Anxious for Coachella? Come check out some of SoCal's new talent at Pappy and Harriet's
Bruce FessierThe semi-finals of Thursday's Tachevah Music Showcase features bands influenced by great melody writers.
Hip-hop may be the most popular genre in today’s music, but the five bands playing Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace say they're inspired by acts ranging from The Beatles and Smokey Robinson to Bruno Mars and Young the Giant.
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They'll each play 20-minute sets of original songs starting at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free with doors opening at 6 p.m.
The five bands playing Pappy and Harriets, and the five acts playing the next semi-finals showcase March 22 at the Date Shed in Indio, were selected by Desert Sun readers from a pool of 45 bands that submitted music videos to Tachevahmusic.com.
The top eight vote-getters, plus two bands selected by Desert Sun curators, were chosen to play in the first two live showcases. Two winners from each heat will then compete for a $3,000 grand prize in the Tachevah finals at the May 5 Indio Block Party. The four-month-long Tachevah Music Showcase is sponsored by the city of Indio.
The Tachevah judges joining one of those curators are uniquely qualified to scrutinize melodic songwriting. Spike Edney is music director of Queen, multi-instrumental leader of the SAS All-Stars and manager of the Pink Satellite Recording Studio in Joshua Tree. Louise Goffin is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose parents are Carole King and the late Gerry Goffin. She founded the Rocket Carousel Studio in Los Angeles, where Katie Perry, Adam Lambert and Jamie Cullum have recorded.
Cody Joseph, mid-day DJ of KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree, will emcee the event. The bands will perform in the following order of appearance:
Stray Monroe features singer-guitarist Blake Imperl of Milwaukee, bassist Brett Kelly of Orange County and drummer Colin Croft of New Hampshire.
They formed in San Diego 2016 and named themselves Stray Monroe after seeing a random painting of Marilyn Monroe at a friend’s house.
"Blake and Brett came to San Diego to go to school at San Diego State," the band said in a joint e-mail. "We were all looking to start a band and just happened to meet each other at the right time. We were very fortunate that the chemistry clicked and think that it shows a lot in our live shows."
Their influences include The Strokes, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Kings of Leon, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Portugal. The Man, and Twin Peaks. They released their first EP in 2017 and their follow-up, “Momentary Vertigo,” is due out March 23.
They’ve performed twice in the Coachella Valley at the Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs, but their most memorable gig was on a bill with the Irish band, The Academic, at Soda Bar in San Diego.
“On the horizon for us is to play in as many new cities as we can and hopefully tour this summer,” they said. "We have every intention of making this a career. We think the sacrifices you make as a musician outweigh a life of working a boring blue collar job."
Victor Bosc is a one-man band from El Centro featuring Bosc on vocals, guitar, harmonica, bass drum and snare. Claudio Alcala may join him on bass guitar.
Bosc finds inspiration from the desert. He attended high school in Holtville and moved 10 minutes west to El Centro after graduation. He's lived there for six years, but has played from Chico, California, to Hermosillo, Sonora, in North America; and from Spain to Iceland on a recent European tour.
It all started by seeing the Strokes on TV.
“It made me realize I had to make music,” he said. “I was 11 years old and, after watching this video, the only thing I was thinking was, I have to get myself a guitar. I grew up around Mexican music only. I never heard a rock song until i was around 9 years old. That could be why I’ve been so obsessed since then. Some of my greatest influences are Queen and the Beatles.”
He chose to be a solo artist, he said, to be in a good position to raise consciousness.
“At the beginning, I found myself wasting my time with bands and people who were not committed to music,” he said, “They only cared about ‘looking cool.’ When I was 17, I left my band and started to play as a one-man band on the streets of El Centro and Los Angeles. The traveling and the playing by myself made me realize I wanted to do this on my own, with support from other people.
“It all comes down to being conscious, I was lucky to wake up one day and notice I was on automatic mode. I remember that day as the first day of my life. If you’re conscious you cannot cheat on people. If you’re conscious you can’t cheat on yourself. It makes us better for the people around us and ourselves. I want to spend my life on the road because that’s how I can help humanity with my messages of mindfulness.”
Manuel The Band is from Long Beach, featuring band leader Manuel Grajeda on vocals and guitar; Brandon Charlesworth on drums; George Madrid, pedal steel; Richard Fernandez, trombone and trumpet; Matt Kalin, saxophone, and Kevin Nowacki, bass.
Grajeda credits his music career to his mom, who made him take piano lessons starting at 6 years old.
