[Landline] Nourishment

Henry Miller, Dan Nadel, R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Wild Family Orchestra, Etran de L'Air, Michael Hurley, Chloe N. Clark, more

1.

For the last few months my mind has kept coming back to this Henry Miller line, from the early 1940s, when, having returned to the USA after ten years in France and Greece, he crisscrossed his native land, and was angry—in despair, in terror—at what he witnessed:

“I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans—the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue-print. It is not a world I want to live in.”¹

(Eventually Miller found a place in the USA he did want to live in. In 1944 he moved to Big Sur, and lived a colorful, mostly happy life² there until 1963.)

2.

Dan Nadel’s new Robert Crumb biography is, as you’ve probably heard by now, fantastic: propulsive, comprehensive, critical, empathetic, poignant. It’s not an easy subjec—there’s been a lot of bad awfulness in his life, some of which you could only guess at from the gnarliest of his comics. Like Henry Miller, Crumb openly despised, and despaired of, the time/place coordinates he found himself trapped in during his first decades of existence in the USA. But Nadel details an interesting phase of Crumb’s life—1978 to 1990³—when he and his wife Aline Kominsky, post-’60s/’70s counterculture stardom, settle somewhere he actually likes, on the bucolic outskirts of a small town in California’s Central Valley:

[They] rented a house in Winters about six miles off the main drag, on Central Lane, a winding road that flows out of the town and dead-ends in the countryside. The house was on two and a half flat acres surrounded by hills and in a bit of a rough state when they moved in. They fixed it up, enlarging and painting the porch pink and blue, adding cheerful landscaping and a few kitsch pink flamingos for good measure. They tended to almond trees, a large fig tree, and a chicken coop in the backyard; soon they planted eucalyptus trees along the street and oaks around the property, giving the place privacy and shade. Winters was mostly cowboys, a few idealistic students, Mexican immigrants, and orchard farmers. Sure, there were some hippies a half hour east at UC Davis, and a small scene still farther away in Sacramento, but it was a ways along back roads and through the small towns that dotted the area in between.

…Small-town existence was good for Robert’s work and life. He and Aline became a part of the community. She, especially, thrived. [She said] “We used to walk around at night the first summer we were there, and these old houses, the lights would be on and we’d just look in and old people would be in the houses. It was like another century. Robert and I were so fascinated by that. And then we got to know old people in that town and talk to them and everything. And it was just this slice of the past, this orderly quiet life that nobody cared about. There were all these beautiful buildings, an old church, a movie theater. That was very appealing after being in this crazy hippie thing for years where it was just constant chaos, messes and chaos.

Robert contributes artwork and lettering to a local monthly newspaper⁴, whose staff he eventually joins…

And he gets a local band together to play 1920-40s jazz and dance music, providing entertainment at dozens of local weddings. (Robert had long been a fanatical collector of 78 records, always looking for local/regional music that had been recorded prior to the homogenizing shift brought on by the onset of mass media, and the music he played as a string player [banjo, mandolin, etc.] reflected that enthusiasm.)

All very cool. But here comes the best part in Nadel’s retelling: Aline takes up fiddle, and finds a local tutor named Wally Summ, a native of the area. Eventually she invites him to the Crumb home to listen to their 78s:

On hearing the records, Wally told them about the Wild Family, who he said sounded like what was on the turntable. He’d known them since he was a kid and offered to bring the Crumbs to visit them. Robert remembers, “A week later, Wally led us to their farm in Zamora, about five miles outside of Woodland, out in the middle of windswept fields and marshes. The old wood-shingled farmhouse and outbuildings looked as if nothing had changed in 60 years. A 1948 Chevrolet pickup truck and a 1954 Pontiac sat in the farmyard. Chickens wandered around loose. The family met us out in front of the house, all dressed formally, the three brothers in white shirts and ties, the two sisters in floral-patterned dresses and old-fashioned black high-heeled shoes.” After talking a bit they welcomed their guests into their home, which was likewise unchanged—a veritable museum of Depression-era rural Americana. Soon the five siblings picked up their instruments and broke into the 1930 popular song “The Waltz You Saved For Me,” which deeply moved Robert and Aline.

The family of three brothers and two sisters ranging from their late 50s to their late 60s had performers n the area as the Wild Family Orchestra since the early 1930s, sounding in the late 1970s as though someone dropped a needle on a German-tinged 79 dance record. Now in their seventies, the siblings hadn’t left the Central Valley, where they lived in a farmhouse on 130 acres of land with a menagerie of chickens and stray cats, since 1947.

Aline began learning the violin from Claude Wild, and for the next few years she and Robert visited the family every Sunday for a lesson, followed by dinner and an evening of playing music together. Robert and Aline were fascinated—the family recounted their memories of the land and of the numerous groups that played music in the Central Valley, some of whom previously only existed as names on 78 record labels. Inspired by the interest of the young folk, the family recorded and released a one-off album on their own label, with design and assistance from Robert and Aline, in 1979.

