Most of the people we’re surrounded by – at least here – don’t think about music or talk about it or chew on it in a comparable way to the way that I do. There are a few of us, just a few, who try to reach the music. Most of the people we’re surrounded with here, and most places we’d bargain to say, don’t feel the need to think much about the details that many of us find important – why we’re really in love with someone, why that one sequence in “Juno” choked us up when it really wasn’t all that sad or all that happy, why, today, we feel good, why that song that we’re just now hearing for the first time has made us deaf and blind to everything else happening at that moment. Most just sit in their reclining chairs and mumble like a pre-programmed bot about how there’s nothing but crud on television that night or they drift off into that vapid world of cynicism where everything that goes on still leaves them thinking and feeling like a white movie screen during the many hours that aren’t showtimes. It’s hard to blame them sometimes for the tendency to just turn off for extended periods and just go through the motions. Then, maybe they meet someone who can speak with such grandiose appreciation and wonder about something that they’d taken as a non-anything, a figure of complacency – something that was just there, nothing to look at, or just nothing that was seen. Two months ago in Esquire, a piece ran about a man building a boat in his backyard with only $25,000 to spend, intending on sailing alone across the world. He is married and recognizes the tremendous dangers involved with a trip of this sort are great enough that he may not make it back alive. Even so, he feels compelled to strike out and do this. He has no death wish – but he has no choice. It’s his way of existing. He feels aglow with the challenge. A quote in the story from Ken Barnes, another man who attempted the same thing but nearly died off the coast of Chile, has been bouncing around my head ever since and in this long-winded introduction to the Bay Area rock and roll band Rogue Wave, it seems unlikely important. Barnes told this man, named David Vann, that he didn’t regret his trip, saying, “You’re living your life, not just existing. Most people just exist. And they might think it’s crazy, but they don’t know what it’s like to sees stars down to the horizon, a moon bright enough to read by, and waves high as mountains, bright as diamonds. You’re too awed to be scared. You look at it and think, Nobody, unless they risk it all, will be able to see what I’m seeing right now.” Listening to all three Rogue Wave records – the Sub Pop releases Out of the Shadow and Descended Like Vultures — and the latest on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records, Asleep At Heaven’s Gate, it’s easy to imagine that you’re hearing someone, or some very magnetic people, trying to verbally describe a glacier to you. They’re attempting to quantify the sheer magnificence of that big, glistening mass of ice and heft. They’re people who could talk about The Rocky Mountains and make you believe that it’s not just a lumpy, gray mountain range, but a little bit of special, and a whole lot of stardust or the like. Zach Schwartz or Zach Rogue sings as if all he sees and is inspired by is snow-capped. It’s a beautiful way to go about it for sure. It’s the same as the first day of a good, hard frost during the middle of the fall – on a day that everyone knows will still reach into the mid-60s for a high temperature – when you sneak outside to snap the morning newspaper up from the white peppered sidewalk, the hands melting the thin film of ice from the plastic baggie, and seeing your hot breath escaping as a cloud of cotton for the first time since the previous March. It helps send tingles. Rogue doesn’t have a lukewarm bone in his body, choosing to showcase the technicolored spectrum of breezy pop that he always seems to have cooking in a full-body kettle, above his kindling or coals. How he got that way is for his mother or father to tell us. How he found associates like the irreducible Pat Spurgeon, Gram LeBron and Patrick Abernethy – each of the same formative appreciations – to flesh out the intimate sounds of buried treasure is for him to tell. How they’ve all maintained the fastidiousness for the brightness of wonder and life might involve taking regular visits, on clear mornings, around the bends of Treasure Island and looking across the bay and just gasping. It should do it.

Tragedy struck the Rogue Wave family two days before Christmas last month as former bassist Evan Farrell died in an apartment fire when he was in Oakland to perform with his old band Japonize Elephants, one of the first bands singed to Secretly Canadian Records. Current Rogue Wave member Gram LeBron was sleeping in the same 100-year-old house the night that an old heater ignited the blaze, but he was able to make it out safely. The band is still shocked by the loss of their good friend, who has most recently been playing with Jason Molina in Magnolia Electric Co. and leaves behind two young sons. A PayPal memorial account has been set up for contributions. » Please do what you can to help his family.

Second song
Ghost (Rogue Wave) [2.61MB] [4345 downloads]


– original version appears on Asleep At Heaven’s Gate
This is a truncated version of the song, kind of how I originally started playing it. The melodramatic cry-fest that is on the album was a product of California speedballs in the studio and tape speed manipulation, and mind control. For this version, though, we decided to have everyone grab a guitar and sit around a mic and strum and sing together, sleep-away summer camp-style. Dom plays a sweet little slide riff. It’s nice to play when you can all look at each other. Harmonies and guitar lines start to swell together, so you’re not always sure who is making what sound.

Third song
Lake Michigan (Rogue Wave) [2.92MB] [4678 downloads]


– original version appears on Asleep At Heaven’s Gate
Summer camp started to feel good, so we kept it going. Whenever we play “Lake Michigan,” I always — in the back of my mind — wish there were about 20 other people on stage strumming guitars along with us. So, it was nice to have five acoustics all facing each other. Gram was able to reach a piano somehow with a free hand every once in a while. Nice job, Gram.

Fourth song
Lullaby (Rogue Wave) [3.52MB] [4386 downloads]


– original version appears on Asleep At Heaven’s Gate
Running out of time here at Daytrotter headquarters, so we kept playing together with acoustics. This is similar to the song from our record, but we changed the rhythm a bit, kind of how we demo our songs on 4-track. So, I guess that’s what it is all about. First, you track a song idea onto your 4-track so it has the exact raw idea. Then, if you are lucky, you can fully work out the arrangement, rehearse it over and over and waltz (or walk) into some kind of studio of your own making or otherwise, to track the song, mix it, then master it eventually. Then, when it is all said and done and “released”, you get to go to an amazing studio called Daytrotter, where there is a child’s playground of vintage guitars, amps, keyboards, not to mention the recording gear. Hello, nurse. With all of that amazing equipment, you grab the most tired looking acoustic guitars and play the song so it sounds close the 4-track demo original. Reminds me of the tale of the fisherman who was asked if he was happy with his job….

Rogue Wave Official Site
Brushfire Records