Time passes, things seem to move quickly, passing in a blur. The last month has been so full, and I’m having a tough time keeping up. Here’s a recap of some of my time since returning from tour.
7/13/18 through 7/23/18
For a number of years, I played drums in my friend Arann Harris’ band on a pretty regular basis. A little over two years ago, he semi-retired from playing shows with the full band, and I kinda retired with him. He calls me once or twice a year to play the select show, and this weekend I’d signed up to play with him at the Rivertown Revival in Petaluma.
Rivertown Revival is held right on the waterfront near downtown Petaluma and is a kinda quasi-Steampunk thing with vendors and food and live music and people in weird costumes. I hadn’t been in a while, and it was actually enjoyable to be at a music festival as a performer and not as a photographer this time. For a few reasons, I consciously decided to not bring my camera at all. It was pretty nice to just wander and enjoy my surroundings in real time. I ran into a number of people I love and got to have some quality – if sometimes brief – check-ins. I even had a total stranger come up and tell me how much she appreciates my photography work and feels inspired by what I do. I’m always amazed when stuff like that happens, and it’s heart-warming and fortifying.
We performed as scheduled, and it’s always a treat to play music with these dudes. Mike James, Jason Carr and Arann are some of my favorite people to play music with, and playing with them is like slipping on a comfortable pair of fur-lined slippers.
Pre-game
A couple days later I found myself driving to Reno to film my friend Tyler’s band, who were performing in an outdoor amphitheater outside of town. I left early in the day so I could stop in Tahoe and soak it up for a minute. I’d been pining a Tahoe visit for a while but hadn’t been able to carve out the time just yet. I stopped at my favorite swimming hole in the South Fork of the American River that runs along Hwy 50 and had a wonderfully refreshing dip. Made some lunch and talked to my daughter Aurora, who’s been living in NYC for the last number of weeks. She’s thinking of moving there when she graduates from UC Santa Cruz next year, and the idea of her doing that is exciting. It means I’ll see her less often (probably), but I think New York has so much to offer her, and I love seeing her get excited about something big and potentially challenging.
Filmed the gig that night, crashed in Reno, and the next day I woke early and headed back through Tahoe again, stopping for a walk at the top of the pass then taking a long and leisurely drive around the lake through Tahoe City and around the west side. This is the area where my parents used to own a cabin, and I always enjoy taking the opportunity to say hello. I’d spent many a summer and winter there all throughout my childhood and feel a super strong connection to it.
I headed back to the heat miser that is Mendocino County to do a little bit of work, then went to Willits to pick Mickey up and take him out to the coast to escape the heat. We had a lot of great conversation on the way (as we always do when we take road trips together), and arrived in Mendocino in the late afternoon as the temperature hit the perfect point. We walked along the beach, enjoying the cold dousing our feet got when the water from the incoming tide gently slid over them. We walked around town, got some books from the bookstore, then headed to Fort Bragg for some dinner. Got back to Willits well after the heat of the day had transmuted into the cool of the evening.
But things didn’t stop there. I headed down to Bodega the next day to film a music video for my friends the Rainbow Girls. They’d arranged to throw a small party for about 50 close friends, with the event resembling their Bodega Day party that happened back in April. They wanted to have the video feature their community of musicians/artists/weirdos doing what they love to do; perform and create and celebrate. I had lots of time in the afternoon to try and figure out what I was going to do (because I’m a noob filmmaker and had no real shot list or game plan or anything that would be something professional), and began capturing footage as soon as people began trickling in. Around 6:00 or so, the musical performances started in their little barn, and I began the frantic running back and forth trying to capture that, as well as getting footage of people just hanging out and enjoying the party.
We filmed the girls playing along with the song for the actual music video part of the thing. Despite the awkwardness of lip-synching their song, they were troopers and ran through the song a few times and quickly resumed the partying. There was another run-through or five of the song later in the night when we had a substantial crowd to act as audience for the band and the little courtyard outside the barn was beautifully lit and dreamy. I was glad to get a little assistance from Bradley Cox, an amazing and talented photographer who lives on the property with the girls and offered to film some footage as well. We wrapped that part of the evening up and the performances in the barn resumed until the wee hours of the morning
I spent all of the next day parked by the ocean just north of Bodega Bay where I sat in the van and worked on photos from the end of tour and started trying to edit video from the tour as well. It was a pretty enjoyable way to spend the day, listening to the surf pound on the beach below and having some quiet time to focus and work without distraction.
A few days later I headed back to Ukiah to do some work, not being stoked at all to be back in the stifling heat. Luckily I’d arranged to connect with my friend Aviva, a talented musician and fellow Capoerista who’d booked time in a gorgeous house on the top of McNab Ranch to record her first record. She’d hired me to come up and make some photos of the process and just hang out, which I was glad to do. The road was rough and steep and I surprised myself by getting my van all the way to the top, but not without sustaining a little bit of discombobulation and disarray inside the van from all the jostling.
The time spent with Aviva and her band was magical. They were recording in a small wooden outbuilding with full-size sliding doors open on two sides, giving the room a partial outdoor feel and letting in lots of natural light. The property sits on top of the mountain adorned by huge oak and madrone trees and silent in the way that only places far removed from populated areas can be. Spending time in places like this are what keeps me coming back to Mendocino County over and over again. There are things about living out in the country that can get old and cumbersome, but relaxing in a hammock suspended between two huge oak trees, surrounded by acres of pristine woods and open meadows with only the sounds of insects and chirping birds never does.
They did some recording, then took a long break for dinner, then resumed recording back in the barn until almost midnight. The music is sweet and somewhat whimsical, folky and intimate, unique and familiar. Watching talented musicians work together to create and record a musical moment is something I always appreciate, and making photos of it is something special.
