Joe Cardamone of The Icarus Line

The Icarus Line's Joe Cardamone, Ben Hallett, Lance Arnao and Alvin DeGuzmann at Valley Recording Co.
(Ward Robinson)

 

JOE CARDAMONE of THE ICARUS LINE

At Valley Recording Co. (Burbank)

"Los Angeles is a hodgepodge of whatever you make it to be," begins L.A. native Joe Cardamone, frontman for the Icarus Line. "I have favorite spots all over the place, no matter what part of the city I'm in, because I've lived everywhere from the Valley and Hollywood to Los Feliz and the East Side. But the area around Highland Park – Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Lincoln Heights – that's where I grew up and feel at home, that's the L.A. I write about."

"I grew up on both sides of the tracks because my family lived in Highland Park, which was way different than it is now, but I went to school in South Pasadena," he continues. "I had an uncle who lived there, and we lied about our address so I could go there. You have to do shit like that here in L.A. My mom's an educator, so that was important to her, even though I didn't really graduate."

It seems that Joe has always made his own rules, whether it's navigating his way around school district borders, organizing underground punk shows in his suburban neighborhood or taking part in on- and off-stage antics that cemented the Icarus Line's bad-boy status. He continues to push boundaries with the group's fifth album, Slave Vows, that released earlier this month. The seething collection of eight songs defies the conventions of most modern rock albums: Tracks vary in length from two to 11 minutes; Some kick off with several minutes of instrumental snarling, with vocals not joining in until midway through; All of the songs were recorded live in Joe's own studio, Valley Recording Co., in Burbank.

Valley Recording Co. provides the perfect setting for our interview, since it is usually where you will find Joe. Aside from serving as the Icarus Line's rehearsal space, Joe has produced albums for bands like Giant Drag, the Bixby Knolls and Spirit Vine in the studio. Located among several industrial business, there's no need to be concerned about the volume being too loud at any hour of the day, however, there's nothing cold and industrial about the atmosphere inside Valley Recording Co. Warm wood panels line the walls of the studio that Joe spent four months building, and there's an amazing art piece of wood bricks that he constructed in the mixing room. It's an environment that he and fellow resident producer/engineer Greg Gordon feel fortunate to call their home base.

The custom wall at Valley Recording Co. (Ward Robinson)

While Joe currently lives in Laurel Canyon, he's excited to be moving back to his old stomping grounds of Highland Park in a few weeks.

"Every week it looks different. You drive down York [Boulevard], and there's galleries and all kinds of bars. When I grew up there, there was nothing," he says. "There was Mr. T's Bowl and the pizza joint, but besides that there were no record stores or even any white people."

Joe grew up listening to his dad's record collection of 1960s music and the entire Beatles discography, which were his childhood lullabies. As he grew up and started going to punk rock shows, he visited Mr. T's and venues like the Anti Club and Natural Fudge a lot. He also put on a bunch of shows in different hole-in-the-wall places around town. The first concert he ever went to, though, was a huge one: Guns N' Roses and Metallica at the Coliseum. Guns N' Roses and their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction, proved to be a monumental influence on Joe's life.

"One year my dad gave me a gift certificate to Licorice Pizza, which was an old record store in L.A., so I got to walk around the store and pick what I wanted. I got a Young MC single and Appetite for Destruction. That tape was glued in my deck for the next couple of years. When my mom heard it, she threw it away. I must have bought copies of it five times; she kept throwing it away, and I kept buying it. They were scary-looking dudes, that's why I liked it. For a 12-year-old kid these guys were wild looking," he recalls. "The day I put that tape in my player, that was it. I stopped doing homework and started convincing other kids to buy instruments. It was pretty instantaneous. I was a lost soul up until that point – always in trouble, getting into fights and I had been kicked out of a couple schools. I didn't have anything to tether me to society or humanity whatsoever. I couldn't relate to anything; I was always angry. That record was the first thing that gave me a way out."

While at South Pasadena High School, aka South Pas, Joe met Lance Arnao ("We started South Pas on the same day, and both had no friends."), and the Icarus Line was born in 1998 with Joe on vocals, Arnao on bass, Aaron North on guitar and Aaron Austin on drums. They played venues like the Cobalt Café in the Valley and Chain Reaction in Orange County and released a few EPs before unveiling their debut, Mono, in 2001. The album won them a place on several best album of the year lists, and the Icarus Line graduated to world tours.

