kim & the Created Darklands The Buttertones Empty Frames Girl Tears Part Time Punks and there’s a Bloody Mary bar all day too!

EL CENTRO DEL PUEBLO Golden Glue Management presents Echo Park Rising 3 On 3 Basketball Tournament De’Anz Rafi El Subsuelo DJs

LITTLE JOY

LOT 1 CAFE

L.A. RECORD + Fever present Fresh and Onlys Bouquet Nedelle Torrisi Devon Williams Bloody Death Skull L.A. Takedown Susan Ya Ba

Maesa Pullman Private Island Maxie Dean Dead Bedouin Draag Captions Radioactive Chicken Heads Alex and the Constellations Barrows Vs Colour Nacosta BODEGAS Bastidas Batwings Catwings Street Joy Ssleaze

ECHOPLEX: USvsTHEM vs MANIMAL BATTLE OF THE BANDS! Signal City QunQ Kiven LA Font Rainbow Jackson Record Company SIlver Hands Dead Dawn Gateway Drugs Bonfire Beach

COMEDY SCHEDULE FRI.-SUN. AUGUST 15-17 Lineups are subject to change without notice. For updated schedule, event information, VIP ticket availability, and an interactive list of participating venues visit epr.la/fri, epr.la/sat or epr.la/sun.

826LA

FRI. AUG. 15 hosted by James Austin Johnson Maria Bamford Sean Patton Baron Vaughn Kate Berlant Jake Weisman Barbara Gray Cory Loykasek Dave Ross

ECHOES UNDER SUNSET SAT. AUG. 16 (9 PM SHOW)

Hosted by Logan Guntzelman Ian Karmel Matt Dwyer Richard Bain James Fritz Megan Koester Pat Regan Erin Lampart

ECHOES UNDER SUNSET

SAT. AUG. 16 (MIDNIGHT SHOW) Andy Haynes Allen Strickland Williams and more...

826LA

SUN. AUG. 17 Hosted by Matt Ingebretson Steve Agee Matt Braunger Sean O’Connor Emily Heller Chris Garcia Sean Keane Jeff Wattenhofer Clare O’Kane

BLAZING 45s’

DANNY HOLLOWAY INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

Danny Holloway is the DJ, producer, music journalist, A&R man ... actually, let’s just say renaissance man, OK? Punk, rap and reggae history all owe him a little something, and at his all-45 club night Blazing 45s, he gets the best of the best spinning genre-bursting all-killer-no-filler sets.

Here he recommends seven 7”s Echo Park-ians need to track down.

BUZZ CLIFFORD “Echo Park” (Dot, 1969) “A 60s song made famous by Keith Barbour—this version has a more rustic vibe and stands the test of time better.”

PENDLETONS “Waiting On You” (Slept On, 2010) “This exceptional soul tune of longing was a smash in recent years. This is DJ Eric Boss’ beat and production.”

JUNGLE FIRE “Firewalker” (Colemine, 2013) “Amazing slice of Afrobeat by a local L.A. band who broke through by repeatedly playing the Echo in Echo Park.”

HOUSE SHOES “Empire” (Tres, 2012) “Beatmaker/DJ/producer Shoes creates a hypnotic, swirling, head nodder on his sole 45 release.”

THE SPECIALS “Gangsters” (2 Tone, 1979) “This tune kicked off the UK ska revival in the late 70s. Brit Howard Paar moved to L.A., opened the On Club in Echo Park in 1980 and introduced the sound locally. Paar’s son, Destroyer, DJs this show.”

THE SPADES “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (Zero, 1965) “Echo Park these days is infested with alt bands. This is where it all began. This Texas band evolved into the 13th Floor Elevators and re-cut the tune. Singer Roky Erickson pours his heart out on this balls-out cruncher.”

SANDY KOUFAX Interview (Volpe/Union 76, 1966) “Echo Park residents love living within walking distance of Dodger Stadium. This interview 45 with baseball’s greatest pitcher features humble Koufax side-stepping his secret to utter dominance on the mound. Still, a lovely keepsake.”

