Hipnic at the Miller

7-6-09

by Corby Anderson

You don't really need a map to get to Big Sur, out on the Central Coast of California. Certainly a keen sense of direction is of no use - the temporal compass bearings and literal waypoints that might help, for example, one escape a poached radiator in the desert go uselessly batty once you have passed the Carmel River. The weird energy that leeches southward of Point Lobos is all pervasive, its vortex too strong, the magnetic discord bears out to be too confusing for even the burliest navigation systems.  

No, there is not a single map in the world that can really tell you how to get to Big Sur. You just have to go. It will be where you need it to be.

Big Sur is much smaller than its legend might imply. Maybe that is because it an autonomous town, a large and wildly remote region, a Mecca, a river, coastline, or a state of mind, and a scene all at once. In comparison to its notorious self, the actual town seems to breeze by in a few blurry, redwooded seconds. Yet settle for even a minute anywhere within its gravitational pull, and those seconds are pulled and elongated like existential taffy, and suddenly become days, lifetimes, and eons. 

It is this rhythmic massaging of time and place, nature and energy that is the reason artists are drawn to the place. Robinson Jeffers, Jack Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Baez, the Westons, Hunter Thompson, and many other writers, sculptors, musicians and painters have existed there, but none quite so famously, perhaps, as Henry Miller.

Henry Miller was a sexy beast of a man. His novels were banned in his home country for much of his long, distinguished career. The closet degenerates who manned the social mores at the time had ol' Henry pinned as subversively indecent and amoral. By today's standards, his work was PG, and in my own estimation, the man lived a good, long and happy life. He was a literary massive. His writing is as good as any that has ever found paper, and even in his advanced years, he seems to have been surrounded by talented artists and a steady stream of comely, adoring women. 

 ....

That Miller's memorial is nestled in dense redwoods, on a nice flat piece of Emil White's old property that boasts a wide lawn, which fills in the lee side of a cliff-tracing S-turn, seems appropriate. 

He is notable for literarily applying consistent pressure upon the fearfully erected cultural walls of pre-1960's era sexual awareness, (thus, the eventual liberating revolution of "free love") and so Miller is really one of the fathers of the Beats, and the subsequent Hippies. In other words, disregarding the history of White and Miller and the donation of such lands, what better place to put a library honoring such a man? A little bit of calm comfort in the woods, a little risk getting there (and even more in staying), and a rack of giant phalluses to mark his spot in the world. Done.

The Mother Hips are a band of men who play music, which generally could be defined as rock and roll, though many have tried to put them into genrenical boxes, which they tend to gleefully reject or repurpose. The band is positioned now, and perhaps always has been, as a musical bridge between the cultural phylum of the weathered but still truckin' Hippies, and a more modern, techno-savvy, culturally ironic lifestyle variation known as the "Hipsters".

The overall philosophical difference between the two is actually pretty vast and essentially generational (though there are "new" hippies made all the time), such as a car mechanic might compare an old Volkswagen to a new Prius. But to continue with the analogy, if you will - both of their bumpers bear many of the same stickers and their wheels all cover the same ground, even if the pace is not always the same. 

The Hips, as their long-traveled fans have come to call them, are at the present career intersection of Haight and Rothbury, and thanks to their ability to draw from multiple cliques of personality, assembling an interesting crowd to attend, and bands to play their first ever self-produced music festival was likely no problem at all. The same circumstance is why the Henry Miller Library is the exact perfect place to host the "Hipnic", which was a family-friendly, two-day picnic at the Miller held over the Fourth of July weekend. 

Because most people who still have jobs were given Friday off to complete their three-day weekend, the concerts started on Friday afternoon. The first band to go was Citay, who derive their name from a common slang term for "city". Citay is from San Francisco, which is a city. 

Unfortunately, I tend to suffer from mild dyslexia, which combined with the steady wafting barbeque smoke from the festival grills likely caused me to insist on calling them "satay", as in, speared chicken. Citay's performance felt fresh, authentic and punchy, and gave off tremendous energy to kick off the festival. My frazzled notebook says that I thought them to have the qualities of  "searing", or "some other word that means compellingly energetic." It is possible that I still had hot chicken on the mind when I wrote this. A man can work up a mean hunger standing around in the woods watching music.

