Farmer Dave Scher
Farmer Dave called me and immediately the call dropped. I called back.
“I’m in a canyon!” he pronounced.
Of course he was.
With roots in California dating back to the mid-1800s, Farmer Dave admits that California is an easy place to fall in love with, whether you have roots or not. He speaks like an ancient person from the future. I had a feeling he might be able to shed some light on what makes California so magical, sounds and visions rippling through time. Sure enough, he seemed to, although his answers lead to more questions, a fractal-like investigation of humanity, like his songs.
From his work with Beachwood Sparks, his self-titled work, his recent projects Californiosos and Wizards of the West; to his collaborations with Jenny Lewis, Vetiver, Kurt Vile, and countless more, Dave is a figurehead of modern California-based music, tapped for his talents in an array of instruments, songwriting, production, poetry, and visual arts. The future of music as Farmer Dave sees it is family and community, and if you can’t get there physically, just put on your headphones. Music is a home to return to.
Can you tell me how you and Michael [Vest] met and how you started developing the idea for this project?
Michael and I have a friend in common who is a painter and poet named Eric Ernest Johnson. And we met through him on New Year’s Day 2001. We were coming home from San Francisco and Eric’s car broke down on The Grapevine outside of LA. In the night, Michael came out from Venice and rescued us. We hung out, we did a lot of poetry readings, and grew and made art. We all loved Richard Brautigan. We all loved the West Coast Beats and really felt a continuation of that and really appreciated California.
So, this particular band is pretty much entirely vibing off things that Michael and Eric and I all had in common when we met. Eric’s not actually in this band but we all get kind of jazzed by the same thing. It’s a cultural affair that we’re having, it’s a lifelong love of art and poetry and poetic license. Hopefully, freedom which we check in on while we’re making the music and all the parts that aren’t easy. Are we still having fun? That would be a high-held banner. A bit of, you know, artistic liberty, be willing to be wrong, be willing to be foolish, and dance with the divine. Like some of our faves.
That’s a great ethos. So who are some of your faves?
Oh wow. Well, I think musically we all love the beats. Loved a lot the Psychedelic West Coast music. Loved a lot of the West Coast Jazz and Psychedelic Jazz. Loved a lot of Spiritual Cosmic Jazz and also a lot of painters. A lot of The Beat Poets. I haven’t named a lot of names but each genre is just kind of a continuum that the different artists plug into.
There was definitely a radical kind of shift after World War 2. All the things that kind of happened led to some kind of, at least in my feeling, a transcendence that is timeless. That still is timeless right now. We’re timeless.
The spirit of the West Coast is both timeless and also always ahead of its time. What is that mystical quality that influences so much great art?
You can attune yourself to any of the times that have been that represent the high point in our human experience. As West Coast people, you’re here. You can attune yourself to the feeling of the land, of the times of abalone and Chumash and open land. You can attune yourself to the days of the Spaniards. You can attune yourself to future vibrations. But you can appreciate anything that’s happened.
Recorded music has existed for one hundred years plus and there are no rules on what you can emulate or what you can appreciate and allow to celebrate in your own art and your manner of being. So, it’s about artistic liberty to sound like you want to sound and have fun.
What was the dynamic between you and Michael while working on this record?
Well, we did a lot of great writing under the Brugmansia tree at Michael’s house in Venice. We would just play our instruments and make songs up. Then those songs were left with me for a long time and I ended up building a lot of the arrangements.
Topics on this record range really widely from worshipful sacred feminine themes to nationalism and social change. What ties these things together?
I think that in any one lifespan or even one day in your life, you experience everything. You have moments of cosmic feeling. You have moments of civil duty. You have connections with nature. You have relationships. This album talks a lot about the goddess and the feminine because we both are entranced by it. Michael’s poems had a lot to do with that.“All of the gods stayed home tonight in their bedrooms so the goddess could dance on the sand. It’s a new world my friend.”
So, it was a lot of poetry with music this time. I think there’s gonna be some new kinds of music. This was a process that neither of us is beholden to. The next batch of tunes will probably have something of a different feeling.
How does this project differ from Wizards of the West?
Well, as Benji [Ben Knight] or anyone in that band will tell you, one person changes the whole thing. So in a band with Michael and I, I guess I’m the constant. But not knowing what it’s like to be without me, I don’t know what it feels like. I’ve been trying to be without myself for many years. Sometimes it works out.