BLAZING 45s FEATURING JON SWEATERFUNK, ERIC BOSS, HOUSE SHOES AND DESTROYER ON SAT., AUG. 16, AT THE SHORT STOP. INTERVIEW

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6 PM

FRIDAY

AUG

15

20 1 4

7PM 8 PM 9PM 10 PM 11 PM 12PM 1AM

THE ECHO AND THE SOUND KERA & THE LESBIANS ODDIENCE THE TEN THOUSAND ROSES (EX-ABE VIGODA) DUB THOMPSON J LITT SPAZZKID

C H A M PAG N E R O O M • TA I X

8/22 $16 F*CKED UP TIJUANA PANTHERS

9/26 $20 TEMPLES

10/1 $17 KCRW PRESENTS THE WAR ON DRUGS

10/4 $25

10/10 $15 TWIN SHADOW

11/13 $25 BLONDE REDHEAD

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

ALLAH-LAS INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

Allah-las are often described as making the quintessential California sound--music inspired by surfing, a love for Los Angeles history and culture, and a relentless focus on period-perfect production. Their new album Worship The Sun is about to be released on L.A.’s Innovative Leisure and here they discuss their newfound approach to songwriting and tell stories about a Southern California cityscape that never was.

Last time we talked, you said that there is always so much to learn about Los Angeles. What have you learned recently about Los Angeles?

Spencer Dunham (bass, vocals): I learned that Jeff Goldblum plays jazz piano Wednesday nights at the Rockwell Bar on Vermont. He plays the theme to Jurassic Park and riffs on it. It’s a five-piece so it’s guitar and drums, bass, and sax— and he’s on piano and the guy with the sax goes around the audience and plays.

Matt Correia (drums, vocals): There’s this exhibit at the art and design museum called Never Built L.A. on all these urban planning ideas and plans for L.A. that never happened. Even like a whole concept of how the whole city would be laid out with pavilions and marinas—futuristic things even looking at them today. I always think of the term ‘remember the future.’ Plans for the future back then are 34

so much different from how they turned out. There’s a book of all these designs called Never Built Los Angeles. Most of the plans didn’t go through because of the Great Depression. What a cool town it would have been. And all of that area— Echo Park, Silverlake—used to be this one thing called Edendale. It was part of Hollywood but that’s what they called it.

Not a whole lot of places have that name or pay homage to that name.

Miles Michaud (guitar, vocals): Also El Cid was built to screen Birth of the Nation. It probably had a different layout at that point, but he filmed part of it over a cornfield around there and then built that to have the opening screening.

With your first record, you said the song ‘Catamaran’ was the breakthrough for you guys. Was there a breakthrough like that on the new record?

MC: For me it was ‘Worship the Sun.’ INTERVIEW

It was some new territory—sonically and the theme of the song, too. It felt like something new—something that I wasn’t used to.

SD: ‘Yemeni Jade’ because it’s an instrumental but the first one we tried experimenting with vibraphone and pedal steel—new forms of instrumentation.

Danny Horne played the pedal steel—he plays in a couple bands, and plays pedal steel with Beachwood Sparks. Very talented all around.

On this record, you all take turns singing and writing. What turned AllahLas into such a group project?

MM: That’s more of a product of the fact that a lot of the songs came from ideas we were hashing out individually or in small groups—a lot of them were ideas we came up with on tour for the previous record. When we made the first record, we had like three and a half years of hanging out and writing together. When it came time to make the second recordswe had all these individual ideas—so if someone wrote a song, they’d want to sing on it.

We built the songs into final products together, but they stem from ideas conceived individually—as opposed together in the basement, just kind of hanging out.

You’re all born and raised in L.A.— how has living and growing up in Los Angeles affected your ideas about making music?

MM: I’m grateful that there’s such a large community of musicians in L.A. and people are inspired by one another, and 36

it’s kind of competitive in the best kind of friendly way. You don’t want to beat someone, but you want to do as well as someone inspires you to do. But at the same time, we’re as inspired by old records that we listen to as by new sounds.

