Venice Beach

Los Angeles is so intense under the easy going vibe. It takes so much of ourselves just to feel like we're doing OK, let alone great, and you need a safe place to chill and feel protected and peaceful and that's how Venice worked for me.

It was built as an amusement park around the turn of the century by Abbot Kinney (Which is how it's high end shopping street got it's name), and designed as a version of the actual Venice in Italy, with little cottages lining sleepy canals and public bathing houses along the ocean back when the public thronged to amusement parks. The freak show boardwalk still exists giving the tourist a destination,(and the drug dealers an office front!).

Back in the day the trolley went out from downtown Los Angeles along Venice Blvd taking inland residents to the big party at the beach and many of them ended up taking up residence in the little cottages. Especially the artists and writers who were attracted by the beautiful light and the idylic lifestyle. Soon Venice Beach stood for "the bohemian lifestyle" and it's denizens including post war european artists, mixed race couple and gays and lesbians who created an enduring stamp on the town. The 60's and 70's saw Venice become one of the destinations of choice for traveling hippies and grew a beatnik culture of it's own. By the time I came along in the 90's after all those decades of being a safe haven for freaks of every kind the decay and drugs and violence had taken their toll.

We moved into a one room railroad style apt on a crack alley and I proceeded to write the material that would become a series of spoken word and music pieces. Digging into myself for the unfigured out chaos under cover of morning fog that would burn off by noon leaving a brilliant sunny day for the wandering and suddenly this Canadian used to four seasons had found a writers retreat that seemed to go on forever allowing me the time and space to cook the songs that became this album.