Rick Turner: The Masterpiece Life Of A True Renaissance Man

Santa Cruz based luthier, engineering genius and all around rock star Rick Turner has built his life around music, and perhaps music has built a life around his work.  Rick Turner is someone whose life has taken so many loops, turns and 180 degree backflips, therefore, I am befuddled as to where to begin a story about this man.  Overall, I suppose that there is not so much a beginning and an end to his story, but a continuous narrative of adventures and hard-won luck.

Photo by Max Mobley

Let us begin with an analogy about the guitar, as guitars have been a central character in the story of Rick's life....
 
Guitars begin as chunks of wood waiting to be transformed into vehicles of artistic expression by caring and talented hands. Each one is uniquely crafted, some even hand-made, comprised of many components that are fused to form one instrument. Every instrument collects the mood and spirit of not only the hands and life of the maker, but the experiences of the musician who will one day hold it in their arms like a cherished lover and make her sing with her own stringed-voice.
 

We humans are handcrafted in a similar manner. We take on what we have been given by our makers, those who influence our lives, allowing each piece of our life to make us who we are, and eventually we become who we are suppose to be. We are ready to sing the song of our own lives.

Every Picture tells A Story: Don Aters, Rock Photographer

Janis Joplin - by Don Aters 

We humans have been documenting our existence for thousands of years. Our early ancestors used plant dyes, blood and minerals to form cave paintings that told of their experiences that happened well over 48, 000 years ago. We can also trace our history in the form of words and songs that carry the past tales of the human condition. When written words began to appear, approximately 400 years BCE, humans found they could expand their memories into a more permanent form, thus making history a bit easier to remember and pass on. Moving onward, towards the recent past, painters, troubadours and storytellers have continued to translate the human drama into forms we can all understand and relate to.

A major leap in historical documentation came about 1685, when Johann Zahn envisioned the idea of a camera, a camera obscura (although it would be about 150 years until the technology available would catch up to his vision). The devise that was created by Zahn was used as a portable drawing aid, where any image could be focused through the camera obscura and onto paper or canvas, thus allowing the artist to recreate a true image easier. It was then a fast track to cameras with plates, which then became cameras with film, which eventually, today, have become cameras with electronic sensors that create an image in a digital format.

So, all this historical gobbily-gook is leading up to my point, which is this: we need people to document the life that goes on around us. The long history of the human condition is an amazing tale and one of the best ways to tell it is via photographs. Photographers are folks who use this medium to tell a story worth a thousand words with every click of the camera. Photos often tell of the life of the photographer as well, as it is through their eyes that the photos are captured; it is through their eyes that the tales are told.

John Lennon - by Don Aters

Enter Don Aters, photographer, storyteller and fabled documentarian of one of the most turbulent and amazing periods of recent American history, what is now known in counter culture terminology as “The 60’s”. That short four year period of 1967-1970 instilled in our collective consciousness the ideas that war is bad, love is good, and music, often with the aid of mind expanding lubricants, can take your perspective to new heights of reality. It was a time that the youth of America were tired of the bullshit attempts at brainwashing and they were ready to ignite a cultural revolution with peace, free love and flowers in their hair.

But Don’s story begins long before that magical period of time…

Don grew up on Chicago’s bad side of the tracks. His mother was in poor health most of her life and he had a devoted father, both of whom later died tragically but separately in their 50’s.  Don took it upon himself to become good at sports, running in particular, which landed him with a scholarship at Indiana University. Though Don’s skills as an athlete had taken him far, the US Army wanted to take him father, to fight a war in a foreign land, a war that was both unnecessary and ugly.

The days of being exempt from active military duty for being a student were no longer valid. Due to the high death rate of soldiers, the war needed more bodies that were alive. Don Aters bucked the system in some ways and avoided the Army by being chosen instead to join the Navy SEALS, which is a long story in itself. The military experience gave him his first opportunity to handle a camera, taking pictures on reconnaissance missions. At least war was good for something, as that first camera changed the course of Don’s life forever.

His return home to the U.S. brought on more changes. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, America was in chaos. The American youth were on the move westward via realms of higher consciousness and life was to begin again for many soldiers whose eyes have seen the hells of war.

