Episode 18: Christine Shields

The Who Cares Anyway Podcast · Dec 08, 2023

Transcript

SPEAKER_01

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I've always been a person that does a lot of different creative things ever since I was a little kid like probably too many

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Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the who cares anyway podcast my guest is

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Christine Shields and here I will read from her bio at christineshields .net Christine Shields is an artist and musician from Northern California. She grew up in various locations most of them rural from the Central Coast to the Sierra foothills. A solitary life in nature along with the influence of a vast range of Californians including hippies, cowboys, bohemians, and punks shaped her early life. At the age of 17, she moved to San Francisco, attended the Art Institute, and played in her first band as a drummer. Her creative life built around necessity and imagination has taken many forms, including painting, comics, music, and illustration. She currently resides in Sacramento, California. Christine Shields is on that list of people whom I neglected to interview, but certainly could have and perhaps should have

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for the book, but I wanted to include In this audio series as a compliment to the book given that she connects With a lot of what's discussed toward the end of the book But also to some things that were happening concurrently in New York City in the mid 90s as we'll hear and then also in San Francisco after the period in the book So talking about things like the mission school that centered around Adobe books that in turn connects back to Laura Allen a previous guest on this podcast series, and to Christine Shields painting. But those of you who, like me, are primarily music people, you'll know her drawings or illustrative work from various releases that you might have in your collection by Sun City Girls, Zip Code Rapists, Phil Franklin, or Franklin's Mint, etc. And then she also contributed artwork to several issues of Banana Fish including cover art and boy that is still just scratching the surface. We'll also hear about a solo album that she recorded with Tim Mooney formerly of the Sleepers and American Music Club in the late 2000s and then also hear a tribute to one Ronnie Burns whose name came up first really after I'd done my research for the book but he passed away and I believe 2020 or 2021. And so there's a little connection back

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to Sacramento and and or Stockton, that part of California, which again, not San Francisco, but part of the broader Northern California, sort of a landscape at the time. So without any further ado, we'll go ahead and get into this interview with Christine Shields.

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I graduated when I was 17 and I moved with my high school boyfriend into this house on Oak Street, this flat with the Oak Street girls as they are still called today. And I really needed to get out of my town. Like, I came from a really messed up kind of family situation. So the relationship with the high school boyfriend did not last, but it got me out of my family home and into this amazing life in San Francisco. So that's how I showed up. So I was like 17, moved in and all these girls were like, just, I mean, they're still like my best friends and sisters to this day. And they're like, Hey, you're part of like our household now. And do you want to be in a band? And I was like, okay, like you just play one drum, you know, and we would like share clothes and we get dressed up all crazy when we performed with Archipelago Brewing Company. It was really fun.

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Was that so I've I've even after all the research

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and interviews I've done, I'm a little unclear about this. The trampolines. Is that was that in ABC or Carolina or both? OK,

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but you see, the thing is is that we were like a sister band to Carolina. Carolina. We had many of the same members. Jessica Luther was in ABC and also in Carolina and Brandon. And sometimes Rux's girlfriend, Tanya, at the time would come. I think she was a goddamn girl drummer, as they're called. Maybe I could be getting that wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a picture where she's playing and we would just, we'd have like guest drummers. And, and I played with Carolina once. And yeah, Greg slipped right down the street. He's one of the first people I met when I moved there.

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Okay. Cause I was wondering about how those connections were made, but how did you find that house in the first place?

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So,

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um, Chris and Janna and Jessica and me and Darcy, boy Darcy, and then later there's boy Darcy and girl Darcy anyway, we'll get to that, but, um, but we were all from the Nevada city area, had lived there, you know, or we're from there. and so they were friends with boy Darcy and we just moved right in with them and then he moved out and I stayed and actually like Chris and I had also both lived in this tiny little area it's called the San Juan Ridge and Barbara Manning also is from there but I didn't know until I moved to San Francisco.

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Okay.

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So, and then to bring it back to the Art Institute. So like when I was interviewing people from the early era, like the late seventies, you know, the early Mabuhay Gardens punk scene, you know, there was a whole lot of crossover between that and the Art Institute. And part of it was how close those things were, you know, and how much North Beach was really central at that time. But from the period when you were there, the only person I know off the top of my head who went there was Darcy, maybe Harvey Stafford, I'm not sure. Yeah, he just texted me too, yeah.

