CAROLYN MCCOY PHOTOGRAPHY, WORDS & DRONE - Photo Essays & Music Reviews

Sunhead & The Strange: Fuck Adults, The Kids Have It Covered

5/19/2023

It's Friday evening, just past dinner time, and the kids have come to rock and roll.

Sometimes it takes a bunch of kids to entertain a bunch of kids, as kids know kids better than adults do. Unless you're one of those adults that remembers what it's like to be a kid with no place to go on a Friday night except Trouble Town. So what better way to gather up the youths for an evening of fun than by pumping into their brains live rock and roll created by their peers and classmates with high school prog rockers Sunhead and pop rockers The Strange?

Youth shows in Marin are few and far between, a sad reality, as young folks really like music as much as us old farts. Supporting kids with the music they create is something we often overlook as grownups, but luckily around these parts kids are go-getters and know how to take shit into their own hands.

In conjunction with Revolution 9's Huda al-Jamal and The Strange front woman Devon Harvey, this fun teen-friendly event had a life of its own and it rocked hard. With both bands playing for well over an hour, local teens moshed, danced, head banged, and sang along to music created by their friends. And might I say that these bands are GOOD; there ain't no bobby-sox kid bands, no, no no, not at all.

Sunhead shook me senseless with the maturity of their music. We are talking a conglomerate of David Bowie, Genesis circa 1974, Wagner, and maybe a sprinkle of Slayer, and they are probably not more than 18.

The Strange is a great rock with a power pop edge. Harvey's band takes on mostly original songs with a few pop covers. All members are ridiculously talented young adults bringing forth music that is full of depth and spunk.

Keeping kids safe and in an environment that is conducive to them being themselves is a fine-edged sword. Giving them space to play and have a good time without us grownups cramping their style should be the norm in any community.

Album Review: Katie Knipp - Live At The Green Room Social Club

4/12/2023

The short-story version of Sacramento blues singer Katie Knipp is this: She’s a little go-getter, she’s got her shit together and she’s not wasting time with making her career happen.

But the long-story version of blues singer Katie Knipp has quite a bit more depth .

The last time I interviewed Katie Knipp was about 2 years ago. She had just come out with her 6th studio album, The Well, she was ALMOST nominated for a Grammy and she had a few of her songs on the Billboard Blues Charts alongside Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Buddy Guy. She is a winner for Best Blues Artist in Sacramento twice over, and she was voted Female Artist of The Year in 2020 and 2021 by the Country Folk Americana Blues Realm.

Now do you understand my earlier comment of “she’s a little go-getter”?

“I would say hitting top 10 Billboard Blues Albums charts with the last 3 albums has been more of a boost!” states Knipp. “It helps with credibility in getting better opportunities for the band."

Fast forward to here and now, Knipp has yet another album for us to feast on with our ears and mind, a live album, no less. Live at The Green Room Social Club, her 7th album, is Knipp and her incredible band showcasing what they do best, performing live in front of an audience. To most bands, playing live is really the end-all of why they create music.

Video Review: Milk For The Angry - "Doors Of Dismay"

4/4/2023

The making of a music video can be very challenging and is no small feat. The planning involved in bringing visual imagery to a song takes a lot of brain power and people to make it happen. Not only does the band need to create a vision based on a song or lyrics, but they also need to do it in a way that makes sense of the song.

Marin's psych-rock band Milk For The Angry is never lacking creativity in pretty much everything that they do, so much so that I’d even credit them as being an “art-rock” band. So when this bunch of freaky-weirdo-artsy-geeks gets together to make a music video, you know it’s going to be pretty epic.

Milk For The Angry’s latest music video (their 11th!) for the song “Doors Of Dismay” is the first single release from their upcoming album Free Gold Sunday, due this Spring.

For “Doors Of Dismay”, MFTA utilized multiple locations to film the “going through the door” imagery, dragging said heavy wooden door around the Bay Area for the shooting; San Quentin Beach, the MFTA studio, The Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma, Mt. Tamalpais, China Camp, the funeral home Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, Druid Heights and many other nooks, crannies, and alleyways around the Bay Area.

MFTA prides itself on making DIY videos; filming, and editing the old-school way. “No CGI, just splicing out a certain area of footage and replacing it with the following scene”, states ringleader Dana Lindstrom. “The movement had to be consistent too, meaning we had to keep track of how fast the camera moved into the next world and at what angle. Lots of failed attempts.”

