The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniel Story Rice of Westing, Brim, Sun Umbra & Fuzz Family Booking

Posted in Questionnaire on June 8th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

daniel story rice westing brim etc

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniel Story Rice of Westing, Brim, Sun Umbra & Fuzz Family Booking

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Composing lyrics along with vocal melodies and harmonies are my largest contributions to the music of Slow Season/Westing, Brim, and Sun Umbra, but I do write songs or just instrumental parts for guitar and keys as well. As far the lyrical side goes, I think that I am trying to find a way to express feelings and ideas that I find difficult to express in a strictly verbal sense. Music is very therapeutic for me in that way.

I came to do this work by very intentionally practicing songwriting in my early twenties. I would perform an exercise where I would open a newspaper with my eyes closed and put my finger on a column at random. Whether it be a classified add or murder mystery, I would set about writing a song using the details of that randomly selected newspaper content as a creative exercise.

After toiling on bedroom recording projects for awhile, I finally got the gumption to emerge and collaborate. I joined my first band when I was 23 because I felt confident enough in my singing abilities to provide a second harmony part to some three-part harmonies a friend had. I brought my lap steel along because I could fake proficiency at that instrument with enough reverb and a volume pedal. Soon enough I had started to play keys and harmonica in that band and began to gain confidence from the repetition of performance after performance. Cody Tarbell joined that band as our third drummer and we soon broke away and started to do what would become Slow Season in late 2011.

Describe your first musical memory.

I remember choking on a coin while the congregation sang a hymn at the church my parents and grandparents attended in Porterville, CA. I think I was two years old. I remember singing mixed with hushed panic as one of my parents hung me upside down and hit my rear end until the coin dislodged. I have no idea if there is an extended metaphor there or not. The second memory I have is attempting to harmonize to Beach Boys songs with my mom while we drove in the car. She sang either the alto or tenor parts in a church where instruments weren’t allowed and four-part shape note hymnals honed my musical ear.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I started crying a teeny bit when King Crimson played “Epitaph” and just generally killed it at the Fox in Oakland in late 2019. It was an incredible show and helped me to process what had been yet another difficult year in my life.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Outside of personal spiritual matters, I’d say a music-related belief I once held was that analog recording was superior to digital because the limitations of the medium became a component of the art’s aura itself. Now that I’ve done a record with Cody that incorporated some digital aspects into the latter parts of the production I can decisively say that that’s not really true. What’s more, recording digitally enabled us to work remotely with Ben [McLeod] since he wasn’t able to finish every single thing he needed to in the four days we had to record the new Westing record.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Hopefully to a better understanding of self, others, and life in general. Inevitably it will probably lead you away from fans of your early work as you grow and change as an artist and as person. Sometimes that means more financial “success” and sometimes that means less “success” but in the end at least you did what you had to do. I def don’t begrudge some of my favorite older artists their later output because the music they make now isn’t for me – it’s for the old fart I’m gonna become and the people that became old farts alongside the artists from their own generation.

How do you define success?

In broad terms I think it means reaching your deathbed without having compromised your core values. In musical terms, to me it means sharing my thoughts and feelings in a way that I can feel honest and uncompromised by economic interests. Financial success in music to the point that it paid my bills would probably destroy the pleasure and therapy of it for me.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Most of the films that I’ve viewed in the last few years. I used to like movies but the vast bulk of productions in the last decade or so have gotten so dumb/redundant. I hate walking away from a screen feeling robbed of time and attention with nothing to show for it.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I’d like to either score a film or write and direct a serialized music video series. Either way, I want to be a part of combining visual narrative forms with music that will help audiences to interpret the visual art and immerse themselves more fully into the experience.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Yikes. I’d say it mostly has to do with mediating our own confusing lived reality with our own imagined reality of the ideal. We are finite creatures who shit and stink and die and yet can also comprehend truth and beauty and the infinite. That’s a lot of therapeutic ground to cover, and I’m guessing music in addition to visual arts and narrative forms help with this in psychological, spiritual, and even concrete physical ways. I’ve gotten into to the ideas of Ernest Becker, Otto Rank, and Norman O. Brown in the past and that has helped me to make some sense of cultural functions like the arts.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Harvest time in my garden and the creation of a community garden next year at the non-profit I volunteer with. The focus is on organic, sustainable practices that address the realities of the seemingly permanent California drought. We are going to break ground in August on a community modeled after the Community First! Village in Austin which provides housing, relationships, services, and dignified income opportunities to people who are chronically homeless.

