It's 2003 and the California-bred, ukulele-playing
punk-folk-singer-songwriter-storyteller-performance-artist Carmaig de
Forest can be found thriving in Baltimore's creative underground,
Canada's eclectic festival circuit, popping up on stages just about
anywhere, and on the CD players of discriminating listeners everywhere.
In
1982, a young Carmaig -- fresh out of UC Santa Cruz's experimental
Theater Arts program -- began wandering between San Francisco and Los
Angeles with an amplified ukulele and a set of vitriolic anthems. The
post-punk scene took notice and word spread. The Violent Femmes took
him out on the road. Alex Chilton took him into the studio with a
crackerjack rhythm section (with Chilton himself playing guitar) to
produce I Shall Be Released Carmaig's 1987 debut album (jointly
released by Good Foot and New Rose Records).
With
an LP to promote, Carmaig formed DeathGrooveLoveParty-a loose-knit
combo of L.A., New York, and Bay Area musicians assembled in various
configurations for various tours. Mr. Chilton's arrangements soon
melded with the punk and other underground rock sounds that have long
been an inspiration. Carmaig began to teach himself how to play guitar
and new songs arose. By then Carmaig had settled in the San Francisco
Bay area where he began working on the material that was to become El
Camino Real.
Carmaig took a break from
DeathGrooveLoveParty in the mid '90s. He began work on a series of
songs about California and performing these strange and intimate tales
as a one-man show -- alternating between electric guitar and his
trademark uke for accompaniment. Taken with this new work, micro-label
St. Francis Records sent Carmaig to Toronto to record with longtime fan
and touring partner, Bob Wiseman. With Mr. Wiseman providing a
different sort of strange and intimate aural landscape for Carmaig's
tales, the fruit of the sessions is the CD, El Camino Real.
El Camino Real CD
$16.00
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