“The workflow has always been that I come up with some ideas, figure out how to logistically pull them off, and then my friend Will Rushton comes out to film and expand on concepts. He’s great, he oozes creativity and has an eye for making things pop on camera. He also does all the editing and that’s another huge aspect of the excitement.”

“Each video is different and everyone who’s involved helps in one way or another. Just showing up is huge. I’ve got to give a big thanks, hug, kiss, and shout out to my favorite person and girlfriend Angela Cieslewitz, who’s been there for every video in one way or another and always helps in a huge way.”

The video for “Doors Of Dismay” pulls off the vibe of a dreamy reality with the psychedelic riffs of the song leading us the way through the visual journey. The band took brilliance to another level by incorporating the incredible clay masks of local artist Rachel Pozivenec, which transformed the band members into the magic beings that lead us through the doors and

New Singles Released By West Marin's Peppermint Moon

3/22/2023

The one-man band that is Peppermint Moon is at it again with the release of two wonderfully composed and sonically layered new singles!

Peppermint Moon is the pseudonym for West Marin songwriter/musician Colin Schlitt, whose other job is being the bassist for dark alt rock band El Radio Fantastique. Schlitt’s choice to not use his own name for this project is a bit unusual. He explains, “I like the idea of a set of music having a poetic name as opposed to just being the name of a person. I am also pretty shy and introverted most of the time and felt more comfortable giving this project a name that wouldn’t draw as much attention to me personally and would focus more on the songs. I thought it would be cool if people were fooled and thought it was an actual band.”

The two new singles, “Foxy Friends” and "He She They” are not part of any upcoming Peppermint Moon albums, but instead they were more of a “creative surprise” for Schlitt. “I wasn’t planning on working on any new recordings for a while, but these two recordings just sort of happened quickly in unexpected spurts,” Schlitt explains. “He She They”, was recorded after Schlitt took his son to a concert at the Fillmore featuring artist Cavetown. “I was blown away by the concert and by Cavetown’s recorded stuff. 'He She They' was already almost all the way written, and with that concert as inspiration,

Rick Turner: The Masterpiece Life Of True Renaissance Man

3/1/2023

Author's Note: Luthier Rick Turner passed away a year ago, I am still sad. He was a genius and a friend. In my 15 years of covering the Bay Are misc scene, Rick was a champion of my work. I had the wonderful opportunity to visit with Rick at his shop in Santa Cruz a few years ago, where we talked guitars, wood and creativity.

Here is my story on him from that interview from 2016.

Santa Cruz based luthier, engineering genius and all around rock star Rick Turner has built his life around music, and perhaps music has built a life around his work. Rick Turner is someone whose life has taken so many loops, turns and 180 degree backflips, therefore, I am befuddled as to where to begin a story about this man. Overall, I suppose that there is not so much a beginning and an end to his story, but a continuous narrative of adventures and hard-won luck.

Photo by Max Mobley (used with permission/RT)

Let us begin with an analogy about the guitar, as guitars have been a central character in the story of Rick's life....

Guitars begin as chunks of wood waiting to be transformed into vehicles of artistic expression by caring and talented hands. Each one is uniquely crafted, some even hand-made, comprised of many components that are fused to form one instrument. Every instrument collects the mood and spirit of not only the hands and life of the maker, but the experiences of the musician who will one day hold it in their arms like a cherished lover and make her sing with her own stringed-voice.

Photo Essay: The Moon, La Lune, La Luna

2/7/2023

Photos & Artwork Carolyn McCoy©

According to scientific belief, the celestial object we call the moon was, quite possible, created approximately 4.5 billion years ago. But, as scientific ideas often begin with guesswork and intuition, with small clues pointing the way to another idea, we can only hypothesize at the true origin of our beloved satellite. No one will ever fully know how things went down that long ago, but some ideas include its creation from a rogue or displaced planet caught in Earth’s orbit, or quite possibly it was formed with debris from Earth itself after a massive impact from a meteor or comet. Gravitational and magnetic forces that create the magic of physics may have bound the debris together, slowly forming a sphere that has tagged along with Earth on its yearly circumambulations around the sun for eons.