Singer Ezra Feinburg, a talented front man, who, as it turns out, and despite all appearances, is definitely not the guy from Pitchfork Tuning, talked afterwards of his love for this particular holiday, though not in the typical patriotic way. He spoke serenely of family and togetherness beyond country and politics. As we talked, a pugnacious Texan neighbor of mine named Spencer chimed in. "You guys were great," a comment which earned a calm reply of thanks. "Yeah. I was shocked!" 

Instant awkward silence. I took this opportunity to stare up at a very large tree, wondering what might be said next. Ezra seemed non-plussed, but gave no words. "I mean, starting off as the first band, and all...You never know. You. Just. Never. Know, you know."

I cautiously sipped my beer, and Spencer went on backpedaling himself into a hole. It was a wonderfully cringful thing to watch, and that interaction, combined with my own lack of journalistic backbone, a huge plastic tub of free beer, and a very interesting scene outside of the festival out on the marvelous curve that fronts the Miller, caused my role as music reviewer to alter drastically into that of historic essayist. There would be no more interviews with bands henceforth but for my fear of them realizing that I had not watched their whole sets, since I was out on the deathly corner directing holiday traffic through the red eyed festivarians who wandered across Highway 1 in Frogger fashion. 

Out on The Curve, as it came to be known, cars, trucks and vans alike parked in tiny spots that barely held their girth from hanging out into the road. Parking issues are nothing new there at the Miller: it is a small place with little onsite parking, and they urge people to carpool to each of their events - but with eleven bands and the general popularity of the Mother Hips, combined with the holiday weekend and the beautiful weather, parking was not only hard to find, with the roar of constant traffic, it was a potentially lethal activity. 

The surreal drive down the coast can lull an inbound festivite into a daze, and that driver might suddenly realize when they rounded the corner that they were in the right place and evasively have to dive off of their Zen road and into a barely navigable spot. Make the wrong decision as to when to exit your vehicle and you could find yourself assuming a painfully ornamental position immediately after your sandal touches the blacktop. 

I first tried to assist, but then clutched my giant can of beer and watched in horror as a fashionable DJ backed his vintage, jet black Porsche - the kind with perfect white leather, prattling Volkswagen motor and tiny Germanic knobs on the dashboard louvers - against the grain of oncoming traffic (which had nowhere to go) as he tried to slip into a spot immediately across from the front of the Miller. His effort, which was in the end successful, was foolish and vain in every way, and drew the ire of a local Big Sur fire brigadier, who bellowed "DO NOT BACK UP ON THE HIGHWAY" repeatedly and angrily as Porsche Guy made his move. I tried to hold back traffic by frantically waving a red poncho that I had in my truck, and through a group effort somehow nobody got plowed. 

This happened regularly for two days. At some point, I was identified by a stranger as "the Official Greeter", a title which I appreciated, since that meant that I gave off some sort of decent vibe out front, where I was needed, but I thought of myself as more of a necessary ground traffic controller. 

The curve which traces around the Miller's frontage is a world-class chicane, ingeniously sloped at somewhere between 10-20% grade. In terms of flow, it rivals any of the banked turns up the road at Laguna Seca Raceway, which happened to be on this very same weekend hosting a concurrent and wholly contrasting event known as The Festival of Speed. 

There, thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts scream into their Valhalla from all parts, where they meet up, possibly drink, pound on each other’s helmets, and then race off down the coast in furious clutches. A good rider can take The Curve at probably sixty, or even seventy miles an hour, judging by what I saw in my time out front. It was quite an impressive sight to see a string of bikes jet by in single file, fender to headlight, drafting off one another. I suggested that maybe we should put some signs up on either end of the road approaching the venue to warn people to slow down, but a local told me, in all seriousness, that someone would just throw whatever signage that we set up off of the cliff.