https://www.facebook.com/slowseasonmusic/
http://instagram.com/slowseasonmusic
http://slowseasonmusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/sunumbraband
https://www.instagram.com/sunumbra/

http://facebook.com/bandbrim/
https://www.instagram.com/brimband/
https://brimband.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.instagram.com/fuzzfamily/
https://www.facebook.com/fuzzfamily/
https://visaliahomestead.weeblysite.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ridingeasyrecords/
https://www.instagram.com/easyriderrecord/
http://www.ridingeasyrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/royaloakie/
http://instagram.com/royaloakie
https://royaloakie.bandcamp.com/
https://www.royaloakierecords.com/

Brim, California Gold (2022)

Slow Season, Westing (2016)

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Slow Season Change Name to Westing; New Album in 2022

Posted in Whathaveyou on October 12th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

If you were to ask me how long it’d been since Visalia, California’s Slow Season released their most recent full-length, Westing (review here), I sure as shit would not say five years. Three, maybe? Four at the outside? However, there’s no arguing with math, and by the time they’ve got their next offering out through RidingEasy Records, that five years may well be six.

They’ll also have a new name, as they’ve apparently decided to take Westing as their moniker — not sure why, but I’d love to know — and are furthering their “fresh start” feel by bringing in guitarist Ben McLeod on lead.

Now. If your eyebrows shot up at the mention of that name, I checked, and yes, it’s Ben McLeod, also of All Them Witches. Uncertain if he’s relocated to the West Coast or is working remotely with Westing or what, but again, that’s another thing I’d love to know. One way or the other, as regards six-stringers in the sphere of modern heavy, that is the proverbial “good get,” and one looks forward to finding out more about how his joining Westing came about, presumably at some point after or concurrent to the new album’s release next year. Fascinating times we live in.

For a refresher on Westing, the album, you’ll find the Bandcamp stream at the bottom of the post. The band’s announcement of current and upcoming doings came from social media:

Westing

IIIIT LLLLIVES!!!

Hey! It’s been a minute.

First off, please welcome our new lead guitar player, Ben McLeod.

Second, we are changing the band name to Westing.

Third, there’s a new record that will be coming out in 2022.

It’s been over two years since we’ve played for y’all and it is time to change that with a set of brand-new material at the following:

November 5th – Booze Brothers (Vista, CA)
November 6th – Permanent Records Roadhouse (LA, CA)

Stoked? Let us know!

Westing (formerly Slow Season)

https://www.facebook.com/slowseasonmusic/
http://instagram.com/slowseasonmusic
http://slowseasonmusic.com/
http://www.ridingeasyrecords.com/

Slow Season, Westing (2016)

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Wrapping up #VinylDay2017

Posted in Features on July 26th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

Grooves and platters galore. My motivation behind doing Vinyl Day 2017 was simple: I felt like listening to records and sharing that process. It was kind of an off-the-cuff thing. Just an idea I had and ran with it. I figure it doesn’t need to be anything more than that, right? Isn’t putting on an album its own excuse for putting on an album? I tend to think so.

And yeah, I made it a hashtag. Because it’s the future, and hashtags. Instagrammaphone and whatnot. I’m a novice at best when it comes to the social medias, but it seems to me that if you’re going to share a full day’s worth of what you’re listening to, that’s the way to do it. So that’s what I did. If I clogged up your feed or whatever and it pissed you off, sorry.

For anyone who might’ve missed it, it turned out to be nine records of various sorts. Here they are, complete with accompanying audio when I could get it, because it’s the age of instant gratification:

There you have it. Had to be Sleep to end it. Pretty awesome day of music on the whole, and whatever was on your playlist yesterday, if it was this stuff or anything else, I hope you enjoyed. I’m gonna call Vinyl Day 2017 a definite win. Thanks for reading.

