Writer

Around 20 San Diego bands performed as part of the annual South By Southwest festival in and around Austin, Texas.

Writer band members gigged their way to SXSW in a Honda Element equipped with a trailer, an electric water kettle, and a hundred packs of Cup O’ Noodles. “Last night, we played in Las Vegas at the Double Down Saloon,” blogged guitarist Jayme Ralph on MySpace. “Interesting, to say the least; the city and the people seem a bit surreal.”

The next night in Albuquerque, “Someone in Writer inadvertently dry humped a cactus,” according to guitarist David Hastings MacAdam. “No booze, no bands after midnight in Albuquerque on Sundays. This, ironically, in a state that has no motorcycle helmet law.”

In Las Cruces, “We pulled up to New Mexico State’s radio station, KRUX, and did a guerrilla in-studio performance/interview,” says MacAdam. “Today’s drive was only 45 minutes to El Paso, and we didn’t even have to stop for an Andy [Ralph] pee break, a new record, which usually is prompted by a lot of screaming and clamping.”

Drew Andrews and Spectral Cities shared their own road-to-SXSW stories. “I dig Albuquerque,” posts Andrews at sddialedin.com, “full of weird seedy bars, young kids littering the main drag all night, trolling for adventures. Last time I was there, the nightlife turned into an actual gunfight mini riot, cops securing the streets. But, hey, it’s still the Wild West, right?...

“Last night was Diego-tastic in Flagstaff, AZ: Long Live Logos, Crash Encore, Transfer, and us. We played [and] stayed at the Hotel Monte Vista. The after-party was a wild mix. I vaguely remember a noise complaint around 4 a.m. and a hotel manager yelling at me, thinking I was the tour manager. I offered him a beer and quickly stumbled away to my room. That’s how we do.”

LINK: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/mar/25/blurt4/ - San Diego Reader

Andy and James Ralph have been playing music together since they were brothers and San Diego is starting to notice. Their tastefully minimalist project Writer, which has included guitarist Eli Bowser for a year and a half, is the perfect example what an independent band should look like. The new CD "Blood Drops" is an impressively self-recorded project with beautiful packaging and seven songs that keep your finger pressing repeat and they will be celebrating its release this friday at Whistle Stop before they take it to the road. They let us invade a practice at Andy's house, where they also write and record, and played a couple stripped-down versions of songs from "Blood Drops."

Sezio: How often do you practice?
Andy: Right now we’re practicing Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, which is a lot. We used to just practice Saturdays or just play shows. We’ve been hanging out here all the time lately.

SZ: So nobody cares that you practice three times a week down here?
AR: No, all our neighbors are cool, the ones right across from us have a band and she records over there. Everyone’s kind of young and they don't care as long as we don’t play after like ten.



SZ: Are you writing too?
AR: We just got done with the CD, so we’re trying to play the CD live. Trying to figure out how to do song-to-song transitions and all that kind of stuff. We haven’t written any new songs since that CD but we kind of need to cause we’re sick of it already.
James: We’ve been thinking about trying to get away from what we’re usually around when we play; go somewhere and try to write a little bit here and there.
AR: Like go on a retreat somewhere. We should go on a cruise; a Caribbean cruise.



SZ: How do you write when you do?
AR: It’s always been that I’ll write a song and they’ll play and write their parts but we all wrote the newest song on Blood Drops together while we were recording. I think that’s what we’ll do for a while now, it works pretty cool.



SZ: How does the record compare to what you play live?
AR: The record is exactly what we play live, there’s not even any extra guitars. There’s like one acoustic, one electric, drums, bass synth and that’s it. There’s not even any extra vocals; all of the vocals are just me and Jamie. And then Crystal Clem sang on one song, which is pretty cool. Sometimes it sounds better when there’s like twenty guitars laid on top of each other on one part, but we didn’t do that this time.



SZ: So you recorded the whole thing here?
AR: Yeah, all the demos were recorded in my room and then all the tracks were recorded in our neighbors basement. And then Jason martin up in orange county mixed and mastered it.
JR: We like basically raided their basement for a whole month and a half every Saturday and Sunday; the whole month of March we just showed up here and just stayed in the basement. I got sick and i'd just stayed in the basement for two days straight and then go work the rest of the week. They have a great setup so it worked perfectly.