“After the military, I ventured back to Chicago,” remembers Don. “I tried the band scenario and hung around with the “garage bands” of the era; The Buckinghams, The Cryin’ Shames, Shadows of Knight, New Colony Six and others. We would all gather in what was then Chicago’ s Old Town on Clark Street, our answer to Greenwich Village or Haight Ashbury.”

"Old Town" Chicago - Don Aters

It was 1966 and rock and roll was just beginning to show its wicked force among the masses. Don’s friend and comrade Chet Helms brought a new band to Chicago to record their first album. “That’s when I first met Big Brother & The Holding Company with Janis Joplin.” Life was never the same again.

Don’s friendship with Chet Helms was a long, fruitful and amazing union. Chet was manager of Big Brother and was an influential man in the music scene in San Francisco. His friendship with Don and his connections to Big Brother inspired Don to find his way into his own music scene in Chicago. To expand his horizons even more, Don began attending and photographing shows at New York’s famed Fillmore East, documenting the amazing music that was become the soundtrack for youth revolt of the 1960’s.

Aside from talent, Don had a knack for making friends and soon became part of the inner circle of music makers of that era, photographing not only the gigs, but also the musicians in more intimate settings such as backstage and even the musicians’ home lives.

Grace Slick - by Don Aters

“I was fortunate not to be included as “just a fan” of any chosen band,” states Don of his personal connection to the musicians. “That concept would lead to many noted icons who have either spent time in my home, or me within the walls of their abodes. During those neoteric days, there was something that would forever make us known but we were too young to realize the magnitude of what it was. “

With time on his hands to heal after a horrid injury sustained at a Civil Right's march, Don decided to follow his dreams. Back then there was no YouTube, no Facebook, no computers or online social networks to make your work known, therefore following dreams was not as easy. One had to crawl from the depths of utter obscurity in order to make their dreams happen, and Don did just that. He became a well-known photographer, creating magic with his lens.

Don set out to photograph what would become not only some of the biggest musical events of the 1960’s, but also some of the more notable events in all of American history. Monterey Pop Festival happened in 1967 and the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival happened in 1969, and Don was there, capturing some of the best-known images of Big Brother and The Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin as well as a collage of backstage antics at both events.

Jimi Hendrix - by Don Aters

At the time most people, including Don himself, had no idea what effect the burgeoning music scene that was blowing up on both coasts would have on history. To Don, it was just a chance to explore his muse, a chance to do something he loved to do and be a part of something that fed his spirit. “There was little history for me at that point, just a muse that I felt was needed at the time; the great elixir being the music of the day.”

His photographs include images of The Beatles, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and James Taylor. He ended up making his dream real amid the blazing world of colorful paisley, flags of freedom and acid-tripping youth, yet the Summer Of Love was dying and another age of malcontent was upon us.

“Time had minimal effect on the ideology of our youth. We continued to do the things that mattered, it just wasn’t like front-page sensationalism of today’s “mainstream”. We collectively could not alter a useless war in Vietnam nor could we eradicate the political corruption in Washington that still continues to this day,” says Don. “What we did constructively accomplish were advancements within the parameters of Civil Rights, Women’s Rights & Gay Rights. At that point, San Francisco was a nexus of the Bohemian lifestyle and we concentrated our efforts to envision progress in all these endeavors regardless of the hippie-esque connotations from the hierarchy of the day. It will all come full circle once again, probably not in the demographic area of Golden Gate Park or The Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. We continue to echo within the echelons of sixties grandeur and we will not be forgotten.”

Paul McCartney - by Don Aters

Fast forward to the 21^st Century. The days of barefoot hippies hell-bent on Peace and drug fueled Love-In’s on the green grasses of Golden Gate Park are long gone. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is now a place for runaways and drug dealers amid the tie-dyed window displays of head shops and high-end, über-hip clothing shops. The voices of the people can no longer be heard over the din of fast food commercials and sound proofed SUV’s. The youth of America are no longer screaming for justice, but entranced in video games and American Idol. Pop music consists of computerized voices amid jingle-jangle crap and Americans no longer uphold the utopian ideals that Don’s generation strived for in 1969.

Many of Don’s beloved friends and icons that have seen his camera lens have passed due to drugs or ill-health. It is a new age in many realms and today things are not as pretty as they once seemed. Chet passed a few years ago from cancer. Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison and many others have seen the ugliness of death by drugs. The fallen are gone but not forgotten.

