THE ECHO, STAYING ECLECTIC AND SUPPORTING THE NEW
A CONVERSATION WITH BOOKER LIZ GARO
Getting its start as a hip-hop, electronic and DJ haven, Spaceland’s sister club, The Echo, has come into its own over the past seven years, establishing itself as a highly supportive live music staple along with the Echo Park neighborhood that surrounds it (once considered too far east). The venue has served as a launching pad for local artists (The Parson Red Heads, The Happy Hollows, Bodies of Water and Death to Anders have all held free, month-long weekly residencies there) as well as a stop for national touring acts. In addition to its various club nights like Part Time Punks and Dub Club, a monthly punk rock wine challenge and Sunday afternoon’s Grand Ole Echo, a country, bluegrass and alt-Americana shindig, are also favorites.
That’s not all — below The Echo lies the 700-capacity Echoplex. Opening its doors in February 2007 after a remodel, this downstairs room features state-of-the-art sound, light and video systems. What is especially notable about the Echoplex, however, is that it allows The Echo to grow with its artists; when an act gets too big for the smaller room, they can be moved “downstairs” to enjoy the larger stage and capacity. Artists who have helped break in the new Echoplex space include Beck, MIA, Thurston Moore, The Mars Volta, UNKLE and jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott.
Performer had the pleasure of tracking down booker Liz Garo during her busy schedule to talk about what The Echo is like from the inside.
Q: How did you get involved with The Echo?
A: I was friends with Mitchell [Frank, owner of Spaceland Productions] and used to book Spaceland. Mitchell was looking for a venue to own and he brought me in as an investor. A small investor — I say I own like a barstool. So then I left the Knitting Factory, where I’d also been booking, to book The Echo, and now I book The Echo and The Echoplex.
Q: How did the two of you approach The Echo’s music programming?
A: Sort of different than Spaceland, which was just doing rock bands, we had this concept before we even opened that The Echo would do dance clubs, more hip-hop stuff and a little bit of world music. Some of our most popular nights are our dance clubs, and there’s actually a really good symbiotic relationship between those and the other shows, with ticket giveaways, etc.
Q: When is a band ready to play The Echo?
A: When they’re confident, professional, have a good draw of 20-30 people. Sometimes with booking it’s just a gut feeling. There have been a couple of bands I’ve booked almost too early. Like Airborne Toxic Event played one of their first shows here and a lot of that happened because of Mikel [Jollett] being really persistent and bugging me. He had strong support bands on it and on their first night they drew like 200 people. Then there’s a band out of Highland Park called Seasons that I’ve been booking for the past year and a half, two years. I think the first time I booked them, 10 people showed up. Now they’ve developed to the point where they’re drawing 50 people, which is great; part of the fun is watching bands develop.
Q: How do you prefer bands approach you about playing a show?
A: The best way is email — sending me a MySpace link, mentioning other rooms they’ve performed at, letting me know if they’re getting any press or any radio, other bands that they would like to play with.
Q: What are your considerations when booking residencies?
A: You want to pick a strong local band — either a band that’s firmly established or one that’s on its way up. Again, it’s a gut feeling. Usually a band that gets a residency is a band that’s played the room before, and in an essence, has kind of proved themselves. For me, one of the best ways for finding out about other bands is from the resident nights. The booking of the lineup is between the resident band and myself, and I’ve always found that bands are your best source for finding new talent — they know.
www.attheecho.com
THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FESTIVAL
CELEBRATES 10 YEARS OF LOCAL ARTS, DIVERSITY AND INNOVATION IN MUSIC
It’s the 10th anniversary and a very special year for the Eagle Rock Music Festival. Hosted by the non-profit Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, the free, all-ages community street festival returns to Colorado Boulevard on October 4 from 5 p.m. to midnight. Known for its obscure stages, musicians will perform in an assortment of venues ranging from tire shops to pickup trucks to motel poolsides to coffeeshops, across a stretch of six city blocks.