Back inside the groovy old wooden gate of the Miller, Red Cortez had the stage, and played what I thought to be a good blend of pop rock, which vocally evoked U2 and Coldplay, while musically recalling the churning power rock of Weezer. 

As we stood watching the children run around in crazy Family Circle patterns, and as other parents made stooped-backed lunges for the ones who went careening off into the trees, Spencer gave his unadulterated opinion of the in-between acoustic set played by a gentlemen known as Levi Stromm. 

Levi is a local kid, at least currently he is, and has a good amount of local buzz.  I had been looking forward to hearing him play when I saw his name listed on the bill, but had missed his acoustic set while out on one of my moto-gawking forays. I wondered if he would play again later. "Don't bother," said Spence. "He's not sad enough." He said matter of factly. 

Spencer's dad has a long history of owning rough and tumble blues clubs down in Austin, Texas. His mom, once she was split from his father, dated Townes Van Zandt. He grew up in the lap of ZZ Top, literally. His first car was a stolen Cadillac. He once killed a boar by jumping out of a tree and stabbing it with a knife. I generally defer to his opinion on the notion of toughness.

"Well, maybe he is just happy to be here, like right now, with all of us here, at the picnic," I offer as counter point. 

"No, no. Not really. What he needs, if he wants to be a real blues man, is to have his soul raped. He needs to have his girlfriend cheat on him with his Grandfather, or something. Get shot. Play for Dinty Moore. He needs to sell his tuner to the devil. That kind of thing." He said this with a hint of laughter, but I knew he was basically speaking honestly, as he sees it. 

"Good God. I thought he was just a folk singer," I said, watching the happy seeming Stromm wander through the crowd, his brown fro of curls bouncing with each energetic step. "I had no idea it was that bad." "Yep. Here, hold my beer," he said, reaching for his wallet. He walked over and tapped the tall singer on his denim shoulder. They talked for maybe a minute, with Spencer doing most of the talking. Stromm mostly smiled widely, until the end of the conversation, when his grin flattened noticeably. Spencer held his wallet in his hands as they talked, but never did anything with it and put it back into his shorts as he came back over to where I stood. Judging by the look in his mischievous eyes, I thought that perhaps I should run, or maybe just hide. 

"What did you two talk about?" I groaned. "Oh nothing much," Spence said contentedly, taking his beer back. He took a long pull. "I just told him that he needs to suffer some." He paused. "Well, a lot. And then I offered to give him $200 for a one-way ticket to Austin, with orders to never return until his very soul ached with injustice." I sipped my beer and tried not to let it fly out of my nose, as it wanted to. 

At some point in the afternoon, a band called These United States played a set. These United States are a cohesive team of professional musicians who definitely look and sound the part. Their style is a little hard to define, but tends towards lo-fi rock with a little prog-nificance folded in, and sounds maybe like what Modest Mouse, Chuck Prophet and Uncle Tupelo would sound like if they all had/got to play together. Lyrically, they are impressive, with dense portraitures accumulating around witticisms and wordplay. 

My notebook has but one other note, and that is a small critique of TUS. For my tastes, at that time, singer Jesse Elliot seemed to lean on the crackling high end of his voice a little excessively. He raspeth too much, I wrote at the time. Listening later, and reading more about the band and their origins, (Elliot was a journalist prior, doesn't really consider himself a musician, and yet has taken on some pretty interesting projects - including a Song Diary Project, which is 365 songs in the course of a year) I find more and more substance to their message and the way that it is presented.  

The stark western sun beat down as the afternoon progressed perfectly at the Hipnic. As the assorted bands dazzled the families who sprawled out on the cool lawn, a curious pair of black hawks circled overhead, spying on the hubbub below. New people arrived in regular clusters. When there was no band playing, you could tell that someone new was trying to park by the panicked sound of their brakes, and the sudden downshifting of motorcycle traffic. As the venue filled up, it was clear that there was a joyful vibe taking hold. Those who sacrificed missing the earlier bands due to their need to commune with a little nature gushed of the boundless recreational activities they were afforded. Smiles took hold and never faded. Old friends slapped backs and new friends clunked plastic cups of beers in honor of the scene and their commonalities. 