EmmyLu Harris - by Don Aters

“I often think of the misconceptions of those who have crossed the River Styx and how different they were as opposed to the media frenzy that was so desperate to nullify their rightful places in the pantheons of musical aristocracy,” says Don of the men and women he once knew. “The trappings of the genre never change, much like the noted ‘27 Club’ which is inclusive of Janis, Jimi, Morrison, Brian Jones, Pigpen, and the list goes on. When one is young and obviously famous, mortality is never considered a reality and death is for books and movies.”

Don is still around, alive and kicking and living the sweet life in Kentucky, taking photographs of the current music of Now. Although he has been in poor health for the last 4 years with a rare kidney disease and heart surgery, his life force won’t allow him to quit yet. “I now concern myself more about where I’m going than where I’ve been.”

His cameras, all Nikons, by the way, are still clicking away to capture the music in all its glory. He is a regular at Bonnaroo Music Festival, he was present for the resurrection of the Monterey Pop Festival in 2007 and he is continuing to capture musical acts from Fleetwood Mac to Yes, from Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams; from Bob Dylan and Hot Tuna.

KISS - Don Aters

His photo archive is huge and the history he holds in film and digital images is massive. The music world he has been documenting continuously is largely immortalized because of his work. Although he has refused to “sell out” to the big magazines, his photos have been seen at The Speed Museum in Kentucky, The Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky and art galleries and Universities around the country. There were images of his in a Canadian movie in reference to Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin plus he has been in print sources such as Relix Magazine and The Courier Journal.

Don is also gathering images for a museum owned by Jorma and Vanessa Kaukonen on their Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio; he is focusing on possible lecture tours with early Grateful Dead keyboardist and friend Tom Constanten and photographing one of his muses, singer Lynn Asher, who has stepped into the big shoes of Janis Joplin as one of the recent front women for Big Brother and the Holding Company.

“What inspires me about Don's work is how honest the photos are; capturing people in all their natural beauty and glory”, says Lynn Asher about Don’s work. “Don is a ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of guy and I relate to that; his photography is very real. I like that most of the images show the deepest part of the person, their soul. They also tell a story by being in the present moment; nothing flashy, just raw and emotional. No fancy tricks with the camera. It inspires me to know that Don was witness to so many special moments and events in history that I can only now experience through film and music.”

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

If that is not enough to keep a very creative man busy, Don is also awaiting the first edition of his book, “Winds of Change” which features his historical pictures as well as written musings of the artists and experiences he was involved in for the last 40 years.

“The book is essentially a labor of love which was started years ago with multiple changes and edits. The text is as good as I could do, with images ranging from backstage to Fillmore East and beyond. These are the icons of an entire generation, those that made a difference within the parameters of society as well as music. The only two that are amidst the circle of friends included in the book that have a reverence for the past but see the proverbial light for the future are Lauren Murphy & Lynn Asher.”

“It is hard to express what it means to me to be a part of Don's photographic journey through his book, through his lens,” States Lynn. “To have been included among my heroes and she-ros of the artists I hold near and dear to my heart, my musical inspiration and soundtrack of my youth and adult life, is surreal and humbling. I am deeply grateful to Don and above all grateful for his love and friendship. It is such an honor to have been included.”

Lynn Asher - by Carolyn McCoy

We are in a new day and age. Life is quite different than it was 40 years ago in the heyday of social change and rabble-rousing ideology. With documentarians such as Don Aters, we are able to  remember the struggles for change those young ideologists strove for, and we can as well be reminded of the soundtrack that was part of that era.

“Whenever I am in the Bay Area, several friends walk The Haight with me as we remember those halcyon days of youthful malcontents and our own search for personal identity,” says Don. “It is within those few blocks that we all think of what we’ve done, the images taken and a pocketful of memories we carry. Some things can be taken from all of us but those days of sights, sounds and the aromas that permeated the streets adjacent to Golden Gate Park, the flaxen haired mavens of the day and our camaraderie predicated on music as the common denominator will forever define us as the Woodstock Nation.”

Angus Young -Don Aters

Mega Thanks to Don Aters for his candidness and the use of his photos. All photos used by permission.

Also Mega Thanks to Dan Rauck for his editing prowess and helpfulness on making my words pretty.

Moonmama says: "I wanna be Don when I grow up!"
Carolyn McCoy 

www.moonmamarocks.com

Wrapping Us In Sonic Velvet: Tracy Blackman's "Could I Be"

Music is something that wraps us in a velvet cloak of melody and words, surrounding us in its warmth and comfort, the sense of familiarity apparent even on the first experience of something new. 

