A soon-to-be catchphrase is born.

Ike Turner was a hard-chargin so-n-so

Ike Turner Glares Malevolently

Lately, Ike Turner’s been getting a lot of mentions around our house. A while back during a rare couple of hours in which we indulged in the quaint, antiquated ritual of watching TV together, Jen and I saw “What’s Love Got To Do With It: the Tina Turner Story” on VH1 Movies That Rock (or was it Lifetime?) It’s been said that Ike was the Darth Vader of Soul. Now far be it from me to impugn the sweet soulful sounds of domestic abuse – I mean just listen to the Jackson 5! – but Ike was a hard-chargin’ slave-drivin’ sumbitch if there ever was one, at least according to VH1 (Lifetime?). Ike would laze around the apartment all day with a harem of quaalude-poppin’ soul-sisters while brandishing a snub-nosed .38, snorting coke and drinking Wild Turkey out of the bottle. But when it came to Tina, he’d just as soon smack a bitch up as look at her if she didn’t execute the dance moves with laser-like precision during a rehearsal of “Proud Mary.”

“Now, you missed that shimmy on the bridge there Anna Mae! (Tina’s real name) You got to shake it on the damn BRIDGE! *WHAP!*”   Discounting the chauvinistic violent streak, you almost have to admire his eye for detail given his many chemical impediments.  

Robot welders: only as good as their programmers

So who, between Jen and I is the Ike Turner figure? A little explanation of our creative process is in order here: If you liken the Dutch Holly music production process to the manufacture of, say, a luxury car, then I would be the factory manager. I’m responsible for ensuring that the assembly line runs smoothly. I program the robotic car-door welders. I order the materials, schedule the workers, pay off the union bosses, and keep the middle managers in coffee and donuts. If necessary, I might be called to testify at a congressional hearing on yet another auto-industry bailout.  By contrast, Jen is the freelance goateed minimalist Belgian designer who, for 600 Euros hourly, comes up with the artist’s (artiste’s?) conception upon which the prototype is based. She then critiques said prototype via Skype from her post-modern loft in downtown Brussels: “Eet ‘as ze curvature of an unripe peach, where eet should ‘ave ze curvature of a Ming vase.”  I obediently nod, scurry from the boardroom back to my corner office where I decipher said critique to the best of my sadly American aesthetic ability. I then roll up my sleeves and start reprogramming the robots. Fortunately, I have a bit of a knack for that kind of thing so I may get to keep my pension when the whole company is taken into receivership by the Obama administration.

Extend this metaphor to the sweet soulful sounds of domestic abuse, add a few liberal dollops of tongue-in-cheek humor (no razorblades, please!) and Jen becomes the Ike to my Tina. (I kid…I kid because I love).

Jen without a razorblade on her tongue.

A couple of months ago, we signed a deal with Expat Records to put out a 5-song EP: What Rhymes With You? coming out September 9, 2010.  Now you wouldn’t think that five songs would be that big a deal, especially considering that two of the songs were already done when we started and another one is mostly done but just needs to be remixed. 

Drops on September 9, 2010

 But, Jen’s eye and ear for detail is even better than Ike’s and she’s not distracted by a harem, mounds of coke on the coffee table, or Wild Turkey.  Thankfully, she also does not own a snub-nosed .38. Even more thankfully, there’s no choreography.

Suffice to say that Jen can actually hear the curvature of an unripe peach. This becomes apparent as she hears the flaw in the latest mix which I have completely overlooked somehow, but which is glaringly obvious once she gives voice to it. 99% of the time, fixing it to her satisfaction results in the stroke of genius/golden finishing touch that makes the tune great. If Jen had been in the studio when John and Paul were trying to figure out how to end “Hey Jude” she would have been the one to say “Hey, I know, let’s just do a big sing-along. Y’know, something like Laaaa laa laa La-la-la-laaaa…”   

So with all of the production that I’m doing, added to all of the strokes of genius being Skyped at me from Brussels, I’ve taken to saying: “Why ya Ikin’ me?” At first, whenever Jen asked about my progress, I would do my impression of Ike: “Now you get on in there and produce me up some songs, Anna Mae, ya hear?” But the Elvis-like accent I used was unclear and she thought I was saying “Edda Mae.” That resulted in the note you see here (written on one of the many to-do lists I’ve had to make just to keep track of everything I’m doing).

Click to see this in glorious hi-resolution detail.

As we all know, impressions get old really fast, especially if the one doing the impression is bereft of any ability to actually sound like the person he’s impersonating. It’s worth noting that unlike Anna Mae, I actually don’t mind Jen’s Ikin’ because it results in great stuff, and I don’t actually have to shimmy or get bitch-slapped. Love’s got everything to do with it.  

 I really think that “Why ya Ikin’ me?” has a real chance of catching on. It could be bigger than “Don’t Tase Me Bro” or even “Top Kill” because it has universal applicability.  Say, for example, you’ve just put the birthday cake you’re baking for your 4 year old into the oven. He has one of your legs in a bear-hug worthy of the WWF and he’s repeatedly demanding cake in his shrillest Elmo voice. Sure, you could go into a long-winded explanation of how the cake has to bake, his birthday’s not till tomorrow,  patience is a virtue blah blah blah, or you can just say “Why ya Ikin’ me, kid?” It just might work. But wait! He won’t really know what you’re talking about because it’s not a real catchphrase yet. Hmm…  

”Why ya Ikin’ me” needs a plan like BP CEO Tony Hayward needs a new job.  So here’s a win-win strategy that will get Tony that new job he’s been dreaming of, AND will forever emblazon “Why Ya Ikin’ Me” on the hearts and minds of millions:  