“My mom made a deal with me,” he said. “I had to take music lessons for five years. If I didn't like it after that, I could stop. I stayed with it for about six years and after that moved on to different instruments. I grew up in a small town in Vermont called Sharon. There were about 1,600 people in that town and, for some crazy reason, there was a steel drum band. Me being me, I had to join it. So, I started playing lead pan.”
While doing that, his mother bought him a guitar-bass starter kit with an amp and told him to start practicing. He did and that ability to play multiple instruments eventually attracted him to the multi-instrumentalists in his current band.
But Grajeda didn’t ever plan to lead a band. He started playing acoustically as a solo artist. Then he added Charlesworth and a bassist for an amplified band gig and decided to go electric. Pretty soon, he was adding a hip-hop artist, a horn section and a steel pedal guitar player for a truly distinctive sound.
“I'd say the greatest influences for the band are John Mayer, Dispatch and Young the Giant – maybe some (Red Hot) Chili Peppers, too,” said Grajeda. “Due to the backgrounds of Richard, Matt, Brandon and George, there's some jazz and Americana-country influences, as well. I think all of those really come out in the group's sound.”
The guys earned some free recording time at Sonic Rocket Studios by winning a Battle of the Bands in San Diego. But they bonded while playing a gig at Mountain High in Wrightwood after a blizzard and turning a nightmare of mistakes into a crowd-satisfying performance. Now, says Grajeda, the band really deserves to be included in the name.
“We move and play together as a strong, cohesive unit,” he said. “It's not too often that you see a pedal steel and trombone playing together and having a solid sound. But, with this group it works.”
Eevaan Tre of Coachella is fronting a band including guitarist Calvin Williams of Boston and desert residents Tomas Granillo on drums, David Morales on bass and Josiah Gonzales on keyboards.
Tre, a Coachella Valley High School and College of the Desert graduate, entered the Tachevah Music Showcase in 2015 with Eevaan Tre & The Show, a five-piece band from Coachella. They didn’t make it to the semi-finals, but Goldenvoice booked them into the Gobi Tent at Coachella.
Morales is a holdover from The Show band, but Tre’s also playing acoustically at the Moxie second-floor lounge on Palm Canyon Drive on Friday evenings.
“I'm open to collaborating with as many people as I can,” he said. “I feel like I learn so much from jamming with other artists and musicians.”
Tre cites no less than 17 musical influences, including Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, the early Kanye West, and Babyface and Pharrell Williams, most especially.
But he also was well-educated at Coachella.
“Not only during my performance,” he said, “but backstage watching some of my favorite artists from a different perspective. (It) was such a learning experience.”
Chill Magnet features songwriter, lead vocalist and acoustic guitarist TomTom of Desert Hot Springs, and producer, background vocalist and guitarist Randy Banis of Antelope Valley.
Banis and TomTom have vastly different influences. TomTom likes bands that write great songs, like U2 and Nirvana, and Tame Impala and The National. Banis likes artists more befitting a guy who makes music from a laptop, like LCD Soundsystem, Frank Ocean, Jagwar & Jona Ma, Anderson Paak, Sofi Tukker, Bob Moses and Savages.
After playing in several punk bands together, they formed a duo in 2015 to achieve a different vibe.
“It was a nod of the cap to the laws of attraction,” said TomTom.”We wanted to have a new band that was drama free and attract a chill vibe. Therefore, "I'm a Chill Magnet."
“Since our songs are never really about what they sound like they are about, we wanted a name that was more truth in advertising,” added Banis. “We simply want everyone to chill with us and our music.”
Banis said their 2017 debut LP, “Surf Chica Bonita,” “may have cost me my marriage.” But they both believed the band “had to be heard” after that album was completed. They translated the studio sound to the stage, thanks to an opportunity at the Red Barn in Palm Desert when they had a chance to try things out, and then they “killed” at the Whiskey a Go Go in West Hollywood last fall.
Now they're using the desert as a new launchpad for their careers. TomTom says he’s inspired to write songs by the desert and beach environments. Banis says when he’s in the studio, “in my mind I'm painting sonically with the colors of the desert.”
“TomTom and I are at a place in our careers when the most important thing is being happy with our music,” Banis said. “We've already enjoyed having money, nice homes, fast cars and beautiful wives. What we want now is simply to create and share our music, and to soak in all of the experiences that will come with that. All we can say is that we love our music very much.”
Live showcase
What: The first semi-finals of the 2018 Tachevah Music Showcase, sponsored by the city of Indio
When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday; doors open 6 p.m.
Where: Pappy and Harriet's saloon, 53688 Pioneertown Road,
Pioneertown
Admission: Free
Information: Tachevahmusic.com or (760) 365-5956.