Sometimes a songwriter has the ability to make us hear things that we already know deeply and understand profoundly, even if the music is not like anything else we have ever heard. It takes a songwriter of talent and grace that creates this for us, as she knows and understands our hearts and minds like no one else.

Hailing from Marin County, California, singer & songwriter Tracy Blackman has this ability.  Through both her songwriting and her multi-instrumental musicianship, Tracy’s newest album Could I Be takes us on an aural journey of comfort and familiarity of what we know is inside us all.  Could I Be, takes on themes of love, loss and the spirit of life like many songwriters do, but she does so in a way that rocks and rolls with jazzy/bluesy sass and a truth that is never trite or angled toward “angry girl music”. She shares many intimate aspects of herself through stories in the form of songs.

Diary Of A Groupie: My Les Paul Tribute

I will be honest right off the bat, I have never been a Groupie to Les Paul, but I feel that I knew him intimately and deeply because of his invention of the Hard Bodied Electric Guitar. That man changed my world and I never even got the opportunity to meet him or see him play live, but I have been a lover a million-and-one times to the Ingenious Guitars that he made famous among the Shredding Elite of the music world for 70 years.

Ah, Les, I bow down to you and your Electric Guitar! Thank you so much for this great gift to Musicians everywhere! The squeals, the shrieks, the yelps and the howls that came out of your invention were like nothing the world had ever heard before. You made an innocent and simple wood and stringed instrument into something of a deeply sensual and excitable lady that loved to be rocked hard and played harder. Gone were the days of simple strumming of a quiet six-string and enter into the days of loud, amplified and exquisite SHRED! 

Les Paul Guitar painted by Neal Barbosa

As a young girl, the power and energy of the Electric Guitar came into my realm via Peter Frampton, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd while playing with my romper-stompers in the basement while my brother played his records. Later, as my Music Awareness broadened and I opened my ears more, the Electric Guitar played well into my emotive teen years with the sweeping and cascading moans and squeals of Prince and the straight-road hard-rock driving of Def Leppard. 

Les Paul Guitar painted by Neal Barbosa

Now, as a woman of some years, I still hold the Electric Guitar as my primary Love Interest as it expresses emotion and feeling in the most precious and profound way to me. As George Harrison explains beautifully, "While my guitar gently weeps..."

Les Paul, your passing a few years back made my heart weep, but your Life Force will continue to live on the magic fingers of James Hetfield, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and my Favorite Shredder Of All Shredders, Buckethead. Your legacy will continue to Rock and Roll forever and always!

SIDE NOTE: I so love a man with MacGyver Qualities*, someone who can make something amazing out of nothing amazing, and Les Paul’s MacGyver Qualities were through the roof! I love a man who can make an amplifier (which had not been in existence as of yet in that early acoustic world) out of a radio speaker, a telephone, a cinder block and a broom. Yeah, he did that…fricking genius!

*MacGyver Qualities: From the 80’s TV show “MacGyver”, in which the main character was so innovative that he could make a parachute out of latex gloves, dental floss and a Bic Pen.

Thanks to Live Painter for the extra visual. You rock dude!

http://www.nealbarbosa.com

The Walk Of Life With Peck, The Town Crier

Photo by Moonmama

Life is but a journey… We all begin somewhere and end up some place else, the pit stops, segues and adventures along the way form who we are and how we choose to live. We learn something new with each step of this journey.  This particular journey takes place on a gorgeously sunny Sunday afternoon in Marin County as music maker Chris Peck, AKA Peck The Town Crier, and yours truly wander the streets of our small hamlet chatting about everything under the sun. Chris Peck is a gifted song writer pumping out self-produced albums of intelligently quirky tunes and then there’s me, a struggling Rock n’ Roll Writer trying to make a name for herself through creative passions for all things music. It seems a fitting outing for two creative, kindred souls hanging out for a day of conversation.