SZ: And what are you doing with it now?
AR: well we pressed a thousand and we’re just going on a two week tour after the CD release party. Up to what’s that called central California?
JR: Basically the worst places you can go in September.
AR: Like Fresno and Modesto, Stockton, Mountain View...
JR: I think we started emailing like two months ago and got in at some pretty cool places. We’re pretty excited. The first time we went to Seattle we played some really funny places.

Listen to songs from Blood Drops at Writer's website and come to their CD Release Party at Whistle Stop, free this Friday (8/29) with friends Joel P West and D.S. Yancey.

Writer was also nominated for Best New Band by San Diego Music Awards and you can vote for them here until Saturday.

Photographs and Filming by Jonathan Foster

LINK: http://www.sezio.org/feature/Writer.aspx - Sezio.org

Sometimes, writers show up to interviews with specific intentions. We want the story to have some sort of angle, so we bring things up and ask and re-ask questions until we get the answers we’re looking for.

Such was the case with Writer, a newer local band made up of brothers Andy and Jayme Ralph and San Diego native Eli Bowser. Armed with “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” an Adbuster story that basically said our generation is self-obsessed, empty, apathetic and unable to come up with anything new, I walked down a driveway leading to a garage sitting on the edge of a South Park canyon, ready to start some shit.

I wanted Writer to get all pissed off and say things like, “Our generation is changing things in a good way; we just can’t measure the extent yet” or “Maybe we’re just more subversive than previous generations and our art and music is making a difference, slowly but surely.” With a name like Writer, and a band biography with poetic lines like “Beneath wooden rafters and a blanket of sound, an unpolished throat sings gritty, spit-shined, and endearingly clumsy,” I thought these boys would step up to our generation’s defense and feed me quotable lines that’d inspire the lazy hipster masses.

But Writer didn’t take the bait. Instead, they offered me a Budweiser, made me laugh a lot, had me hanging out on their front porch watching creepy ice-cream trucks drive by and, eventually, an hour-and-a-half into what I’d intended to be a half-hour interview, sent me home with a nice butternut squash from Andy’s garden.

The conversations that did take place that hot, hot day in the tiny garage where Writer practices twice a week went more like this:

Me: So, you guys just put out the new album. You must be getting pretty serious.

Jayme: We definitely started playing in San Diego way more at the end of 2007, beginning of 2008. We’ve been playing in San Diego a lot—a lot-ish.

Andy to Eli: Hey, are you tying knots in glue sticks?

Eli: Yeah, I’m trying to get three of them together.

Andy: That’s weird.

Eli, looking back at me: We’re world famous. Ha. No, not really, but the people who like us really like us.

Me: Yeah, the last show I went to, everyone was singing along. You guys do have some catchy songs.

Andy, a little offended: Catchy? What do you mean, like pop?

Jayme: In some cases, it’s a negative thing—pop.

Me: OK, so how do you guys describe yourself? I didn’t call you pop by the way.

Jayme: Kinsee just said we were a pop band!

Eli: She said “catchy,” check the tape.

Jayme: For one of our genres on MySpace, we have “Ghettotech.”

Eli: Look [he holds up three glue sticks tied together], it’s like a balloon animal, minus the balloon and the animal.
Andy: Those things are weird. Glue sticks are weird.

Another round of Budweisers is cracked and, eventually, I get Eli to describe their music as “slow rock with a Texas flare, or a southern drawl, or a southern twang” and Andy to settle on “garage rock,” only to have Jayme jokingly agree with Andy since “we do practice in a garage.”

And when I bring up the Adbuster piece and push the band on the purpose or political intent of their music, or anyone’s music these days, for that matter, the guys talk around the issue until none of us have any idea what the hell we’re talking about anymore. And before I know it, I’m drinking a Budweiser, too, sweating my ass off in the tiny wooden garage, watching a crooked California state flag blow in the weak wind of a plastic fan while Writer makes pretty music.

They play “Try and Stop Me” and “Matthew,” two songs from their new Blood Drops LP, and my heart flutters a bit.

