11 minute read
Surf Report
vcreporter.com
Manager, musician John Grimaldo discusses playing under House Arrest
by Tim Pompey tjpompey@gmail.com
House Arrest, from left: Johnny Jacinto (alto sax/lead vocals), Dennis Akesson (tenor sax/backup vocals), Freda Ramey (lead vocals), Danny Torres (keyboards), John Grimaldo (guitar/band director), DaLaun Martin (drums/percussionist) and Jeremy Kirsch (bass guitar). Photo courtesy Freda Ramey
If you could use one phrase to describe John Grimaldo and House Arrest, it’s old-school East Los Angeles with a beat. Featuring seven to nine pieces, including horns, the band’s style varies from rock to R&B to jazz to cumbia (a Mexican genre played specifically for dancing, which traces its roots to Columbia, Cuba and even German polka music). It’s a sound that Grimaldo describes as “raw, down-to-earth dancing.”
Grimaldo is from the San Fernando Valley, and recalls that, in the ’50s and ’60s, there was music everywhere. “Growing up in Pacoima, there was a band on every other block.”
Pacoima was also the hometown of Chicano rock pioneer Ritchie Valens . . . who happened to be best friends with Grimaldo’s father. And there were musicians in the family as well, like his grandfather, Ignacia Benavides and his sister, a recording artist in East L.A.
When he was young, Grimaldo came across an old, broken steel guitar a family member had tossed out. Determined to play like his grandpa, he mended the guitar using two-by-fours. According to Grimaldo, it was music that saved him from the clutches of the “Pachucos” (gang members) when he was in junior high school. “They found out I played music and left me alone,” he said.
Grimaldo’s cultural influences were two-fold: guitars and cars. In his day, they were inseparable. Like the Beach Boys and surf, he collected cars and wrote songs about his local car culture. He still drives his own classic, a 1950 Chevy Panel called Trigger.
He launched his music career in the 1960s with some original songs. As a Latino artist, it was tough to be taken seriously. Record companies considered his style of music a non-starter, and Grimaldo described being tossed out of the Troubadour when his band started playing Latin-tinged music.
Today, however, it’s another story. Grimaldo has found success with local band House Arrest, which he manages.
He points to bands like Tierra, Los Lobos and El Chicano as examples of the “feel” and culture. Grimaldo also actively recruits members and subs from his decades-old network of musician friends out of East L.A.
Asked to explain the band’s sound, Grimaldo said, “The magic is in the horns. I always have a horn section. It’s rooted in traditional Mexican music, where horns of some type were always present. Fathers and families passed this down to us. You can hear it in TexMex, and you can hear the flavor in the acoustic guitar sounds of Los Lobos.”
Now in his 70s, managing a band is a lot of work for little pay, but Grimaldo loves the music. “I do it to keep people happy, to heal people, and to see smiles on their faces.”
House Arrest features John Grimaldo (lead guitar), Johnny Jacinto and Freda Ramey (lead vocalists), Dennis Akesson (tenor sax), Ed Weiss (trombone), Ray Cordova (keyboardist), Jeremy Kirsch (bass) and DaLaun Martin (drummer). John Grimaldo Jr. is the band’s sound engineer.
CHECK LIST: p phone number is correct surf reportp address is correct p expiration date is correct p spelling is correct sponsored byPhoto of John Gianelli by Robert Chapman This proof is to check for accuracy and is not intended to show quality of reproduction. PLEASE NOTE: All advertising produced by the production department of Times Media Group, is the copyrighted property of Times Media Group. use other than the placement of advertising in any of Times Media Group’s publications is prohibited without the express consen Times Media Group, plus any applicable fees. Date: ______________________________ Signature: __________________________ p OK to run p OK to run with correction DEADLINE FOR AD CHANGES IS 12:00 NOON THE TUESDAY PRIOR TO THAT ISSUES RELEASE. Tide Table ♦ Nov. 25 - Dec. 1 Sunrise 6:40 a.m. • Sunset 4:47 p.m.12-7 Patio Restaurant 2x6.indd 1 LOW TIDE HIGH TIDE
AM HT PM HT AM HT PM HT
Thur ------ ---- 8:21 0.6 11:49 4.6 ------ ---Fri 8:07 3.6 9:20 0.6 4:34 3.7 1:10 4.2 Sat 10:03 3.1 10:10 0.7 4:54 4.0 2:49 4.0 Sun 11:09 2.4 10:54 0.7 5:14 4.4 4:15 3.9 Mon 11:59 1.6 11:33 0.9 5:37 4.9 5:26 4.0 Tues ------ ---- 12:44 0.7 6:03 5.5 6:28 4.1 Wed 12:11 1.0 1:28 -0.1 6:33 6.1 7:24 4.2
House Arrest plays every Sunday, 1-4 p.m., at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way, Oxnard. For performances at other venues, check out the band’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook. com/john.grimaldo.144. Surf Report: Northwest swell is due this Friday and Saturday with larger swells on the horizon for the end of next week.
Shopvss.com Free shipping with a $30 purchase, use code: freeship$30
IN GOOD TASTE
Collective growth
by Madeline Nathaus
The Abundant Table CSA and Farm Church community tour the King and King Ranch location (in Fillmore) with farmers Guadalupe Rojas (left, in cowboy hat), Reyna Ortega (right, waving, in baseball cap) and Allen King on Oct. 30, 2021. Photo by Lisa Devine
That love affair began with her involvement with The Abundant Table, a Latinx and women-led nonprofit workers collective focused on workers’ rights, justice, healthy eating and sustaining the land.