We stroll languidly past high-end boutiques and Latin super markets, we saunter under maple and oak trees that hold leaves still hanging with the remnant touches of fall color and through small city parks and over dirty sidewalks, we walk. We talk about the weather, we touch upon conspiracy theories, we get, as one Chris Peck song suggest, “coffee, muthafuckin’ coffee” and we talk about my writing. But mainly, we talk about his music.  As that is why we are chatting away on this blindingly bright California spring day. The purpose of this stroll is for me to get a better understanding and find out more about this gangly, white boy rapper-beat-poet dude named Chris Peck, who’s songs inspire goofiness, big ideas, awareness of the soul and a bit of bump-n-grind to boot.



Beginning at the tender age of 10, Chris Peck took to music like a fly to honey. Guitar was number one and was followed by drums at 11.  As he grew older, his musical passions continued onto bass and a deeper connection to percussion. “I got way into Cuban music, Salsa and Rhumba, and learned some rudiments of Conga drums in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba when I was 17 and 18. I saw people go into trance at ceremonies, danced with ladies in the nightclubs, and drummed for 6 hours a day with an older gentleman named Roberto.”

Songwriting and musical arrangement began at 11 with a tune called “The Irishman”.    

“I’ve written pretty steadily and it has always involved a toggling between lyrics and music. A good amount of my material is instrumental. I like to make little home versions on a multi-tracker, or hash things out on the musical staff or make a graphic representation of the music to help me figure out the form and arrangement.”

Fused within Chris is a lifelong love affair with creativity through songwriting and wordplay. Honing his poetic chops in a weekly gritty-streets-fueled Poetry Slam in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, he is known for tossing words with other poets amid the insanity of a busy neighborhood known for it’s deep politics. “Thursday nights, I go out to 16th & Mission in SF, where about 100 people gather and perform for each other outside at the Bart Train Plaza. There’s no microphone, and it’s a noisy street corner, so it really focuses you on the power of your performance, and some way to grab people’s eyes and keep them. I feel like a different person when I’m there, its like bullfighting. You can get mad glory or embarrassment at 16th & Mission.”

Chris left The Bay Area in 1998 to study music at New York University only to return in 2003. His main influences have always been other musical artists including but not limited to Weather Report, Kraftwerk, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Laurie Anderson, Claude Debussy, Terry Riley, Deerhoof, the Wu Tang Clan, Arthur Russell, Yusef Lateef.  When it comes to hip-hop for Peck, the crème de la crème is the great New Orleans mc Mystikal.   “Some musical fascinations lose their luster for me, but not Mystikal. I keep feeling more impressed by him whenever I come back to his music.  It’s all about his voice, the characters he inhabits, his story telling, and for God’s sake, his rhythm. There’s a song called “Shine”, dedicated to his sister’s memory, that is so dang soulful and rhythmically complex.”

With 1 EP’s and soon to be 5 Full-length albums under his belt, Home Phone- (2010), Le Chronique (2009) Groundhog's Day (2008) and The Garden Sings (2005), Chris is anything but shy about promoting his own music. Whether standing tall alone as Peck The Town Crier, the multi-instrumentalist genius, or with a band of rotating musical friends called The Crysmuscles, Chris does all he can to enhance his quirky sound and songs. Fusing White Boy Poetic Rap with anything form Rocking to Ethereal tunes, you may find a lot of similarities to the artist Beck. “My first album is called “Your Tape Machine’s Not Broken”. I made it on an old 4-track reel to reel, and it’s really funky-sounding and blown out. Most of it happened in the summer of ’97, when I had just got back from my first two weeks in Havana. I made an altar on my ceiling, dedicated to Elegua, the Santeria deity who gives and takes life. I remember the feeling of making that music, I was way overjoyed and had all these instruments and cables out in my room, eating lots of apples. I felt kind of possessed, like people talk about with automatic writing. Because of the purity of that experience, I still think that album is the most sacred to me. At some point this year, I’m going to re-release it.”

With his amazing back stock of songs as well as his constant writing and creating of new songs, Chris is never at a loss for fodder for all his albums. “About 80% of each record is made of songs written in the interim since the last release. But I DO reach back and re-work old songs. Sometimes, even a tune that’s been released on a previous record will get re-recorded with a new arrangement, or I’ll poach material from within the song and incorporate it into a new setting.”

“I really hope my music will be, fresh, surprising, healing & real. If I can get those elements together, I’ll be making music I’m really consistently stoked about. I would love for my music to be heard by little pods of people all around the world; Like some little rare breed of bird, that convenes on an island once a year and celebrates their quirkiness together. When I’m an old man, I would love to meet young musicians and work with them. I love that continuum of music, and of human knowledge in general. I love my heroes and teachers so much, and I want to do MY thing with just as much fire and dedication as they did THEIRS.”