The Moondoggies played, but unfortunately I missed their set due to an encounter out on The Curve, where I found myself waving down traffic once more in an attempt to save the herds of wandering wookies and their grinning chicas. 

While trying to get to my own car for a cold beer, I stumbled on a long white van parked nearby. The wheels on the van were making a scootching sound in the gravel below, and I could tell by the swinging feather amulet that hung from the rear view and from the tell-tell rhythmic squeaking of the shocks that the van was, in fact, rocking. It was a scene straight out of Up In Smoke, and I laughed myself so silly that I forgot to get myself a beer, and instead turned around and went back to the front of the Miller, where I was set upon by a man with a large knife and a lemon. 

He sliced the lemon in big cavemanesque curls of the blade, and when he had filleted a slice, he danced his eyebrows a few times, which I took for the universal motion meaning, "Want some?" I declined, seeing as I had no use for a lemon wedge that I could think of, and instead watched him gum the lemon slices while he told neighbor Spencer and I a tale which seemed so implausible that it nearly shocked me sober - no easy task after a sunny summer afternoon of beer and tunes. 

Bedraggled and freely defiant of social stigmas such as personal reek and close-talkativeness as he was, our acidic new friend spoke low and seriously about an incident which had happened in the very spot where the bouncing van was parked just the night before. 

There, he said, a man had stopped his car to talk, but instead of asking for directions, or offering a ride, the guy in the car offered the lemon man a drastically brutal choice: Jump off the cliff, or be shot in the forehead. As he told it, the man was dead serious, and held a pistol by his side. So he jumped, and somehow survived the hundred or so foot drop by clinging to ice plant vines just over the ledge, until the coast was clear. That is where he found the lemon, it seems. Out there on the cliff someone had ditched a bag of the things for no apparent reason, he said punctuating the conclusion of his story with a creepy lemon peel smile. 

I never got that beer, but did manage to shake loose enough to get back inside the Hipnic, where darkness was drifting ever closer, and the hosts, the Mother Hips were welcoming the crowd officiously. The Hips started out their show with an incredibly slow version of Mr. Soul, the Buffalo Springfield number which they have been want to play for a long time. The effect was palpable, as the crowd swayed gently while listening. The rest of the set seemed equally subdued, even with the presence of a few of their time-changing, energetic rock songs like Magazine, Poison Oak and Honeydew. For each of those, however, there was a balancing tune of country or balladic nature - like the Everly Brothers Gone, Gone, Gone, Collected Some Nerve, or Melody Fair, by the Bee Gees.  

The highlight, for my money, was the last song of the night, a new number called This Dream, which is a galloping country tune set to vivid, spirit beckoning lyrics. There had been mention prior to these shows that there might be some new tunes off of their upcoming record, and I spoke with two different fans who expressed hope that This Dream would end up on the new record. It would not be beyond the pale, however, for the Hips to write such a great song, one that any band would be thrilled to have in their repertoire, but not to include it in LP form. It has happened before, and remains one of the many interesting side-notes within the growing discography of one of rock's great secrets. 

The show ended at 11 pm, or thereabouts, and it was only then that I realized just how many yards of ale that I had poured willy-nilly into my gullet. Walking was difficult now, and everything seemed so quiet outside under the ripening moon. There were no more motorcycles to contend with, so I danced in The Curve until I broke a sandal, which for some reason I then sent flying off into the chasm before me, near where the lemon fella nearly met his maker. 

Someone drove us all back safely, and like ravenous jackals, another Texan named Cameron and I tore into a pile of frozen Costco hamburger meat that we barely even took the time to singe over the dimly flickering fire. 

The womenfolk who had stayed behind to watch the kids on the first night of the Hipnic (thinking being that kids would only be manageable for one full day of music) were all asleep but one, and she urged us willfully to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE KEEP IT DOWN!, which we did to the best of our abilities amidst the clatter of camp cookery and snorts of scotch. 