Listen up, Tony:  the next time you have to testify before the US Senatorial Comittee on Evil Atrocities, and they’re all like “Why didn’t the backup plans work? How much was your bonus this year? How come Corexit doesn’t seem to correct anything?” Rather than inflicting a new jargonistic buzzword on our already overstretched lexicon like “Top Kill” or “Junk Shot,”  just be like “Why ya Ikin’ me, senator?” True, it may not be a satisfactory answer to the question, but it only took a day for the national media to make “Top Kill” a household phrase.  Just think what those rabid jackals could do with “Why ya Ikin’ me?”  I mean, this could be the out you’ve been looking for, Tony. You haul off and coin an epic catchphrase on the floor of the US senate in the morning,  I guaran-damn-tee you’ll be selling “Why Ya Ikin’ me?”  T-shirts with your picture on them that afternoon!  You could stand a career change anyway, right? You want your life back Tony? Call me. (Leave a message if I don’t pick up, I have alot of work to do).

July 15, 2010
Categories: Tres Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: Leave a Comment

Wine and Weed, Gas and Guns

I have a tendency to talk myself into things that I really don’t want to do and then frantically over-explain myself to others. It’s more of a compulsion, really. Take, for example, the time I got myself deported from two countries in one week. I had talked myself into travelling through pre-9/11 Europe with a young man who at the time could barely even drive a car much less comport himself properly in multiple foreign cultures and languages. The over-explaining this time took the form of sarcastically remarking to a customs agent that “It’s not like 

My Traveling Companion at the Customs Office County Cork, Ireland

My Traveling Companion at the Customs Office

I have a machine gun in my guitar case” when he began asking questions about my work visa. It didn’t exactly help that my traveling companion had eaten a huge chunk of hash just hours before the whole debacle and I really just wanted to get on with things before he did or said something (else) really crazy. 

If you have read any of my previous posts or even just the preceding paragraph, you may have noticed a recurring theme of pot in most of my stories. ‘Tis true, I have had my share of experiences with good ‘ol Mary
Jane. Weed is another wonderful example of how I talk myself into doing something that I don’t want to do and then begin frantically over-explaining to anyone who will feign the slightest interest in what I’m saying. The truth is that I really cannot stand being “high.” I currently hold the highly sought-after title of The World’s Most Annoying Person to “Party” With. Unlike so many that I know and love, who become mellow,
philisophical and downright productive, I spend the first half hour or so trying to convince everyone that I am seriously dying. Surely, the reasoning goes, I’ve been poisoned by some insidious person who has soaked
the pot in some chemical or another that is specifically designed to stop my heart. This is why my heart is speeding up and jumping into my throat: it’s the countdown to The End. The only solution to this is to get drunk enough that I don’t care that I’ll soon be dead. Once I’m properly loaded, I then spend the next while trying to convince myself that no one is trying to kill me. At some point I notice that I have miraculously survived the attempt on my life. I then realize that, of course, there is a Divine Metaphysical Reason for my survival: I am meant to be here. Thus begins the pot/booze-induced-christ-complex-complete-with-meglomaniacal-ramblings portion of the journey. It is during this stage that I have made grandiose proclaimations about myself the like of which would humbleThe Lizard King himself. The entire time, I will of course be explaining in great detail to anyone who will listen or even stand close enough to hear: 

1. The reasons I am certain that I am dying
2. The reasons I must drink in order to keep from caring that I am dying
3. The Divine Metaphysical Reasons for my miraculous survival
4. The reason that I am in fact the chosen one and you (and all mankind) would benefit greatly from doing my bidding without question. 

The Lizard King moment

This brings to mind the time that I smoked a joint in the parking lot of The Emerald Lounge in Phoenix. Fortunately, an ample booze supply was collocated with the scene of this petty crime, so it was not long before I was, once again, The Chosen One. My Divine Metaphysical Reason this particular evening was a tiny homeless Navajo woman who told me that she was living in this very parking lot. The signs were too great to ignore. After inviting her into the club (as my Honored Guest) where she eagerly lapped up whatever booze I ordered and made my friends pay for, I became convinced that we needed to take her home with us. I met some resistance from my friends and especially from her, but at that point it was all-too-obvious (to me) that all concerned should take up the work of obeying my commands and stop questioning me for the Greater Good of Mankind. I insisted that I would sleep in the parking lot with her if she didn’t go with us. 

Amazingly, everyone begrudgingly complied with my tyranical (but benevolent) demands. Since I was living in a modest apartment in Tempe, I convinced my new friend to go with Scotty, a sweet man who lived alone in a gorgeous luxury home with ample room for a tiny Navajo woman. Visions of an Eliza Doolittle scenario played out in my mind as I delighted in my good works. I had this woman getting pedicures, relaxing in the hot tub, living in the lap of luxury, working on a novel, or possibly, she and Scotty could become a new hit reality T.V. show (if you ever saw Strange Love, you know anything’s possible on reality TV). I had an inkling that perhaps she was a a genie that would grant me three wishes for my benevolence and virtue. At a minimum, she would certainly realize and proclaim, in Navajo, that I am in fact the Chosen One: the White Buffalo Child come to heal the planet. 

Meanwhile, back on Earth, my new friend had become terrified and began screaming that we were kidnapping her. (But it was an altruistic kidnapping!) After Scotty was finally rid of me, he took her to a bus depot and gave her twenty bucks and as profuse an apology as a man in his situation could possibly offer. 