What started as a humble mom and pop-style community festival garnered up so much local interest that by its seventh year, street closures became a necessity. “I’ve seen it evolve in a very organic way,” said the Center’s director of events Brian Martinez, 26, who has been working at the Center since the age of 17.
Remaining true to its mission of providing multi-cultural and innovative arts to Northeast L.A. (NELA), the Eagle Rock Music Festival makes sure to offer something for everyone in the diverse and multi-generational community, while at the same time cross-pollinating audiences so that fans of one genre are exposed to many other exceptional artists. Even more impressively, the Center has pulled this off for the last 10 years on an incredibly small budget and is committed to keeping the festival absolutely free to the public.
This has proved difficult and refreshing, according to Martinez. “Our goal is just to be two steps ahead of other festivals, music-wise. Small budgets hurt us when it comes to getting bigger names, but at the same time, we pride ourselves in living in Northeast L.A. where there’s a lot of bands and resources,” Martinez told Performer. With a whopping 90% of the bands playing for free this year, local sponsorships have also played a large role in making the event possible. “The great thing about teaming up with people is that it’s not just the Center or the festival as an entity, it’s the community as a whole,” said Martinez.
Taking submissions as early as January and receiving upwards of 2000 this year, Martinez explained that the music committee “just tries to get a really solid lineup throughout the whole festival with every genre,” instead of shooting for big headliners. Roughly 40% of the booking is submission-based and at least 75% of the programming is local (L.A.).
The two main stages this year will be the Global Stage, curated by L.A. music collective Dublab, and the Emerging Stage, on which Earlimart, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, Crystal Antlers, Pizza! and Princeton are scheduled to play. Over 30 additional musicians will perform in festival showcases, including conscious hip-hop with Fidel Rodriguez of KPFK’s Divine Forces Radio; a second indie stage out front of the tire depot hosted by local recording studios The Ship and Kingsize Soundlabs along with the Eagle Rock Bowling and Drinking Club, on which The Parson Red Heads, The Radar Brothers, The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra and Light FM will play; a folk and experimental stage at the American Legion Hall including Emily Lacy, Upsilon Acrux and Emily Wells; Xicano progressive rock fusion with Aztlan Underground; classical Indian and raga jazz from Arohi Ensemble; big band, doo-wop and Daddy Cool (the Australian band best known for their 1971 hit song “Eagle Rock”) at the Women’s 20th Century Club; zydeco on the second floor of the Welcome Inn; punk, rockabilly and psychobilly on a Halloween-themed flat-bed truck; the I N I Sound reggae truck, a converted ice cream truck; and even kids’ music on the lawn at Eagle Rock’s “City Hall.”
Home to Nels Cline of Wilco, Brian Burton of Danger Mouse, Earlimart and their studio, The Ship, more space and lower rents, Eagle Rock is becoming a growing arts and music neighborhood in L.A., and the Eagle Rock Music Festival is only helping the cause.
Martinez summed it up: “Now that No Age is taking off and a lot of the bands from The Smell are really coming around, the cats from Earlimart and Kingsize and all the local bands, and Silver Lake — it creates a lot of momentum and we want to make sure that people on our end of town are a part of that as well.”
www.myspace.com/eaglerockmusicfestival
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IN THE NEWS
On October 21, The Happy Hollows will release their new EP, The Imaginary EP. The follow-up to 2006’s Bunnies and Bombs EP, the new album features five songs recorded with producer David Newton and artwork by Tim Lamb. The L.A.-based trio will kick off the month supporting Deerhoof at the Avalon in Los Angeles on October 3 and at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on October 4.
www.happyhollows.com
Monsters are Waiting also have a new EP, Ones and Zeros, on the way this month. The follow-up to their 2006 full-length debut, Fascination, the six-song EP was recorded in the band’s Silver Lake studio and will see a release through Kanine Records on October 14. At press time, a US tour was in the works.