There were at least five kids sleeping in various tents at our site, and now Spencer was passed out, so that made six. After flipping four hamburger patties using nothing but my whiskey sterilized fingers, we ate the meat with just a corn tortilla wrap for each, and then retired  - some might say were forced - down to the river, that magnificently wide, ankle deep creek that Kerouac made famous in his terribly depressing novel Big Sur, where Cameron and I played the song Down By the River for at least an hour. 

*****

Saturday

The morning unfolds slowly at the recently nearly burned (last July) Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park (not to be confused with nearby Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park). The creek burbles on down the grade towards the sea, a flock of chattering blue jays zip by from tree to tree, the old branches of the tremendous coastal redwoods creak and groan above, and the sound of the morning campfire crackling away in the pit lulls the pickled mind of the summertime camper. 

The soft strumming of an out of tune guitar drew me up and out of this preternatural nesting, and the next thing that I knew, sitting in my lap were four different recipe varietals of eggs on a single paper plate, and a cold Rainer beer sat coozified in my hand. 

Walking by the camp was a chipper looking blonde lady. As her figure drifts behind the massive trees that block site #65 from the road in places, a strange realization distracted my egg consumption. I tell Spencer that I think that I know this person. 

"She's been walking a lot," he says, half-interested, while three kids hang off of his legs as he stands stirring his Bloody Mary. The walker emerges from behind a tree and I take a closer look. "Hey!" I yell, intent of satisfying my curiousity. "By chance, is your name Meghan?" 

"Why yes," she says surprised. 

"Great!" I counter, rising to greet her. She carried a travel tray filled with four tall cups of coffee. "You don't know me, but you are one of my closest friends. Well, top two hundred, that is."

"Oh yeah? Is that so?" she replied, seeming amused. 

"Yeppers. Totally. Facebook. My name is Corby. I'm the one with the orange van in his picture."

Awareness softened her uncertainty. "Aha! I recall now. It's nice to meet you," she replied. I was just about to strike up a conversation with this long lost new friend when I heard a clattering commotion back at camp. "Your food is getting eaten!"  Someone yelled. It's the damned blue jays. They have descended from the trees and have gang tackled my breakfast of quiche, scrambled eggs, sunny side up eggs, and hard boiled egg. "Cannibals!" I yelled, running back to camp with a pinecone in each hand and blue jay blood on my mind.

By the time that I returned, all of twenty seconds, my first breakfast was history. But this was OK, because I was immediately put to work back in my former role of Official Meat Turner. There, for the next several hours, I fried up heaps of Canadian bacon, several pounds of American bacon, an industrial sized can of Spam (Lite!), and various other potted meat products. 

The kids in our camp numbered in the single digits, but seemed to be everywhere, and all at once. Big Sur is as much a wonderland for children (and maybe more given the grandiosity of scale) than it is for adults. There were simultaneous games of whiffle ball, badminton (with a downed log as a net), and tag going on all through camp, with some kids actually managing multiple events at once. This, I thought to myself, is how you develop Pentatheletes. 

Soon, they all rush off towards the river with floats, buckets and scoopers, and tiny fishing rods. Meanwhile the adults do adult things, like bask in the warmth of their own existence, or read books, or happily flip multiple nationalities of pork. 

It is right around this time that I discover, much to my chagrin, that I have developed some sort of chronic gastrointestinal difficulty. This concerned me a little, in that the only thing really wrong with the Hipnic, other than it being on the Fourth of July weekend, (which is incidentally also the best thing about the Hipnic, but which means that it is happening at the same time as the very popular High Sierra Music Festival), is the fact that there are only two bathrooms at the Miller. That there has been a copy of a recent poem of mine subversively pinned in amongst the funky bric-a-brac art haus decor of the main restroom for several months is of little comfort, since the line to use it is prohibitive, and guys are expected to make due elsewhere. 

