Author Archives: charrcrail

Welcome to my new blog about the Principles of K.I.S.S.ing… and this is NOT what it seems. 😉

As a professional photographer and artist I’m creating and holding workshops where people with artistic sensibilities can learn and explore the wonderful world of digital photography and create otherworldly images with ease and panache. I call it my K.I.S.S. method.

I constantly get asked– How did you do that? Using five or less elements to make something extraordinary, astonishing, fantastical, gorgeous… big words for something so simple.

KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETIE. That’s what I will teach you about the process of creating art, Charr style.

Meet Brian Doyle, 24-year-old drummer in the process of making some big decisions in life and working towards a future that will allow him to pursue his passion for music. Doyle is a drummer, an energetic play hard and make lots of noise drummer who was with the punk rock band Guttermouth. Now Doyle is back home in Torrance California planning out a new future and splitting his work time between college courses and waiting tables, but playing drums on the side in his home studio. Ultimately his plan is to transfer to a four-year college and get his International Business degree where he believes his looks and outgoing personality will serve him well, ultimately financially fueling his music pursuits.
Doyle decided to become a drummer at 14 when he went to church and was amazed by the resident drummer there “ripping rock beats”. He chatted him up afterwards and began a great friendship, which included his new friend teaching Doyle how to play. “Now I show him what’s up!” Doyle says with some pride and a smile in his voice. Doyle has developed a style that is fast and hard with lots of different rhythmns. He says for him that drumming is a natural drug, better than any hard drugs. “I don’t do hard drugs but even if I did I know this is still way better than that!”

This video is from a Warped Tour performance… see Doyle in the back on drums.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuVN76akHT0]

One of the top dogs at California Musical Theatre once called Ron Swanson the “Mary Pickford of Music Circus” because everyone loves him and he makes them look beautiful. “I get them out of trouble, saving the orphans from the alligators, just like Mary” Swanson says with a sweeping hand gesture and an easy laugh. Early screen star Mary Pickford was well known as a victorious victim in her film roles so it stands to reason that saving actors from bad hair days makes Swanson a real treasure in the realm of making people look good on or off the stage. Swanson is the Director of the Hair and Wig Department for Music Circus and California Musical Theatre. Brilliant actors travel from both coasts to perform here each summer season and Swanson transforms them in to every manner of character one can imagine and he’s been doing hair and wigs at the theatre for nearly 14 years.

Why does he love doing hair? “I love the people, the hair artistry, the service performed, it’s fun.” Swanson adds that there is an enormous difference between Salon hair and Theatre hair. “Theatre can be very creative but salon has very strict parameters– contemporary, street level styling so it blends in with every one else out there. But in the theatre you are free to get completely lost in any time period you’re in and you can do anything, it will never be wrong. People are happy to wear great big ugly hair in the theatre because they know they can take it off.”

After a moment of reflection Swanson adds “Theatre people and actors are some of the bravest people in the world. When you are someone who makes a living with your looks, are noted for that, and you’re on stage in something that makes you look like your grandma– in front of two, three, four thousand people– that takes real courage! Most of us don’t ever leave our homes if we don’t look a certain way, I can’t! And then stand there singing like it’s all natural? Oh no no no no noooo, no, nooooooooo” he says with a dramatic and hearty laugh… the final nooooo trailing off to a thoughtful silence…..

However, in the interest of the Moonlighitng blog premise it turns out Swanson also has a sideline– an appreciation for doll collecting and restoration, which began ten years ago but got serious about five years back. (Check back because I’ll be photographing him doing restoration on a Shirley Temple doll in the next week or so and will have photographs as well.)

Though Swansons doll collection is large and varied with approximately 75-100 dolls, his favorite is Judy Garland as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. “It’s an investment, I’m not selling them now. I’m sitting on the collection because it’s going to be part of my old age retirement.”

