California dreaming. Illuminati Hotties. Julien Baker. Y La Bamba.

America is a big-ass country. Almost all of us are immigrants. We are all hungry.

Nov 08, 2024

Illuminati Hotties (Sarah Tudzin, Ryan Fyffe) at Teragram Ballroom, Los Angeles. Photo by Will Hermes.

You don’t read this newsletter for politics. But they’re baked in, as they are in everything we do. In the wake of this week’s U.S. elections, a grim affair with faint glimmers of light, I’ll say this: grieve as you must; allow others to do the same; then let’s resume building the kind of world we’d like to live in, to paraphrase Jason Isbell. And let’s do it fearlessly, with renewed strength and love in our hearts.

My dear friend Stephanie, a progressive activist filmmaker who walks it like she talks it, texted me and some of our crew this Yeats poem the morning after Election Day:

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

-W.B. Yeats

I spent the final two weeks of October traveling in California. I did book events in Los Angeles and the Bay Area to promote the paperback edition of Lou Reed: The King of New York, which were wonderful. I had other work to do as well — including a review of the new Mount Eerie album for Rolling Stone. Phil Elverum’s music, made on Orcas, the largest of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State, seemed to fit the moment I was in. The record, called Night Palace, feels even more potent now.

Above is a taste. Here’s the last ‘graph of my review:

In the end, hope shines through. The album is frequently uneasy listening, and notwithstanding the occasional earworm or guitar solo (see “I Walk”), doesn’t work that well with divided attention. But give yourself over to it as an experience, it will likely provide comfort, move you to empathy, and maybe even spur you to action.

FYI, Elverum has a Substack. If you dig his music, you will likely dig his writing here.

As always, I saw great natural beauty in California. I visited small wineries in Sonoma with my friends Deb and Richard, who’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know about vinology. (This despite having been schooled for decades by my Hudson Valley neighbor Kevin Zraly, who I recently re-connected with. Back in 2000, when I worked at SPIN magazine, I took his 8-week Windows On The World wine class, conducted where Kevin worked atop the World Trade Center, not long before it was destroyed on 9/11.)

Later in the week, my friends and I biked over the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island, where we visited yet another winery, Kendric Vineyards, a nearly one-man-show operated by Richard’s college buddy Stewart, who makes excellent and fairly affordable small-yield wines. (His viognier and pinot noir in particular: chef’s kiss.) Another day, we stood in line an hour — happily — for Indonesian-style halal Texas barbecue at the awesome Fikscue in Alameda, which just got a shout-out in the NY Times’ Best American Restaurants feature. The brisket and dino bones were easily as good as anything I’ve had in Texas Hill Country.

Down in LA, I grabbed gorgeous late-night al pastor tacos with my buddy Craig, and killer Thai food at Night+Market in West Hollywood w/ another Craig, my pal and longtime music journalism colleague Craig Marks, before our event at Book Soup (who I’ll bet still have a few signed copies of Lou Reed: The King of New York and his great oral history I Want My MTV, if you’re inclined to mail-order one or both as holiday gifts). I chowed down at Versailles Cuban Food on Venice Blvd. — still an inexpensive diner-style joint where they serve sugar-cane spears in the mojitos — after my reading at the community-minded third space Village Well Books & Cafe with archival producer Andy Zax and New York City scholar (among other titles) Lisa Jane Persky.

Then I took Amtrak from LA to Santa Barbara, a stunningly pretty train ride up the coastline (and a bargain at $31 one-way), to visit my friend Leslie, who I’ve known since grade school. We ate Mexican food at the low-key legendary La Super-ica Taqueria, made famous by the late Julia Child, who lived part-time in the area and sang its praises on Good Morning America in 1985. (FYI it remains cash only; Leslie & I came up with $50 between the two of us, ate handsomely & still got change back.) Leslie works with unhoused folks up there, connecting them with mental health services and other resources. We walked, talked, counted our blessings.

On the train back to Union Station in LA, I stared out the window at the Pacific Ocean, one of two mighty bodies of water that so many immigrants have crossed to come to America. And I looked out over huge tracts of coastal farmland with hundreds of workers — no doubt many if not most immigrants, “legal” or not — laboring in the fields, to feed California, and all of America. Immigrants like them and my own family (with roots across Europe, Italy in particular) came here to better their lives, in the vast majority of cases. And I’d argue that, in the vast majority of cases, they make our lives as Americans better in the process.

Back in LA, I caught some excellent music. Y La Bamba played a memorable show, sound issues notwithstanding, at The Paramount in East LA, located in what was formerly a Jewish Bakers Union social hall. I saw Julien Baker cap a 4-night residency at The Bellwether, ending her current tour in her hometown. And I saw Sarah Tudzin (pictured up top) end her Illuminati Hotties tour with a heartwarming homecoming gig as well. All three shows were love-fests, and they made me think about the inevitably immigrant history of music in California, LA in particular: Richie Valens, the Go-Gos, The Bags, The Bangles, The Minutemen, Cypress Hill, N.W.A., Los Lobos, Santana, X, the Dead, The Beach Boys, and on and on. American music, at its finest.

Enjoy the images and videos below; take care, love hard. — Will