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

Photos: El Cajon - San Anselmo, CA - 9.9.23

9/17/2023

Mix in a teaspoon of pop with a tablespoon of rock, spice it up with a splash of positivity and stir well. Add a few slices of accordion, a dash of violin and shake it up in a mosh pit of fun.

El Cajon are: RJ Holmberg (guitar and lead vocals), June Holmberg (keys, accordion and backing vocals), Michael Rennie (violin and backing vocals), Martin Ledyard (bass and backing vocals) and Kyle Hermans (drums, percussion and backing vocals).

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Photos: Pete Floyd - Rancho Nicasio - 8.27.23

8/30/2023

SET 1: ONE OF THESE DAYS, IN THE FLESH, THIN ICE, BRICK 1, HAPPIEST DAYS, BRICK 2, BRICK 3, YOUNG LUST, ECHOES, WISH YOU WERE HERE

SET 2: SHINE ON, COMFORTABLY NUMB, PIGS, BREATHE, TIME/BREATHE, GREAT GIG, FEARLESS, MOTHER, MONEY, US & THEM, ANY COLOUR, BRAIN DAMAGE/ECLIPSE. HAVE A CIGAR, RUN LIKE HELL

PETE DELANEY, PETE HALE, PAIGE CLEM, TOBY TYLER, SEAN ENGLAND, TEAL COLLINS, ALEX GARCIA, BOB MCBAIN

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Reyes The Pen Writer's Workshop - 8.25.23

8/26/2023

1) Alone In The Realm Of My Senses: I just sent my 20-year-old daughter off to traverse 5,045 miles across the globe for her collegiate life without me. And let me say, it never gets any easier to let her go. My grief and sadness over the long road of being by myself is always a huge shock when it happens, year after year. Even after playing the game of empty-nesting for 3 years, I still find it difficult to hold it together emotionally for a few days after she departs. It’s a huge transition from daily motherhood to eating toast over the sink by myself, it can be brutal for me. I now know that finding activities to keep my mind off my sadness is crucial, so I find myself at a writer’s workshop out at the magnificent Point Reyes National Seashore to distract me from my panic, fear, sadness, and the empty pit in my belly over her initial departure.

Words have been my solace and therapy since I was young, and writing during challenging times has been a lifeline that has kept me from going over the edge countless times in my roller coaster life, and now is no different. When I need to feel, I write.

Now, it’s not necessary to pity me for being alone. Being alone is a gift for me, one I cherish immensely, as with being alone I can fully gauge what I experience and feel without the outside influence of others. I can use my senses without any input other than what I pick up with my antenna of a body from the world around me. And so alone, I head out onto the trail to begin to compose the writing assignment about sensory perception out in the woods.

What I see is usually my first introduction to an unfamiliar environment. The mighty oaks, bay, and willows cover my pathway as they lend a mysterious shadow-side to the light coming from above. The brown of the grasses that line the path are not just brown, but grey, green, yellow, orange, and a multitude of other colors and shades, a plethora of earth tones that blend into one vibrant visual for my eyes.

My nose kicks into gear, picking up the dryness of the valley around me. Dust is kicked up as I walk; it is earthly, dense, and chalky, with hints of sage as it fills my nostrils. The air is filled with pungent pennyroyal and dry grasses with a hint of salt from the coast over the ridge. As I near a small, trickle of a stream, the aquatic aromas of algae, mud, and the damp odors that water creates take center stage over the dust. Mugwort and salvia send out a variety of medicinal smells that denote their true purpose as part of nature’s pharmacy.

With a body covered in skin that holds millions of sensors, I cannot help but physically feel the world around me. The sun’s heat versus the cool breeze. The leaves in my fingers and tree bark against my palms leave a dusty film. I feel my feet hit the ground and I notice every injury I have received over the last 5 years come shining through. I trudge on, knowing the hike will benefit me regardless.

The cacophony of birdsong is one of the forest’s gracious gifts to our ears. The woodpeckers knock and cackle as they go about their job of relieving trees of their bugs. The flocks of California quail call out their incessant “CHICAGO! CHICAGO!” as they scuttle across roadways and paths, their many offspring wiggling along behind them. The wind in the tall, undulating grasses hiss like rushing water, although water is scarce this time of year. The sound is still soothing. It is only when I hear a human voice on the trail do I remember that I am human, too, and not a wild animal of the woods.

If my heart pumped the ancient blood that carried the deeper knowledge of edible plants, I would no doubt have been able to identify more things I could survive on if need be. But still, my limited knowledge of herbs and plant identification allows me to know that I can taste the mugwort and it will be bitter but calming, that the wild amaranth drying next to the creek has seeds that pack nutrition, and that, during another season, the berry bushes I passed will eventually be filled with bright red thimbleberries, currants, and huckleberries.

Filling my senses with the world around me is my way of knowing I am part of the world itself, that I am not separate from it. Our senses are key in connecting us and solidifying ourselves in this world and with others. With all my senses in use, I am never alone on the paths I walk.

