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Bolinas Beach Babylon
Quiet Quiet Window Lights Brought The Folk, And Bobo Brought The Freaks.
By Rob Harvilla
Norman
Dog
At first, we miss Bolinas entirely. Drive right by it, oblivious. Twenty
minutes later, up a perilously winding road pointing in the wrong direction, we
stop at a gas station, wherein the bemused attendant informs us that our
disorientation is very much by design.
Old burned-out hippies -- not teenage pranksters -- probably snuck around
and tore down the street signs themselves. Bolinas cares not for nosy
outsiders. The epic bar brawl that nearly erupts in the town's official
watering hole several hours later might explain why.
We have gathered at Smiley's Saloon, a tiny bar and minihotel with a square
footage no larger than your average Taco Bell. It's Friday, opening night of
the two-day Quiet Quiet Window Lights festival, a rustic hoedown engineered by
the narcotizing trio Brightblack. The place is loaded with SF and Oakland kids who have braved the
ninety-minute, drive north for some transcendent freak-folk goodness.
The Bobo regulars who braved the ninety-second, bone-chilling stroll to Smiley's
to imbibe some transcendent alcoholic goodness have no idea what the hell is
going on. "Where are you from?" one guy demands, reasonably,
surveying his suddenly overloaded local bar.
"Oakland."
"You drove from Oakland to here? On a Friday night?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Why?"
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Onstage is Peggy Honeywell, who probably doesn't clear five feet. She
politely strums a similarly diminutive banjo, and is dressed, adorably, like a
Little House on the Prairie extra. Angels want to wear her red shoes. "Her
hat looks like a delicious biscuit," my nearby friend remarks hungrily.
Peggy is singing lovely, plaintive tunes about birds, open skies, puppy
love. She is also nearly inaudible, as the locals are chugging brew-dogs and
shouting good-natured threats at each other.
Brightblack frontman Nathan Shineywater, perched near Smiley's soundman, finally
seizes a nearby mic, points out that Peggy is a medicine woman, and thus
certainly deserves our undivided attention. Therefore, all yakkers are advised
to -- and I do quote -- "shut the fuck up."
Peggy's face immediately registers terror and alarm. She tightens the grip
on her banjo.
"No, you shut the fuck up," enjoins a local.
"It's not your town," adds another.
"It's not your town either," Nathan retorts. "Your people
raped the red man, you Anglo-Saxon son of a bitch." He offhandedly mention
a knife he owns, and is proficient in using.
And with that, given that the "Beat It" video is about to break
out, everyone in the bar unconsciously switches to Battle Mode.
Including Peggy. "I'm just trying to play my songs as fast as I
can," she notes with hesitation. This is without question the funniest
stage banter anyone anywhere will generate in 2005.
Nathan and the Lead Heckler -- who makes a point of openly questioning
Nathan's sexuality -- convene at the back of the bar. That they do not come to
blows is a minor miracle, credited to a few Samaritans who separate and placate
them. Common ground is then forged: The Warriors are losing (!!???!!!) to the
Lakers on the TV above the bar. Half-court strategies are avidly discussed.
Peggy plucks on.
The tension between Bolinas and the metro Bay Area-and, by proxy, between
those living the freak-folk lifestyle and those who merely idolize it-is
central to the appeal of Quiet Quiet Window Lights, a now-annual institution.
Separating townies from tourists proves more difficult than you might imagine.
"Beards are the new trucker hats," notes my biscuit-lusting friend.
And indeed, 85 percent of Bolinas' male residents this weekend appear to have
recently entered an Abe Lincoln Look-Alike Contest.
Devendra Banhart would not win such a contest. He does, however, salvage
Friday night's musical proceedings. While Peggy was endearing, the French posse
Women and Children follows with shambling, Nico-aping hokiness. The frontwoman
immediately requests more reverb, and after one shambolic tune I, for one, am
prepared to provide her with all the reverb she can possibly stand.
But oh, Devendra. Banhart is the king to harp virtuoso Joanna Newsom's queen
in the freak-folk canon, perhaps the genre's most mediagenic star, even if this
involves acting functionally psychotic during interviews. But onstage at Smiley's
he is mesmerizing, his Spanish as evocative as his English, his falsetto
trilling infectious enough that the hometown Bobo boys start imitating it, less
insult than homage. He covers Canned Heat and makes it sound like Bach. He
covers Charles Manson and makes it sound like Jeff Buckley. He entreats us to
have sex, kill our lover immediately before climaxing, and drink her blood. We
laugh, smitten.
Michael Hurley-folk long before folk was cool -- follows with a set
featuring too much folk, not enough cool. "He seems to have written a song
for every car he has ever owned," my biscuit-lusting, beard-coveting
friend notes. I like the one about the '54 Chevy.
We rise the next morn, wander around glorious Bolinas Beach, wind through the hills of Muir
Woods, wrassle with all-you-can-eat crab, and convene Saturday evening at the Bolinas Community Center, where we all sit quietly crosslegged on the hardwood floor
as Vetiver overloads the stage with bongo-banging and guitar-strumming and
harp-fluttering guest musicians, a band channeling the Band.
Bill Higgs twangs on his mouth harp.
Brightblack plays its slug-slow backporch balladry, consciousness-expanding
yet barely conscious. You can see this band five times without realizing it has
a drummer. But tonight that drummer goes nuts, goosing a slow jam with furious
Bonham bonhomie. We approve.
Joanna Newsom does her thing, which I've given up trying to describe.
The gorgeously harmonizing ladies of coffeehouse-pop duo Willow Willow serve
beer in the back. Alas, they shoulda played.
Instead, the evening ends with Entrance, another bearded dude playing a
raucous but tremendously loud electric guitar. The Quiet Quiet spell is broken,
and we wander off into the Bolinas night. In the morning we rise, drive home,
watch playoff football.
We will never "live" folk, but at least we are free to enjoy it.
Originally Published By East Bay Express Wednesday,
February 2, 2005
©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.