Years later, having stopped trying to talk myself into liking the effects of pot, I took up the practice of pursuing friendships with the people I felt most uncomfortable around (and no, I certainly am not referring to YOU. Seriously, if I have called you in the last month, I really am not). Once the effects of pot and booze were replaced by the effects of motherhood and small-town-girl politics, I developed an odd mechanism that took over when I was uncomfortable around someone or just plainly disliked them. Rather than running quickly in any other direction, I instead convinced myself that the Greater Good of Humanity would be best served if I said “Yes, lets spend all of our time together. Surely, it is something in me (that I need to improve) and certainly not anything about you that makes me feel like I have donated twice the legal allowable limit of plasma whenever I’m around you. Of couse, I should make you my very best friend so I can have all kinds of awful experiences that are not fun to me. For you see, by mildly suffering your subtle-yet-deniable verbal abuse, backhanded slights, and snarky

Mother Theresa wished she had game like me

resentment, I will prove once and for all that I am the White Buffalo Child come to heal the planet. In fact, to further the misery, lets have our kids play together and encourage them to be best friends as well (even though our parenting styles are galaxies apart). Mother Theresa (RIP) wished she had this kind of game.” Well, that was fun. 

And now, for the over-explaning portion: let me first begin by directing you to the beginning of this post…

June 8, 2010
Categories: Family Life, Jen Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: Leave a Comment

Trick-or-Treating for Cats

I come home from work to a house with two missing cats. I know they are missing because I have talked to Jen at length during the day speculating as to where they could be. Behind the washing machine? Under the dresser? In the closet? No such luck. Their disappearance is mysterious because we’d left the sliding glass door open to the back deck which is two stories high. It’s a long way down. Even if they’d have both gone Jonestown, formed a bizarre feline suicide pact and jumped, there would have to be some

Duke and Duchess of Dander

evidence. At best, they would both have been gravely injured if not killed by the fall and carried away by coyotes, or scavenged by birds. In either case, there’d be some fur or blood at the scene. When I arrive home, Jen and I dance around this gruesome possibility while within earshot of Max, our four-year-old who seems confident that “the kits” will return soon.

Finally, a clue surfaces: an open window with a loose screen close to the floor at the front of the house. Aha! With hope revived, I call our neighbor, Penny, who also is a cat owner, and tell her to be on the lookout for any wide-eyed wonder-cats looking to sign up on her kitty roster. She’s predictably alarmed and breathlessly regales me with the tale of how the coyotes got two of hers. Thinking I at least have time to change my work clothes, maybe have a cup of tea, generally be home for a little while before mounting the search, I am caught unaware when Jen calls from the window:

“Tres! Penny’s out in the street looking for the cats!”

This actually means: “Tres! Our retired cat-lady neighbor is out there right now frantically searching for our cats making us look like heartless animal abusers while we sit here idly and do nothing!”

Not wanting to appear to be in league with the coyotes and birds of prey, I spring into action.

“C’mon Max, let’s go look for the kits.”

Max gamely hops-to, donning his leather bomber jacket, checkered Vans and a blond fleece-lined fishing hat. It appears that Penny

Max and "The Kits"

 has this street covered, what with the yellow police-line tape and the orange safety cones she’s strategically stationed around a six-house perimeter. Since the National Guard is on alert for our street, I decide to get in the car and go a block over, knocking on doors. I get the feeling that Penny is thinking “How could they leave at a time like this!” as we drive away. No doubt compounding the appearance of my reckless ambivalence, I let Max forego the normal car-seat routine and just sit up front with me.

While we drive, I wonder how best to break it to Max that the cats may never come home.

“You know, son, we might not find the kits.”
“I know, dad. I’m worried about them.”
“Me too, son. Where do you think they could be?”
“I think they went to England.”

It’s a solid theory. A deep respect for royalty is ingrained in the British national character. Not so much here in Arizona. Ivy Cat and Reginald T. Cat (who also goes by Citizen Cat) are often displeased by our family’s American indifference to their obvious rank and breeding. At a minimum, they are the Duke and Duchess of Something and expect to be treated accordingly if not better. Also, the Brits have a single-payer healthcare system which can come in handy when you’re an exiled illegal-immigrant cat on the lam from an obsessed retired lady and a regicidal American host-family. It’s not like here in the US where they ship you off to Guatemala at the first sign of being injured-while-undocumented.

We arrive at the first house and knock on the door. The middle-aged woman is on her cell phone. She regards me more kindly once she sees that I have an oddly-dressed preschooler with me.

“(hold on Stacey, there’s someone at the door) Yes?”
“We live down the hill from you and we’ve lost a pair of kitties. You haven’t seen them by chance?”
“No, but I’ll call you if I do. Leave a message on my answering machine with your number.”

She gives me her home number and continues her conversation. While we walk across the street to the next house, I call and leave a message on her machine with my name, number and predicament.

A very old woman in an apron answers the next door we knock on. I explain our plight to her and she looks doubtful.

“The coyotes…” she says in a thick German accent.
“Yes, I know. That’s why we’re trying to find them while it’s still light.”
She regards Max with interest and asks his name.
“I’m Max. I’m four years old.”
“Max! I can say that!” she says, implying with her pleased expression that “Max” is a good Germanic name and reminds her of the Homeland. She asks the names of the cats.

Citizen Cat

Citizen Cat

“Ivy Cat and Reginald T. Cat. Sometimes he’s Citizen,” replies Max. She seems confused by the non-Germanness of this response.

“Well, I’ll let you know if I see them. Shall I take your number?”

While she fetches the pen and paper that it now occurs to me I should have brought, Max observes:

“This is like trick-or-treating for cats, only no costumes. Costumes are very important when you’re trick-or-treating,” and I take his meaning: If only I were dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi, and he as Darth Vader, we’d probably have found the cats by now.