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Chris Cary leads a very complicated life as he winds his way through the many jobs he holds. To some he’s known as “Chris, the mechanic”. To others he’s known as lead singer and songwriter for his band Call Box. Next is his work connection to Tesla where he is alternately known as bassist Brian Wheat’s personal assistant, roadie and bass tech. And soon he’ll be known as the studio manager at J Street Recorders, a job he just recently took over. It’s a helluva schedule and he’s a popular guy. Hang around Chris for awhile and it’s easy to see why. He’s talented, professional, hard-working, articulate, gracious, good looking and well liked by everyone.

Catch Cary by day and you’ll find him at Nor Cal Transmission where he rents a bay and works on cars for his steady and dedicated clientele. Though this may not be his favorite of the many jobs he has he happens to be good at it and it serves him well in his double life. He got into auto mechanics as a teenager after he blew out the motor of the very first car he ever owned within a week. His dad’s response was if he wanted to continue driving that car he’d have to learn how to fix it himself. Cary’s first job was to rebuild that motor, which he did with the help of a neighborhood friend. Next thing you know his friends started asking him to fix their cars too. It even got him into car racing including a stint as a pit mechanic on the modified midget race cars where he worked with World Outlaws racing and toured with the 410 and 360 sprint cars. “It was a lot of fun” says Cary, We got to travel all over California, race, get into fights in the pit area. People would cut you off in the race track, or do something another race driver may feel was offensive, and it just full on breaks out and you’ve got eight people on eight people. Not that often but it happened.” he says with a Cheshire Cat grin.
The racing days are over but his mechanical skills now serve him in an entirely different arena– Music, his first love, his true passion. Asked if they cross over he says yes. “I did (mechanic) trade for all my head shots for the band. When we recorded Mixed Friction at Pus Cavern I did work on their vehicles and did trade for recording time. As far as the studio goes myself and Brian (Wheat) and some others built that studio from the ground up, from the dirt to where it is now– a 5000 sq ft state-of-the art studio and since I did that the whole album is paid for.”
The mechanical skills also come in handy if anything breaks down while traveling on the road with Tesla.
He became involved with Tesla four years ago when a former Mixed Friction band mate introduced Cary to bassist Brian Wheat when they were looking for a producer. It was a turning point. “I knew he was building this studio so I said well, if you ever need help I can do other things and he said ‘then get your butt out here. If you want you can work off your album’ and we just got to be really really good friends through that process. One of the dearest friends I have.
It was with some hesitation that Cary began touring with Tesla because he was in mid-production of his CD but in June when Brian’s bass tech got sick Cary came to the rescue and “just never went back home.” “Yeah it’s a blast, just this last leg alone we had three days off in Chicago and I got to see the Chicago Art Museum. Cary says that seeing a Monet and a Salvador Dali was one of the highlights of his trip. They even took a jaunt to Little Big Horn along the way. Cary says Tesla is unlike touring with a lot of bands. “A lot of bands are all about partying. Tesla is done with all that so on our days off we sight see. It’s cool, you don’t feel like you wasted a day because you just drank it all away. You went out and experienced a piece of life. Life is good right now.”

