BRIM – “California Gold”

Pedal steel, central valley sounds mixed with swirls of psychedelia. BRIM sounds like My Morning Jacket meets GP meets Sloan. The title track from their debut album California Gold reminds us why California tropes are just that – wisps of nostalgia, vestiges from a Huell Howser show (the album is dedicated to the California TV tour guide), and some far-off whiff of sea breeze, even inland.

California Gold is a song that meditates on the virtues of living in what most would consider to be flyover/drive-through country. Growing up in Tulare County, folks eventually adapt to a belief that they are missing out on a faster, shinier, better world just three hours south over the Grapevine or three hours northwest into the Bay Area. Most young people try to leave as soon as they can, and it’s easy to understand this move. Here, career opportunities outside of agriculture largely consist of some sort of population management, be it as a teacher, a nurse, or a prison guard. We have some of the world’s worst air quality, the state’s worst poverty, and our water supply is quickly drying up. The overall outlook can seem really grim.

Fortunately for me, I grew up watching Huell Howser, a sort of cornfed precursor to Anthony Bourdain who absolutely delighted in the prosaic. His weekly program was called California’s Gold, airing on public television and almost completely devoted to discovering and appreciating the hidden gems of California’s smaller communities. I’m not sure that this program’s connection to my own experience of rural town life really hit me until my early 30s. So much of one’s 20s is a scramble for life experience, only to come up short in the promises of the American Dream again and again. I became a father at age 32 and this helped me to gain clarity on the reasons why I still live in the same county I was born in. I’ve heard lots of people tell me how sad that is, and maybe they’re right. 

But I think they’re wrong. 

The truth is, I love my life and all the smallness and simplicity of it. Here, we are a real and rooted people. We have been embued with soulful authenticity that may have travelled with us from the South and Midwest in the 30s and 40s, strongly evidenced in our unique drawl. Tourists quickly pass us up for the nearby Sequoias and big dreamers don’t move here to wrest their fortune from the hands of the community. Our towns are full of lifers who chose to stay. Here, we adapt to the difficulties of our circumstances and learn how to spot beauty more readily when it pushes out of the dry ground. We have to drive a little further than many to escape the 108 degree summers, but time and again we fall in love with the nearby mountain peaks and their groves of giant trees so frequently threatened, damaged, or lost in the new annual event of “fire season.” Most of us here are deeply flawed, politically homeless, socially anachronistic, and a great time to have a beer with. People in rural areas are more complex and varied than they are given credit for, and the band is evidence of that. ReNelle and I went to the same high school here in Visalia and got together later in life. My little brother Micah is in the band. Hayden is from the same town my folks grew up in. Brian is a mountain boy from a dinky place called Prather. It’s hard to put all of this into a straight response, as usual, so hopefully the song can do the rest of the work. That’s why I had to write it, after all.

Daniel Rice

Singer-songwriter Daniel Rice and bandmate Hayden Doyel originally formed Brim as a rootsy side project to their main gig in psychedelic hard-rock band Slow Season, now known as Westing.  Shortly thereafter, Daniel’s wife ReNelle Rice joined the fold, playing keys and fleshing out their three part harmonies. 

Written and recorded in their hometown of Visalia, CA, the band’s debut album “California Gold” is a paen to the dirt-road-back-streets and down to earth humanity of rural California’s small towns and agricultural valleys.  Local friend and engineer Marc Dwelle recorded most of the album over the course of three summer days in 2019, and David Glasebrook mixed the album at his studio in Oakland, CA. The album recalls the lonesome pedal steel of Bakersfield country, Gram Parson’s stories of sin & salvation, and Neil Young’s loose and dusty years on the beach.

The first few songs written for the album were inspired by Daniel’s experiences with the growing pains of sobriety and the dwindling dreams of a rock n’ roll band. However, the next batch of songs sprung forth from a meditation on greater and more lasting things on which to pin one’s hope and dreams—family, friends, and faith. 

Inspired by the humble humanity of the farm towns in California’s San Joaquin Valley that the band calls home, Daniel returned to his roots and wrote about the overlooked nooks and crannies of California flyover territories as a sort of metaphor for finding beauty in the simple things of everyday life. Not the postcard views of Malibu sunsets and sandy beaches, but the California landscape of walnut orchards, rolling hills, and tule fog. No surprise he calls it California Gold.

Royal Oakie Records will release the album on May 20th 2022. Meanwhile, Brim is set to hit the road in the Summer and Fall 2022, and they’re dead-set on playing the small towns.

Song by Daniel Rice and Hayden Doyel, lyrics by Daniel Rice
Daniel Rice – Vocals, guitars, keys percussion
ReNelle Rice – Keys, backing vocals
Hayden Doyel – Bass guitar, guitar
Justin Snell – Drums, percussion, backing vocals
Mark Ala – Pedal steel 
Caleb Melo – Pedal Steel
Engineered by Mark Dwelle
Mixed by David Glasebroom
Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering

Pre-order California Gold, out 5.20 via Royal Oakie Records on Bandcamp