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Okay, but was there, other than that, was there much crossover between the Art Institute and this kind of music scene or was it? No,

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and it was weird. And I've actually talked about that before because I felt like I had a double life. I did move there to go to the Art Institute and I took a semester off and then started in the fall, I mean in the spring of 88 and I felt like I had this art school life and this music life because all we ever did, And, you know, with the Oak Street Girls, we are either playing shows, getting ready to play shows or going to shows. We went to music shows all the time, constantly or parties. I it was just like a nonstop party in the Lower Haight for those few years, you know, and it was really fun and, and wild. It's pretty wild.

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But

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that, the lower hate where you live, but then the venues, I'm thinking that was really the peak of the chameleon era, or no, the

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chameleon. So at that point, the same space that would become the chameleon was called the chatterbox.

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Okay.

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And sometimes we'd go like, all the way out to the mission, and it was all like boarded up on Valencia Street, and I was like, Whoa, where are we is a lot. This is a long ways away like edge of town Which seems so funny now, but um, it was the chatterbox and it was like You know this little down -and -dirty Rock -and -roll punk rock

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club and

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Suppose that I just found a book on it actually a while ago. I was like, oh my god. There's a book about the chatterbox Supposedly, Johnny Thunders had hung out there and written his name on the wall or something. Okay. So there's all this weird lore around the Chatterbox, and then it became the Chameleon, I guess, probably around the time I moved to Mission, which was 91.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So,

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but as far as the Art Institute and the music scene, I mean, it seemed weird to me that it was so separate and kind of a shame, but I remember, I didn't even like the Art Institute at first. I thought everyone was super mean and I wanted to leave. I wanted to go to state where all my friends went, but then I, after a while, I started to make friends and I realized not everybody was mean. and they were just damaged like weirdos from whatever little town they were from and they were shy. So I made some friends, but somehow like I noticed a lot of people that were into art weren't that into music or at least I thought they weren't into very good music. I know it's snobby, but I was snobby. And then the people in the music scene I was in just thought that Art Institute people were elitist and posers. That was the feeling I got. And I was like, well, you know, I was very serious about being a painter. So I was like, I'm just going to keep going to school because I want to learn how to paint and do the other things I was doing.

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But that's where I met Darcy, a .k .a. Dame Darcy, in animation class, and met Jaina Davis there, and Harvey I already knew because he had dated one of the goddamn girl drummers, our friend Mary Garrison. They had dated and they met in a really funny way. I'm like, does Harvey want me to tell this story? But anyway, he showed up at the Art Institute like he was just there one day and I'm like, Harvey? What are you doing here? He came over from CCA or CCAC as it was known then, before they got rid of the craft part. And he later told me I was the only person that was nice to him there.

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Yeah. Okay.

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But Harvey, Harvey's great.

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And yeah, so then, you know, and he was living in the mission and then there was, I kind of segued into that whole scene too, which was a little different.

SPEAKER_00

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Yeah. It's at some point in here, I'm not sure if the exact timeline by any means, but you started doing stuff for, for banana fish, but maybe that was later.

SPEAKER_01

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No, that was, yeah, that was like around 90, I guess, yeah, I think it was before. So I lived at Oak Street for four years. And then the household just kind of started to fall apart and some people moved out and I moved to this weird area off of Visidero and Geary that I jokingly called Lower Pacific Heights.

SPEAKER_01

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But I guess it's actually called that now. And it was this really nice Victorian flat across from the projects that people from the Art Institute had lived in, and and their friends for a long time. So I lived there and Dame Darcy lived there. And my friend, Eric Beck, who's also really tied into the music world. And so I lived there for a while and then I was like, I don't want to live here anymore. So I moved to the mission into a haunted house. And then yeah, you know, but I already knew some of the like guys from you know, I'd already met Seymour Glass and you know, some of the guys from like communion distribution slash Boner records, like that whole scene. And Harvey was tied into that because he did all those like amazing Melvin's record covers.

SPEAKER_00

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Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Yeah,

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they're really cool. He did them in the, you know, in the style of those Kiss album covers.

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Oh, right. Okay. Those were Oh, okay.

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You know, one of each. Yeah.

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Okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Yes.