What are you listening to that might not be obvious to the listener?

MC: We’ve all been influenced by Spacemen 3 when growing up. Listening to those records made me want to play music and everyone agrees on that. And those types of bands, like 80s and 90s Brit-pop and psych and paisley underground. It might not be readily available for people to read into that but that’s a huge influence. Listening to those records made us go further back in time to what they listened to.

MM: Soul, country—I like a lot of Latin jazz and I try to add a lot of those elements into the percussion, and sometimes people pick up on that.

MC: Definitely a lot of U.K. and Brazilian stuff for sure. And obviously a lot of folk music,—anything from Tim Hardin to Nick Drake. Also, we really like production, and that’s something that we’ve added to our records. We’re particular about the way we want things to sound but we like records with interesting production. The Elusive Bob Lind is a big influence on us, and a lot of other records for the way things sound—but that’s just one I can think of.

ALLAH-LAS PLAY FRI., AUG. 15, AT TAIX MAIN STAGE. INTERVIEW

THE GROMS INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON

The Groms was founded by B.G. Brixton when he realized he had an urgent, deep-seated need to play fast and fun punk rock—a need that many of us can relate to. So he convinced his brother and best friend to jam with him and the Groms were born. B.G. speaks here about the benefits of growing up in a home with a no-secular-music-except-K-Earth rule, and the not-sohard-to-find connections between Iggy Pop and Cab Calloway.

What were your bands like before the Groms?

This is my first band. I wasn’t allowed to listen to music growing up. My father was a Christian pastor so I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music. The only thing I was allowed to listen to was K-Earth, so I grew up on the oldies. I wasn’t allowed to listen to Britney Spears or Korn or something, which I probably would have loved because everyone else my age loved it. I listened to the standards, and now I appreciate that. I picked up a guitar when I was eighteen—my roommate’s guitar. I didn’t even know you had to tune it—I was just like, ‘Today’s the day!’

My cousin—he knew how to play guitar—just started laughing when I asked him why it was so hard to play. He was like, ‘Dude, you see these little knobs?

You have to turn those!’ At that point I was really into art and performance art.

I wasn’t really concerned with how something was done—I was more concerned with just getting it done.

INTERVIEW

Is K-Earth music is part of the Groms?

Absolutely. At first punk was very separate from that and I got into it through friends—and my grandmother actually listens to some stuff too! I thought of it as in no way attached to rock’n’roll, and then I started to identify with music a lot more and tried to figure out where it all comes from. So I started digging and digging, and saw that there are so many different connections. This music I grew up with is where it all came from.

So you were listening to the stuff that like Iggy grew up listening to?

Definitely. That was actually probably a really big day for me, I do my research and I get from Operation Ivy to the Descendents, and from the Descendants to the Germs, from the Germs to the Clash, to the Stooges. And then what was he listening to? Well—Cab Calloway and weird stuff like that!

THE GROMS PLAY ON SAT., AUG. 16, AT THE IAM8BIT GALLERY. 39

FROTH

INTERVIEW BY KRISTINA BENSON Froth lives right in the heart of Echo Park—steps away from the headquarters of their label Lolipop—and so frontman Joo-Joo Ashworth puts his civic experience to use here in Froth’s own guide to surviving and thriving along this particular part of Sunset Boulevard.

ON BONNIE BRAE STREET: “There are eight bands that live on Bonnie Brae between Park and Montrose, and they’re all on Lolipop. Also in the last year, two houses burned down and there was an escaped murderer that ran and hid on this block but they eventually caught him. My sister said Bonnie Brae is like the freshman dorm hall for bands in their early 20s and Echo Park Ave. is like grad school for established Pitchfork-y bands who licensed enough music that they can afford to live on Echo Park Ave.” ON PARKING AND TRAFFIC: “During rush hour, never take Glendale or Alvarado.