2) We Are All Gardeners: We are the gardeners of our lives. We are the ones who plant the seeds of our humble beginnings as humans, and we are the ones who need to nurture ourselves to grow. Ground your roots deep into the earth, and feel those roots grasp onto the network of community beneath your feet. Put your hand into the ancient soil that has fed life for eons with nutrients and minerals, and feel the past of who you were within its many grains. Survival isn’t enough, you must thrive and succeed in your garden of life, and therefore attention, commitment, and care are needed to further this process. Lift your arms to the heavens, as if you are offering up your branches to capture the wind, the sun, and the moisture present in the air to feed your soul. Allow those that you love to pollinate your heart with love and acceptance, and give back in kind, as the exchange of life force is how we learn, grow, and become the blossoms to carry on the seeds of love for everyone around us.

3) In This Landscape: This land that I exist in is crucial to my happiness, its rhythms of hill and ocean and grassland pulse through my veins like my own blood. This landscape, these trees, this place, this time, I cannot imagine my life without it anymore, as I have become part of the landscape itself. The spirit of the natural world around me saves me, nurtures me, and keeps me sane. This landscape is therapy, love, and joy. I utilize it to make me a better person so I can go out into the world and smile, laugh, and be kind to others and myself.

When I am in the trees, when the birds are the only creatures speaking to me, I truly relax and engage with myself more positively. The voices outside my head subside and quiet, the voices inside my head become calm and passive, and I feel at peace. Within this landscape, I am at the core source for upholding my true self.

Check out my photos from my wanderings...

All photos: Carolyn McCoy ©2023

Antidote For Lost Souls In Fishbowls: Pete Floyd - The Chapel, SF - 7.29.23

7/31/2023

My first introduction to Pink Floyd was probably in the mid-70s, when my older brother would bust out his rock and roll records. While searing guitar riffs and big-drum booms wafted from his bedroom in the basement, I would be nearby playing with my dolls, my romper-stompers, or I'd be reading Little Golden Books about pokey puppies and cute ducks. I may not have been paying attention to what he was playing, but that music still made its mark.

Fast Forward to 1986 and my first acid trip. There were melting faces. There was stomach-quaking laughter around the absurdity of life on top of the shedding of hot tears around the newfound realization that I had a hot date with mortality at some distant point in time. There was also my first viewing of Pink Floyd’s wicked-mindfuck of a masterpiece film The Wall, based on their epic album of the same name. My friends and I were obsessed with Pink Floyd at the time, as any teenage acidhead is prone to be.

My friends and I were also grappling with the suicides of two of our crew; young men of 16 years who, for their own reasons, thought dying was better than living. We were only teenagers ourselves, very sheltered, and we did not know how to deal with that kind of loss. That whole summer we were raw, shocked, and wallowing in deep trauma and grief. We needed The Wall; it wrapped up all our fears, angst, anger, and rebellion into a two-record guidebook on how to say FUCK YOU! to a fucked up world. It was brilliant! We lived, breathed, and spoke the Gospel of Floyd. It helped us make sense of the bad shit that went down. In addition, Wish You Were Here and Dark Side Of The Moon were on repeat as we processed our sadness. We used it as an antidote to feeling so lost in the world.

As I grew and changed into adulthood, Pink Floyd ebbed and flowed in and out of my awareness as they too grew and changed as a band. The songs, new and old, continued to tickle my ears with edgy lyrics and heavy, emotional concepts in conjunction with a constant psychedelic dreamscape of sound.

It’s interesting when you can pinpoint aspects of your past through reliving musical experiences; it is almost a type of time travel. Hearing songs from my past, especially the intensity of most Pink Floyd songs, is truly bittersweet. My recent experience with SF Bay Area Pink Floyd tribute band Pete Floyd at The Chapel in San Francisco definitely brought back the deep feelings of my youth. Pete Floyd culls its players from the extraordinary North Bay music scene, including founder Pete Delaney, (vocals/guitar), Pete Hale (guitar/vocals), Toby Tyler (Bass), Bob McBain (keys), Alex Garcia (keys/sax), Sean England (drums) and the powerhouse vocal team of Teal Collins and Paige Clem.

As I witnessed this band’s execution of some of my favorite Floyd songs, I was brought back to the vivid memories of my past and there was nothing to do but pause to feel and honor those memories. I then began to sing; utilizing my voice, shouting the lyrics loud and clear as I did when I was young & wild and trying hard to understand myself. As I stood amid the audience of like-minded music lovers, singing along with these songs I knew so well, I felt a sense of much-missed peace inside my mind; and then there was that familiar feeling of possibility that I am not as alone as I thought.

www.petefloyd.com

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

5/18/2023

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

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

4/28/2023

It's Friday evening, just past dinner time. Do you know where your children are? Probably not and that's normal. But do know that sometimes your kids are having a great time without you, and as long as you know they are safe (hopefully), it's easier to go about your parental life without too much worry. That's why teen events are so important! Because just like us old farts, the kids need 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 of Marin County for an evening of fun than by pumping live rock and roll into their brains that is created by their peers and classmates?

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

In conjunction with the bands The Strange and Sunhead, Fairfax's teen-friendly hub Revolution 9, owner 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; these bands are not 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 band 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. With events like this, created for and by young adults and teens, allows these kids to become more aware of who they are within their peer groups and gives them a safe outlet to bust their shit out. Support youth bands and youth events, it's the best way to keep kids of out trouble.

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.

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.