It was during a show at the Austin Hard Rock Café when the infamous Stevie Ray Vaughan incident (North smashed a protective case surrounding a guitar that supposedly belonged to the guitar legend with a mic stand) occurred, and the band started being referred to as hellions. Eventually, Austin, Arnao and North, who went on to form Buddyhead with Travis Keller and play guitar with Nine Inch Nails, all parted ways with the group, but Joe soldiered on with a rotating lineup that included longtime friend Alvin DeGuzmann and put out the highly praised Penance Soiree in 2004 and 2007's Black Lives at the Golden Coast. The release of 2011's Wildlife marked a significant change for the band with Joe assuming production and engineering duties for the first time.

"I've always been very hands on with our records, mostly because I've usually known what I want. When we were doing Penance we met with a bunch of big producers, and I would tell them what I wanted. A couple of them said, "Well, you know exactly what you want, so why don't you just do it,'" he remembers. "I never really dreamed of owning a studio, it just came out of necessity. I'm pretty good at looking at the big picture of things and pretty easy for people to deal with, so that helps. The main thing when it comes to pro ducting is being able to make people feel comfortable."

Joe in the studio

It also helps that artists feel like Joe can relate to their situations as well, since he's also a recording artist. Having worked with all types of musicians as a part of the Icarus Line's various lineups has definitely aided in his production abilities as well. He specifically mentions those experiences in relation to stepping in to record with local band Wake Up Lucid, comprised of a tight-knit unit of two brothers and their cousin.

"They were super receptive to the things I had to say because they wanted a great record. I've been a bandleader for so long, and that's basically what I do when I produce records," he tells. "In all the different formations of the Icarus Line, I've always written towards everyone's strengths. I make sure that I'm writing material that we can perform that maximizes everyone's potential as an individual musician. Having done that, it made me a little more adept at honing in on people's strengths and writing towards them or finding something out about them that they don't already know and fostering that. That's what I did with Wake Up Lucid and hopefully what I do with a lot of bands: Find out the best things about them that they don't already know and let that shine."

Letting each band member's talent shine is something that Joe has definitely achieved with Slave Vows. The band, with Arnao back on bass, DeGuzmann on keyboards and Ben Hallett on drums, spent most of 2012 on the road with Killing Joke and the Cult. Since he has played music with Arnao and DeGuzmann since they were children and Hallett has been a part of the group for over three years, Joe feels like they've achieved a perfect blend of old and new, making for some fantastic chemistry that lent a natural and organic air to Slave Vows' recording process.

"That's one of the main reasons that we recorded it live, because I knew who was in the room with me and I knew what we could do. We spent the year on the road, and I just knew we could make an album on a four track or anything, it didn't matter, the band sounds insane. We took a couple of days to make sure everything was set up the way it needed to be to capture things properly, but after that, we pressed record, went in there for five hours, pressed stop and left. We did that for a couple of weeks and were done," he shares. "Music is plagued with a kind of micromanaging, revisionist mentality these days. A lot of it out there is all an airbrushed photo. It just doesn't appeal to me. Human and legitimate, pure performances have a compelling nature if you're open to being moved by that kind of stuff. It can be a heavy experience."

Joe definitely embraced the beauty that existed in the letting go of having to be in control over every single bar, the perfection in imperfection in the making of Slave Vows, and songs like "Dark Circles," "Dead Body" and "Rats Ass" are a kick in the gut to the material that occupies most radio airwaves today. The album should make both new and old fans excited about the Icarus Line and their future. As the band prepares to embark on a British tour in support of the release, I ask Joe if he plans on writing some new material on the road.

"Not so much, but I'll write words on the road. A lot of the lyrics I write have a documentary aspect to them. Even though they're not literal, they're definitely informed by our lives," he says. "Life on the road is so routine that I am mostly thinking of how to make the next night better, that's what I become fixated on: dialing the band in as we go. I don't multitask well. I feel like I'm sacrificing or compromising if I'm not focused on the task at hand 100 percent."

When he refers to his lyrics as having a documentary lean to them, it's quite an apt description since Slave Vows is very cinematic. In fact, the band released five film clips as a preview of the album. Each video features a different song and stars one band member, with Giant Drag's Annie Hardy in the fifth. 