Just go down on Sunset to Lemoyne through this weird alley and then turn left on the very last street before you get on the 2. The worst day for parking is Wednesday nights because of Dub Club and also it’s street sweeping Thursday—double bad parking.”

ON THE PET HOSPITAL: “My uncle lived in Echo Park in the 70s and said there’s a place that’s now a pet hospital but there used to be a phony doctor there where everyone could go get prescription drugs. That doctor never did anything but give out drugs.”

ON ECHO PARK LAKE “The Lady of the Lake Statue in Echo Park Lake is over 100 years old. They took it out for like 50 years and just put it back in when the lake was renovated. Oh and in Chinatown, there’s a part where they’re paddling in a boat in Echo Park lake. The paddle boats on Echo Park Lake used to be swans. It looks exactly like it did back then.”

ON THE SECRET SKATE PARK: “There’s a tiny skate park no one knows about in the rec center off of like Lake and the street after Temple, on Alvarado.”

ON THE FIFTY CENT BUS: “There’s a fifty cent bus that goes from Echo Park to downtown and back. Pick it up on Park and Sunset, or Sunset and Echo Park Ave. It goes all up and down Echo Park Avenue also.”

FROTH PLAYS ON FRI., AUG. 15 AT THE ECHO. 42

INTERVIEW

SUBSUELO’S CANYON CODY INTERVIEW BY CHRIS ZIEGLER

Canyon Cody is part of planet-spanning bass outfit (and flamenco-fusion band) Subsuelo, whose Boyle Heights club night is the stuff of future legends. He departs from his usual up-to-the-minute arsenal of remixes and singles to pick ten albums (in reverse chronological order!) that transport him across the world.

Chancha Via Circuito, Rio Arriba (ZZK, 2012) “This is an Argentine deep electronic producer who does transcendal ayahuasca music—something I’d compare to Burial or Flying Lotus, but rooted in South American rhythms. It chugs along at 70 BPM and clearly shows wide-ranging influences from dub and Jamaican music but the sounds are much more … mountainous. You notice a difference in psychedelicness as you go higher in elevation in South America. Like Peruvian chicha, which is a derivative of cumbia with crazy psychedelic-ness to it.

So Chancha is one of those producers who makes music from deep in the future and deep in the past—there’s no nowness to it. The music changes very slowly and perfectly and sounds just where it should be. I think he’ll be rediscovered in decades to come as someone very unique.”

La Vida Boheme, Nuestra (Nacional, 2011) “This record allowed me to not include the Talking Heads and Fela Kuti. This is the 21st century next step after both of those. They’re a rock band from Venezuela that really finds the middle ground between smart and … not pretentious, like heavy badass party rock but with substance and musical flourishes and lots of direction without getting too Arcade Fire. Four dudes—four friends—who played house parties and got a little bigger—they won a Latin grammy last year and never compromised. They didn’t dumb down for anything.”

Afrocubism, self-titled (WorldCircuit, 2010) “A follow-up to the Buena Vista Social Club record of the 90s—the prototypical quoteunquote ‘world music’ album of all time. The original plans for Buena Vista were the two Malian musicians Djelimady Tounkara and n’goni player Bassekou Kouyate INTERVIEW

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would fly to Cuba and record with the Cuban musicians Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer and make an Afro-Cuban All Stars album. But they arrived the day before recording and their visas got denied. So ten years later, they decided, ‘Let’s make that album we were gonna do originally.’ So they did—with Ochoa and his amazing band, since Segundo and Ferrer has passed by that point. And it’s amazing.