With blooming technology, it was inevitable that humanity would find a way to get to the moon. That historic visit with the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969 culled a scientific treasure chest of new and massively important information that has helped us bash many an absurd myth about what the moon was. We discovered no spacemen were living there; we found the moon was not made of cheese, and we were enlightened to find that it was not a large cardboard cutout made by a stage crew and hung in the air in a sound studio in LA.

We have discovered much about the moon since those first non-terestrial steps. As we now know, it is in synchronous rotation with Earth, taking 27 days, 7 hours, and 43.1 minutes to make a revolution around our Big Blue Marble flying at 1.02 kilometers per second. Because of the lack of its own rotation, we always see the same face of the moon, with its dark volcanic landscape interspersed with the brighter ancient crustal highlands and the prominent circular impact craters from meteors of days past. We have also discovered glass beads strewn all over the surface, indicating a past nova of our beloved sun. The moon has “moon quakes”, it has water molecules, and it shows that without an atmosphere, it’s fair game for every type of flying space rock to pummel its surface.

The moon is a powerful force. Without it following our planet we would have a very different world. Lunar power drives our oceanic tides as well as the blood-tides that flow through our veins, as we are water-formed beings. It guides the monthly cycles of fertility with women, hence creating new life.

Photo Essay: Places I've Made Out With Boys

1/3/2023

"If you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss"...or so the song goes. But the reality is, that's a lie. We all know kissing, especially a really good kiss, is all about a chemical connection via hormones found in spit.

The mouth is a sensual place if you ask me. Warm, inviting and chock filled with chemicals in the saliva that will set the heart pattering during a kiss. The mouth and lips contain over 40% of the nerves connected to our face, so the lips respond intensely to every kind of stimuli, which, in turn, triggers a massive response in the brain. During a passionate kiss, our blood vessels dilate; more oxygen is routed to the brain; our breathing quickens and becomes erratic; our cheeks flush; our pulse quickens; our pupils dilate. We are inundated with dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and our adrenaline levels spike, leaving our bodies awash in a chemical bath that is equivalent to an amazing drug high that often leaves us addicted and wanting more.

So, a good kiss really means nothing in the grand scheme of commitment. It doesn't mean he loves you, it doesn't mean he'll stick around, but it does mean there is some seriously good sexual juju that may or may not lead to love.

#1: It was just a mild flirtation and I never expected anything to happen. But for only one night it did. I remember the sound of the creek below as my hands wove through his hair. So soft, both the sound of the water and the feel of his hair. He sat on the guardrail before me and we were then face to face. The trees shook in the wind, the night blended the darkness into various shades of light and for a few moments I was oblivious to it all...

#2: The wooden footbridge was dark, empty and probably not more than 50 feet long. But when one is lustily distracted by a wild and curly-haired man with a dark soul and a fiery passion, a bridge, even a short bridge such as this one, can take hours to cross...

#3: As we sat on the bench in the dark, he told me he was emotionally bankrupt and couldn't give me anything, I said that was OK. But when my lips touched the warm, salty skin on his neck I was hit with a desire I hadn't felt in awhile. I knew at that moment that I was lying to him and that eventually I'd want more....

#4: The intimacy of my bedroom is rarely shared with anyone. The honor of being in my sacred space is something that is earned, not freely given. But if you find yourself standing next to me near my bed, you can expect that I want more than a kiss.

Mirabelle's Release - A True Ghost Story

10/12/2022

When I was in my early 20’s, I was hanging out with a folk band from San Francisco, The Straw Coyotes. Their music was filled with multiple harmonies, lyrics with “thee” and “thou” and they were acoustic in a troubadour kind of way. I was deep in unrequited love with one band member, a lanky songwriter boy with a wandering, gypsy heart. I loved to hang out with the band, party with them, and experience the wonderment of having beautiful songs come to life in my living room (or my bedroom, as the case may be).

During the summer of 1992, the band members packed up their vans and cars for an epic road trip. The plan was to jam, write, and make music while communing on the shores and woods of Puget Sound’s gorgeously wild Vashon Island near Seattle. I decided to road trip up to Washington for a few days on my own to visit with the band.

I was a lot wilder in those days than I am now, and I was always up for adventures. My favorite road trip ritual was to consume massive amounts of Sudafed and guzzle Snapple Ice Tea. I would then leave at night, cracked out of legal uppers and drive till the morning light appeared over the two-lane blacktop. It was so exhilarating to be one of the few drivers on the road at 4:00 in the morning. I could freely drive 90 miles an hour with my mixed tapes blaring, the Sudafed making my scalp tingle, and all the crazy thoughts I had about life flying through my mind.

