Hum Tunes September 2, 2008

Rand's Life on Display at Humboldt Brews

On a recent summer tour, Joanne Rand had a special performer on stage with her. Her nine-year-old daughter Georgia.“She was on stage dancing with me, dance that tells stories of the songs,” Rand said. “Itwas really a wonderful feeling to see that happen. I felt like a plant and she was the flower.”

Rand performs at Humboldt Brews for the first-ever “HumTunes” event, a free made-for-TV performance on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Although her daughter is not scheduled to be dancing on stage, Rand’s life story, told in the nine CDs of her music, will be on display. Each disc is a different chapter: The sister who honors her brother’s “explosion of creativity near the end of his life,” tragically shortened by AIDS, in the compelling “The Monkey Puzzle,” which is perhaps her masterpiece.

Her daughter’s birth inspired another disc, “Family History.”
“It’s my favorite album,” she said. “It also tells the story of my ancestors. It’s a mix of quiet songs and more rockin’ type stuff. And it’s more personal.” Songs born in the wilderness, along the Klamath and Salmon rivers, in “Where Our Power Lies.” Through it all, Rand, 47, feels that her life’s purpose is “as a midwife of sorts.”
“I want to change the world,” she said. “I want to help move people across borders; borders of the mind, feelings that happen in transition.”

Her most recent CD, “Broken Open,” is a solo endeavor, the tracks put down last winter. Later this fall she will start re-recording some of those songs and new ones with her band, “The Rhythm of the Open Hearts.” She is proud of her heritage, a mixture of Southern gentility and Appalachian mountain folk. Yet she didn’t stay close to home. “I left Georgia as a teenager because I didn’t fit in,” she said. “I made a big zig-zag across the country over a number of years and ended up in the west.” Why does she live in Humboldt - or more generally, the northwest between northern California and southern Oregon?
“The greatest concentration of shakers and movers are here and the wilderness is here,” she said. “It’s mostly the people. I love the southwest but every time I go there, I know why I’m living here. This is where the activists live.” Activists like her husband, Greg King, a well-known environmental advocate. And Rand herself.

Rand’s aspirations as a shy young adult began with creative writing, but then she decided to go to art school. After that, massage school. Finally, in her mid-20s, she embraced her musical abilities. “What I had to say was more important than my ego telling myself that my songs were not good enough,” she said. Along with creating music and performing, Rand has again tapped into her healing arts background. “I feel like it has taken me all there years to realize that what I really like the most is to help people,” she said. She has returned to massage therapy, working at a couple of area clinics. “It’s a great balance for the music because it’s about listening to the other person.” Rand is also at work on a music composition degree at Humboldt State University. But it’s family and nature that form the strongest threads in the fabric of her life, woven together by music. “When I was a kid there was this tree that I’d make a pilgrimage to and play music for it,” she said. “When I got in sight of the tree, I couldn’t speak. I just had to play for it.” One day, her daughter may turn that story into a dance.

NOTE: Joanne Rand and Robert Franklin take to the stage at HumBrews on Tuesday, Sept. 2, for the inaugural made-for-TV HumTunes video shoot. The show will debut on Ch. 12 (Access Humboldt) on Sept. 13 at 10-11 p.m.

Sari Baker: Unrequited Love, Social Injustice, And Parallel Parking

When Sari Baker walks on stage with guitarist Mike Craghead at Humboldt Brews for the videotaping of a new local music TV show, she won’t bring any sheet music. On Tuesday, Sept. 2, she won’t have a musical instrument either. Even if she did, they would be useless. One of Humboldt’s most talented, exuberant and poignant singers does not play a musical instrument. Nor does she read music.
“I write things in my head,” she explained. “I tape them or sing them over and over again until I remember them. A chorus, a little catchy part of a song will come to me and I’ll build on that.” Artists she performs and recorded with - from Eldin Green of Dr. Squid and most recently the Sari Baker Trio - enjoy the freedom, as she describes it, “to put whatever instruments they hear to the song.”

The 33-year-old emerged reluctantly as a musical artist. At age 22, she began to perform and write songs. She credits Green with a wonderful experience on her first CD and Craghead in balancing her anger on the second album.
“A lot of my songs are a little angry,” she said, adding with a laugh, “If I had better choice in men, it might might not have been that way. If you listen to my songs, the first ones especially, it sounds like I’m pissed off. And I was out there with my pissed-offed-ness.”
“I met a wonderful man a few years ago,” she said of husband Steve, “and I haven’t written a damn song since. My friends call him the career killer.” Happiness, she said, is a “narrower market.” A government employee, there is a reason why she has a day job. “When you try to turn your art into industry, you compromise a lot,” she said. “When I do it on this level, I feel a lot more control and what I sing about is on a level that I’m passionate about.”

Her biggest musical influence and inspiration has been Scott Baker, her father. From a family in Humboldt County for three generations, Baker said, “The only people I consider locals are native Americans.” She has three published CDs. The most recent is a12-song series about an unrequited love. “Still Feel You,” with the Sari Baker Trio. Her first album, “Mad Woman Blues,” was produced by Eldin Green, who owns the humboldtmusic.com website. “Eldin was awesome, someone willing to help me make my first CD. He had his own ideas but it was always my call about what to release with my name on it.”

Her second disc “True” with Mike Craghead, the songs were still about bad experiences with men she loved. “It’s my motto, hurt me and I’ll write something pretty,” she said. Now her focus has changed. Her songs are less about ill-fated love and more about social injustices. “Politics can often replace love as far as song material goes. I’ve branched out. I started focusing on other things,” she said. “I moved into Eureka a few years ago, and I live on what the police refer to as Heroin Alley. It has exposed me to a lot of issues in our society; the distribution of wealth and the general apathy of people have come up in inconvenient and upsetting ways. People can not go around and ignore it and be in bubble about gas prices and food prices ... and all of the problems with the system.” With an offbeat and irreverent sense of humor to balance her passion for social justice, Sari Baker likes to lampoon the uppity. That’s why she reads Vogue, for “the ardent pretencia of it all.”

Pretencia?

“The pretension of Vogue does require a certain amount of devotion,” she said after reading a hilariously inane selection from the magazine. “Sometimes it’s refreshing to put life in perspective. There are so many NOT important things that people choose to care about.”

Among her talents, Baker is a good driver who can handle a stick shift. “And I’m really good at parallel parking,” she said. “I’m proud of that.”

NOTE: Sari Baker with Mike Craghead will perform at Humboldt Brews in Arcata on Tuesday, Sept. 2, for the inaugural videotaping of HumTunes, a live music TV show featuring North Coast area artists. HumTunes can be seen on Access Humboldt Ch. 12 Saturdays 10-11 p.m. and Wednesdays 6-7 p.m. beginning Sept. 13.