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And yeah, there was also, he lived, he lived with Chaz and, and this guy, Bob McDonald on Mission Street in the Starlight Warehouse.

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Okay. That connects a dot as far as why that label is called what it is. Starlight. Yeah. Okay.

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Yeah. Which I guess I do a drawing of that for

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like I did for banana fish, but yeah. And, and don't know if Harvey told you about his infamous birthday party there, but that was one of the craziest things.

SPEAKER_00

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Yeah. I've actually never, I reached out to interview him, but he put, but he told me I interview this other person instead because it was I was specifically reaching out about the pet hospital which is a little earlier oh yeah so he put me in touch with someone else and sort of deferred and so I've never actually talked to him other than just the message I

SPEAKER_01

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forgot he lived at the pet hospital which also Donald the nut from three days stubble lived at and that place was I think I was laying there a couple times but I remember a really crazy party there too where Unfortunately, everyone got so wasted in somebody's like films were all ruined and there was a big fight. But that place was creepy. It was felt super haunted by pets or veterinarians. I don't know. But it was a weird, weird place, I thought. Yeah. But then Harvey lived in on Mission Street. So, and that was, that was the chameleon era that started then.

SPEAKER_00

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Yeah, so, so all this is happening kind of as you're wrapping up it at the Art Institute and then, I don't know what comes next after that as far as, because I know you had at least a few more years in San Francisco before moving to, to New York but we're, and you doing a lot of different things as far as drawing album cover illustrations that got used on album covers but then your different contributions to zines and then later your comic book but I don't know the whole timeline on that and if you were at that point maybe trying to figure at a course between like this underground kind of music world or adjacent to music world versus some kind of more capital A art career and kind of where were you in that period right after you finished? That's a good

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question. I may still be trying to figure that out.

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But, um, you know, like I, as a younger person, before I came to San Francisco, I was always obsessed with music and, you know, those were the kids I would hang out with in high school, you know, like the weirdo punk rock new waver kids. And we just go to shows all the time whenever I could get away with it or sneak out of the house. So that was already my world. And then I lived in Sacramento also for a year. There was like a great scene in Sacramento. Sacramento is really interesting little music history scene. But that was my world. I was like, I love music and I love to draw. And I was also obsessed with fashion and these like certain illustrators that were amazing fashion illustrators. And I just wanted to draw all the things that were woven into the world of music. And, you know, this whole world of the style of it and everything that was like what I escaped into away from my family and stuff. So moving into the city it was just like a continuation of that where I was still at shows all the time and I like to draw so people would ask me to do stuff and I would do it. And I wanted to be a serious painter. But I also didn't really know how to that seemed like this really elitist world that I didn't have entree into. And so when I moved to New York, which is not that much later, it was like 9093. And I had no idea how to even approach that world or where, you know, I went, I just slid right into this kind of comics and zine and illustration and shows more music stuff that that's just what I did. All of that jumbled up together.

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And Darcy and I were in a band together.

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Yeah, she mentioned that. Yeah, I hadn't realized that that was in New York until recently when I was reading it the way she told it to me, because everyone in it, I thought had lived in San Francisco, as well. I don't know about Ian Christie. He had not lived in San Francisco.

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But he would come out and visit later, after he met Harvey and, and other people. But he lived in Hoboken at the time. And I met him through, I moved to New York. And then I think Darcy lived in like Rhode Island or Providence or something. And then moved down to the city and we all ended up in Brooklyn and we had this band for a little while. But she and I had also, since we were both really into animation, I was obsessed with film, but I thought I can never raise the money to make a film. so comics were like a little like a cheap way to make something like a film like a story with pictures and it was just really natural to to segue into that and illustration and she was doing her comics and she played banjo and then I learned to play banjo and I tap danced so we just started like doing this stuff together. And it continued for a while in New York.

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I admit, I have not seen copies, just some stills online of Blue Hole, but I was trying to get a sense of, you know, how that fit in to the sort of landscape where you've got like the underground music zines with Banana Fish certainly being a prime example of that. But then there's this comics world, but they're comic zines. And in a sense, I gather that that's kind of its own space or its own thing. Was there much overlap in terms of the underground music zines versus the comics that that you doing?

