Madrone Art Bar, Nopa Restaurant, Pops Bar, The Divisadero Corridor and the Mission District will be hosting a Celebration of Life for Caleb Micah McGehee.

This Sunday from 1-4pm, at Madrone Art Bar 500 Divisadero Street, San Francisco, CA.

He was the best.

Here’s the official statement from the Madrone/Pop’s family:

11-19-17

It is with great sadness, a heavy heart and a somber spirit that we have to announce the passing of our beloved friend, co-worker, brother and son: Caleb Micah McGehee. Stolen from us at the young age of 30.

His spirit and energy shined so bright and everyone lucky enough to know him will forever be marked by his contagious charisma.

We are all currently struggling with his loss, and out of respect for Caleb’s grieving family and close friends, we ask that instead of asking why, we simply remember a wonderful human being.

We will never get over this loss, we will just learn to live without him in person, while his spirit shines with in each of us who knew him.

We will come together as a family and a community Sunday 11-26-2017 for a celebration of his short-lived life. Details forthcoming.

Please feel free share photographs and stories of Caleb so we can smile and laugh between moments of grief.

Here’s a list of all the ways we’ve ever described David Enos:

• Cultural anthropologist David Enos
• Television historian David Enos
• Gender studies authority David Enos
• Gifted kindergartner David Enos
• Geo-gustatory research fellow David Enos
• local gaming historian David Enos
• Gonzo cartographer David Enos
• Music fan David Enos
• Style maven David Enos
• Local lonely boy David Enos
• Local cult cartoonist David Enos
• local rock historian David Enos
• local urban anthropologist (and illustrator) David Enos
• Local geriatric anthropologist David Enos
• Local clotheshorse David Enos
• local painter David Enos
• Local commuter David Enos
• Local cinephile David Enos
• Local historian David Enos
• Local anthropologist David Enos
• Local thirtysomething David Enos
• Local bug hunter David Enos
• Local renter David Enos
• Local nightlife historian David Enos
• Local veteran barfly David Enos
• Local independent filmmaker David Enos
• Local nostalgic ephemera (and ephemeral nostalgia) archivist David Enos
• Local guidebook David Enos
• Local cineaste David Enos
• Local hop-head David Enos
• Local social anthropologist David Enos
• Local film historian David Enos
• Local comix artist David Enos

The book release party for David’s new book, Bat-Man Is Lost in A Woods, is tonight at the Make-Out Room. Read all about it in our post from yesterday (which also includes a list of all the posts referenced in this post).

[Photo by David Enos]

(Thanks, Jess!)

Mission Local reports:

San Francisco police released a statement today seeking the public’s help in finding 32-year-old Matthew Wastrodowski, who was often seen in the Mission.

Wastrodowski was last seen, according to police, at 1 p.m. on December 7 at Clay and Walnut streets, and has not been seen since. He was a frequent visitor to Dolores Park and would go to the Phone Booth bar at 25th Street and South Van Ness Avenue.

He was described as approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing around 140 pounds, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a beard. Wastrodowski was last seen wearing black framed glasses, a red and black plaid shirt, a blue jacket, blue pants and blue shoes.

SFGate adds:

At the time of his disappearance, he was wearing black glasses, blue pants, blue shoes, a plaid shirt and blue jacket — but his jacket, shirt, wallet and keys were found later in the Presidio.

About a year ago, Wastrodowski was treated for depression-related illness and put on medication, according to his mother, Patricia Wastrodowski.

“In July, he got it into his head that he was feeling better and wasn’t going to take it anymore,” Patricia Wastrodowski said Wednesday. “The last two or three weeks, apparently he had become delusional.”

Call SFPD if you can help.

I mean, we already know he lives in the Mission.

[Photo by Mr. Pickles, via It's Always Sunny in San Francisco]

The news promptly got 75+ likes and at least 30 shares — indicators that this was popular news. But then look at the comments section:

What a bunch of grumpy complainers! You guys really need a sunny afternoon in the park!!

More about the memorial and Ted here. Donations in his memory can be made to the Tenants Union, or to the fund for Falcor, his dog, who needs medical care.

[Photo by Bryn Newman, via Eater SF]

Duuuuuuuuuude!