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

There is a certain reality in the record business to be faced and Cary is looking at it squarely in the eye admitting his chances may be slimmer than he’d like. “First off, it’s a lottery ticket to just get a record deal… when you think about how many good bands are out there and how many actually get the chance… I’ve got lottery ticket times 10, those are my chances.” Cary says.
At 32 Cary finally decided to go for it after being inspired by people like his mother who got her BA in Anthropology at 40. “I”m a late bird in the game.” Cary says. Despite seeing his age as a drawback Cary has some important people rooting for him. I’ve got (friend and record producer) Michael Rosen who won a grammy for working with Michelle Branch and Carlos Santana. I’ve got Brian Wheat who sold 20 million albums with Tesla and all these people are very supportive of what I’m doing but even Brian Wheat came to me and said you need to look at the realization that if I’ve got a record label I’m not going to sign you. I would do it as a friend but I wouldn’t do it as a buisness project. I take that and I go ‘I understand why your’e doing that.’ He’s working with a band called Gooser and they’re all like 16 years old. These guys have a great chance, they’re a phenomenal band and they will probably make it, but because they’re 16 he’s got two years to develop them and they’re still only 18 and still very sellable to the record lables.”
“I don’t have a lot of time to do artist development. I’ve gotta get in there and get my stuff done. So were looking at other avenues now, not necessarily just record deals but movie soundtracks, any kind of publishing that we can get.”
But if he does make it big then one thing is clear in his mind. Large venues or arenas hold no appeal for him when he imagines himself on stage. “I would rather do ten shows at the Crest than one show at Arco. Even when I’m working with Tesla and you’re on the road you’re seeing 20,000-30,000 people out in front of you but you don’t tend to notice any of them. They become this sort of this blanket… But when we do the smaller theaters you tend to notice a lot, you start noticing the characters and the individuals and the people, seeing how they react. I like to watch people… it’s all about the connection. If that person doesn’t walk away feeling what you felt in that song then I don’t feel like you connected with them. That’s the most incredible power in the world knowing that you moved someone by something you wrote… You can’t do that as a mechanic. You can’t do that as a recording engineer or a bass tech. “
Music is everything to him and it’s what he is striving to do full time as he phases out the car mechanic part of his work life. Taking a look back he can’t remember a time when he didn’t sing. He tells a charming story about being on the school swing set with friends in second grade singing the Three Dog Night hit Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog at the top of his young lungs. He loved singing so much that he always made it a facet of his life to some degree including singing in the high school choir, and school theater musicals. “I was always the lead character.” When Cary determined to pursue rock and roll as a career his parents were not enthusiastic. “Then when they came out and saw what I could do with music and I blew their minds, then the tables turned and they became more than 100% supportive. I just remember being relieved and this overwhelming feeling of joy… They saw how I captured the audience and how I interracted with people and they were pretty blown away. It was a huge moment for me, to be able to cross that boundary because for years I had this anger towards them for not wanting to support the one thing that I loved. So when it did change it was a pretty monumental moment.”
Cary continues to express his passion for singing with his band Call Box. He describes it as “a hard rock melodic band. Sometimes I like to think of us a mellow Godsmack or a hard Nickelback because all of our tunes are really melodic and we don’t do a bunch of screaming… I just like having that edge in the music… it’s what brings me alive as a frontman you know. For me it’s how I express my passion. ” Although the music is a collaborative effort he’s the bands lyricist. He writes by drawing from life experience and the inspiration he finds in people and the stories they tell. For Cary inspiration is everywhere, even in a riff. “Suddenly I’ll get a mental picture of what I want a story line to be, how that particular piece of music moves me and makes me feel. I think it’s the only way I can really get all the emotions that I have out.”

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Larisa Bryski is ambitious. “Every spare minute” is spent trying to make the music thing happen. “The only limit that there is for me is time.” she says. “Fortunately the band has been together for four years and we’re still doing okay.”

Many would say more than okay. Bryski won the Female Vocalist in the 2004 Sammies and her music was described in the Sacramento News and Review as “…an updated, female-fronted Aerosmith. It’s that rocking…” Speaking of rocking– In March The Larisa Bryski Band, which includes her guitarist singer husband Willie Seltzer, will be hob-nobbing it with some of the very best in the business when they take part in the enormously important South by Southwest conference where hundreds of bands from all over the country will swarm into Austin, Texas and spend nearly a week performing, talking, selling, schmoozing, jamming and generally inspiring fine music together. DMI is flying The Larisa Bryski Band out there to perform in a couple of showcases, see the iconic Robert Plant as the keynote speaker and maybe even run into living legend Madonna.

Bryski says she has been trying to be a professional musician forever. “I remember being five years old, I wrote a song and sang it acappella in front of my whole school in a talent show. When you’re five you’re fearless. You’re just la lala la la…” she says in a sing-song lilt.