www.myspace.com/
monstersarewaiting
Autumn Tone Records has had a busy end of summer, with the release of Le Switch’s debut full length, And Now...Le Switch, on September 30, and now the release of The Henry Clay People’s new album, For Cheap or For Free, this month. The Henry Clay People will celebrate their CD release with The Parson Red Heads and labelmates Le Switch at Spaceland on October 3, then head out to Eagle Rock the following night to play the Eagle Rock Music Festival.
www.autumntone.com
Richard Swift will tour the West Coast with Stereolab this month, on a stint that begins in Seattle on October 17 and wraps in San Diego on October 24. The artist recently released a five-song digital EP, Ground Trouble Jaw, through Secretly Canadian. The EP was being given away for free earlier this summer via EMusic.
www.richardswift.us
On October 21, L.A. four-piece The Monolators will self-release their third full-length album, Don’t Dance. Clocking in at 34 minutes, the album’s 10 tracks were recorded, produced and engineered by Raymond Richards at his Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The band will celebrate the release on October 25 at Spaceland with You, Me and Iowa, Summer Darling and Correatown, and the album will be made available on vinyl and digital download.
www.themonolators.com
Rademacher, the Fresno band that’s found a second home in San Francisco and L.A., released its fourth EP, ERA, digitally via JAXART Records on September 30. To celebrate, Rademacher will be doing a free residency at The Echo this month, playing every Monday night in October.
www.myspace.com/r
ademacher
L.A.’s Liverpool transplant Pop Levi has released the follow-up to his 2007 debut. Titled Never Never Love, the 13-song album was released on Counter Records and at press time, a full-scale fall tour was in the works.
www.myspace.com
/poplevi
The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra released a new EP, Escapements, prior to their appearance at Eagle Rock Music Festival. Forming in the summer of 2007, the six-piece band recorded its debut EP after a very warm reception in the local music community. A few songs from the EP have already been picked up by local radio stations Indie 103.1, KXLU, KCRW and KROQ. With touring on the horizon, FTO plans to start working on new material for an upcoming full length as well.
www.myspace.com
/theflyingtourbillon
L.A.’s Restavrant recently released their debut album on Narnack Records, entitled Returns to the Tomb of Guiliano Medidici. The album presents 12 tracks from the duo of Victoria, Texas transplants and will see physical and digital distribution through Lionsgate thanks to their new distribution and publishing agreement with Narnack.
www.myspace.com
/restavrant
After spending their summer playing the European festival circuit, L.A.’s Cambodian rock all-stars Dengue Fever have announced a West Coast tour this month, which kicks off on October 5 in Long Beach and wraps in Vancouver, BC on October 22. At press time, a full-scale British tour was in the works for November, as well as dates in Ireland and Turkey. Touring in support of their latest release, Venus on Earth, Dengue Fever also released its predecessor, Escape From Dragon House, for the first time on vinyl late last month as a limited-edition colored LP.
www.myspace.com
/denguefevermusic
L.A.’s own hip-hop duo People Under the Stairs recently released their sixth album, Fun DMC, on Gold Dust Media. The decidedly L.A. record, recorded on a custom-built console designed by PUTS’ Thes One and incorporating field recordings of Saturday barbeques and parties taken from the South Central streets, also comes with a comic book written by the duo.
www.myspace.com
/peopleunderthestairs
On October 28, Andy Ross will release his sophomore effort as Secret Dakota Ring via his own Serious Business Records in conjunction with No Office Records. Entitled Cantarell, the string-heavy pop album was written by Ross while touring as OK Go’s guitarist.
www.myspace.com
/secretdakotaring
L.A. collective Dylan Trees, with singer/songwriter Jeremy Simon at its core, will release the Charlie Horse EP on October 7. A four-song collection of “broken folk,” the album was recorded with producer Charles Newman (Magnetic Fields).
www.dylantrees.com
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