I have been listening to Sondre Lerche’s music for over ten years, which is a very long time for me. Since 2001, Sondre has released eight diverse, genre-spanning albums, including the jazz-inspired Duper Sessions, and two film soundtracks, including a haunting score for The Sleepwalker, a 2014 film directed by his recent ex-wife Mona Fastvold and starring Christopher Abbott (Charlie on Girls). I have seen him perform at The Fillmore, Swedish American Hall (RIP), Great American Music Hall, Bimbo’s, and a handful of places in Austin, Texas. I have seen him perform solo, with a full band, and everything in between; whatever the configuration, he always impresses with his distinct voice and shredding guitar.

Sondre’s latest album, Please, dropped a few weeks ago. Please was written in the aftermath of his divorce with Fastvold, and with it, he reinvents himself again. The album’s first single, “Bad Law,” was one of my top summer jams, combining a super charismatic dance riff with chunks of distorted guitar.

This Thursday, Sondre Lerche is playing at The Independent. I had the pleasure of chatting with Sondre about his record, upcoming tour, the color of his music, the idea of guilty pleasures, and why San Francisco is his favorite city in America.

MM: Tell us a little bit about your newest record, Please. I read that it was heavily inspired by your recent divorce. What was your process like? How was it conceived?

SL: I started out wanting to free myself from the regular recording cycle. I just wanted to do one song at a time, to be able to record instantaneously and enter into collaborations without having to carry the weight of the whole record. I just wanted to open up a bit. I usually write really thorough songs that limit what you can do in the studio, so I tried to open myself up to surprise, to surprising myself. There was a lot of music I was listening to that I realized comes out of a completely different process, and I was curious about what that is. So that’s how it started, and as I wrote more and more songs, I thought I knew what the record was about. And then all this stuff happened in my private life, that just forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. One of them was what this record was about; all of these other songs just started coming. I realized that certain things were more urgent than others, and the album just changed. I think it came out of the necessity of ventilating and trying to find reason in what is happening to you. And the studio is just the perfect place to figure out stuff, to get it out. I guess it’s a cliché, but it turns out it’s real.

MM: The first song on the record, “Bad Law,” is such a great dance song, despite being quite dark lyrically. What is that song about?

SL: It’s a song that took a lot of time to write. It started with that riff, and then I recorded the bass and drums, which was new – I usually start out with guitar. I had this idea of the sort of paranoia you feel when you pass through customs. As a Norwegian flying into the States, even though I now have a green card and have nothing to hide, I always feel a certain paranoia. So I wanted to play around with that ritual, where you feel so watched and pressured, that in the end you started doubting yourself, and maybe you do have something to hide. Maybe that’s how the police get people to confess things that they didn’t do. In the end, you’re just so worn down. It felt like a reasonable metaphor in the context of the record and everything else.

MM: And what happened to the protagonist in that song? I couldn’t tell if he had murdered his lover or if it was an accident.

SL: That’s a good question! I’m not sure how that guy is doing. In the first verse, it’s like he’s passing through a checkpoint, but in the second verse, I feel we’ve entered into a courtroom-type situation, and I’m not sure what’s happened in between. I think he ends up confessing to these things, and maybe he did do some of them, but for some of them, it was just easier to confess. It’s like in an argument, where you can’t really win, and it’s so bad and dark and the subtext is so heavy, and you end up saying, okay, you’re right, I guess I am that way. In the end, it’s easier to give up. But maybe it was all a bad dream.

MM: Do you think there’s a fundamental difference in the sound of this record, in contrast to your past work?

SL: It’s more stylistically and rhythmically concise. Instead of starting with chords or melodies, I started with rhythms and built the songs from there. There’s more collaboration, a wider spectrum of sound. And I didn’t want subtlety, I wanted things to be clear. The songs have a distinctive, important color.

MM: If this album was a color, what do you think it would be?

SL: To me it feels multicolored, like all of the colors of the rainbow. My last album felt more like earth tones, dark greens and browns, and Two Way Monologue is sort of beige.

MM: Yeah, “Bad Law” especially sounds like an explosion of colors to me! You’ve experimented with so many musical genres throughout your career. Duper Sessions comes to mind with its jazz influence, and Phantom Punch was a heavier rock album, and the score you composed for The Sleepwalker was something else entirely. Do you usually have a concept in mind for how you want something to sound? How does that usually come about?