On this particular trip, I made it to Seattle in about 11 hours, stopping only for gas, pee breaks, and more Sudafed. When I disembarked from the ferryboat and headed to where the band was staying, I had been up for over 36 hours. That’s what being 22 years old and a wild child is all about.

The Magic Of PoisnIvy Circus - 5.29.21

5/26/2022

A circus is more than a circus, it’s a community. It’s people working together to create something larger than themselves. It’s also a place where we can leave our troubles behind and step into a dream world for a while where the magic happens and reality is blurred by color and music and activity.

The idea of what a circus should be has changed, a lot! Thanks to organizations such as Cirque Du Soleil and Burning Man, circus arts are making a very cool, very hip, and very grand resurgence into mainstream consciousness. Today’s modern circus model eschews the use of animals and focuses more on the great feats that the human body can dish out. From contortionists to aerials, fire dancing to burlesque, LED light dancing to clown comedy, all wrapped up in chains, ropes & silks, tattoos & piercings, and a lot of sexual innuendo & bravado.

PoisnIvy: Marisa Gregory, Viva La Glam, Natalie Nelson

With all that said, a new circus has come to town! PoisnIvy, the Bay Area circus troupe that has been wowing folks since 2011, has found a permanent home in Marin County’s tiny hamlet of Forest Knolls, about 40 minutes from San Francisco. Founding member Marisa Gregory has created a new art and performance hub that will host yoga and martial arts classes, movie nights, live music, theater performances, and the famed circus.

May 29th, 2021 was ground zero for the first installment of magic for PoisnIvy in its new space. With an amazing assortment of talented folks culled from the vibrant Bay Area circus arts scene. Along with Gregory and co-producers Viva La Glam and Natalie Nelson, PoisnIvy pulled out all the stops and created a visually stunning night of entertainment. The show sold-out and the lucky crowd bore witness to such acts as physical comedian Snatch Adams, a hilariously talented gag-master, who loves to envelop herself inside a large balloon; aerialists Megan Gallagher contorting in a metal cube, Jo Kan elegantly flying on a hoop, and the massively amazing and dynamic aerialist Drago wrapping herself up in chains while suspending herself via a leather strap in her mouth. Slim Chance and Nathan Holguin were caught clowning around more than once while burlesque feather dancers got juicy amid the darkening skies.

Album Review: Kyle Stringer's House Plants

2/3/2022

Here we are, closing in on a whole year since our lives and our global existence have morphed into different beasts, and I have a feeling things might not go back to what we knew of as "normal." But within that, life does go on; the Earth keeps spinning on its wobbly axis, and music is continuing to be made and heard.

The other day I was sad. I was grieving for the old normal and needed to shut off my brain for a little while. I put on my headphones, spread myself onto my bedroom floor, and pushed play on Kyle Stringer's solo project House Plants (which is both the name of the "band" as well as the title for the album.). I cried for the first time in a while. You may think that a weird statement to start an album review, but in my mind, if music evokes strong emotion, it's an excellent album. The crying led to a smile, which led to a laugh, then onto a small boogie-dance session, which ended with thinking many thoughts and feelings about my life. All that and more are encompassed in the various moods of House Plants.

Stringer has grown up playing music, starting on Euphonium (a tiny tuba) in elementary school as well as learning guitar. "My love has pretty much always been the bass, though," Stringer says. "I love how it glues music together. It's really the unsung hero of music! Listening to it and playing it is so rewarding." He also works as a music therapist at a Veteran's Home in Napa County, where he uses music to heal.

Up until the life-sucking shutdowns, Stringer was in Oakland-based rock band Milk For The Angry. But because surviving in life is about making the best of bad situations, Stringer felt that now that he wasn't able to gig, he had the chance to record many of his own songs that he had been stockpiling over the last five years. Like most musicians recording in this particular historical period of time, Stringer created this album by recording in his bedroom on his computer while doing most of the vocals and instrumentation himself (including his Squier Strat and Silvertone Archtop plus lots of pedal effect, as well as his trusty Rickenbacker 4003 bass and more). He had friends on board who filled in various musical parts from their own bedrooms across the country with file sharing. Welcome to the Pandemic Age of recording music.

Photo: Carolyn McCoy