With his big dreams and constant ideas, Chris Peck wants to do it all. “Really, in my path as an artist now, I’m hoping to grow outside pure music making, into some kind of medium that involves musical skills on display but also some type of public interaction, storytelling and myth-making. It feels like this new medium will be more attuned to what we’re feeling as a people now a day.”

“I spend hours at coffee shops every week, trying to figure out what the hell that’s going to look like. Someday soon, I’m going to take action on all this yearning.”

Chris and I end the day as the Spring sun begins to wane in the late afternoon sky. We have come full circle with our journey, him with his story told and me filled to the brim with the experience of the day, off to mold the experience into his story, both of us collaborating on our desire to be heard by many.

www.peckthetowncrier.bandcamp.com

All other photos of Chris Peck are by Cat Rivera:
www.innerjungle.blogspot.com


Moonmama LOVES you!
Thanks again Dan Rauck for editing my words. ox

Mirror In The Bathroom: Is It All Vanity?

You may have noticed in the melodic musings of mine that I often post a picture of myself that I took in the bathroom at the back of some seedy bar, club or musical venue. Many people have asked me why I do that, so I feel a strong urge to explain myself to you, as posing in the bathroom mirror of bars and clubs all over the San Francisco Bay Area may seem a little strange to most normal folks. Not to mention posting them on the Internet for all to see, my mother would freak!

For some unknown reason, I am able to see the romanticism in the common bathroom. Yes, it’s a trait I carry with pride. Bathrooms are a place of deep intimacy, secrets and finality and they have been ingrained into the history of music as a room to be worshiped.

My bathroom Self Portraits all started at Peri’s Silver Dollar, the bar in Marin that has some of the most amazing décor in both the men’s and woman’s restrooms. As I was washing my hand like a good girl, I got a bud in my bean stock and felt the need to take a photo of myself in the mirror to send to a friend. It turned out pretty cool. As the door opened and the music came in, I got the idea of how bathrooms have a tendency of playing crucial roles in the history and legends of rock and roll music.

So, my excuse for my exhibitionistic photos? I write about music and I want you to know who I am, so I take photos in the bathroom. It’s all, like, interconnected, ya know?

While I am at it, why don’t I throw some interesting Bathroom and Rock History facts at you.

There are, of course, the folks who have died in the bathroom: Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley and Judy Garland. It seems like a hard-lived life destroyed all 3 of these talented performers while in the throes of being truly human.

Canadian rocker’s “Bare Naked Ladies” and blast-from-the-past Captain Beefheart are folks who have recorded songs or even whole albums in a bathroom, and my Web search tells me there is even a band called “The Bathroom Choir” that I feel I must now find out more info on. When I typed in “bathroom songs”, over 7 million entries came up. Also in my research I found all kinds of plans and tips for building your own personal recording studio in your bathroom, they do have amazing acoustics.

Dare I even go into the sordid, sinful and decadent treats that most musicians are offered in the bathrooms of clubs, bars and concert halls? I think Jimi Hendrix “met” one of his main groupies in the men’s bathroom stall after one of his early shows. Just what was she doing in the Men’s bathroom, I wonder…?

For me, bathrooms and Rock-n-Roll go hand and hand. They are dirty, grungy & sexy-in-bad-girl-way. The drama, the passion, the lies, the truth get expressed in song and tile.

Moonmama LOVES YOU!

From The Darkness and Fear: Volary Moves "Out Of Shadows"

Volary: Noun. 1) A flight or a flock of birds.  2) the cage you keep them in.

Seldom in life do we pause to think about tomorrow, to think about whether or not we will still be alive to love, eat, breathe and create. We often take for granted our day-to-day existence and seldom do we stop for a moment and think, ‘What if I die tomorrow? What sort of legacy do I want to leave behind?’

Enter Volary, an Australian born singer/songwriter now making her home in San Francisco.  Volary has just recently begun to ask her self those questions.  She has cancer.  As most of us know, cancer sucks in a really big way and will inevitably change your life and perspective of it right before your eyes, regardless of whether or not you want it to.  A deeper sense of your own mortality can make you want to live your life even more.