"After Lance left the band, he started doing film and editing work as a career, so when he came back he said, 'I do all of this shit, so if we ever want to do anything, let's do it.' We've done some videos here and there, but it's always been an afterthought or someone else's thing. Now that we control it, it's the dawn of a new era for us because we can actually put visuals to the sound. Lance is good at visually interpreting what's going on in the songs, giving a look to what the songs sound like," he says. "For me, a lot of he movies I love are just as inspiring to the music as records. Sam Peckinpah films, for instance, definitely have something to do with us, why not represent that if we can?"

One can see the Peckinpah influence in the clip starring Joe, while they also pay homage to Park Chan-wook's Oldboy in the video with DeGuzmann sticking an entire live octopus in his mouth.

"That was definitely not his idea, unfortunately for him," Joe laughs. "I went to Koreatown at 11 a.m., and there were two left so I bought them then called Lance and said, 'Get the camera. They're going to be dead in three hours.' We all met up and made it happen."

You can view all of the Icarus Line videos here. Slave Vows is currently available. The Icarus Line perform Sept. 7 at the Wiltern. For more information, visit theicarusline.com.

Wake Up Lucid

Ian Baca and Jamie Baca of Wake Up Lucid at Sunset Beer Company

 

WAKE UP LUCID

At Sunset Beer Company

1498 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles (Echo Park)

So many bands perform in Los Angeles every night that it's a rarity to come across a special act whose music not only makes you stop and take notice but leaves an impression that lasts well after they've played their last note on stage. After my first time watching Wake Up Lucid perform, I immediately bought a copy of Feel It, their debut full-length, and the album has been in constant rotation on my record player ever since. The trio marries classic blues and rock elements with the fuzz and aggressive energy of garage-rock to truly set themselves apart from most groups on the scene.

But a frenetic live show and unique sound aren't the only remarkable attributes of this band. Vocalist/guitarist Ryan Baca, bassist Ian Baca and drummer Jamie Baca have known each other since birth.

"Jamie and I are brothers, and Ryan is our cousin. Our dads were brothers, and they were in a band together, too," shares Ian. "We grew up in Apple Valley, Calif., and they used to play cover songs, like Neil Young and lots of '70s records, around Barstow Community College. They would always play at family gatherings where other family members would sing along. We really just grew up playing music."

Ian and Jamie accompany me on my first expedition to Sunset Beer Company, a bottle shop/tasting room/bar space in Echo Park, and I couldn't have asked for better partners on a beer hunt than the Baca brothers. Situated in the corner of a nondescript strip mall, Sunset Beer Company opened a little over a year ago and is truly a beer wonderland. From England's Wells Banana Bread Beer to selections from Central Cali's Firestone Walker Brewery's, they offer over 250 beers to purchase from their wall of refrigerators or taste in their cozy bar area. Since the $2 per bottle corkage fee is a little steep, it's best to taste whatever they have on tap then buy some bottles of different beers to take home.

We walk around the bar room that resembles someone's den with its fireplace, wooden shelves lined with books and brown leather chairs before deciding to each try something new: the Black Butte Porter from Portland, Ore.'s Deschutes Brewery for Jamie, the Stone IPA from Escondido, Calif. for Ian and the Sourdough Ale from Pasadena's Craftsman Brewing Company for me. As we settle onto a long wooden bench with our pints, the brothers inform me that Ryan won't be joining us because he's ill. Since the frontman resides in Orange County anyway, it will give me more time to pick the other two's brains about their respective L.A. neighborhoods.

"I live in Silver Lake/East Hollywood area in a commercial spot with some friends. It's a really cool spot that used to be a medical office. We're lucky because we never have anybody complain about the noise we make," says Jamie. "I live right next to the Kitchen, and their Carmelized Onion Frittata is really good with the fluffy eggs and the onions all interspersed in it."

The brothers are also fans of El Chavo, Pho Café and Red Lion. They both love playing venues like Silverlake Lounge and the Echo, but Ian actually lives on the other side of town.

"I live in Culver City, and the area is really starting to come around. I live off Washington in the Art District, and there are like 50 galleries within walking distance. The farmers market's cool in downtown Culver City, and there are some good places to eat," he says. "I like the bars, culture and art. If I get off of work early I could walk around a museum for a couple of hours., and every Saturday at least one of the galleries has an opening with wine and lots of different people. The Mandrake, a little place right on gallery row, is a pretty cool bar. Cinema Bar on Sepulveda, that's a good spot. I love dive bars. In Venice, there's Hinano Café and across the street the Whaler. I like Danny's down there on Windward, too."