So it goes, house after house, until twilight falls. The entire time, I’m amazed at how unfazed Max seems to be at the prospect of losing the cats forever. Maybe that American indifference isn’t so bad after all? Eventually, of course, Ivy Cat peeks her little head over the porch and mews. The Duke and Duchess of Dander have been holding court under the front deck about 10 feet from the culprit loose-screened window. I lure them out with a feast fit for an Earl, pick them up by the scruff, and bring them in. As I call Penny to let her know she can call off the police chopper, I think to myself: the coyotes will have to go hungry tonight.

April 22, 2010
Categories: Tres Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: Leave a Comment

Not The Grace You Been Waitin’ For……

As soon as I dumped my closeted gay boyfriend who hated my body even more than I did at the time, a personal revolution began. I was living in Huntington Beach with a couple of pot-smoking, pagan theater types, Josh and David.  Josh, David and I were in the full-time business of having grandiose ideas about ourselves (I was an aspiring filmmaker and writer) and the part-time business of doing local theater productions together. I discovered at this time that I had a talent for directing plays. On the closing night of one play, we had a big cast party at our place. I was talking/drinking/smoking/mingling when out of the corner of my eye I saw a stout, elderly woman sitting on our couch by herself. She was beaming at me. Being the hostess that I have always been, I introduced myself. She had worked on the show as an assistant stage manager. 

Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond

Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

Grace had actual stubble on her chin (I came to find out later that she preferred to shave her hormonal hair rather than wax it away).  Incongruently, she spoke in the Old Hollywood style, elongating her vowels like Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard , calling me “Jennifehh, deahh.” As in: “Jennifehh, deahh, bring me my tuhhban.”  She would say this occasionally, her eclectic fashion choices including a turban and other things like “kaftans” (really, a mumu) which sounded so much grander when pronounced in this way.  

 No sooner had our conversation on the topic of jazz and its sub-genres started, than I found myself agreeing to come to her “Coach” to check out her vinyl collection. Grace had a gift for referring to even the humblest of things – like her trailer – in a grandiose way. Hence, “the Coach.”  The Coach turned out to be a cozy little double-wide with a step-up porch in one of the nicer mobile courts in Garden Grove. It also turned out to be my next place of residence. 

Though it had been fun, my living situation with Josh and David had dissipated in a strained but mostly amicable haze of pot-smoke and packing boxes. The reverse Three’s Company sitcom that was our domestic life had reached its final season. Mr. Furley was long gone, and Mr. Roper was on his way out.  

Ryan, Jen and Grace, the Coven of the Coach

Ryan, Jen and Grace, the Coven of the Coach

Grace and I were never alone at the Coach. As at Josh and David’s place, quite a few other bohemians, local theater types, pentacle-sporting witches and the odd PA working on the fringes of the film industry found their way to the Coach. Grace was a generous woman with a penchant for hanging around “Young People” so she didn’t mind sharing her space and relished the attention and the company.

Bob the game-master (also of the Coven of the Coach)

 If you were to visit the Coach during that time you would be as likely to encounter a pagan rite as you would a medieval-themed role playing game (not really my thing). In either case, there was much talk of daggers and mead. There were frequent field-trips to the Renaissance Fair. It had become the Coven of the Coach.

Because of my access and proximity to film industry people, it wasn’t long before I found work as an extra in movies and television. I was what they called a “specialty extra” because I could act a little bit and could play a wide range of ages. I found that I could also get work for a few of the (other) weirdoes who hung around the Coach.  It occurred to me that Grace would make a smashing “character extra,” so I decided I should introduce her to my agent. Though she feigned modesty, I know she was tittering like a teenager at the prospect of being discovered.  

I dragged the falsely reluctant Grace to my next meeting with my agent. She waited in the reception area while I was in his office. Unfortunately, Grace suffered from a condition I like to call Narcissilepsy: the condition of falling asleep when you are not being lavished with attention. If the conversation should ever turn to a topic other than what she was interested in, mainly herself, Grace would almost immediately fall into a deep slumber. Predictably, a waiting room chocked full of self-involved showbiz types nearly put her into a persistent vegetative state. When I was finished with my agent, I came into the reception area to find a small crowd, murmuring in concerned tones, huddled around a near-comatose Grace. She was sprawled on the floor with her dentures several feet away.

Grace in her Renaissance Fair garb

Grace also developed a series of really awkward (and some downright creepy) crushes on a few of the elves and dungeon-masters who hung around the Coach. Invariably, they were far too young for her. This never resulted in anything good. I decided for the Good Of The Coven to help Grace find love with someone a little closer to her age. Sadly, this also did not result in anything good.

It did, however, result in a series of weird encounters.  One fellow she met at the Denny’s down the street asked her to give him her bra for whatever unimaginable purpose.  Another wanted to borrow a few bucks. After too many of these episodes, we arrived at a seemingly benign gent who had sadly just lost his mother, loved jazz music and was a couple years older than Grace. Compared to the bra-sniffer and the beggar, this guy was a prince.

 We arranged a meeting at the Coach, where I would serve as chaperone. The Prince arrived with his mother’s death certificate and a “prescription” of coke. Being desensitized to weirdoes from the previous encounters, and given the baseline strangeness of the people

we hung around with, we welcomed him.  Grace and I gave our condolences and informed him we were not interested in the coke (in all my wild times I have never done the stuff, never even wanted to). We had visited a while when he pulled out some pot which I thought was a great idea, it might loosen things up a bit.  In retrospect, I realize that when you’re in a trailer with a coked-up Norman Bates and a horny old lady in a turban, “loose” is not really the direction you want things to go.   