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Slow Season, Westing: All the Boogie (Plus Track Premiere)

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on July 7th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

slow season westing

[Stream ‘Miranda’ from Slow Season’s Westing by clicking play above. Album is out July 15 on RidingEasy Records.]

From the upbeat shuffle of opener “Y’Wanna” on down through the creepin’ blues bounce of “The Jackal” and the funk and classic psychedelia that shows up in “Miranda,” Visalia, California’s Slow Season make a strong case for the laid back, groove-minded next generation of West Coast heavy psych with Westing, which is not necessarily trying to be anthemic or representative of anything larger than itself — far less pretentious than that on the whole — but winds up that way anyhow. The four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Daniel Rice guitarist David Kent, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer Cody Tarbell self-produced their third full-length behind 2014’s Mountains (review here) and a prior self-titled that RidingEasy reissued late last year, and that fact becomes important because while they still sound like a young band, that is they deliver their material with a sense of energy and purpose, Slow Season three albums deep are actually considerably seasoned, thanks in no small part to considerable time on the road alongside labelmates and others over the last two years.

As a result, Westing (also on RidingEasy) benefits from growth in basic presentation and versatility while pulling together its vinyl-ready eight-track/37-minute run, easily digestible for its hooks and flow but with depth of mix and performance ready for any listener looking to dig a little further on repeat listens. Over the course of its two sides, Slow Season show off different looks between vintage-derived boogie and heavy blues rock with more ethereal touches, but though they break out the organ on the penultimate “Manifest,” they never lose sight of the overarching mission of their songcraft and they never fail to engage the audience.

A big sticking point for Mountains was its clear Led Zeppelin influence, and Westing has some of that as well in songs like “Flag,” the guitar and spacious drums of “Saurekönig,” and closer “Rainmaker,” but it’s less direct than last time around, and as Slow Season have continued to grow — and actively forced themselves to grow by touring — they’ve arrived at a more individualized place, still at home in the earlier-Graveyard sphere of modern retroism, but in some crucial ways answering the question of what comes next for that sound, particularly in their affinity for bluesy tones and swing. Both feature mightily on “Y’Wanna,” which launches with a shuffle in medias res to immediately give a sense of movement.

slow season

There’s a sun-baked warmth in the chorus as well, and they open up to it fluidly, what sounds like a blend of acoustic and electric guitars intertwining amid multi-layer vocals and the solid rhythmic foundation of creative bass and drumming that will become a running theme as “Flag” takes hold like someone called in for boogie reinforcements. Laid back but not lazy, “Flag” typifies side A well in its rhythmic sway, catchy hook and steady flow, but the blues spirit underlying begins to deepen on “The Jackal” in the guitars, bass and drums, and Rice‘s vocals are more than up to the task set for them. He’ll have another highlight performance shortly as “Damascus” opens side B, but what Rice brings to the album overall isn’t to be ignored in helping capture the moods elicited from the songs, “The Jackal”‘s tension and roll seeming to be in conflict but finding resolution in a final verse and chorus after a quick break en route to the nod of “Saurekönig,” which as noted is one of the more Zeppelin-style cuts, but heads off on its own path to Kashmir nonetheless.

Thinking of it as a companion-piece to “Y’Wanna,” “Damascus” gets underway in not entirely dissimilar fashion, but the process “The Jackal” and “Saurekönig” started in expanding the palette continues as the instruments drop out of “Damascus” to let Rice bridge to the chorus on his own, weaving into and out of falsetto smoothly as the fuzzed-out groove surges back. Arguably the most memorable single track on Westing, “Damascus” is one of just two to reach the five-minute mark — the other is “Manifest,” still to come — and it uses that additional runtime to back its last chorus with a solo-led jam that winds and careens with some final vocal lines that thuds to a sudden stop and lets “Miranda” pick up on the beat, more led by Doyel‘s bass than anything thus far but still full in its arrangement.