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Oh, there's tons of overlap. I as far as like the people that were, yeah, I would say in San Francisco,

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like, you know, that's like around the time that Darcy and I were roommates. And oh, by the way, like before that, when I met her at the Art Institute, then she met, you know, my roommates and friends. And I'm not sure if that's how she ended up in Carolina, but maybe, but she moved in to this household with Darcy Drollinger, who was in this band Enrique, who are amazing, and my old high school friend Jason Messier. So they had girl Darcy and boy Darcy at the time in this house. Then I moved in with her later. And so we were just really both in this same scene of people that was like the Communion, Revolver, Boner Records crew, Seymour Glass, Banana Fish, and she was in Carolina, and then she met Lisa Suckdog and was doing a lot of stuff for Roller Derby, and Lisa was friends with Jaina, and Jaina had a zine called Flatter, which I did a lot of stuff in. So we did a lot of stuff together and separately, but we had like a lot in common at that time. And then we both ended up in New York in another, like this group of comic book artists. It was so fun, like a wild crew.

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And there weren't like very many women doing comics then in that, in New York.

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So,

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yeah, yeah, and then, you know, I'm not, I have only the most cursory knowledge of comics kind of in general, but I know the late 60s, San Francisco there, it had its own obviously tradition with Crom, Clay Wilson and Crom, yeah, was there, was that something that was on people's radar screens or did that seem like a distant, I mean, I don't how distant that seemed in the past. Obviously, it's not the same social circles, but was was that stuff at all an influence? Or that? Um,

SPEAKER_01

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well, it's weird, because like, as time goes by, you start to see how everyone's connected. Like Robert Crumb's crazy brother was on the street then he used if you've ever seen that film crumb. Yeah,

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you know, I was like, Oh

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my god, that's that guy that we always see on the street. And, you know, there are all these connections. And then, like, later, like getting to know, like, Dan Klaus, and he knows Krumm, like they all know each other. And so there's some connection. But for me personally, as far as influence wise, like I was aware of it. Like I worked on H Street. So the hippie dream was still holding on. I guess

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00:24:55

it would be kind of like saying, yeah, is the, was the Grateful Dead an influence on Carolina?

SPEAKER_00

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That's about the, that's about as, as, as course of a question as I'm kind of, you know, but it's kind of like, I can only make these analogies. And I imagined that it was like, that's a pretty different era, pretty different mindset.

SPEAKER_01

00:25:16

No, but it's, it's, but I mean, it is part of the family tree for sure. Because, I and Crumb himself wasn't really like into the hippie thing. He just was doing his thing and it, you know, he really aesthetically affected the counterculture. But anyway, his, you know, Keep on Truckin' and the Cheap Thrills album cover, like this stuff was just around all the time, living in the hate. and I grew up in a hippie town, but personally, for me, what got me into comics was Love and Rockets, the Hernandez brothers, OK, that the band is named after. OK, so I just became obsessed with that in the late 80s. And I think that planted a seed in my mind. Yeah. Yeah, so that's more but I'm sure they I'm sure they know from they all know each other. And then when I moved to New York and Darcy was in New York. She knew these comic book artists, and I knew, you know, like, all these people knew each other. there. And the music and comic scenes were separate, but they overlapped. You know, and a lot of these people worked at screw magazine, which is a really trippy scene. It like,

SPEAKER_00

00:26:52

I think it was in the banana fish interview where you talked about writing for that publication as well as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and your verdict was that screw was easier to work with or work for and yeah,

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I mean, the guy who ran Screw was a controversial figure for sure. But they had the world's nicest art director, Kevin Hein. I think that's okay that I and he's just a wonderful person. And he, he just, they had, you know, they had the money to stockpile covers. So if somebody was desperate to make their rent or whatever, you could just call them up and say, can I do a cover? Yeah, sure.

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It wasn't a lot of money, but, and then I remember, I mean, they just had these crazy parties there. The people who worked there were either like rockers or like comic weirdos. Those are the people that worked in the offices there. So the parties would be like rocker people or like punk rockers. I don't know, whatever you want to call them. Rocker seems to fit better for that scene. And strippers and porn people and like comic nerds. And that spectrum of all like hanging out together.

