Take Me Higher

The Reggae-Pop Combustion Conglomerate Still Flyin' Gets Those Vibes Vibin'

originally published October 3, 2007

Still Flyin' is reggae in the way Big & Rich is country, and while the bandmembers may all hate that comparison, the point is that the categorization is just a way to get some very basic ideas across to potential listeners before launching creativity missiles straight through all the rules. It's a lot harder, or at least takes more words, to say, "Hey, check out this amazing, 20-ish-piece, folky, yelling pop explosion with a winding beat and a proclivity for jamming in a way that somehow isn't annoying" than just to call it "reggae" and be done with it. But the point is that Still Flyin' plays reggae and rocksteady for people who do and for people who don't like the genre. The best thing that's been said about the band so far was said by Garrett Kamps, music editor of SF Weekly, who wrote, "Fun is the new not-fun, and Still Flyin' exemplifies that ethos."

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The group (or should I say collective?) is the enormous infant of ex-Athenian Sean Rawls, formerly of the late Masters of the Hemisphere and currently of local band Je Suis France (despite being literally across the country from most of the band). The France has proved that you don't all need to live in the same city, let alone the same time zone, to continue to produce records and tour, and Still Flyin' has taken that program even further, with members as far afield as Australia (Izzo Knowles) and Sweden (Ake Stromer and Anna Storakers), although most of them, like Rawls, call San Francisco home. How did he end up there? It resulted from an itch to get out of Athens, due to a military brat childhood spent moving, and, post-Masters, San Francisco just seemed like a good place to go. And the, um, giant reggae band - how did that come about?

Rawls explains: "The last year or so that I lived in Athens, I started playing  in Je Suis France. We have a trilogy of songs about some dude flying or something,  and I made up the last installment, called 'Never Gonna Touch the Ground.'  It was an enjoyable little ditty to perform and we  started playing it once or twice  per show. People asked us if it was a cover - the jam factor was that high in this one.  So for the first Twilight Delirium after I moved, I was feeling a little Francesick and recorded NGTTG for them to play over the P.A. as they took the stage. The friends I recorded it with were so into the song that we decided to form a band around it.  I asked everyone I knew in town to join my 'reggae' band, and, to my surprise, everyone accepted, hence the gargantuan lineup."

So the song Pitchfork recently humorlessly called "a leaden, even insulting ersatz reggae track complete with embarrassing fake Jamaican accents" birthed a band of many colors, a band with no reggae experience except drummer Yoshi Nakamoto's brief fling with ska in high school. In fact, Rawls says, "a lot of people in the band claimed to hate reggae before joining." So why did they respond positively to his invitation, let alone actually show up to practice? "In the beginning, most of the people I asked to join thought I was joking and said yes. Then when we finally got around to having  a practice, they showed up out of curiosity, I suppose. Now I guess people want to join because we jam it so hard onstage, and if there's already that many people in the band, people figure it must be pretty easy to join. We had to implement a membership cap because it's too hard to fit onstage, plus, for transportation purposes, it's ridiculous."

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After being asked, skeptically, if the number of bandmembers (18 on this tour) meant mostly rhythm eggs being played, Rawls provided a list of who was playing what, although confirming that some rhythm eggs were, indeed, involved: "Me, singing, guitar; Mindy Schweitzer, singing, percussion; Yoshi Nakamoto, drums; Tater Moran, guitar; Bren Mead, singing, mega-percussion; Phil "The Thrill" Horan, dancing, bongos; Alicia Vanden Heuvel, singing, organ; Drew Cramer, bass; Izzo Knowles, singing, trumpet; Ake Stromer, singing, saxophone; Anna Storakers, singing, melodica, percussion; Nick Underwood, singing, trumpet; Ice Bergeron, reverb tank; Maria Niubo, singing, percussion; Gabe Saucedo, singing, vibraphone, trombone; Gary Olson, singing, trumpet; Frank Jordan, singing, saxophone; and Becky Barron, singing, trumpet."

It all sounds rather overwhelming, down to the question of what exactly a reverb tank is - "a metal box with springs in the back of an  amp that creates  reverb.  We  unscrew it from the back of the amp, attach super-long RCA cables and physically bang it on various body parts (head/ chest/ thigh/ high-fiving someone else), and it makes a big crashing sound.  The only problem is that all the violence breaks the tank pretty quickly.  Sometimes  a new one doesn't even last through one show.  We need to hire someone to engineer an indestructible reverb tank." And besides, despite all the songwriting experience involved (you probably recognize a lot of those names above from bands like Maserati, Red Pony Clock, Ladybug Transistor, Aislers Set and more), the vision and the songs come from Rawls, which provides some grounding to the chaos of fun.

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Whether it's as big a hit anywhere as it is in Sweden is a question that remains open. Still Flyin' has toured Scandinavia twice to great response and has received positive reviews in San Francisco, but this is the band's first venture to the East Coast, and the members hope to expand some minds.

Athens, in particular, is a special show, a show the tour schedule was rearranged around in order to accommodate a Friday-night gig, and, while expectations might be high, the group has previously managed to satisfy big promises, as with the Mind Zap Festival that took place in San Francisco in 2005. When Rawls says the sequel to Mind Zap is Yacht Zap, to be followed by Atlantis Zap, and that "the final zapination will be on the moon," he inspires a strange kind of confidence born from witnessing his previous miracles (e.g., touring with 17 other people). If you say it enough times, it will not only have the aura of truth, it will be true. Never gonna touch the ground.

Hillary Brown

WHO: Still Flyin', Je Suis France, Night Moves, Fairmount Fair, Lil Flip Scoldjah & Excalibrah
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, October 5
HOW MUCH: $6