Back cover of the Wild Family Orchestra’s album.

They also hosted music festivals each May for three years at Zamora town hall; Robert, Aline and friends would spend weeks decorating tables and making cards for each musical act. The days in Zamora were a safe harbor away from their lives as “the Crumbs.” There was no concern for money, competition, publishing, fans, or reputation. It was a quiet emotional and mental space in which to rest and ride out the rest of the decade.

You can stream the Wild Family Orchestra’s 1979 album via the Yolo County Archives here.

3.

As a respite during the last few days of mounting madness/horror/dread⁵, I’ve been looping this ferociously transcendent nine-minute live KEXP studio radio performance rendition of 'Agrim Agadez' by Nigerien family/wedding party band Etran de L'Air. Includes my absolute favorite currently operational drummer, the continuously rolling Alghabid Ghabdouan. Smiles in blue.

Bless Etran de L’Air’s USA-based label Sahel Sounds, whose Christopher Kirkley⁶ has given us so much over the last 15 (!) years…including this recently released too-brief 18-minute cascade of Western Sahel gem-footage from 2012:

I SING THE DESERT ELECTRIC: A collection of video shorts taken in four locations.... From fuzzy electric guitars of Mauritania to raucous electro street parties of Bamako, the short survey is a window into contemporary performance in the Western Sahel.

4.

Joe Carducci has this perfect bit about the late Michael Hurley in his latest New Vulgate:

When first coming out to do the Upland Breakdown⁷ Michael was still living in Portsmouth, Ohio and I remember him saying that after buying his station wagon he at first couldn’t afford to register it so the car wasn’t street legal. But he explained that Portsmouth had blocks with alleys on all sides that crossed in the middle and so he had no problems getting around town by alleyway.

5.

Seriously cannot get enough of this thread on BlueSky started by Chloe N. Clark back in April, which I *think* you can read even if you’re not on BlueSky. Enormously inspiring (so many food visionaries! so many traditions! so many pleasures! so many crazy stories and enigmas!) and so moving (they're almost all gone):

"A little Mexican place near us. I asked how they made their mole sauce. Guy went in the back and ... brought out his mother. She hand grinds the chilis, hand chops Mexican chocolate, cooks it for at least 6 hours - pops it in the fridge to marinate, then they use it the next day. Damn. fine. food. I got to know them well. Their mother's hands were getting sore from arthritis. They talked about having one of them do this - but use a food processor to save time. They never did it as they were all afraid to tell their mother they would use a food processor instead of grinding by hand."

"There was a Chinese restaurant in the Missouri Ozarks that served Springfield style Chinese, which is a kind of southern fusion. Best I've ever had. The chef was a genius. Then he got kidnapped and the food was never the same. It was very strange. The kidnapping itself was covered by the local news but there were all sorts of wild rumors about who did it and what happened to him. Everything from the cops to owing money to some shadowy criminal organization. This was in the 90s and we later moved to a different city, but when we came back to visit they didn't know anything."

“The Cubano panini from the café I worked in before grad school. People would call to ask if it was a special that day and cheer so loud you’d have to hold the phone at arm’s length. Boss gave us the crispy spiced roast pork ends, never shared the spice rub recipe. Café closed several years ago. …We also had an excellent head cook. He took another job at a seasonal place and made life-changing sweet potato pancakes with cinnamon butter. He was super tall, so his idea of normal size pancakes was huge (and perfect).

I don’t mean to encourage social media use any more than is absolutely necessary, just saying this particular thread exists and it is—nourishing!

More soon,

Jay Babcock

Southern Arizona

---

Landline is free to everyone, but survives on donations, barter and kind words. You can help keep Landline from getting disconnected—and receive occasional bonus ‘Landline Special’ emails—by making your subscription a paying one. The button below gives you a 50% discount, meaning only $20/year (that’s $1.67/month)…

Alternative ways to financially sustain Landline: buy me a coffee or leave a tip of any amount in the PayPal TipJar. Thanks for your support!

1. The Air Conditioned Nightmare, 1945.

2. See Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, 1957.

3. And then they moved to rural France, and stayed there.

4. Winds of Change, 1980-1984.

5. Dread and anger. Because by the time Trump voters and enablers realize the depth of their error, or Trump is somehow stopped, the damage will be irreversible. “To be a victim of one’s own mistakes is bad enough, but to be a victim of the other fellow’s mistakes as well is too much.” (Henry Miller, 1945)

6. A great American.

7. Upland Breakdown was an annual “poorly attended” 2000s festival in Wyoming put on by Carducci and the late David Lightbourne. It was connected to Carducci’s Upland Records label.