WRITING SAMPLES
IMAGE: RY WELCH
From the academy of deep soul and no ego, Reverend Baron delivers visions of liquor store East LA, the off-the-freeway dry mirage of slow motion graffiti and lonely seagulls. A nylon stringed zen fog with themes of woozy love, layered dimensions of nostalgia and glazed neighborhood tales that roll in with a natural ease.
After notching a permanent status in the skateboarding orbit as Danny Garcia, he transferred his effortless style, dedication and authenticity into music. Practicing a philosophy of demystifying the process and doing it yourself, he has become a proficient multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and producer of his own and other artist's music. All streams of curiosity converge into the river.
An enigma, Reverend Baron emerges from the proverbial grey overpass with no sense of urgency. He takes a sharp gaze at his surroundings and processes them through a factory of depth and gentle swag to yield a sound that sits as easy as fallen molasses on the bodega shelf. The songs are an unassuming invitation to either walk through the doorway or lean on the wall outside, either way something beautiful and rare.
IMAGE: RY WELCH
A ladybug on a warm leaf, a lazy dog asleep on a diving board, a thirsty LA scene wrapped in a tequila duvet. Tim Hill’s songs stall you in a cul-de-sac of forever summer, offering all shades of sonic blue, blurred Mexican mirages and the heavy velvet of a closing night.
Los Angeles born. Whittier grown. He translates what he knows; a hometown where the Dodgers rule the roost, time carved out for slow endeavors is paramount, and coffee is the blueprint for the day. He seasoned his musical skillet as a keyboard/saxophone player touring with artists such as Nick Waterhouse, Curtis Harding and the Allah Las. In 2018, he released a 45 entitled “Paris, Texas,” b/w a cover of Warren Zevon’s “Steady Rain,” under the Allah Las’ label, Calico Discos.
Tim Hill’s full-length release, “Payador”, puts itself on the villa’s shelf, painted with sounds of introverted West coast visions. Some songs are fraught with above-the-palm tree vocals and lonely harmonica solos while others park their front tire on top a warm curb. It’s full throttle suburban shade, acoustic strands of sun and that Spanish radio station floating from your neighbors window.
IMAGE: JULIA BROKAW
Cornelia Murr is tethered to no place but has designed her own sky, a spiritual canvas being continually etched into with each collection she casts. Her particular style of tender pop is the steadfast canopy spread across all context. It feels like a layered gift, blankets of truth from her lived hours.
She crafts songs pulling us into new chances for space, where one pearl revealed begets another pearl hidden. Her memories become crosshatched with our own, drawing soft echoes with coated whispers. Her lyrics build us rooms to visit. The ethos of her work is pop introspective and painted in concepts that dab the various shades of love’s palette. She examines her Achilles heel while offering her findings as a means for us to asses our own.
IMAGE: DYLAN GORDON
Two decades of chiseling songs has placed Matt Costa in the role of the elder, a position he fulfills with peeled back openness. Like a curious researcher throwing himself into the nuances of fieldwork, Costa turns the lens on his subjects while enlarging the aperture of his own spirit. The result of his findings are songs of perfect pairing that document the quests. His last two music releases, “Donde Los Terremotos” and “Katabatic Flight” are both teamed up with films directed by Costa. They are collections of journey, two bouquets of story.
“Donde Los Terremotos” draws native shapes with frequencies of earth baked romance. The songs become collected objects, something molded or braided, put in a bag and brought home. Each track is a portion of the tale unfolding. While some pull a lassoed star through smoking gravy, others carry us over the sea in the ribcage of a mystic albatross. Costa’s willingness to remain the porous observer, enables him to sponge then spill his gatherings, leaving us with the rich pulp. It’s the relay of ritual, it’s the sound of Spanish singing, it’s the percussion pushed to the front of the mix, the allure of indigenous drone, it’s the deep lightness of sonic ceremony, it’s Octavio Paz writing, “Listen to me as one listens to the rain”. The album as a whole feels anointed, a blessed secret given.
“Katabatic Flight” is a modern account with ancient lessons. It is a layered study of human and wind. Costa’s storytelling helps us understand that our quantity of surrender will be directly linked to the grace or struggle of our own glide. The opening track where Costa sings “Who you were / who you are / that’s all about to change” renders simple truth dug in with tambourine waves. From there, the songs get minimal in approach and slope low into the clay with tones of cinematic sustain, strings that roam like nomadic shadows dancing, and tracks of breathy, desert flute. This offering is the steady stir that helps us see that the world is the great chameleon and we must be the ones to keep saying yes.
Both releases are bound by nothing, which reveals to the listener where their own limits may lie. Thanks be to Costa, the poetic messenger who went away, thrived in new environments and returned with the energy to transcribe songs that serenely hold us on the crest of not a single word.
REVEREND BARON ALBUM BIO - “OVERPASS BOY” VINYL RELEASE BY COLEMINE / KARMA CHIEF
Written with no big plan in mind, Reverend Baron's "Overpass Boy" becomes a Los Angeles meditation, an eight song prayer of poetic topography. The album gives the city its own sound, and its own songs to hum.
Recorded in several different locations of LA, and loosely sketching the story of a young wanderer, the album is an easy current of observations and longings. Slices of soul and doo-wop emerge in stacked harmonies, while the percussion and grooves are the blooms that could only come from East LA. Garcia's investment to vocal tenderness and instrumental high style strikes our universal center. His soft serenade reconnects us to something misplaced.
Playing almost every instrument on the album, Garcia's spirit is tailored into the sound, designing an amalgam of tones and frequencies as idiosyncratic as the singer himself.
Traversing the alleys, passing the sous-chef's cigarette smoke, under the shaking bridges, behind a velvet curtain in a good suit, with a slide guitar in the rain, the titles quilt together for us: Every promise out here walks and waits in the little hours. Jackie and Jimmy drive away and we're left in that little valley, suspended. Recorded and digitally released in 2019, "Overpass Boy" will be re-released by Karma Chief Records on 8/2/2024.
TIM HILL ALBUM BIO - “MOON LANDING” 2024
We are offered a fresh neuron sprawl, branching beyond lyrics in interrupted pieces of sound. Tim takes our reptilian brains and welds them to our unborn futures, placing us inside of his droplet. Here, we’re forced to reflect out, something singular multiplies, nature brings her face in, something shifts, our speed changes, the Self refracts and what’s left jumps on sustained lines that eventually arch into meditation milk. It becomes a karmic cleanse of the amygdala, a launch from normal feeling life. Tim takes the risk, committing to diving deeper into his own bottomless pool of art, gifting us with sensory treats that dilate our old perimeters. It’s sky as theatre, handing out everything but answers to questions. And where do we go? Where starlight mingles. Where minds never land.
CONTACT
rywelchwritings@gmail.com