The hustle and bustle of Los Angeles is a far cry from the high-desert area of Apple Valley where the Bacas grew up. Music was a constant fixture in their homes, and they all picked up instruments at an early age. Ryan began to play the guitar at 7, while Jamie started on the drums at 8.

Ian, Ryan and Jamie (Chris Beyer)

Ian recalls, "I had left my drums at home when I moved away. I came back, and this guy [nods at Jamie] was shredding. I just said, 'Well, I feel like I can't take them back now.'"

"It wasn't really an intentional thing," Jamie says of 'stealing' Ian's kit. "My brothers had taught me one beat, and from there I practiced it and then could add some things on. It was just something to do."

While Ian and Josh, the brother in between Ian and Jamie in age, listened to '80s rock group when they were little, they were heavily into hip-hop until the early '90s.

"I'm like the whole Nirvana cliche. I saw the 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video and was like, 'What?!'" admits Ian with a laugh. "The only other rock album I listened to at the time was that Faith No More record [The Real Thing], but that was almost borderline rap rock. It was really progressive as far as genres go; it was real funky. After that record, I bought an electric guitar at Guitar Center for cheap and started getting into rock again."

While artists like Herbie Hancock had a huge influence on Jamie, who has also played in jazz and metal bands, his older brothers' musical tastes also helped pave his way to becoming the solid rock drummer he is in Wake Up Lucid.

"I was 4 or 5 years old, and they were listening to Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine. Those groups were a big foundation, and Tool as well, because they were so aggressive," he says. "Rage Against the Machine, for us as a rhythm section, is like the gold standard. The Beastie Boys, all the '70s records they sampled were super groove-based. All that stuff definitely made an impression on us, and it's what we used to jam on at our house."

"We would take our drums, guitar and bass, find a groove and continuously jam to that," adds Ian. "I would record it with a 4-track, then we would add some shakers and call it a day."

The Bacas found another hobby that they all enjoyed, which was also tied in with their love of music.

"All three of us were into skateboarding," says Jamie. "What I really enjoyed about skateboard culture was that it preceded a lot of Internet exposure of music culture. If you would watch a skateboard video with underground rock or hip-hop songs, you would be like, 'Whoa.' To see cool songs paired with awesome skate runs, it was the shit."

"That was the way to get exposed," interjects Ian.

"Yeah, and it was really cool to see that because it was a very non-corporate or super huge record label produced thing," concurs Jamie. "It was just two separate cultures that obviously liked each other building each other up."

The three cousins honed their musical skills in other bands before eventually uniting as Wake Up Lucid and releasing the Look Alive People EP in 2010. With that EP and its follow-up, Sugar, a year later, the band began catching the attention of the L.A. Times, Nylon Magazine and the Icarus Line's Joe Cardamone. The three-piece found an ally in Cardamone, who eventually assumed production duties on Feel It, which hit stores in August.

"Joe really challenged us to streamline the tracks," says Ian.

"It was beneficial to have someone outside [their circle of three] added to the mix," adds Jamie. "Especially Joe, because of his vast knowledge of music."

One spin of Feel It touches on a full spectrum of sound and emotions. From the pulsating grind of the title track and the lightning spark of "Fame" to the sultry purr of "Facepaint" and "Death Valley," Wake Up Lucid artfully combines an array of sonic vibrations into 11 cohesive tracks. Besides the music contained on Feel It, the album's cover art is an image that instantly grabs attention.

"I was looking through my parents' records, and I realized that as a kid everything was dictated by the cover art. I would see these albums, and they would capture my curiosity, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold as Love. It's true, even now. Sometimes I'll go to a record store like Vacation Vinyl, and there's a ton of stuff that you've never heard of that has such gnarly cover art that you wish you had $500 to just buy records," shares Ian. "It's just like Feel It. It has a pretty bold cover. If I saw it on the shelf, I would be like, 'Who are these guys?' and buy it. Then when people buy it at shows and pull it out, they see the record is red. I remember my parents collection had one red vinyl record by the J. Geils Band, and it was the one other time I've seen it."

It's true, the red-colored vinyl was a definite bonus when I opened my copy of the record. And it's little details like this that really set Wake Up Lucid apart, especially when it comes to minute facets that the inherent chemistry from their familial bonds produce on stage.

"For some bands it's just a job: They go on tour, but they don't talk, they write. I'm just not interested in that at all," remarks Ian. "The Beastie Boys were like brothers to each other, and it came across on stage. And with us, I think it comes across. People see that."

Feel It is currently available. For more information, visit wakeuplucid.com.