The band keeps the music low enough in the mix that Andy’s words are discernable. He’s saying, “Don’t feel bad even though you should” over and over again until, inevitably, I’m feeling—not necessarily bad, but I’m definitely feeling something—and it feels pretty good.

And while Eli plays—here’s that word again—catchy guitar riffs and Jayme pounds away at the drums, occasionally grabbing a maraca to keep a more delicate beat, and lends backup vocals from time to time, I’m reminded of why I like music so much. Music and art express sentiments that can’t always be put into quotable lines.

By Kinsee Morlan

LINK: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/said_in_song/7237/ - San Diego City Beat

You won't find this indie-rock band on Google without a helpful phrase like "SDMA Best New Artist nominee" -- an honor that frontman Andy Ralph says is surprising. "I guess we just played heavy in this past year, and people noticed." Mmhmm.

You may also notice something reminiscent of The Cure on their second album, "Blood Drops," released in August (maybe it's the lyrics about organs being frozen, thawed, then bled).

We even hear a little Modest Mouse (check out the relaxed title anthem and "Try and Stop Me") and a Southern influence on San Diego native Eli Bowser's twangy guitar (aka his "git-fiddle").

Drummer Jayme Ralph rounds out the lineup. In person they look like sensitive gunslingers -- fuzzy but friendly -- and live or recorded their simple arrangements come across as upbeat heartache, like Robert Smith's mellow/sunny middle phase.

More SDMA nominee interviews, videos from last year's event and such here.

Writer, interviewed on Aug. 25, 2008, by Keli Dailey


LINK: http://www.signonsandiego.com/entertainment/street/2008/09/sdma_best_new_artist_nominee_w_1.html - Union Tribune

A complete guide to the good, the bad and the downright ugly contests that make the San Diego Music Awards more than just a glorified version of musical chairs

If the San Diego Music Awards are our Grammys, it’s not because it recognizes the best in local talent, but because the nominations are either bizarre or obvious and sometimes the least-deserving nominee wins the big prize. Since I am neither a member of the “Academy” nor allowed to vote on most categories (yeah, I’m kinda bitter), I’ll break down some of the bigger awards and predict not only the winners, but also who gets robbed. Drama! Suspense! Drunken rock stars! At least it’s all for a great cause.

Best New Artist

The Nominees: Calico Horse, Fing, Hotel St. George, Revolution 89, Smart Brothers, The Silent Comedy, Wild Weekend, Writer - San Diego City Beat

Writer & Black Mamba
Luce Loft | 3/25/2009

Writer and Black Mamba kicked off our 5 night, Luce Loft extravaganza. Below are some videos from Brad Kester, photos from Carly Ealey and words from Rosey at SDDialedIn.com.

Wednesday night kicked off what turned out to be quite a spectacular week of local music. Sezio.org coordinated five nights of music at a place called Luce Loft in downtown San Diego. Sandwiched between Sushi Center for the Arts and The Corner on J Street in East Village, the space is an open loft space with concrete walls, arched wooden ceilings, and open space. It's stunning on its own, but add some couches, a couple giant love sacs, some chairs, area rugs, and 100 people with a deep love for San Diego music and arts, and it was completely breathtaking. And all that before the music even started. Sezio specifically paired bands with different sounds in an effort to cross-pollinate the audiences, and they succeeded above and beyond anything I could've imagined.

Black Mamba kicked off the night with a quiet set that set the stage for what would turn out to be ten of the most unique and moving sets of music I've experienced. Aimee's voice is hypnotic and the music allows you to drift away and I was glad that my first time seeing them was in this setting. I look forward to their record release later this month.

After a short break, Writer played. It was easily my favorite performance from them yet. It's obvious that their SXSW tour helped David gel with the band. Andy played his guitar unplugged and sang a couple feet back from the mic so it really felt organic. Of all the performances of the week, I think that Writer's lyrics lend themselves to sing-alongs the best, and the crowd took full advantage.

April 10th Writer will be playing the Ken Club and Black Mamba the Whistle Stop, but I've heard rumors of a reunion show soon...



LINKS: http://www.sezio.org/review/Writer-Black-Mamba.aspx - Sezio.org