The Highly Acclaimed Volume 2 Issue 1

the

Highly Acclaimed Volume Dos Numero Uno

art ‡

music

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action

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adventure

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photography

The Photography Of

BECK

Barry & Cathy

The iconic husband and wife duo of Barry and Cathy Beck have been travelling the world, fly fishing and photographing some of the greatest anglers and locations for decades. Recent inductees into the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, we digitally corralled them for a quick e-mail interview.

All photos next ten pages courtesy Barry and Cathy Beck.

So... What got you into fly fishing and photography? What came first, and how did they mesh for you? Barry was established as a fly fishing guide when I met him. At that time he was getting into photography as well. So, I became interested in both by default. It was more about making a living then dreaming a dream. We had a small sporting goods store that we bought from his retiring parents. His mom taught me all about reloading, ammunition, traps, and shotguns and handguns. Eventually we turned the “general sporting goods store” into a fly shop and eliminated a lot of the earlier lines. I worked in the shop while Barry guided and quickly learned the ropes. Years later after we sold the retail business, we were able to pursue photography as a means of income.

Before that, it was just a hobby. Retail was our life.

You’re being inducted into the fly fish hall of fame... What does that mean to you and how do you feel about it? Well, we feel very blessed to be able to make a living from what we love to do. I can honestly say that being inducted into the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame never crossed our minds. I guess we were too busy trying to make a living, raise a family, and figure out what we wanted to do and where we were headed. In lots of ways, we’re still trying to figure that out. Fly Fishing has given us a wonderful way to make a living and meet lots of interesting people all over the world. It keeps us grounded, so to speak, and we’re constantly reminded that life is about quality - not quantity.

Out of all your adventures, which one stands out as the most amazing or memorable? That’s a hard question to answer. We can’t think of one adventure that necessarily stands out. We’ve got lots of funny stories about people and places, but what we remember most are the very early days when we had to scrape to get enough money together for a trip to Montana in August, drove non-stop, slept many nights in our VW van, camped alongside rivers like the Madison in Bakers Hole and the Snake at Island Park, cooking eggs and potatoes over a fire in the morning, fishing, tying flies, reading, and just enjoying life. We met some wonderful people back then, many of them are still best friends today. We don’t camp

very often these days and seldom cook over a campfire. It was a simpler way of life. One that we hope to find our way back to.

What do you use for gear, and any advice for up and coming photogs? We have been fortunate to be on the Sage Team for twenty years. We were a Sage dealer when we were in retail and we’ve loved Sage rods from the beginning. Now, of course it’s Sage/Redington/ Rio and we’re still as excited about the line(s) as we were back in 1992 when we were first invited to join the “Team”. Sage has been the leader in high performance fly rods since the early days and we feel privileged to be part of such a well-respected company.

Last words? We’re very humbled to be with such great authors, fly tiers, and fishermen who are gracing the walls of the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. It is an honor. We will continue to work hard at promoting fly fishing as a sport through our travels, our photography, and fly fishing clinics. In today’s world of stress, the need to produce, to prove oneself in order to survive, there truly is nothing like it. Fly fishing grounds us, it makes us realize that we are not the center of the universe, it humbles us, it brings us back to reality. It helps us remember that there is a greater meaning in life, that we’re only passing through on a very short journey.

BECAUSE TH

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Brown Bird

Brown Bird is a part of that funky, folky music movement that’s afoot. With just two members, they manage to get out the floor-stomping dance-alongs and molasses-sweet, rumbling slower tunes that will soon have you transfixed, forgetting that your drink ran out a long time ago and your girlfriend is being hit on by some guy who looks like a logger wearing his little sister’s jeans.

How did Brown Bird come about? I know it all started in Seattle, but you’re based out of Providence now, yes? How did you wind up there?

Does being in Providence relate to your sound?

Dave only lived in Seattle for a few months in 2003, but that was where he started writing and performing songs under the name Brown Bird.

Brown Bird was a solo act first. When Dave moved back East, husband and wife duo, Jeremy and Jerusha Robinson (of the band South China) joined him on accordion and cello, respectively. Brown Bird existed that way until 2007, when the Robinsons left to focus on South China, and Dave embarked on a six-month solo tour around the US. It was at the end of that tour that I met Dave, when he and the band I was playing with at the time met up for three shows together. I sat in with Dave playing fiddle, and at the end of those three dates asked him if he wanted a fiddler long-term. I ended up joining him for another week or so of shows, and

when we returned to Providence (where I’d been living for the past 5 years) he moved in with me. We’ve since relocated to the tiny town of Warren, about 20 minutes outside of the city.