SL: It’s usually informed by what I’m into or curious about at the time. It feels more compelling to explore things that are new to me. This album represents a curiosity with a more physical, rhythmic pattern that you can dance to. It ended up being half that you should dance to, half that you should cry yourself to sleep with. It was very inspiring to do The Sleepwalker soundtrack, because it was so freeing to come up with music for the kind of atmosphere that the film demanded. It was something I had done before [Sondre also composed the score to Dan in Real Life], but something that really compelled me. I learned a lot of from that, and a lot of that stuff is parallel to the recording of this album.

MM: What’s the plan for your tour? Are you playing solo or with a band? Will you be playing with the Faces Down?

SL: I have a new band. I’m going to tour with my drummer Dave, who is on most of the record, and a bass player who plays on a lot of the record; they’re both incredible musicians. The Faces Down don’t tour anymore. Kato, the guitar player in the Faces Down, produced a bunch of the songs on this record, and we’ve worked a lot together. But the Faces Down are ten years older than me, so they’ve reached a time in their lives where they don’t want to travel so much, but they’re in the studio a lot. But it feels good to have a new band. I’ve lived in New York for awhile, so I have a crew here too.

MM: Do you have any guilty pleasure listens this year?

SL: I guess I don’t like that term, guilty pleasure. I feel that in music, above all, if something gives you pleasure, you should not feel bad about it. But of course I understand the association, but it implies that you should feel bad for your taste and it classifies something as less worthy. I like to think that any music that gives you pleasure is good for you and that you should be proud of it. Just the last week, I had a friend visit, and he was really into techno. And that’s something I hadn’t really explored before, so I went with him to a lot of techno clubs. And it was so much fun, I was just completely hypnotized. But I wouldn’t call it a guilty pleasure, a lot of people are very serious about their techno.

MM: I was just thinking in terms of, you’ve covered Beyonce before, and while I don’t personally think of her as a guilty pleasure…

SL: Yeah, and I guess a guilty pleasure is also associated with… obviously I’m a music snob, I’m so particular about things I care about, so I know my taste can be pretty judgmental, although I try to remain open. I guess the term guilty pleasure is also often associated with extremely popular, commercial, accessible music, and I think there’s nothing better than the times when mainstream music intersects with my own taste. It happens rarely, but when it does, in the case of Beyonce and Rihanna, people who are really brilliant pop stars who have really wonderful songs, when that intersects with even a snob like me, I am really gracious. It makes me feel part of the musical common space of the world.

MM: Is there anything you’re looking forward to seeing or doing while you’re in San Francisco?

SL: San Francisco is my favorite city in America, I gotta say. It’s a place that I’d like to live. But it’s so far away from Europe, and it’s pretty expensive, so I don’t know, but I hope someday to live there for awhile. I’m forever fascinated with San Francisco because of the association with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and also The Birds; one time I went to Bodega Bay just to see where The Birds was filmed. So I have a fascination with San Francisco that’s very physical and magical. I look forward to being in San Francisco again, I hope I have some time to walk around and enjoy myself. And I hope people will want to come out to the show. I think we’re gonna make people dance this time. And then we’re gonna break them down and make them cry, and then we’re gonna make them dance again.

See him live this Thursday:

Sondre Lerche, TEEN
The Independent
October 9, 2014
8pm, $15 (21+)

But I bet you didn’t know that the co-writer of the track and the guy who layered all that sweet saxophone on it is his uncle and local musician Ralph Carney, who you may have seen around town playing with Gaucho, the Cottontails, and Serious Jass Project.

Oh, are those acts a little too underground? Well then maybe you’ve heard his past work with Tom Waits, the B-52s, Elvis Costello, and They Might Be Giants.

Once, Harvey Pekar wrote a comic about him:

Ralph is a rare jazz musician who brings something that it’s sorely needed to the genre: a sense of humor. You can’t help but smile every time you see him play. But it’s not a gimmick, it’s in his DNA. Tom Waits once described him best: “He’s guided by some other source of information. He’s like a broken toy that works better than before it was broken.”

We chatted with Ralph recently about the theme song, and other pretty interesting stuff:

MM: So how did you get approached to do this project?

Ralph Carney: Patrick from the Black Keys was asked to do a theme for the show and he sent them this track that we already finished last November. It was his first tune from his newly built home studio. The producers loved it. They edited it down from 4 minutes to 30 seconds or so.

It was a lucky break. Patrick and I have been trading files on and off since around 2007 but nothing had ever come of any of it till this.

