GREG FRANCO
[Greg Franco and Wandering Bear, Rough Church, Ferdinand and Bongo Notch]

4-01-2008

Sitting at the computer here and I’m contemplating my classic and sorted musical career. I feel like a bit of a Zelig in the music industry. I’m like a dark and weird shadow cast upon the pantheon of rock and roll.

My bands The Idiots, Blasphemous Yellow, Ferdinand and now Rough Church, were all started by myself with either family members like step - brother, Dennis Hall or close friends. For instance, since I grew up here in Los Angeles, never once did it occur to me to move to a town to “make it.”

So I guess, having been in my own “comfort zone” since the start of all of this in the early eighties, and I never really felt like I was putting very much on the line, like some people do. I’m thinking this has been good for me, in a way, not until 2004 did I get the opportunity to leave L.A., so my going to N.Z. and make a record with David and Bob from the Clean was something really different. We ended up calling the band “Wandering Bear,” and it included drummer Tane Takona, and the record we made was called “Southpawwest.” Somehow it has lead to this productive and prolific time, here in mid life.

In May, I’m returning to New Zealand for the third time in four years, So, what I’m saying is that I’m finally “going for it.” This time it is in support of a new EP, of half songs from “Wandering Bear,” and the other half from my current band with Jef Hogan and Jon Franco called Rough Church. It is called “The White Dove of the Desert.”

During a quick trip in early December, when the weather is gorgeous in Arizona, My wife and I went to Tucson, to visit my step brother Daniel. We stopped at this really interesting Catholic Church that was built by the native people. It is called San Xavier Del Bac nicknamed “The White Dove of the Desert.” It was busy that day, a mass was held to celebrate the old church’s renovation. The desert is calming and one tends to get reflective.
The weather was alternately stormy and clear. I have a thing for the desert air, and the landscape. But we prefer the Winter because in the summer the weather is truly formidable.

On “White Dove,” I think the listener will get a taste of some newer versions of songs ending the Southpawwest era that started with my initial trip to New Zealand, and then hear the second half of the disc that features a raw “just finished the tour “versions of Rough Church from mid April 2007. It serves as an introduction to the Rough Church sound, one that has been developing with its initiation back in 2003. It features Daniel Bosher whom we drafted to play on the tour, and as far as we are concerned he’s a firmly established RC member.

Some of these songs originated in Ferdinand, like “Thanks for The Pen” and “Not Pissed, Not Hurt” but evolved over time and at the end of the N.Z. tour they have a raw and unique live sound. The others were new like “You Are A Comet,” and “Your Learning,” there are no overdubs, or fixes at all! This is what we sounded like on that tour, and at that time.

Still, regarding my so called career again, it still seems like a whole lot of fun and folly complete with tours that almost function as long vacations, time in recording studios as diverse as world famous studios in Los Angeles that Richard Bosworth has taken us too, like Stagg Street, Smartso, down to our own small home recording room.

"Southpawwest" was recorded in a big converted school gymnasium in Dunedin with Tom Bell called "Tin Shack." The last place we recorded was at Bob Frisbee’s scruffy studio at Powertool, that was somehow perfect in the vibe department.
If suffices to say that I have seen a diverse amount of recording studios, and live venues over the last twenty years, so the music sorta reflects that.

This strange and wonderful ride was not typical in any way shape or form, but it has been quite productive. Traditionally musicians uproot themselves from their various hometowns, touring for many years, gobbling up tons of cheap food, communicable disease, and recreational drugs habits. If I have any habits these days, it’s a growing addiction to tea, expensive wine, movies with the wife and a pretty intense obsession with my Dodger baseball team or bowling nights with my friend Catarino.

Still Crazy after all these years should be my personal song, because I have seen a bit of, and been a part of L.A. rock history. My first gigging band was called Blasphemous Yellow (1983-1989). I was the lead singer and show booker. I also had the rehearsal space, in my bedroom, employing a cheap p.a. and dumping my bed for a sleeping bag.
Right away after about six months in the converted bedroom, we were playing the same L.A. clubs and had the same type of fans as the Minutemen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Saccharine Trust, Debt of Nature, Savage Republic, Tex and the Horseheads, Radwaste, Psi Com to name a few, and at times, in the mid 1980’s, my band B.Y. was headlining The Anti Club and Lhasa, Al’s Bar, and Madame Wong’s.

Blasphemous Yellow ended just after the collage years when the BY drummer Kendall and I both received Bachelor’s degrees from UCLA. You know, we just didn’t realize that at that moment, we should have quit our regular school thing, and joined the “school of rock.” Somehow it didn’t seem so obvious to us. We played in a band and with bands that were “ahead of their time,” and lo and behold some actually stuck around for their big moment. Instead we broke up, finished school, and got regular jobs. None of my original band mates from B.Y. is still in music or playing in a band at all.

In the lost early 90’s when my kind of music actually lost favor to the Peal Jam’s, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, and Extreme’s of the world. I actually was not pursuing much musically for many years, I took guitar and voice lessons, and tried to make a living as a Courier, in Advertising, and Telemarketing. I was also a biller in the Medical field. Later I was temping at a shitty job somewhere when a new band was started by Myself and college buddy Laura E. Smith, in 1993. Here we were, nearing thirty years old, and out of sheer boredom, and hatred for music at the time, we decided to learn our respective electric guitar and bass guitars.