Having smoked, Grace passed out almost immediately leaving me to entertain the fellow. Because the rest of the Coven was at the Renaissance Fair that day, it was just he and I. He asked me if I’d like to see pictures of his family and I said I did, though really what I wanted to see was him leaving.  The pictures of his “family” were, in fact, terrible Polaroids of seedy-looking women in various states of undress and horrendous lighting.  I told him that was quite enough to which he replied “You are a panther and you better sing like Judy Garland right now or I am going to shoot you!”

I had been held at gunpoint before (that’s another story). In that situation, the perpetrator gave no warning and instead just grabbed me and put a gun to my head. So I knew from first-hand experience that Prince Norman was either bluffing or at best, he was an abysmal amateur.

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)

 ”Where is your gun?”  I challenged.

“Out in my truck,” he replied.

“Well you can go get it then, because I am not going to sing for you!”

As soon as he was out the door, I locked it.  I tried to wake Grace who was still sleeping. Dreaming, perhaps, of one day soon becoming the Film Actress she was born to be. When she finally came to, I apprised her of the situation. She went all Rambo style saying she was going to “stand her ground” and “fight to the death.”  I could tell that she was really enjoying the drama of this particular role!  During her soliloquy, the phone rang.

 I thought it was one of the Coven calling to check in, and I began breathlessly rambling about the nut-job outside with his mother’s death certificate, a vial of coke and a gun in his truck.  When I got to the part of the story about those horrible Polaroids of his “family,” the voice on the other end of the line began to laugh and said, “well did you like them?”

It was the creepazoid calling from outside the house. I hung up and dialed 911 as I shoved Grace out her back door to her carport and into her truck.  We raced out of the mobile park faster than anyone who lived there had ever driven.

  The following week after the police report had been made (they really couldn’t hold Prince Charming on anything) he called and asked if he could please come by and get his mothers’ death certificate. We said sure, but we also made certain that we had a full complement of elves and dungeon-masters there and that the police were coming too. So he came by, apologized and said he had been really depressed and didn’t know what came over him. One thing I learned from that experience is that it is extremely dangerous to meddle in the affairs of others.

April 8, 2010
Categories: 1, Jen Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: 1 Comment

The Mayan Calendar, The Chosen One, and Voyeurism…

I cried for about a week straight when I first moved to Tempe with my band (at the time) Persephone’s Picnic. I had been urging them to move up to the Bay Area with me but goshdarnit,  Arizona really gets ahold of her own! So there I was, miserable among the endless miles of strip-malls and other forms of ugly architecture; immersed in a culture of paunch-bellied Coors Light drinkers. Accordingly, my bandmates and I had taken up residence in a squalid institutional  apartment complex  in south Tempe. I shared a pair of adjacent apartments with my bandmates and their girlfriends whom I later came to regard more kindly, but at the time considered to be awful, nagging, useless excuses for women.   It was not at all how I had envisioned my life unfolding. I would never have suspected that this  blighted, humorless jungle of salmon-colored adobe facades and NASCAR fans was exactly where I needed to be at the time.

Jen and Tres of Dutch Holly

Photo by KC Styles

Because I hadn’t really fronted a band before, I had been shying away from directly facing the crowd at our shows. Once I decided to turn around and let ‘em have it, we started getting really great gigs playing to more and more people. One such gig was at The Valley Art Theatre on Mill Avenue. I had come down with a crippling case of bronchitis, but the show promoter gave me a Fishermans Friend (like an Altoid, but curiously soothing) and the show went on. As I was performing, I saw a tall, skinny fellow with what looked like a large denim pillow on top of his head standing in the back of the theater. I did my set, got off stage, hugged and talked to an appreciative and growing fan-base, and as I turned around, there stood the pillow-headed fellow. It wasn’t a pillow on his head after all, but a single giant dreadlock under a big piece of blue fabric. This probably wasn’t the way the blue fabric had envisioned its life unfolding either. Whatever the blue fabric had started out wanting to become, it had wound up a dreadlock-pillow despite its best efforts to become something else entirely, I felt sure. I wondered if it hated ugly architecture as much as I did. 

 ”I noticed that when you sing, your energy is red, but when you talk to the people, it turns green,” he observed. This held great significance for him, and because he was talking to me about me, it held great significance for my ego as well. He told me his name was Merril and he started pontificating to me about the Mayan Calendar and this system of belief  which included, among other things, never speaking the word “no” or even “know” because of it’s negative connotations. For all of you who know me personally, you know  that I am a sucker for this sort of thing. This is due to the megalomaniacal hope that at any moment, the pontificator will realize (and proclaim!) that I am, in fact, The Chosen One.

The Chosen One

The Chosen One

Meanwhile, the fellas in my band were getting a group of people together to make a party (something I did quite often). They were leaving the theater and I was shoulders deep in my discussion with Merril still, so I opted to walk home from the place. Merril offered to escort me and I accepted, so there we went: me my in my black velvet blazer, Sheriff badge gleaming in the moonlight, and tall, skinny Merril and his head apparatus. Our conversation turned to my upper back which was bothering me and seemed vaguely related to the bronchitis. Merril, being a self-styled healer of sorts, put his finger to the part that hurt and –  wouldn’t you know it - I felt better immediately.  I said “would you mind keeping it that way as we walk?”  He agreed. As we strolled down Mill Avenue, talking about this magical that and the other,  a cop car pulled up lights flashing, bull horn blaring “Hands where we can see them.” I, being cheeky and thrilled that I felt better than I had in days, said “Don’t worry fellas, I’ve got it under control here,”  and pointed to my Sheriff badge to indicate my command of the situation. When I realized that they didn’t recognize my authority, I instinctively went  into my oh-don’t worry-I-am-not-on-drugs-or-crazy routine. It’s a versatile routine, appropriate for grocery store mishaps, sidelong looks at the library, and police interventions alike.  Nonetheless, it didn’t work. It became apparent that they thought Merril was holding a gun to my back.