In Volary’s new album, Out Of Shadows, the lyrics and songs were already written before “cancer” became a common, daily word for Volary. The darkness of the mood of her music and the positive hope that she tries to convey within her songs are present and accountable in this breathtaking first effort from a woman who knows how to survive everything from self- doubt to lost love.

“I was actually diagnosed just before we were due to start in the studio. My producer and I had already been doing preproduction for months, I’d booked the studio dates, we’d lined up the musicians’ schedules, I was super excited to finally be making my debut CD...and then the bottom fell out of my world,” states Volary of her brand new reality. “The songs were all written before my diagnosis, but the title and dedication of the album were definitely reflective of my situation. At the time I didn’t realize how far the shadow of cancer can stretch, and I would say that I’m still struggling to get out of those shadows (for example, I’m still not strong enough to play a full length set), but the hope is that I will be out of those shadows sometime soon.”

The album covers a wide spectrum of emotional ideas within the music. Her power-pop vocals are set against a moody backdrop of layered arrangements, both thick and sparse with instrumentation that guides the listener deeper into the dark lyrics. Viola, horns, clarinet, organs, cello, oboe and sax all add their rich sounds to guitar, bass, drums and voice.

“I didn’t want to make the typical singer/songwriter or rock band album. I definitely wanted to try for a sound that was not your typical vocals-guitar-bass-drums,” says Volary of her decision of adding less typical instruments and arrangements to her album. “I’m a sucker for music that’s really layered and moody. I love listening to albums where you can discover more and more on each listen. Sometimes stuff will be buried so deep in the mix that it’s barely there, but the sum of it all adds up to some aural goodness.”

The opening track of “Die A Little” starts us out on the journey of looking deeper into our own darkness of the soul in words like “Too many years of sadness/ I’m stretched so thin/Standing with my back to the wall trying not to scream/ I wanna cut the demons out/from underneath my skin.”

Tapping into all things intense and tumultuous, Volary’s lyrics speak of a woman taken to extremes of her emotional life. She gives in to self-doubt and lack of confidence in the powerful “That Girl”.  All of us have been there; all of us have at one time of another wanted to be someone aside from ourselves. “Yes, it’s true, I’m insecure/sometimes…. I wanna be That Girl.”

The gorgeous piano arrangement in “One Good Reason” sends the emotion of lost love into my heart within Volary’s soothing vocals as I ask myself ‘How many times have I been in relationship that was not good for me but I refused to let it go?’  “I’m standing up and I’m refusing to play/You are lost to me/Your love has not left me unscarred”

From pop to rock, from tribal drums to simple acoustic guitar and gypsy string, the songs on Out Of Shadows move from light to dark, uplifting to heartbreaking. The songs are never simpleminded and are always intense in fullness of sound, each layer comes forth with more meaning upon each listen.

“I don’t know if I would express songwriting as being my therapy. It’s more like a necessity. Sometimes it really feels like my soul needs to give birth to something and then it’s like an itch I can’t scratch until a song comes out. It’s also very often like banging my head into a brick wall.”

Although her diagnoses of cancer did not make it into her lyrics, it has made a major impact on her life. “As to how {the cancer} has changed my view point on life; well, it’s definitely changed that forever. The spectrum of a possible recurrence is always going to be there, especially since I was diagnosed at a young age and statistically the cancers that occur in younger people are more aggressive than those that occur in older people. I’ve had to face my mortality at an age where other people are in the full bloom of life, and that’s something that leaves its mark forever. One thing that I will be doing when I get to play shows again is to do some benefits. There are two organizations in particular that have been helpful to me along my cancer journey – the Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS) support group, and the Commonweal Cancer Help Program.”

Along with all despair and intensity in life, there is hope and dreams of something better. Volary takes the good, the bad and the ugly and makes music that can resonate with us all. Whether it is dark or light moods, fear or doubt, creativity can make a difference in setting our paths to the correct direction we are meant to be heading. Faith in that path, whether we understand or not where we are going, is not always open for us to question. But we can know there IS something better...we can start out with ideas in our minds as we think “I’m reaching out but I’m grabbing air/and I freefall through my life” (from “Touched”) and end with the mantra of  “No, I don’t wanna believe/that there’s nothing more than this/Nothing more, nothing more, nothing more than this/So I just gotta believe/that there’s something more than this, something more, something more, something more than this.” (from “Blackbird”).


All Volary photos by Alexander Kieselstein

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