We had a thing for bands like Gang of Four, Wire, Pylon, R.E.M. Husker Du, Devo, Replacements, Superchunk, Pavement, Dream Syndicate, Patti Smith, Neil Young, Big Star, the V.U. and The Fall, to name a few. We were ex-UCLA college radio d.j.’s. We had a snobby “what the hell” or more accurately “what the f%#k” attitude. We employed a drummer named Dean Shubin who was our perfectly scripted band mate. He was a colorful character that I met at a party, who liked The Pixies, and Prince. Right away we became a power trio called simply "Ferdinand", named after the bull that sniffed the flowers. Almost a year later, we added a second guitarist and key member Chris Chandler who was in the band up until 2000. He was essential in shaping the new sound, a renown sound engineer as well, it launched us from there to add keyboards as well, at one time the band swelled to five members adding the brilliant Dave Burke.

Dean Shubin left in 1996, so we employed a slew of drummers that included guys like Rob Koegler, Josh Baldwin, John Lacques, Jon Franco, and probably you! at one time or another.

But after the initiation of the band as the “power trio” we played a new scene of Coffee houses with no age limits because the “kids” were mostly all right. We played "Eagle’s Coffee Shop and Newsstand" in North Hollywood, that was our first show on April 8th 1994. We also played Troy Cafe in Downtown, which was owned by Beck Hansen's mother, and the beloved Mr. T’s. in Highland Park, on the city’s east side.
Hollywood, especially the Sunset Strip, was not cool at all, and the parking sucked.
Somehow, not much later, we ended up in a new “Sliverlake” scene while keeping our roots in the San Fernando Valley and the Eastside.

Great bands blossomed at that time. Bands like Possum Dixon, Lutefisk, Lifter, Sugarplastic, Beck, Touch Candy, The Abe Lincoln Story, The Negro Problem, V.L.A., Six Volt Sunbeam, WACO, 400 Blows, Wiskey Biscuit, Third Grade Teacher, Menthol Hill, Roanoke, and later Beechwood Sparks, and Rilo Kiley. These bands were either our friends on the scene, or we shared the stage with them, sometimes we even shared band members!
It was a beautiful time really, and the day jobs be damned. The day after shows, we had to keep from sleeping at our desks, so we slept in our cars at lunch!

Again, looking back, I guess none of us were willing to give up our cheap rent controlled and air conditioned apartments, with pool access. Summers in L.A. were great, the shows were fun, and we were not willing to put our cats or dogs in the kennel while we toured like nomads. We all had relationships too, even marriages that sometimes would last, sometimes not. We guessed that unless some incredible offer came through that didn’t involve us giving up our publishing rights, or our souls, we were happy with the way things were.

We were amazed at some of the successes of our friends in bands, and shocked by some of the record label bullshit as well that snared our same friends into bad contracts, endless touring, and various personal catastrophes.
That was before all the internet tools that are available to bands today. Note to newer bands: It’s better now, you don’t have to do it the record company way anymore. You can reach your fans in better ways than before, even booking shows is much easier. Believe me, I had a bitch of a time trying to track down the booker to get a gig at the Troubadour opening for some big band. I once died on hold!! Sometimes, in order to get a good booking, you had to become kind of a stalker!

But we really did get choice gigs eventually, even outside of our East Side neighborhood. We became the really “tight” fun-loving kick ass opening band to some of our “indie rock” heroes, for example we opened for Mike Watt, The Figgs, David Thomas, The Clean, because we seemed to have good music, cool flyers or something, or maybe it was just that we always reminded the bar patrons to try the beer.

Ferdinand managed to get out a 7-inch single in 1997, on Pronto Records, it was called " Butterscotch b/w Costume Disappointment," and we did a one-week Pacific Coast tour that summer. Somehow we started in Seattle, and worked our way down. We played some really cool shows in places like Chico, CA, and San Luis Obispo.

By March 2000 we landed a gig at SXSW in Austin TX, by that time Laura and I had two new guys in the band David and Josh, because we lost David Burke and Chris Chandler to their busy jobs.

Then a few months later in Aug. 2000 we had the good fortune to turn out a nice disc called “Demoted to Greeter,” luckily, we did get some great reviews, even in The L.A. Weekly and New York’s Village Voice end of the year poll, all thanks to “Falling“ James Moreland.

It was a different but great phase for Ferdinand. Third Grade Teacher guitarist David Guererro joined Laura and I, in 2000, and that later lead to David and Laura's marriage. We played a ton of great shows with different talented drummers such as John Rosas from the great band “Lifter". We recorded quite a bit as well and nearly finished a full disc.
However, due to the lazy susan of about a dozen drummers coming and going in the band, management problems that were totally unnecessary, plus some real heavyweight “personal” events in the lives of Laura and me, and the increasing demands of the band 3GT, which Laura joined, it all added up and we broke up after ten years in 2004.
Still, there is recorded a half studio and half live, plus bonus tracks album called “The Memorial Interchange” coming out in May. Who knows what the future holds we do have some unfinished business. We could easily ride again.