There we stood in the driveway of an AM PM, engulfed in an awkward misunderstanding of 80′s sitcom proportions. My band and their newfound partygoers happened to be there buying beer (Coors Light, no doubt).  They gawked as the officers sprang from their squad cars, pulled their guns, and crouched behind their open car doors; ready at the slightest whiff of malfeasance to take out the maniac with the pillow on his head! Merril, for his part, was absently unconcerned. The policemen might well have been mailboxes or lamp-posts. 

I said, “Officers, thank you for your concern, but there isn’t a gun behind my back, he is just doing healing work on me as we walk, he is actually quite a nice fellow.” Well, Laguna Beach officers would have gotten this explanation right away, but something in the makeup of a Tempe cop prevents them from immediately processing that brand of “woo woo stuff.”  Perhaps I was suffering from an advanced case of Stockholm syndrome. Perhaps I was actually the perpetrator, posing as a victim (with a badge!) to throw them off the scent. A tense moment of silence passed while they processed the situation. Deciding that there was no danger, or that if any danger was in fact taking place it was of too obtuse a nature for them to bother with,  they put their guns away, got back in their cars and drove away. My band, still agape, asked if we wanted a lift back to the apartment(s), but it was a beautiful night and Merril and I had been enjoying our evening  stroll. Plus my back really was feeling better!

Jen and Mr. Doyle

A few months later, after a wild night on the town a bunch of us crashed at Tres house. In the morning while Tres and I were spending some quality private time together in his makeshift bedroom, our cohort, one Chris Doyle, went outside to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, we heard Mr. Doyle talking to someone. It was Merril. Mr. Doyle reported that Merril was looking in the window, spying on Tres and I!  Tres confronted Merril who was characteristically unconcerned, then ambled off.  I suppose when you’re on Mayan time, the petty annoyance of being called on your voyeurism is just that: a petty annoyance. No oh-don’t worry-I-am-not-on-drugs-or-crazy routine required.

Merril

Merril ambling off

March 31, 2010
Categories: Jen Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: 2 Comments

Mrs. Lee and The Experience

The Buttercup Cafe

The first time I ever tried “Tofutti” I lived in Berkely California. I waited tables at two different restaurants, The Buttercup Cafe, which was owned by an Ethiopian guy named Fessah who always thought I was stealing his wine (I was not) and The Mongolian Barbeque on the main drag, Martin Luther King Way. That place was run by a Korean Family, whose matriarch, Mrs. Lee, was a tiny little Tazmanian Devil of a woman with a loud, harsh voice who only ever referred to me as “Girl” (really more like “Ghorll”) as in: “You! Ghorll! New table!” There was always a new table in that place, and Mrs. Lee didn’t hesitate to let me know it. One day, when I showed up for work Mrs. Lee was rocking a new ‘do: a tight fuzzy perm that looked like a giant afro. This ‘fro somehow possessed the magical ability to transform Mrs. Lee from a snarling imperious wolverine into a sweet, lilting songbird. Her tone was almost singsong when she lilted “Ooh, Ghorll, you look so pretty today, so nice, so CLEEEEEN!” (the old familiar Tazmanian Mrs. Lee reared her medusa-head on that last part like she was just barely holding it together, songbird-wise, and a little Tazmanian Devil couldn’t help but slip out around the edges. Apparently, Tazmanian Mrs. Lee was backhandedly implying that I was some kind of unwashed hippie on non-’fro days).  Her change in attitude and new, transparently insincere-yet-complimentary tone was owed entirely to the fact that she felt so cute, what with the new ‘fro and all.

My boyfriend at the time, Scott, was a giant tattooed Pacific Islander guy who had a thing for Jimi Hendrix (one of the tattoos is Jimi’s face). He worked for an auto detailing company which may or may not have been a front for dealing illicit substances. As a perk I guess, he often found himself getting little dime bags of what they call “Chronic Hood Weed” which we may or may not have smoked in abundance, I cant recall. On one such occasion (having maybe or maybe not just smoked the Chronic Hood Weed), Scott opined: “You know, with her new ‘fro, Mrs. Lee looks alot like Jimi Hendrix.”

I called in one day and quit with the weirdest excuse I could think of: “I broke my ankle on the toilet, and I’m never coming back.” 

Mrs. Lee inspired this and other paintings (by Jen) of "The Ladies" which hang in our house to this day.

Now, whenever I’m in a better mood due to some external factor like a particularly good hair day, I say I’m having a Mrs. Lee moment or, simply that I am Mrs. Lee today. Like this:

Me (feeling really cute in my new top): “Man this is some great stuff”
Tres: “What? I thought you hated that stuff.”
Me: “I did, but that was yesterday. Today, I’m Mrs. Lee.”

or

Me (fresh from having gotten a massage): “It sure was nice to see Barnabus.”
Tres: “What? I thought you were never going to talk to Barnabus again.”
Me: “Yeah, but I’m Mrs. Lee about him today.”

March 29, 2010
Categories: Jen Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: 2 Comments

May the 4ce be with you.