How do you try to get there?
All roads lead to Rome, if that’s where you’re headed.
When you were growing up, were your parents really into music?
They did, they listened to a lot of mainstream which in the 70’s was great. I loved all that music in the 70’s. If “Right Down the Line” by Gerry Rafferty came on with my mom, I wouldn’t get out of the car. I would not move until the song was over.
The Best of the Beach Boys Volume Three cassette. KROQ in LA was the best station. Here’s the new song by The Smiths, Here’s the new song from this band The Cure. Everything was flying. LA in the 80’s was great. 70’s too, but I was a little younger.
So, there’s just so much music. In my case, a lot of mainstream music mostly. I didn’t know any different. I’d go watch Ghostbusters then listen to the latest tunes but I loved everything. But I found a lot of that music was exaggerated also, a song like “Always Something There To Remind Me” or “Owner of A Lonely Heart” was sure to have a bunch of weird sound effects and things happening because all music had to have that unique and exaggerating cadences. I grew up on that ear candy. Music is so calm these days. I like having a little more fun with things. Being willing to be silly or foolish in order to follow a point.
It makes us kind of elastic and kind of rubbery. At the concerts we play, it does seem like people have been having fun. And if they’re having this much fun we know that we can keep going. Maybe even dig in a little bit deeper. That give-and-take with the audience, and you know what we’re talking about here, the kind of people out in Cali and other places that get together around a band, get together around a music scene- that pushes you. You can play better when you see people dancing and grooving on what you’re doing.
The emphasis going forward, I think, is on family. You don’t want to try to get your band ahead, you want to be with your community and everyone together. That’s how we do it. If it takes a while for that to be correctly monetized, then it’s great for musicians to make sure to stay at the community level. Because then you may over time not be able to live off it, but at the community level we’ve experienced together people bring food and they provide things. You still have win-wins that are just of a different appearance.
How did you start playing with bands?
I was in a fairly avant garde band called Toendëf right during the time anti-folk was a thing. That might’ve been our closest adjective. Bands like Beck and Ween were popular. It was me and Miguel Mendez who’s still a musician, he’s making cool albums and Nils who isn’t active. We had two acoustic guitars and a viola. When I was in my teens got me into John Cale and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They really got me The Beats, too.
There were tons of bands on the local level, in Long Beach where I grew up going to tons of shows. Fun bands that got me into a lot of avant garde music and then seeing bands like Sublime play around at a school dance or at parties. Snoop Dogg came out at the same time. I went to the two high schools where those guys were from. It was wonderful.
I went to college, got into KXLU, a good radio station and Beachwood Sparks was born out of that.
Can you tell me more about how Beachwood Sparks was born?
Yes, we’re up there going to really edgy and beautiful shows. They used to call some of it Emotional Hardcore which turned into something else pretty fast so, I don’t know if there’s a proper name. But, we went to The Smell when it first started and Jabberjaw, Alligator Lounge on the Westside, SoCo in Venice. A bunch of cool spots.
We were all in these bands and listening to this music that was pretty progressive. But we started digging through records and getting into things like The Byrds. We got in trouble with the radio station because you’re supposed to be playing all the new music that’s coming out, but we were playing huge chunks of ’60s and Psychedelic music. We almost followed the LA sound in months instead of years into country rock. We really liked The Burrito Brothers and that was that. It took time and that band had a couple of lives before Sub Pop discovered us which was the best because then we became a touring band and got to go around the world.
And it still has more lives, right?
It does and that project is going to be recording soon.
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What have you learned that you’re bringing to these new records and what’s great about releasing albums yourself or on independent labels like Curation?
This is kind of a walk on air. You have to dispel this music for me, dispel the illusions that you have to do it a certain way to have a career or you have to go through certain channels or you have to go through a certain sound that matches other people to be accepted.
I think I’ve had enough different experiences where I’m not going to make art for those terms anymore. If good things come of it, which it seems to happen, that’s great but, in my case, it’s been a road far less traveled for a while and you need to have good psychogeographic navigation in place or you might measure yourself by other careers and feel like you’re just blowing it. It’s a hazard of musicians, even very successful ones, but music itself is divine creation. This is time for the music in every person’s heart on the whole planet to be shared and loved and widely accepted.
Listen to Californiosos’ latest release here, visit their website, and see Farmer Dave and the Wizards of the West next Friday, March 13th at Harvelle’s Santa Monica.