In the meantime, we bumped into David K, Bob and Hamish, when Ferdinand opened for the Clean at the Knitting Factory in September 2001.

I ended up foisting myself on them and haranguing them enough that they let me come out to Dunedin, and make a “solo” album with them in 2004 called “Southpawwest.” This lead to a deal with Powertool records, and the lovely Andrew Mai Tai. Also, I began working and writing with my new band called Rough Church.

R.C. started with meeting Jef Hogan after a Dodger game, at a Ferdinand show at TAIX lounge. A casual “jamming session” ensued with a guy named Tracy Hill. Later, my cousin Jon and I did a gig of new songs at Mr. T’s. We invited Jef to listen to the show, and after the show, we invited him to join our “new band.”

So in the same spirit of again, “what the f*&#”, we started the long process of rehearsals and recordings. In a small stroke of good or almost “great“ luck, the most amazing L.A. legendary producer Richard Bosworth (The Knack, Johnny Rivers, The Cowsills, Brian Wilson, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Neil Yong, just to name a few) who had also helped Ferdinand shape it’s vision, and recording chops. Richard also produced the Rough Church recordings. So Me, Jon and Jef, have comprised Rough Church for the last four years, living as neighbors here in Mt. Washington/L.A.

When the Southpawwest album finally came out in Sept. 2007, and the guys who made that disc with me, Bob, DK, and Tane were not able to join me, so Rough Church made plans to travel to N.Z. and as a band, we promoted the album. We were lucky enough after a generous grant from the RA Hall foundation, (thanks mum for the frequent flyer miles,) to go half way around the world to tour in April 2007 on a one-week tour. The tour, also thanks to Andrew at Powertool, and Daniel Bosher drummer from the band Decordica, was fun and successful.

Now I have played around a hundred or so shows in two countries and in the course of 24 years.
This band is like the others I started , where we kept our day jobs.

So, here’s what is going on: There is the new May/08 Wandering Bear and R.C. six-song E.P. called “The White Dove of the Desert.” It will be followed by an acoustic 20 date N.Z. Greg Franco solo tour called "Sparks from the Universe" in May/June. Also in May 2008, Powertool and Rubberband Ball Records will offer the last studio album from Ferdinand called, “The Memorial Interchange.” Also, Rough Church will be offering “Laundromat T.V.’s of the Arroyo Secco.” due in 2009, and there will be another R.C. N.Z. full band tour next year.

All in all it has been a very different and creative thing to develop music outside of the constructs of the big bad recording industry.
Right now I am thinking of a great tour memory from 2007, it was at a venue called "Happy" in Wellington, we had great show, and we got really “happy”(i.e. intoxicated) at Happy, We had this Wellington based musician named "Dragstrip" join us on stage for the last number. So, it was great until someone smashed the car rental window out. They left an ipod and for some reason and stole all of Andrews choice CD‘s. Naturally we found a MaC ‘s Gold cardboard box for a make shift window. The next day we returned the car at the airport, and caught a flight to Christchurch and hung out with “The Bats” side project called Minisnap, it was somehow triumphant! Sorry still to Andrew. That G.B.V. box set is still gone and that's hurt! Don't be surprised if you don't find in in your stocking from us this Christmas though.

The next stop was Dunedin, a return trip for me, but new for the band. We did a interview at Radio One, and played at Circadian Rhythm. Much thanks to Bob Scott and Bill Direen for opening, and to D.K. for showing up even though he wasn’t feeling too good.

Just for the record, when I got married to Michelle, just a few days after the tour, we had known each other for almost 20-years. (we met in 1989)

The relationship somewhat unfolded like my music career. It has been quite a sojourn! Sometimes I feel silly about all of this, but I have found that since I’m pretty darn good at it by now and the music is still pounding in my head like the surf at Zuma beach, and begging me to lean, record it and release it to the masses, I have to keep it going.
Well "for the masses" may be an exaggeration, maybe it’s for at least 20-30 die hard fans in L.A and NZ, but it works for me.

Right now I also to tutor Los Angeles middle school math students for my only real income. I’m looking forward to the New Zealand tour,! and perhaps I can get something back this time, like a Sassy Red to the head, ooh good song title,! or some really sad “golf club”claps in places where at least they don’t serve shitty yank bud in a can. No Bud lite!! No Bud Ice!

As for all the rest of the year, and the rest of my life, I hope for me and our friends, good health, good times, productive and passionate work, and naps in the afternoons. Hello to all my old partners in crime like Laura, Chris, Dean, David, Kendall, Ed, Daniel, Rob, Byron, Mark M. D.K, Bob, Andrew, Tane, Dave Burke. Some of you still like me! Hopefully!
See you in NZ May 2008. As my 2008 candidate B.O. says quoting M.L.K. “There is a fierce Power of Now.” and I’m still trying to catch some of that.

Dedicated to the memory of a real fighter, patriot, and truth teller, Gilbert B. Franco 1935-2006 Miss ya Pop.