The Fillmore-based certified organic farm was founded in 2009. Their mission is significant and sweeping: They seek to change the way consumers think about farming through social justice, farm education and creating a connection with the land.
The Abundant Table P.O. Box 6295, Ventura 805-983-0333 info@theabundanttable.org theabundanttable.org
Re-connecting to the land
Several months ago, the farm relocated from the McGrath family farm property in Camarillo to a 3.6 acre plot of land on the King and King Ranch in Fillmore.
The change has taken some getting used to, said Smith and Guadalupe Rojas, an Abundant Table farmer. Each new land they work with offers different soil conditions, microclimates and pests. Even a small alteration in the environment changes what kind of crops the land can naturally yield and also calls for alternative approaches to weeding and pest control.
Smith, who regularly helps out on the farm, and Rojas said that with the convenience of commercialized farming, consumers have grown disconnected from where their food comes from.
Rojas, whose native language is Spanish and was translated by Smith, said, “That’s always been our mission, bringing consciousness about our relationship to the land, each other and ourselves. It is growing food but it’s also deeper than growing food, it brings you into a relationship with other beings on the land.”
Part of how they’re achieving their goal is by bringing people onto the farm to work with the soil and see where exactly their food comes from. They hope that raising this awareness will gradually change the farm system as a whole and bring the farming industry and public back to the roots of natural food production. Their farmbased education program in particular allows students of all ages to visit the farm and interact with the farm’s ecosystem.
“Bringing kids out onto the farm and from an early age giving them really formative, shaping spaces to feel that connection with land and feel that connection with the work of tending land can really have an impact on their lives and the lives around that child,” Rojas said.
The Abundant Table also offers a community supported agriculture program, or CSA, through which members can get a weekly box of organic, seasonally grown local produce for $30.
Spiritual roots
The organization began as a campus ministry with a small group of students at the California State University, Channel Islands and a small plot of land in Port Hueneme. Between the collective efforts and resources of founders Sarah Nolan, Julie Morris and Paul DeBusschere, The Abundant Table was able to offer a space in which interns could live, work the land and explore faith-rooted land healing and farm worker justice. Though the founding ministry was Christian based, the members of the Farm Church, an Abundant Table community, emphasize that their faith is nonsecular. All beliefs and backgrounds are welcome; the heart of their spirituality is the earth. Jeannette Ban, a Farm Church member and
The Abundant Table Farm Church community gathers at King and King Ranch in Fillmore for a Día de los Muertos service on Oct. 30, 2021. Photo by Lisa Devine former intern and farm coordinator, said, “It’s impossible to separate the mysteries and magic and the inherent spirituality of farming from the actual practice of it. Instead of dominating the land and changing it completely, we try to be in synergy with it and grow as partners.”
Abundant Table’s aim is to interfere with the land’s natural processes as little as possible. Farmers and other workers avoid using pesticides in favor of introducing beneficial insects to the environment and only grow produce that the land naturally grows itself. Typically, the most abundant crops are carrots and lettuce, but the harvest is regularly changing.
The farm works on a surprisingly small scale. At one point, the farm had upward of 20 employees between the board of directors and farmers. These days, they have about five people on the board and three farmers. The positions, however, are not stagnant; the farmers sit in on board meetings and the board members offer a hand in the field when they can.
Collective action
About two years ago, a mini revolution took place when the farmers voiced their need to be more included in the decisions that were being made. Thus began the transition to a workers’ collective. Though the conversation is ongoing, the objective for the farm is to function democratically, with all staff having an equal say in the decisions being made.
Rojas said he views the shift to a workers’ collective as a natural progression of the values The Abundant Table upholds at its core.
“The crux of the issue was being able to have decision making authority and there was a lot of support for that,” Rojas said.
The Abundant Table also intends to help bridge the racial and class gap by offering subsidized CSA boxes, providing fair wages for its workers, maintaining awareness about how farmers are treated and remembering the Chumash who owned the land before.
“The Abundant Table community is largely white, middle-class folk and the farm field is mainly Latinx folk and there’s a lot of reckoning with the realities of that,” Ban admitted. “Racial justice is something that we as a culture are going to be wrestling with for the rest of our lives, and our children after us will continue to wrestle with that.”
The Abundant Table is fiscally supported by individual donations, grants from departments like the USDA and CDFA and most importantly by its CSA boxes. Demand for the boxes went from 75 a week to almost 300 a week after COVID-19 began last year, due to fear that consumers would not be able to purchase nonlocal food.
During the pandemic, the farm kept farmers safe by having regular conversations about mask mandates and social distancing. Staff wanted to ensure that their farmers felt safe and willing to continue their work.
Though events and volunteering opportunities have been reduced due to COVID, The Abundant Table hopes to make them regular occurrences again once everyone has fully settled into their new farm in Fillmore. People can also get involved with the community through the Farm Church group, which has regular outside gatherings and a Facebook group.
“This farm, in terms of its community, is growing around the farmer and that farmer’s relationships to the land,” Smith said. “The space here allows us to build really authentic and meaningful and, dare I say, transformational relationships. That is why you have people who have been really committed to this, to each other and to land for 12 years through all of the ups and downs.”