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It was like boogie nights. when I saw Boogie Nights, I was like, Screw Magazine was like the poor man's Boogie Nights. But they had, I wandered into, I went looking for the bathroom once and the art director was actually horrified that I found the men's room. He's like, Oh no, there's a nice ladies bathroom, which was all pink and clean. But I was like, What? No, the men's bathroom has our crumb graffiti. Speaking of art from, because all these like really famous underground cartoonists had worked for them for a long time. So they had amazing graffiti in the bathroom.

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This would have been mid 90s New York or yeah,

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exactly.

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Then eventually you went from there to LA. Is that right?

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Or was there something I came

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back to say, I always came back to San Francisco. I've moved there's back there so many times. But yeah. Oh, and by the way, like a lot of these people works for the New York Press and like the village voice, stuff like that. And they all and they were just a great group of people who were would help you get jobs. They were really supportive of each other. Unlike what I saw in like the art world. So I guess I just to me at At time, I felt like that's where the excitement was, was going to shows and like the Lower East Side and East Village and stuff and all the kind of zine culture happening. It was really great. But yeah, I came back to San Francisco, tried to keep being an illustrator, but the work ethic that I had learned in New York didn't fly in California, which is why I said, like, it's easier to work for, you know, screw.

SPEAKER_01

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It was just a different scene. I lived there a couple years again, and then moved to LA for a couple

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I think it was a different interview where you said something. I think it was one that I was reading online where he said that it got kind of, I don't know if dark was the word, but mid 90s. But I gather that that's kind of, you know, there was a period in, let's say 95, 96, 97, where a lot of like bands are breaking up, people are moving away. And maybe early .com stirrings are happening and changing things. But it's I gather that's that was when you had that that stint there of two years before moving to LA or or what? Was it about it that? Seemed unpleasant at that time. I

SPEAKER_01

00:31:22

actually I Think I was probably referring to why I moved to New York. I'm guessing because that The scene got really dark, you know, that just happened. Sometimes it was like It was really amazing. I mean You know fax Ted bands like that. We're at all the all these great bands were playing at the chameleon It was like everyone's living room. It was amazing and you know other play other venues as well, but There was really a lot of great stuff going on at the same time. It felt really really dark and People were not really being very cool to each other. There's a lot of mean mean attitude and some not very great drugs circulating. It's just, it's like a dark cloud camped out over the mission for a while. And I was like, I am, I'm sick of this. And, and it was just, my life was just pushing me like go somewhere else. And I was gonna, I was gonna move to Prague but I ended up in New York instead. I'm glad I did. And so that was like way before the kind of dot com thing really was a few years before that. And then I came back and yeah, it was kind of like, it was okay. But I just, I think there were breakups, breakups too, or I was like, I need to move. That's what I would do. Then I can't stand to be here anymore, move to another city.

SPEAKER_01

00:32:56

But then when I, yeah, I moved to LA until 2000 and came back and then that was like a new, totally new scene at like Adobe Books and that was

SPEAKER_00

00:33:11

great. I wanted to ask you about that because there, you know, we were, we would have been there at the same time, but somehow, um, maybe a couple of degrees of, of, or one degree of separation because I certainly knew where Adobe books was and other people I knew would talk about these events there and somehow it just wasn't where that wasn't where I was ending up. But did you see there in the early 2000s in terms of like what was exciting? And they talk about the mission school. Was that already a term that was being used at the time?

SPEAKER_01

00:33:43

I guess it was starting to be used then. So and of course, all these little scenes, all, you know, they're like this Venn diagram,

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right?

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They all bleed into each other, they all like move around.

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But um, I had gone into Adobe Books, because Laura Allen worked there. Before I lived in L .A., you know, it was a place I would stop in and just had a lot of character. The owner, Andrew, was just such a welcoming, interesting person. He loved artists and poets and musicians and weirdos. So all these people would just, you know, end up there. So I already kind of knew that about Adobe, but then I moved to L .A. and came back, and then I walked into Adobe and felt something, you know, because just from scenes I'd been in at neighborhoods before in my life, I started to be able to recognize this kind of electric electric feeling and not take it for granted like I may have before like, oh, this is just what it's like. It's not always what it's like. It's like there are special times when things gel in a certain way. And when I came back, I felt it. I felt the electric feeling at Adobe. And I was like, something's happening here. And it's good. And what was especially good about it for me was that But the musicians and the artists were not separate at all at that point. Everybody was like interwoven. The artists made music, the musicians made art, and they weren't separate scenes. And there was just all of a sudden all this talent and character congealing in this place. So, yeah, there were so some people I'd known from before, like Laura Allen, and some people that I, I met tons of people there, like Chris Johanson, and so many others, like John Dwyer from the OCs was around and I was like, this guy's amazing. And yeah, it's just, oh gosh, I mean, I've wanted to make a whole book just about Adobe called the Adobe book. That's just ephemera and art and people writing about it because it really should exist, but I just, I'm like, I can't do all that.