Max Ikner the 4 year old Jedi

Max Ikner the 4 year old Jedi

Happy birthday to our (Jen and Tres) son, Max, who turns 4 years old today, March 24th 2010.  Thanks for choosing us to be your parents, Jedi-Max-Mowgli the Great Little Watash. It’s a distinct honor. Many genuine thanks also to the multitude of friends, family, dragons, wizards, Darths (the nice ones), pigs, babies, Quetzel birds, Snargaluffs (the nice ones)  and cats who’ve been a part of Max’s life and continue to make his (and our) lives so very fun and special. Here’s to another wonderful trip around the sun for our son.

March 24, 2010
Categories: Family Life, Tres Blog . . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: 1 Comment

What Rhymes With You Part Two

 

If you read What Rhymes With You Part 1, you’ll know that JJ, the violinist on this song

What Rhymes With You

came over one day a few months back, tied us down, poured red wine down our throats and forced us to write a song including the line “I could sit and stare in my lilac underwear.” Well, here it is, now. You’ll also hear the musical talent of Prescott’s best kept secret, Mark Dorsten on bass.

More to come soon. We hope you enjoy this one.

March 13, 2010
Categories: Music, Northern Arizona . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: 1 Comment

The Yoda Show

Deafening quiet

When we moved Prescott, the number of people we knew here was in the single digits. We were adrift without a band and without sufficient social contacts to find one. Our first few months in Prescott were marked by a profound quiet.   Inevitably, a promoter we knew called and booked us a gig a few months out, which – true to form – we accepted despite the fact that we had no band. This was largely our modus operandi while we were in Phoenix: someone would call us, book us a show, and we’d cobble together a band from the musicians we knew, and rehearse them for the show.

It quickly became apparent to us that we were not going to cobble together a band in time for this gig. I had taken a job at Yavapai College that afforded me access to video production equipment, so one night, Jen and I began tossing around the idea of having a virtual band projected on a screen behind us. The more we talked about it, the more outlandish the idea became. We settled on the players:

Yoda plays bass

Yoda on Bass Guitar

A Slice of Birthday Cake on Keys

Mr. Mondo, a Yellow Finger Monster, on drums

The Yoda Show

Instead of rehearsing a band, we set about an intense two weeks with a camera, a green-screen and 500 watt stage lights set up in our living room. At one point, I was standing too close to a light and melted a set of headphones to my head.  Amateur puppeteering became a full-time job. I barely did anything for another week after that but edit the video, stopping occasionally to cackle madly.

We arrived at what amounted to a concept set: Jen and I (and Yoda, Mr. Mondo, and Birthday Cake) were the Court Musicians of the Emirate of Khaang and we were double-booked for the night of the show. However, through the use of “Futuristic Technology” we were able to be in both places at once by beaming our band in from the Emirate of Khaang, where they were fulfilling the duties of the Emir’s Court Musicians while Jen and I appeared in person (and were presumably being beamed back to Khaang).

I  edited the backing tracks (bass, keys, drums) to all the tunes using mostly the Fen’s drum tracks and Kevin’s bass tracks we recorded with The Lovelies, and I programmed drums and bass for a few of the tunes.

I realized that we didn’t have keyboards on every tune so we needed some reason for the Birthday Cake to leave “the stage” after the first few keyboard tunes, and then reappear for the final tune. So, we had our dear friend Serene Dominic play the evil super-villain, Dr. Volker Sontaag, who takes over our “paltry communication system to deliver the following edict: There shall be no more birthday cake for anyone, for it offends me! Mwahahahah!”  and zaps our (and presumably all) birthday cake out of existence.

At that point, we play the non-keyboard tunes. Then, just before the last tune, Dr. Sontaag again takes over our paltry communication system to “issue the following apology.” He realizes that it was his own latent homosexuality that was preventing him from enjoying birthday cake. Turns out he’s not a mad scientist, he’s a gay dad scientist! So, having come to terms with this,  he zaps our (and presumably all) birthday cake back into existence.

Sontaag’s got great timing as it turns out,  because we were just about to play our final song (with keyboards) which just happens to be entitled Gay Dad.

The thing that is truly hilarious about this is the crowd reaction.  We did this in a few places, but the gig we worked it up for was at the Spirit Room in the weird little ghost-town of Jerome, AZ. At the time, the place was a well-known biker bar along AZ route 89A. I’m pretty sure that no one in that place had ever seen anything like this before. But, as we came to find out, if there’s one thing that gains universal acceptance, it’s video of Yoda playing bass.

Over the next few months, we wound up doing this set more than a few times in our living room for friends and friends of friends who had heard about it. People would show up at odd hours in varying degrees of sobriety cajoling us to “do the Yoda show!” Not long after that, Chris and Stefan came along. We were amazed at how strongly The Force was with them.

January 28, 2010
Categories: Music, Northern Arizona, Tres Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: Leave a Comment

Usurp This

My old buddy and college roomate Matt Legrow asked for some production/engineering/recording notes on the Dutch Holly Pull tracks. The reason I chose to write about this tune first

 Usurp This

is because in the production of it there is alot about the recording of the other tunes (by comparison) and because it represents the most recent processes that we have used to produce tracks. I will say that the recording of Pull represents the process of learning to engineer/record/mix/master songs for me personally and that Usurp This  happens on the more recent end of that learning curve.

The first thing you hear on Usurp This is Jesco White talking about a gas-huffing-induced hallucination he had involving a serpent head on a (naked) girl’s body. What’s so brilliant about this quote is that, despite the disturbing nature of this horrific image, in the same breath, Jesco’s saying ”she looked to me to be about 19, maybe 20 years old.” So, snake-head nothwithstanding, he’s actually checking her out!  Jesco is the Devil in himself, and that’s what this tune is about: who’s bad? Jen writes pretty funny stuff sometimes, and this one is a light-hearted romp into the heart of darkness itself, poking a little fun at the (self-proclaimed) Evil Among Us like Anton Levay (“you dance like Charro”).