Bryski was just seven years old watching Laverne and Shirley with her grandma when the truth of her talent came to light for the first time. “I was sitting on the floor singing the theme song at the top of my lungs, vibrato, hitting all the high notes, and my grandma looks at my mom and says ‘you know she can kinda sing’. I remember hearing her say it and kinda going hee hee hee, because in the back of my mind at that point I KNEW I could sing. I started telling my mom I was interested in music. I wanted Shawn Cassidy records. In the mountains we didn’t have good radio stations so I was always trying to get my relatives to send me records. When I was eight my mom bought me a really old funky piano upright, nasty, paint chipping off it of it kind of thing. I started taking piano lessons and it was like–insert cool blast off sound here– I was off and running!”

She began performing professionally when she was 14 and says that until she was 25 she was “in and out of a gazillion cover bands. “I was playing in bars and my mom had to write me a note to play. When mom got mad music was always the first thing she took away. “My stereo and my curling iron. She sent me to school with straight hair and that was bad in the 80’s!

At first glance one would not think there could be much crossover in her two jobs. Bryski deftly explains the beauty of the crossover in her double life. “It totally works. Being a musician in Sacramento and working for a non-profit, I know a lot of people
and it’s helped me in my job at Sierrra. I know radio station people who are interested in helping charities.” Bryski has worked hard to build a good rapport with people and on occasion they may even do favors for each other. “Promoting your band is a lot like promoting anything. There is product involved, design, website. A lof of it goes hand in hand”.

She admits that it’s a lot to handle. “I get really tired because I have this double life. I get here at 7:30 am and work until 4:30 pm most nights, then I go to Skips and teach (vocals) from 5-8 and and then some nights I have band practice or shows. I teach on weekends too, then have shows at night.”

For the rocking Larisa Bryski one thing is crystal clear. ‘I will never stop playing music whether it with my band or solo, not necessarily performing but writing and teaching.” “It’s all important. The music is important, the job is important. But if I had to choose, I would always choose the music, it’s just in me.”

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Larisa Bryski leads a double life.
By day: Public relations hub for Sierra Adoption Center.
By night: Singer songwriter with her group, The Larisa Bryski Band, who recently landed a recording contract with an upstart label, DMI.
But somewhere between am and pm these two seemingly disparate aspects to her life seem to cross over effortlessly.

“I have two different lives. The music part of it is just something that has always been in me, and the passion for the job I have is something that’s come since I’ve been in the non-profit world as an adult going into a career, something that pays the bills.”

But clearly it’s really not just about paying the bills. She has a genuine passion for philanthropy and seems to have found a niche that feeds her soul almost as well as the music does. Bryski says that after working at Sierra Adoption Center for awhile she fell in love with the mission. “I’m happy with what I’m doing. I’m the only person who does PR for the angency. I aspire to do more with my job, create more buzz for the agency, get more recognition, place more children. I see myself being happy here for a long time, unless I get the big record deal.” A smile spreads across her face and she lets out a delighted laugh. “What’s cool about when I first got hired here, one of the women in administration knew who I was because she had heard my name on the radio or something and she says, ‘Well, you’re a musician. What happens if you get rich and famous? Are you just gonna leave? That was part of my interview and it was this big panel and she was one of them. I said Well, probably but I would donate a big chunk of money to the agency!” I would too, they all know that that’s who I am but they also know that while I’m here I make a very conscious effort to separate the two. I dress like this (see attractive conservative outfit photo) and I really try not to conduct band business while I’m at work. There’s a mutual respect. They know things might happen, I hope things happen, but if they don’t that’s ok too.”

Bryski says that one cool correlation between working for a charity and doing music is that she can sometimes perform for charity, and not just for Sierra. “I’m really into philanthropy anyway, animal issues, children issues, breast cancer, girl scouts (she used to be one). It enables me to do something other than just write a check.”

Although she gets an emotional charge from both sides of her life she says the emotional end is quite different for each. “When I’m interviewing a family for the newsletter we produce I cry a lot. Because the kids we place most of the time come from situations of neglect from their birth family and then they are saved by these people who come forward to adopt them and take them into their homes forever. It’s crazy, just the most amazing thing so many children who need families and have families that adopt them. You ask them ‘is there any diference between having a biological child and having an adopted child and they say no, no difference. I love this child just as much.’ It’s awesome when that happens.”