MM: So you had no idea you were writing something for a show about an anthropomorphic horse?

Ralph Carney: Haha nope. It wasn’t really composed for the show, but it worked for them. I got a text from Patrick in April saying, “I think we have a sync deal.” I thought he meant something about plumbing.

MM: It’s awesomely sax-heavy. When I first heard it I thought it was a lead guitar. Then other parts of it sound like a guitar chunking out power chords. How many tracks of saxophone are on there?

Ralph Carney: There are 3: tenor, soprano and baritone. The soprano didn’t make the theme but there is some in the 4 minute version that will be out on iTunes soon, I hear. And one bass trombone part.

MM: Haha awesome. Can’t wait to hear the whole thing. Patrick Carney has been pretty open about your influence on his musical career. Did you encourage him a lot as a kid?

Ralph Carney: Well I know he liked the Tin Huey record on Warner Brothers, and as he got older he thought it was cool he had an uncle who was on a record. Not sure if I musically influenced him, though.

I turned him on to weird children’s records and the Shaggs when he was in high school and came to visit in 1996 or so.

MM: Oh yeah, the Shaggs influence is clear.

Ralph Carney: His first musical output which I have on cassettes is pretty out there. That is why I was kinda surprised when he played me the first Black Keys stuff. I thought Dan was an African American. Also, I didn’t know he (Patrick) was a drummer. The rest is history, I guess.

MM: How long have you been in San Francisco?

Ralph Carney: Since 1995. I moved to Oakland in 1989, two weeks before the earthquake.

MM: Glad that didn’t scare you off. Do you think there’s been much opportunity for the working musician here?

Ralph Carney: It depends on what you are trying to do I guess, I think it is harder for young people in rock bands. Too expensive. But as far as the kind of gigs I do, it is not so bad, plenty of restaurants and bars to play old music.

You have heard it all before from Patti Smith, David Byrne, etc. Meaning here, NYC, etc. are no longer cheap like in the mid to late 70′s.

MM: Maybe I’m venting now, but it also seems like the going rate for the working session musician hasn’t changed since the ’60s.

Ralph Carney: Agreed! I sometimes wonder what I was thinking and then a thing like BoJack comes up.

MM: What else do you have going on musically these days?

Ralph Carney: Just recording stuff for various singers in my home studio. And then local gigging.

(Editors note: Ralph is being modest. “Various singers” includes St. Vincent. Here is his playing on the track “Digital Witness” on her record from this year.)

Ralph Carney: I just played a wedding for Roman Coppola. That was exciting, seeing Nic Cage yell at his kid.

MM: Haha the goth kid?

Ralph Carney: Hahaha, I don’t think he was there. They were a lot younger and not goth. There was a lake and Cage yelled to be in the water where “I CAN SEE YOU!!!” (in his best Nic Cage impression)

MM: Yeah, plus goths don’t swim.

Ralph Carney: Hell no!

MM: Where are you playing these days?

Ralph Carney: Well I play all over S.F. and now suddenly Alameda.

(Editor’s note: More Ralph vagueness. I happen to know Ralph blows on his bizarre assortment of horns every Wednesday 8-10pm at Amnesia with Gaucho, and every 3rd Sunday at the Riptide with the Cottontails. Also various nights here at there at the Rite Spot Cafe under his own name.)

Thanks Ralph! I should also mention that all the fantastic character design in the show was done by the Bay Area (now LA) artist Lisa Hanawalt, but that, as they say, is another interview… hopefully!

After 6 weeks of pony riding in Iceland, exploring Malta, hosting his annual hammock camp at Burning Man and literally holding down the fort during the rainstorms, KJ Paul is officially back and in action. Get your song list ready for September!

According to MM reader Chino, he’s a “stop and chatter and a direction changer” (and he likes Ramen):

We crossed paths outside of JapanTown in SF.  He saw our excitement when we recognized him and said ‘You guys wanna go this way with me’ We switched routes and chilled. He gave us an opportunity to banter & didn’t rush it at all. The whole thing was really human & made our day. Thanks Fred!

Gotta admit that I’m kind of surprised he’s not a stand-in-liner.  For the record, if anyone recognizes me on the street, I’m a “turn around and run away shrieking-er.”

(Thanks Chino!)

Thanks, Brian!

Not as cool as the time I saw him in a mosh pit and then at a foosball table, but cool nonetheless.