"Eat some shrooms, that'll keep your mind off it," offered the wife as a remedy, but I saw right through her dorm room pharmaceutical amateurism, imagining myself trying to grapple with twin convulsions occurring in my mind and my bowels simultaneously. "No thanks, I'll pass," I said, longing for a regular constitution.

Soon enough the crisis passes, the kids returned from their expedition, and we all excitedly loaded up into two jam-packed vehicles heading for the Hipnic. I made sure to race out ahead of the baby-boarded Suburban so that I could score a parking spot for the protracted assault vehicle by running interference on the road when they pulled in. By the time that they all arrived, I had a perfectly executed parking system, complete with multiple spotters, temporary spot-saving folding chairs, and a steely eyed flagger who was armed with a medium sized Superman t-shirt, which has been gaff taped to a fishing pole. 

Once the families were safely inside, it was time for some serious Fourth of July relaxification. The country rock outfit Travel By Sea was already playing, and I tuned in as best I could amidst the throng of excited kids, the determinably glorious sun, and the shooting woods. It was all so much to take in, again. 

Travel By Sea has a back-story unlike any other band that I have ever heard of. Formed originally after meeting on the Mother Hips remarkably talent-laden fan site, www.the-grotto.com, Kyle Kersten and Brian Kraft then proceeded to make not one, but two good records while having never actually met each other throughout the entire process. Kersten lives in San Diego, and Kraft is a Coloradoan. The first time that they met was at their own CD release party. Interestingly, Kraft is somewhat absent at the Hipnic, and in his multi-instrumentalized place are two Pinata's and a lap-steel guy with excellent skills and the requisite beard. 

Dan Moore and Trevor Gerhard are two of the favorite people, not just musicians, but people, that I have ever met. Both played in a series of bands that all caught my fancy starting back about ten years ago or so, first as 5 Foot Tuesday, and then, when the Mother Hips went on hiatus, they joined forces as the backing band for the Tim Bluhm Involvement, and finally as the now paralytic Pinata. 

Their Morphine Country Guitars remains one of the best country rock songs written in the past decade. Now they are in Travel By Sea, which is a great pairing of philosophies and personalities, though as of yet the partnership does not seem to parlay the true talents of the two into band form, but their performance was noteworthy in its execution, and you can tell that the four are onto something. Kersten is the driving force, it seems (there may have been one or two Dan Moore songs) and his songwriting is solid and purposeful in its long-gone sincerity. 

Sitting on the lawn and sipping whatever beer it was that flowed for two days out of the official festival jockey box, I got the feeling that this is the music that I would want playing on my GE tape cassette player if I was driving a battered old Chevelle through the Kansan plains at sundown; leaving sweet, soft lipped Lisa back home at the farm with a cold ring and a warm promise to have ourselves a real wedding when I get back from the Middle East. 

The songs are wistful, full of new dreams and mourning for those that have fallen away. It does seem appropriate to mention that this was only the third performance together, and that Travel By Sea had a great set. My suggestion to them, and I believe that it was taken well, was to mix in a few more romping country type numbers, of which they are definitely capable of in a Jayhawks, or Ryan Adams' Cardinals, way, to keep the audience pulsing to the slower laments. 

One thing that I never thought that I would end up doing at a Mother Hips picnic in Big Sur was becoming a player agent for a two-year-old, left-handed phenom from Sunnyvale with two nicknames. Shane "The Train" is still in diapers, but possesses the natural ability to scorch the hell out of a ball with a bat in a way that I, nor anyone else, have ever seen before. 

Shane is Cameron the Texan's kid. Dad goes a stout 6'2", so projecting "Crash" (his other nickname, given by me to honor his catchers instincts) it is easy to see big league potential in his every enthusiastic swing. It should be noted that his first contract is only good through next week, with payment consisting of a few Wheat Thins and a binky, and was signed in what looks to be blended peas. Still, if anyone needs a backstop on their club and has a few extra jars of Spaghetti-O's, hit me up, well, until next Sunday, that is.

Part 2 will be posted shortly....Stay tuned!