SPEAKER_01

00:36:30

But I hope it does happen because it was just and still continues. It's not the heyday anymore, but yeah, it's just been one of those hubs. The mission school started with people who I happened to be at the San Francisco Art Institute with, but I wasn't really connected to them at that time. I knew some of them, but like Alicia McCarthy and Margaret, no, not Margaret, she wasn't there. Barry McKee and Ruby and anyway, there were people that were like going out and doing graffiti and I was sort of aware of the graffiti art and I, you know, when I moved to New York And then when I came back and met Chris Johansson, I realized, oh, he's friends with all those people. So while I was away, this whole kind of congealing of this art scene had happened. And people were like the core of what was later called the mission school. But some people describe it as like a larger group of people, which it really should be.

SPEAKER_01

00:38:01

But yeah, it's been fun in a certain way, of course.

SPEAKER_00

00:38:06

Was mission school or that kind of activity what inspired you to take up painting again? or?

SPEAKER_01

00:38:14

Well,

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SPEAKER_01

00:38:16

guess I was in sort of a no man's land, personally in LA for a couple years, I was like, What am I doing? Like, I still played banjo. And I still did art did illustration stuff. Sometimes I worked at the museum, Mocha, but I never quite could get my just didn't feel like I fit there or something. so I left. But I've always been a person that does a lot of different creative things. Ever since I was a little kid, like probably too many, I have to stop myself because I just, I'm curious like, how do you, I want to figure out how to do that, but I've always drawn and painted. And so I've just gone through different iterations of using those skills to do different things, which sometimes make me a living, and sometimes are my just my own creative vision. So I do think I showed up back there and I, I saw and felt this thing that was happening. And there were people, you know, that knew me from before who are like, hey, you know, be in this show, you know, because of like juxtaposed magazine, stuff like that. There was this kind of, I don't know, I don't really love the term lowbrow or feel like a part of that exactly or what it's become. But there was a part of the art world, which was really like influenced by more illustrative or comic art qualities. and there were a lot of shows for that kind of work. And that's sort of like blended into the mission school thing or the mission, just the style of the mission neighborhood doing art. And also creativity explored was across the street from Adobe, which is like, if you know that place, the art center for adults with developmental disabilities. And I really feel like their presence in the mission and in San Francisco has really affected the aesthetic in a great way. There's so many great artists that came out of there and they always send collaborations with artists that don't have disabilities. And so that was a big part of it. So there's just all this like really great crossover. And it really had a inclusive feeling more than other scenes in the art world that I've seen.

SPEAKER_00

00:41:15

This might have been a place where we were in the same room at the same time, which would have been 2005 -ish, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00

00:41:23

but James Goode did a thing, this eight channel audio thing at a house in Potrero Hill that had the pencil staircase. And I thought the house was called Pennsylvania, but the house has a different name, but yeah, what, what's the story behind that house and your involvement in it?

SPEAKER_01

00:41:43

Yeah. So, so Jaina, um, AKA Jaina B who had gone to the art institute for a while and then dropped out and had been in this band Enrique with my Nevada City High School friends. Jaina purchased a house at some point and then they just started inviting their friends to do stuff there and I mean sometimes we did probably didn't know what we were doing but I was one of the main people and Jason Messier who's such an amazing artist did the pencil stairway did a portrait of Jaina as an old woman as granny the character of Granny's Empire of Art, which is what that place is called in James Good I had known James Good since I started at the Art Institute because he was one of these weirdos who, after a while, you realize they're not a student there. You're like, you don't go to school here, do you?