Certainly living in Warren has had an influence on Dave lyricallymuch of the new album’s lyrics speak to the work Dave was doing at a shipyard there.

I’ve seen your music described with words like “Americana”, “gypsy” and folk. How do you brek it down for the uninitiated?

What are your primary influences?

We’ve started describing ourselves as being “non-genre specific”.

I sort of cringe at the label of “folk”, since we’re influenced by so much more than that, and people’s general preconception of what folk is tends to worry me. I don’t want to be mistaken for, say, Greenwich Village-type folk. Then again, “folk” can also be used to describe just about any type of music that pulls influence from any sort of traditional or ethnic music, and in that sense we are absolutely folk. We have several favorite compilations we listen to a lot- “Balkan Gypsies”, “The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania”, “Romanian Gypsies”, “Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music”...and then bands like Taraf de Haiduks, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, The Black Ox Orkestar, which all pull heavily from “Gypsy” music, which of course is folk music. That aside, we’re also influenced by Country greats like Willie Nelson,

Johnny Cash, and Roger Miller. We also love bands like The Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Mastadon, and we pull influences from all of them. So...how would you describe it?

It seems that you all are on the come up, so to speak. How have things been going, and what’s coming next? How is the national tour going? What is your takeaway thus far?

Things have been going great! We’ve been out on a national tour since mid-October, and with The Devil Makes Three since the second of November, opening for them on their national tour. They are wonderful people, a great band, and are dear friends. Touring with them has been a great experience and we hope it will happen again soon. We’re on the home stretch now, and are looking forward to being home for the holidays and having some time to work on new material and hang out with our cat. Then there’s a small tour coming up in January with O’Death, and talk about more extensive touring in the Spring.

What are you listening to now?

At this very second, I’m listening to The Devil Makes Three from the greenroom of the club we’re playing in South Carolina. The music that’s been on heavy rotation in the van, though, has been Mastadon, Baroness, Red Fang and Queens of the Stone Age.

With the rise of bands like Blind Pilot, The Head and the Heart, etc, it seems that “folky” music is having resurgence. What do you think of that? Do you see more and more people being turned on to your style of music, as far as in a cultural perspective?

I think that this “genre”, whatever it is, has been around for a long time. Bands like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Blind Melon, Nirvana, The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket...they all have the same influences, they just treat it differently. It seems like there are more current bands that are gravitating more towards using acoustic instruments, for whatever reason- perhaps we’ve figured out how to amplify them properly in recent years?- but the blanket genre still encompasses everyone from The Devil Makes Three to Grinderman. Of course, it’s all up for debate and interpretation.

It’s music, after all.

I’m not sure what “our style of music” is, really. I think it just speaks to you or it doesn’t. www.BrownBird.net

“Hey man, can I use your phone?” This is how the (not so) young lady struck up a conversation with our most innocent staffer while we were shooting the Brown Bird feature. She then went on to explain, in a loverly faux-British accent, that she had lost her phone, but would love to give him her number. In case he needed a “date”. Just a ploy to bum a smoke, or a close (first) encounter with a lady of the night? Either way, she got her butt, but Doug decided he didn’t want hers.

An evening in the Middle East with

Vetiver

Okay, we have an admission to make.

We love Vetiver. Seriously, love them.

They are on of those bands who’s music is, you know, perfect. No matter what you’re about to do, they have a song that’ll go along for the ride. The perfect companion. Why are you still reading this? www.Vetiverse.com

This guy looks like he’s unsure, but he was in there dancing away a few minutes later.

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These three musicians were sessioning right outside the theater. As Gordon and company were providing the sound track to many a tilt-a-whirling collegiate, they had a small audience of non-ticket holders swaying against the cold in exchange for cigarettes and spare change.

Speaking of cigarettes, one of my favorite photo essays of all time is by pro skartist (that’s a skateboarder / artist to the uninitiated) Ed Templeton entitled “Teenage Smokers�.

Basically, over the course of multiple cross-continent skateboard tours he took photos of myriad puffing pre-adults, of which there is a shocking variety. This slightly unfocused tribute was found down the road from the venue, lurking in front of, what else, a coffee shop.

Garfunkel & Oates Move over, Weird Al, there’s some new (much cuter) sheriffs in town.