Very unforced. It’s not like ‘Let’s put some weird people together!’ You can hear how the Malian music complements the Cuban music. Usually I’m much more excited by compatibility, not juxtaposition—not just ironic mash-ups of culture. And this really demonstrates the interconnectedness and shared history. Which brings us to …”

Quantic & His Combo Bárbaro, A Tradition In Transition (TruThoughts, 2009) “A very appropriate title—it’s rooted music, but it’s not stuck. Often in ‘world music,’ it’s about preserving some sort of sanctified past in a museum, like ‘this is an authentic snapshot of the people of Papua New Guinea.’ As if their music wasn’t continually changing or evolving. Or it’s just taking somebody’s music out of context and using it without respect to the uniqueness of where it’s from. So I like the title. To be honest, I’d like to get people into Quantic’s whole career! His complete discography is kind of mind-blowing. But this one has a lot of my favorite songs and shows he’s not like stuck in, ‘Oh, this is my cumbia record.’ There’s also sublime beautiful songs like ‘Dreaming Mind.’ And the remix of this album has a lot of my favorite producers too.”

Novalima, Afro (Mr. Bongo, 2006) “They were pretty ahead of the curve in fusing electronic and analog music, and they did it in a way I really respect—in the format of a band. Often there’s a distance between the producer and musician. With Novalima, the producers are in the band, and that’s a special thing. It sounds like a musical family. There’s cohesion to the fusion that doesn’t exist in a lot of remix work.”

Bob Marley, Chant Down Babylon (Island Def Jam, 1999) “A remix record with Rakim, Chuck D, Lauryn Hill, the Roots—a lot of important hip-hop artists who went back in the studio to re-record classic Bob Marley songs. I remember being in high school when this came out and it really opened up a door! Like wow—we can participate in music with dead people! And pre-recorded music! Like believe it or not, these are not finished products. We’re here to engage with all of them!

At that age, Bob Marley is like your parents’ music. I was into Sublime or something— hip-hop. But it was like, ‘Oh shit, Rakim is on this?’ It opened me up to liking it. You’re able to have new access points—to provide people with something relevant to them.”

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INTERVIEW

Outkast, Aquemini (LaFace, 1998) “In my life, hip-hop is the most influential genre. My first tape ever was hip-hop. So although I’m tempted to put some hip-hop en español like Ana Tijoux, Calle 13, Orishas or Los Rakas—but at the end of the day I felt in my heart that I had to pick Outkast.

People are still trying to catch up with mid-90s Outkast! Listening to the way they incorporate local sounds into their music fits the pattern of the other things on here— like the twangy guitar and the harmonica, the same way a New Yorker samples James Brown because that’s the context of their city. They rooted hip-hop in a way that was futuristic. If I thought the hip-hop police would be after me, I’d say Southernplayalistic… or ATLiens, but ‘SpottieOttieDopalicious’ wins it for me.”

Ozomatli, self-titled (Almo Sounds, 1998) “Not only is this a quintessential L.A. record, but I was coming up listening to Sublime and Red Hot Chili Peppers bringing hip-hop into what they were doing, and this band was doing that—but with something more relevant to me, which was Latin music. And the fact Chali2na and Cut Chemist were in Ozomatli before they focused on Jurassic 5 … this record is still something to try and catch up to.”

Paco de Lucia, Almoraima (Philips, 1976) “He was 28 at the time and already regarded as the greatest flamenco guitarist of all time—he’d already established himself and earned the respect of all the traditionalists, and then he went and destroyed everything and started incorporating Moorish influences! Which were already there, but he started admitting it—an important distinction. And it was happening at such a pivotal point in Spanish history. Their dictator died the year before and they were transitioning to democracy. I feel the artists are the bravest ones willing to move forward, and the culture around them kind of followed.”

Bill Withers, Just As I Am (Sussex, 1971) “For me, it’s the quintessential American record—rooted in African-American music but not stuck in funk or soul or R&B or something partitioned off because it’s quote/ unquote ‘black.’ There are clear folk influences, country—there’s a broad American musicality to this album. And it was also a very sensitive and brave record. The songs aren’t just like, ‘I loved a girl, she broke my heart.’ They’re about an artist speaking truth to himself—not worrying about fitting in or what a record is supposed to sound like.”

SUBSUELO DJs WITH DE’ANZ AND RAFI EL ON SUN., AUG. 17, AT THE ECHO PARK RISING 3 ON 3 BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT AT EL CENTRO DEL PUEBLO. INTERVIEW

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