SPEAKER_01

00:42:53

So he just hung out and he'd come from a really interesting, you know, scene of like the way he grew up in New York. was pretty trippy. So, you know, his dad had a theater that showed John Waters first films and apparently Cookie Mueller was his babysitter, which I'm just so blown away by. Anyway, so James, he was just always around and I already knew him. And then, you know, he was connected to the Carolina people and then Phil moved out in the early 90s and I went out with Phil and yeah, we went out like many times over the years. So, and James and Phil had gone to art school together. So there's just, it's all a big web. It's this crazy web, but yeah, James did that piece at Granny's Empire of Art And Jason and I worked together and Kate Finker and other artists doing all this amazing stuff that granny's over the years. So it's an art house.

SPEAKER_00

00:44:14

Yeah. Yeah, I had never seen anything like that,

SPEAKER_00

00:44:18

that staircase in particular, but and I didn't necessarily even get to see the rest of the house cause it was mostly dark. I it wasn't like a tour of the house. It's just that that's where the thing was. But coming back to the music thing, so your album came out in 2010 with someone who, oh, kind of in terms of the book, it connects back to the very beginning of the book. Tim Mooney being in The Sleepers and being then in Toiling Midgets, you know, was part of the real early period that I got into. And then that album that you did at his studio, he played drums on it, and that would have been really toward the very end of his life. But were the circumstances behind that as far as, you know, working with Tim Mooney and uh, at his studio there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

00:45:14

So, um, my cousin, Jude Mooney was, was married to Tim and

SPEAKER_00

00:45:21

like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

00:45:23

So, and I mean, that's another crazy story. My cousin and I didn't know each other existed until we met at the art Institute through a painting.

SPEAKER_01

00:45:33

and that's another really, like strange story. But we found each other and we've been super close ever since. And she married Tim Mooney. And at some point, you know, she's he had this really great recording studio.

SPEAKER_00

00:45:51

Closer, closer. Okay, closer, closer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

00:45:55

That Joe Goldring was at. And they had a whole scene going on there. And Jude said to Tim that he should make an album with me. I was like, Oh my god, because I you know, a lot of my life I played music with other people, but I never considered myself a musician, really, just a music lover. And I was kind of shy about it. I had made some recordings that Seymour Glass put out with Banana Fish, and that was sort of like the first music of my own that was put out into the world. So it was something I always wanted to do, and it ended up happening. He worked on, he played drums on it. I mean, really, I really feel like that album is, it's Tim's album too. He puts so much into it. I wrote all the music and I made a lot of the decisions and I brought in a lot of people to play on it. Really great musician friends like Willie Winan and Sheila Bosco and Joe Goldring and Tim, of course, played on it. Oh, gosh, I hope I'm not leaving anyone out.

SPEAKER_01

00:47:18

But and friends came in and sang on it, Jane and B. And anyway, it was it was really a great experience. But sort of a tragic thing happened, which I won't get too deep into, but the guy who was had become like a partner in had started a record label and had really wanted to work with Tim and he wanted me on his label and that's how all this happened and then he kind of went in a really bad direction and so the music just got shelved which was really heartbreaking for me. I was like, I can't believe this. You know, that's like, one of the best things I feel like I've ever done. And it's just never gonna come out. But then, Phil Franklin, when we were back together, said, Why don't you ask Chris Johanson to put it out? And I was like, I can't I can't do that. I'm terrible at asking for things. I just, it's really hard for me. But he pushed me to do it and I asked Chris, who had this great record label, Awesome Vistas, did small batches that are all handmade, like silkscreen, there's beautiful,

SPEAKER_01

00:48:39

beautiful records. And I asked him and he's like, Oh, yeah, I want to do it. So that's how it ended up happening. It took a while.

SPEAKER_00

00:48:50

But

SPEAKER_01

00:48:51

that's

SPEAKER_00

00:48:51

how

SPEAKER_01

00:48:51

that came to be.

SPEAKER_00

00:48:52

Okay, I couldn't figure out what it came out in 2010. Yeah. Okay. So then it was recorded. If it took a while, then it must have been recorded more like what? Seven or something. I don't know. Like, I

SPEAKER_01

00:49:07

guess maybe. Yeah. Oh, seven or eight. Yeah. I think it took a couple of years.

SPEAKER_00

00:49:15

Okay. Okay. So then it wasn't as close to the end of Tim Mooney's life as I thought that it was getting there. Yeah. In Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

00:49:27

And so, and it seems like that was a one -off. I at a certain point you, I don't know when you moved from San Francisco, how long ago that was to where, I guess you're in Sacramento now.