Garfunkel & Oates is the brainchild of actresses Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel) and Kate Micucci (Oates). Embodying as much a comic act as they do a serious band, their sweet and peppy songs are a great way to swerve off the road in a fit of laughter. Opting to parody social causes and awkward situations instead of pop songs, their topics have run the gamut from medical marijuana (Weed Card) to same sex marriage (Sex With Ducks) to the obnoxiousness of the recently fertilized (Pregnant Women are Smug). We caught them almost a year ago during a comedy showcase in LA at, where else, a sex shop, where they had the amassed crowd of neo-hipsters, up and coming comedians and creepy bondage gear shoppers (an admittedly tough crowd) snorting up their Coors light in roaring guffaws. Rumor has it they even have a show in the works with HBO, which Lindhome has described as, “Glee with dick jokes”.

Check ‘em out yourself... www.GarfunkelandOates.com

Double view of Blind Pilot’s Luke Ydstie

Ben Sollee and band

We first heard Austin, Texas’ Shakey Graves on the soundtrack for No Comply skateshop’s five year anniversary video over at the Roger Skateboards site. Instantly hooked on the classic, casual sound and impressive songwriting, we played the vid over and over again in the background just to listen. After a few hours of this, one of our more resourceful staffers discovered his Bandcamp site, where we downloaded Roll Your Bones. Another full day of listening later, and we were emailing for the following interview.

So... How did Shakey Graves come about? Is it just you? Tell us a bit of back story if you will.

I have always considered it fairly important to keep music and personality separate, it tends to suspend disbelief.

For the most part I produce my music to have a layered choral effect on your ears and I try and use melody and harmony to distract from the fact that it’s just some turd sitting in his living room with a pawn shop microphone.

I wrote my first three song EP in high school under my own name and it just ended up feeling like some John Mayer crap. Everyone associated my face and personality with what my songs were trying to convey and it lost the transcendent feeling that I long for music to have.

So after that, my first few lo-fi projects went under a few different names. I started as The Blinds in 2004, and then moved into a crappy apartment with my first live-in girlfriend and started calling myself House Hold Robot... My music had much more of an Indie slant and I used a lot of cheap electronic samples, I have tons of hissy, bitchy recordings from those times.

It wasn’t until I tripped by myself with a guitar that I barfed out eight complete songs that I had never heard before. It was like being possessed. My hands knew where to go, and music just started falling out of my body.

The recordings from that night ended up being called “The Bones Album” and to this day it is an unheard collection of the most honest songs I have written. Just spot on.

When I listened to that music, I just couldn’t hear myself, it simply didn’t sound like me. My voice was singing in a creepy falsetto, and my words had honesty and bite.... I mean, it was music that I never believed I could write.

So.... From then on I decided to let my hands do the writing. Let the songs come. Open a door and let the spooks in.

Soon after, I read a story about Jeff Buckley and a tour he did after Grace came out. He didn’t like all the instant fame and high-end, high-stakes shows he had to play, so he took a mystery tour and booked gigs at shitty coffee shops and random bars playing under a different name every night.

Soon after that I went on a camping trip with my friends and we all gave each other drunk person campfire names.

Mine was Shakey Graves... And it stuck.

Around the time that I recorded “The Bones Album” my music took a drastic turn towards finger picking. I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I pawned my banjo for my first record player. At that point I started teaching myself music history through the dollar bins at Amoeba Music. They don’t have vinyl listening stations, so I would go in and spend ten dollars on ten albums. I struck so much gold in those days and found music that I never assumed I would like... I was addicted to songs, not albums, not music – songs. I would search through whole LPs of crazy 90’s bands just to find the one song that they somehow caught.

I fell in love with Bruce Springsteen for a dollar, I found a signed

Jesse Lone Cat Fuller album for a dollar (arguably the godfather of true one-man-band song writing), I listened to a lot of Divinyls and the Go Go’s, and I was constantly scouring the shelves for anything put out by Smithsonian Folkways or Alan Lomax. I also fell in love with the music Townes Van Zandt, who has stayed so very high in my musical roster for so very long. That man caught a ghost, so to speak.

Since I was living in California, away from my friends, I would make them mix tapes and send them off constantly, so if a song fit, it was a hit in my mind. The first band I wrote music for was called Toru Okada... We were an obscure mid 90s style scream-o band, with wimpy lyrics and twinkly guitars. So my taste in music was anything from Circle Takes The Square and Mobb Deep to Buell Kazee and The Country Gentleman.

You have an Americana / folkie sound. What’s your inspiration, and how would you describe it?