Chris Ozuna drummer for Dutch Holly

Chris Ozuna

We recorded drums first. For most of the other tunes on Pull (Paradise, Wingding, Bill, Averge Girl and Hey), Chris had a kit set up at our house in the basement and I had (badly) miked it up and recorded them to a 16-track hard disk recorder. This was before I knew anything about what I was doing, so there’s alot of bleed in those drums and they required alot of post-production to get them sounding right. We didn’t include Usurp This and Supermodels in the initial set of tunes because we had recorded earlier versions of these tunes when we lived in Phoenix and were playing out as The Lovlies with my brother Fen Ikner on drums and Kevin Pate on bass.  You can still hear these versions on GarageBand.com (I mixed them in CuBase, on a beige “power-mac” not sure that I even mastered them at all). But at our live gigs, Usurp This and Supermodels slayed, so we decided we probably ought to include them on the album. So, one day during the time I was mixing/mastering the other tunes on Pull, I went over to the Body Bag (Chris lived in a basement of a house with a rehearsal room that was lined in black plastic and so it was  dubbed “the Body Bag”)

Dutch Holly Rehearses at the Body Bag

The Body Bag

 where Chris had his good kit properly miked up and we recorded Supermodels and Usurp This with me playing scratch guitar in the headphones and singing as best I could. As I recall, we recorded these to a click which was an el-cheapo Dr. Beat drum machine. We cranked the tempo up as fast as Chris could stand (on both tunes) and were off to the races.   I burned the drum tracks to CD and took them home. I imported them into ProTools and got a rough mix together with the scratch guitar and vocal track (shudder) that I had recorded at the Body Bag.  

A few days (weeks?) later, Stefan came over to our place and laid bass tracks on Usurp This and Supermodels. 

Stefan Cochran bassist for Dutch Holly

Stefan Cochran

He used  a 5-string Ibanez through a DBX tube preamp, direct to my 16-track hard disk recorder. Of course, these were burned to CD and imported into ProTools as well. He also recorded an outro-guitar solo on Usurp This which didn’t wind up on the final version (Sorry, Stefan). Stefan is a hell of a guitarist, a shredder, really, and it was alot of rapid-fire face-melting notes, but the more I listened  to it, the more I wanted something a little more melodic ala Billy Corgan on Gish. So, after I recorded the rhythm guitar with my Fender Mustang through a Korg ToneWorks AX3000G (direct to hard-disk of course), I set about recording the outro guitar solo.  Now, I’m nowhere near as accomplished a shredder as Stefan, so it took me about a dozen takes but I finally got the take I wanted, and that’s the one you’ll hear on the tune. I then added some final keyboard touches (a sitar and a weird little sine-wave lead synth part during the verse) with the Korg Triton.

With the instrumentals all recorded, I worked up a rough karakoe mix in ProTools for recording vocals. I dumped it to CD and loaded it on the hard-disk. A note about all the hard-disk to ProTools transfers: I didn’t track directly in ProTools because the computer I had was pretty slow and always quit in the middle of takes, my theory is that the playback engine was demanding too many CPU resources to simultaneously record and play back. I never had this problem with mixing, only recording and playback at the same time. Thus, tracking to the hard-disk then transferring the WAV files to the computer (via CD) was the best way to track.

The vocal setup was straightforward, a large-diphragm condenser mic isolated in our walk-in closet (hard wood floor, and clothes hanging on three sides, sounds just like an iso booth!) through the DBX tube preamp. We have a setup where I can be in the room just off our bedroom (we call it the Vision room) and I have a headphone amp and mic cables set up in there along with the Digi002, computer, hard-disk recorder some other out-board effects, and a comfy chair. I run the headphone extension and mic cables under the carpet to the closet and I have a talk-back mic set up at the desk.

Of course, we are parents, so the real trick to recording vocals is finding some time when Max isn’t going to be demanding our undivided attention. This would be nap time. Max naps in the early afternoon on our bed, so while he was asleep on our bed, Jen was in the closet, and I was in the Vision room whispering into the talk-back mic. Luckily, Jen could record this tune in her sleep, so it didn’t require many takes. We even had time to come up with the little harmony part on the outro where she sings “back” after “I want It!” We got it done in one nap time.

In post, I really didn’t like the way the tune started out with just the guitar (that’s how we do it live), it seemed kind of empty. So I started playing with the first couple of measures of the drum track I had mixed down for instrumental recordings. I brought it into BIAS Peak, and tweaked it out with some VST effects (PSP Nitro), and looped it (glad we recorded it to a click). Initially, I had this fading up under the guitar, but it still seemed kind of lacking somehow. The Jesco sample was the final touch, of course. It comes from the cult-classic documentary, The Dancin’ Outlaw which if you have not seen, you simply must. I have a great series of photos on my Facebook page of when Jen and I actually went to Boone County, WV (where I’m from) and hung out with Jesco for the day.  

Mixed it in ProToools, not much to tell there. I will say that Fen taught me how to run the drums through a stereo bus and insert compression on the bus to get a fatter sound. Thanks for that, Fen.  

Mastered using BIAS Peak and Apple AU Multiband Compressor. This is well before I knew what I was doing with mastering, so at some point, I’d like to go back a re-master using a maximizer/limiter and some EQ, as I think this mix came out a little bottom-heavy.

January 26, 2010
Categories: Music, Tres Blog . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Dutch Holly . Comments: Leave a Comment

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