The sunshine of the album’s first hook is recalled, but there’s a rush at the heart of “Miranda” as well, and that ensures there’s no sense of the band being repetitive. “Miranda” is raw songwriting at work, classic in its construction and the momentum it builds, ready to be pressed as a 45RPM and shipped to record shop storefront windows. As side A began to broaden with “The Jackal,” so too does side B with “Manifest,” but true to the form, “Manifest” pushes further, its subdued and melancholic feel made even more wistful by the organ and the guitar work. There’s a linear build happening, but until about four minutes into its total 5:57, it’s so subtle as to be almost overlooked. At that point the track takes flight, albeit momentarily, but the payoff effect is prevalent all the same, and the turn back to the chorus on just a couple quick crashes is the kind of thing that would trip up lesser bands.

Organ ends “Manifest,” which leaves the swinging, swaggering “Rainmaker” to finish out with one last boogie slide. The difference I suppose between it and “Flag” or “Y’Wanna” is the noisy movement near the end. They bring it back around to the central riff for the last measure, but for a while there Slow Season seem to really let go in a full freakout, and it shows that as far as Westing has gone up to that point, they can still go further. That might be the message of the record as a whole as well, but not at all to be ignored is how much Westing finds Slow Season making a direct contribution to West Coast heavy rock. In its vibe, natural chemistry and songwriting, that contribution is formidable.

Slow Season on Bandcamp

Slow Season on Instagram

Slow Season on Thee Facebooks

RidingEasy Records

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Slow Season US Tour Starts Tonight; Westing Due July 8

Posted in Whathaveyou on May 16th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

slow season

Best wishes to West Coastly heavy rockers Slow Season, who begin this very evening the touring cycle for their upcoming third LP, Westing, due out July 8 on RidingEasy Records. Not at all the first tour for the four-piece, it’s a nonetheless ambitious coast-to-coast run, starting out by heading north to Seattle then looping back through the Midwest before a quick swing into the Northeast and back down through Texas to get them home. It’s a significant amount of road-time, all the more considering the record won’t officially be released until after it’s over, but though they still have a youthful vigor in their sound as the new streaming track “Y’Wanna,” which you can hear below, demonstrates, these guys are practically veterans at this point.

If you didn’t hear their prior record, Mountains (review here), the vibe was strong with it. The song below gives me high hopes for the new one to follow suit. Dates and audio:

slow season tour poster

Slow Season tour starts [this] week and doesn’t end until the last week of June! Who’s rolling out and where? *w/ @thedirtystreets

PRE ORDER the new album Westing at www.ridingeasyrecs.com

MAY
16M – Visalia, CA – Cellar Door
18W – Santa Cruz, CA – Blue Lagoon
19Th – San Francisco, CA – Thee Parkside
20F – Oakland, CA – Golden Bull
21S – Grants Pass, OR – G Street Bar & Grill
24T – Portland, OR – The Liquor Store Bar
25W – Seattle, WA – Funhouse
27F – Boise, ID – The Shredder
28S – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
29Su – Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
30M – Omaha, NE – Reverb Lounge
31T – Chicago, IL – The Double Door
June
1W – Indianapolis, IN – Bent Rail Brewery
2Th – Kent, OH – Stone Tavern
3F – Pittsburgh, PA – Gooski’s
4S – Rochester, NY – Bug Jar
5Su – Brooklyn, NY – Idio Gallery
6M – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
7T – Columbus, OH – Rumba Cafe
8W – Cincinnati, OH – Northside Yacht Club
9Th – Nashville, TN – FooBAR *10F – Memphis, TN – Hi Tone
*11S – New Orleans, LA – PARTY!
*12Su – Hattiesburg, MS – The Tavern
*13M – Shreveport, LA – Bears
*14T – Texarkana, TX – Arrow Bar
*16Th – Oklahoma City, OK – Blue Note
17F – Denton, TX – Andy’s
18S – Austin, TX – Hotel Vegas
19Su – San Antonio, TX – The Mix
22W – Phoenix, AZ – Yucca Taproom
23Th – San Diego, CA – The Merrow
24F – LA, TBA

https://www.facebook.com/slowseasonmusic/
http://slowseasonmusic.com/
https://www.instagram.com/easyriderrecord/

Slow Season, “Y’Wanna” from Westing (2016)

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