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Stan Charles O N E M U S C I A N S ’ H E A R T B E AT BY SEAN MCALINDIN
“I
’ve been hiding out like a hermit, recording nonstop,” says Stan Charles from his home studio in Glenshire. A computer screen full of half-finished files gives hint to the way his mind works. “I can hyper-focus on recording or writing songs, but then I can’t find my keys,” says the 42-year-old multi-instrumentalist. “I’ll lose my phone 10 times a day. Really dumb stuff. But I haven’t written nonstop like this before. Ideas are spewing out of me from all different directions.” Charles grew up in the San Francisco Bay community of Redwood Shores with his younger sister Jenni, the fiddler and frontwoman for Tahoma Americana band Dead Winter Carpenters. His first memories of music were singalongs as a 2-year-old in the band van with his father, legendary cowboy entertainer Pete Charles. As a toddler, he took drum lessons from Kenney Dale Johnson, a Marin County session drummer who plays with Chris Isaak. By age 6, he started piano lessons and soon picked up the guitar. Charles was always a natural musician who played by ear and feel. “I never got good at reading music, so I’d fake it,” he says. “In my older age, I’m understanding it’s my meditation. I can’t calm my mind even with guides or whatever, but I can sit down and play a riff for three hours straight.” A true child of 90s California, Charles was a fifth grader at Catholic elementary school when he formed proto-rock groups, Armada and One Shot, which later morphed into punk band, On the
Brink. After high school, he studied music at California State University, Long Beach where he immersed himself in Rastafari culture while touring with Dub Kinetics and The Lighter Thieves. “I was a white skater punk who wanted to learn where reggae came from,” he says. “I went to the local church and read the Kebra Nagast. I got way deep into it. It was very spiritual to me.” In 2004, Charles moved to the mountains and founded hip-hop reggae collaborative, Truckee Tribe. He cut his teeth on wild, late-night gigs at the infamous Pastime Club in Truckee. “It was the f*in’ Wild West,” he says. His local popularity eventually led to opening slots for lionized artists such as The Wailers, Eek-a-Mouse and Lyrics Born. When Covid arrived, heartbreak paired with seemingly, never-ending restrictions on live entertainment guided the long-time Tahoe Sierra musician inward. He split with the mother of his 5-yearold daughter, Mazzy (named after shoegaze icons Mazzy Star), and left his job as a music educator at Tahoe Expedition Academy to focus on his own work. Charles now has around 50 new compositions in varying degrees of completion. “It was a dark time,” he says. “I holed myself up for two years. I was playing sad songs. I was staying up all night with a song in my head. The weird thing is I like the songs. It was my therapy to get it out.” Charles is planning to release his solo music under the pseudonym, Technical Difficulties. His music is varied, com-
Truckee songwriter Stan Charles at work in his home studio. | Mazzy Charles
plex and soulful, as if Beck met Stick Figure on the road to Seattle. “Beautiful Hot Mess” and “Hard Times” are warm emo-ballads about his ex, Veronica Lichter of femme-rock trio Rogue (formerly Burning Nylon). “Bye Polar” starts out as a low-key Death Cab for Cutie tune before morphing into melodic one-drop rhythm with a vocal delivery reminiscent of the Barenaked Ladies on Xanax. Charles’ music fits squarely in the realm of genre-bending bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and 311, with the dynamic “Mellow Fellow” seamlessly transitioning from atmospheric rock to funky hip-hop at a moment’s notice. On songs like “Stay Up” and “Astral Travelin,” he follows his muse deep into a swampland of stripped-back New Orleans groove.
“Wonderful Life” weaves feel-good island vibes evoking modern groups such as Pepper and Rebelution. For “Proud Boys,” Charles goes full-on country tilt for a sarcastic play on modern white supremacy. “I like to make people think,” he says. “If you look at my lyrics, I probably thought about that sentence three times and there is probably three different meanings to it.” One thing’s for sure: the music sounds like him. “This is a whole different chapter of weirdness,” says Charles. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do I feel like I’m doing something for myself. Then again, I might have gone crazy. All these songs might suck.” | stancharlesmusic.com n
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