SPEAKER_01

00:49:40

Well, I had moved out to upstate New York in like 2008 with Phil Franklin and then you know the economic downturn happened and we ended up moving to Sacramento into this family house of mine here and it was supposed to be temporary but it ended up being quite a while yeah and we We a lot of music and art stuff together. And then I moved back to San Francisco for a couple years and then I ended up back in Sacramento.

SPEAKER_01

00:50:20

SPEAKER_00

00:50:20

What was the last time? I don't know. I imagine you don't get the snapshots that I do because like I would go out there and and there might be five years in between. Like the last, I had a gap that went 2016, 2019, 2023. And so each time I would go out there, it would just be kind of jarring in terms of how much had changed. But was there a point when it just got to be like, this is too much for one reason or another,

SPEAKER_00

00:50:50

or was it just too unlike what it had been before or just too impractical to live there or all of the above?

SPEAKER_01

00:50:58

All of the above, and it happened in like, kind of like waves, you know, I'd say like some people, when the dot com thing happened, you know, when I was trying to move back from LA to there, I thought, Oh, no, I'm not going to be able to afford a place, but I was able to move right back into the rent control department I lived in before. so it was I was able to do that and then the adobe that whole scene in the mission was so vibrant that I was thanking my lucky stars that I came back but later it started to it just got harder and harder as people lost their foothold and the last stint that I did there when I was managing Adobe, the new Adobe books, I just couldn't make it, you know, I, I, I couldn't move out of where I was, there was no way I could, I couldn't afford anything. So, and I didn't like it anymore. You know, I just, when you've had like a glorious time and a place in your youth, and then it, It changes so much and it makes it so hard to do what you love to do. Then it's hard to stay there I would have if something a door had opened up, but it really didn't so I was like, well, okay I gotta I gotta go but you know, I still I Still go there will be events in San Francisco where everyone comes out of the woodwork from a certain scene and it'll be great.

SPEAKER_01

00:52:45

Or when it's a beautiful sunny day there and everything's just right, the magic is still there. But I usually don't feel like I can or want to live there anymore.

SPEAKER_00

00:53:01

Yeah, I feel like the extremes have gotten more extreme and that's really dissonant. Like there's some real dissonant juxtapositions situations, such as five -star restaurant, pantless person with syringe in arm out front kind of. And the extremes of wealth and opulence and the extremes of misery and desperation side by side like that is kind of, yeah, dissonant is, I don't know, that's the best word I can think of. But I

SPEAKER_01

00:53:40

mean, it's the same here in Sacramento to a lesser degree. But people are really down the whole state. And maybe the whole West Coast. It's, it's pretty harsh in the cities in that way. Yeah, but I mean, I still have friends who still live in San Francisco and still have pretty good lives. They're sad their friends aren't there as much. But yeah, maybe me think of like Paula Frazier from Tarnation is still there and doing great stuff, has such a great band and, you know, Tarnation started out on Nuff Said way back then. So I mean, there's so many people that are just amazing, that are connected to that. But I really feel like it was the San Francisco time that just, you know, built this community family tree that has just gone on and on, even though everybody's a diaspora all over the place now. And I miss it. I miss being around my, I guess, peers. There's great people here too. And I have great friends here. But, you know, like I'm in this shared art studio and everybody's so much younger than me. It's just fine. I love them.

SPEAKER_01

00:55:04

But it's not the same. Like I went up in January. Chris Johansson invited me up because, oh, I mean, I don't know if this guy Ron Burns has come up and in any of this, but he passed away during the pandemic and he was in so many bands. He in Smog and Star Pimp and oh my gosh, just on and on. He was such a great person. So he had this band Sunfoot with Chris and Brian Rumford. So Chris had everybody come up to Portland and play this beautiful show. They had recorded all this stuff before he passed away and they were able to put out one more album and just really dedicate this beautiful show to him. So, it was amazing. It was so great to be around all these people from San Francisco and Portland, and, you know, it was really special after a pandemic time of being alone in a room, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

00:56:20

The sky will wake, and the mountain will wake For the sea to come, for the sea to swallow up I am a rosy -tailed child, and my stomach's all too blue.