The term “folk music” is getting thrown around a lot today and I definitely wouldn’t call my music folk music or Americana.

Calling Shakey Graves folk music simply because I pick a banjo would be like calling someone like Radiohead techno music because they use synthesizers.

Folk specifically pertains to a generation of musicians and a tradition of songs. It was a take on the generational songs that got passed down out of Appalachia and then became a focal point for free speech and equal rights, protests and generational change.

I maybe have some of the stylings of folk music, but I don’t stand behind the mentality and preaching nature of the idyllic folk musician. For instance, I cant stand Pete Seeger (sorry Pete), and it is a very dated style in my opinion.

I have come across a lot of musicians in my travels that assume because they have a guitar and a harmonica and can sing “Baby You Follow Me Down” that they are a folk musician. I feel that you have to have conviction and tradition to write songs of change and do folk music right. These days we don’t have the same struggles, the modern American doesn’t fight in the same way.

So at the very least folk music has changed, and given birth to some sort of new, as yet un-named sound.

My songs are just my inside on the outside. The sound track of my day displayed in front of you stuffed full of all the modern influences and references I can get away with. When I hear a perfect song, it sounds like it could have been written by anyone in any time, and the listener should be able to apply the song and word to their daily life however they see fit... Like a vessel waiting to be filled.

How can people find your music? You’re based in Austin, right?

Do you tour much?

You can find my music online at www.shakeygraves.bandcamp. com. Im playing Kohoutek music fest in California in April so I was going to plan a mini-tour west around that... First one ever.

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Anyone who thinks the advent of cell phone cameras isn’t changing the face of photography is hopelessly stuck in the past. While hipsters and purists still gravitate towards film, the vast majority of day-to-day snapshots are taken with one of hundreds of in phone camera apps.

No matter what camera system or film style you want to replicate, chances are there’s a cheap or free download that will turn your free-with-a-yearlyplan smartphone into a tool that used to cost thousand of dollars. With this freedom and ease of use, sites such as Instagram are popping up, allowing an

easy and convenient way to share images instantly. While many a “pro” is feeling threatened by this ease of use, we think it’s pretty darn neat. To that end, we’d like to encourage you to send us your “faux”laroids for a feature on our site.

Any cell phone style photo is cool with us, send em to hey@homeawayfromho. me and while you’re at it, find us on Instagram: @homeawayfromhomemag

photo: Corey Arnold • www.coreyfishes.com

The real gold mine is already here. Tell the EPA to keep Bristol Bay’s watershed just like it is. Act today to stop the Pebble Mine.

www.SaveBristolBay.org/takeaction

Sapsquatch Sugarbush’s community supported maple cooperative. words and photos by Jeremy Veverka

It requires 40 gallons of raw sap to produce 1 gallon of maple syrup.

Every winter when the short days grow longer and the frozen earth begins to thaw, it means one thing: spring is coming.

For Josh Dolan, founder of Sapsquatch Sugarbush in Enfield, New York, it means long hours at the sugarbush, collecting firewood and maple sap during the days, and late nights at the sugarshack boiling watery sap into sweet, sticky syrup. With roughly 500 maples tapped for the 2012 season, Sapsquatch is a relatively small syrup producer. For Dolan, Sapsquatch isn’t about mass-production, but rather promoting community involvement in traditional maple syrup production through education and outreach. “I’m trying to support my family and grow a community,” says Dolan.

Josh Dolan, founder of Sapsquatch Sugarbush, chops wood to keep the boiler going all night.

At a community work day volunteers load sleds with firewood to be transported back to the Sapsqautch sugar shack.

Visitors at Sapsquatch’s annual Maple Moon Party keep warm by a bonfire as they watch the full moon rise over the sugar shack .

Gaia Cooper, right, and visitors warm their hands over the boiler at Sapsquatch’s annual Maple Moon Party.

Maybe Yell pours boiled syrup through a straining cloth to remove any remaining particulates. Once it cools, it will be ready to be bottled and sold.

When the temperature reaches 220 degrees Fahrenheit, the syrup is ready to be removed from the boiler.

Ian, a regular visitor at the Sapsquatch sugarshack livens the chilly night with songs from his home country, Cuba.

The Sapsquatch sugarshack is a community space, where everyone is invited to participate in the maple sugaring process.

Sapsquatch Sugarbush is a community supported maple sugar producer based in Enfield, NY. Each year it sells CSS shares (Community Supported Sugaring,) to provide the necessary capital for the season, in exchange for a share of the syrup produced.