But from the music side of things when somebody comes up to me and says I love your song… when I write a song that really connects with someobody… that’s like woah, I made something that somebody else relates to and made them emotional and that makes me emotional.

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

It’s the corporate attire that takes you by surprise because it’s a far cry from the sexier fare of this singer who belts out her original songs in clubs all over town on a very regular basis. But here we are at the offices of Sierra Adoption Center where Larisa Bryski works, standing in the child-friendly hallway, walls covered in murals. Bryski’s public relations efforts for Sierra Adoption Center helps children who need warm and loving homes find them.

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Imagine a boy playing with his best friends in a large and beautiful landscaped backyard, perfect for grand scenarios involving their various Star Wars and GI Joe action figures. Adjacent to the yard is a patio turned space station nightclub and bar. This is where the young Mark Gilmore, DJ in training, got his start on destiny.

“We set it up with one of our boom boxes as the wall of the club and we built this little stage. We would cut out paper guitars for our GI Joe figures and I would create tapes to play as if I was the radio DJ setting up the songs. It was me pretending to be Pat Martin who is my boss now. I would listen to what he did and we’d play Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Ratt. That was my first DJ job. I though it was fun but I went through my later childhood thinking I had no shot at ever being anything. I took the most common jobs. I was kind of a shy person.” He’s not shy now. What he is now is an on-air radio personality at 98 Rock as host of Local Lick’s, Sacramento’s longest running local music showcase broadcast live Sunday nights from 9-10 pm on 98 Rock. The whole hour is dedicated to unsigned local bands. He is also the manager for popular local band Brand X Savior.

As the door to the radio station swings open the first thing you notice is his bare feet. Of course, it’s radio, who can see you? Later on he’ll joke that he has a face for radio. It’s not true. Gilmore is very tall and very handsome.

When I ask what his main job title he says “Part-time air personality, part-time producer, just all around bitch” he adds with a hearty laugh. “ I do whatever it takes to keep my day busy.” Gilmore got his start as a DJ almost by accident. While growing up he says “I didn’t have resources or anyone telling me I could do that. I though the most important thing was getting money and not doing something you love– or building a career. It was pay your car payment, insurance have some spending money to take the girlfriend out.” But when he met former Local Licks host Kylie Brooks she suggested he could intern at 98 rock as her assistant. “I was just bs’ing with her one day. So now I’m here doing the show she was doing when I started.”

Gilmore says he really wanted to be a musician but says he “can’t play a lick. I have a bass but I can’t play it. I’m trying to get someone to teach me. I wanted to sing but I can’t sing a stitch. So those who can’t, do radio. That’s what I’ve heard”, he jokes. His ultimate goal is to be a full-time jock and contracted on-air personality. Something he’s working hard at. At 9 pm sharp the show goes out live on the radio and between songs and interviews Gilmore takes calls from listeners, some of whom are confused because the show recently moved into an earlier and longer time slot due to it’s popularity. “The band I’m playing now just called me a few minutes ago hoping I would play this song and they’re all partying right now! So that’s kind of the main thing. The main audiences are the bands I’m playing but we’ll get peoples minds open to local music.”

One last thing about moonlighting in this brief record needs to be straight and Gilmore is very serious about this. “Really my first job, my first passion is being a husband and a dad. So these other two things are moonlighting from those.”

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Enter Brand X Savior.

“I heard their music before I started working for 98 Rock. I went to an Inruin show at The Boardwalk and saw (Brand X Savior) for the first time and then until 2 am me and the guys were out in the back parking lot BS’ing and got to be friends.” Surprisingly the chemistry was not about music. It was about Star Wars, Science Fiction, “weird stupid stuff” that they all had in common. “That’s what I like about bands– when you get past the music and can get into the people.”

Gilmore says with Brand X Savior “I always liked what these guys sounded like and I thought they aren’t getting the credit they deserve. They aren’t aggressively pushing for what they deserve as a status. They needed somebody NOT in the band who wasn’t afraid to piss somebody off, to step up and say ‘No, When we talked it was this.’ And that’s kind of what a manager does so that’s why they give me the title, Manager.”