TIP OF THE HAT
The dusty mystique of the
classic American West has seduced artists of every medium for
more than two centuries, and Bron Tieman-whose experimental fusion
band Crooked Cowboy and the Freshwater Indians has shared a bill
with Spindrift-is no exception. For him, this inspiration came
in the form of the now almost stereotyped music of Ennio Morricone.
“Ennio was dropping in harpsichord, banjos, all of that;
he’s the inventor of this music.” Tieman says he was
first blown away by the myth and the music at age 5 when his
8-year-old sister performed a cheerleading routine for him to
the theme song from, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which topped
the charts at the time.
If Morricone sets a mood
through sound, then Leone provides the parables, psalms and parameters
for what has become something of a religion for these artists.
Director Quentin Tarantino dubbed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
the “best directed movie of all time.” Not so coincidentally,
Morricone composed music for both the original Kill Bill and
its sequel. Leone’s films are not unlike Tarantino’s
in their stylish irreverence for the standards of a genre.
From last July through January,
amidst more traditional Western artifacts and lore, The Autry
National Center - Museum of the American West in Los Feliz hosted
the exhibit, Once Upon a Time in Italy…The Westerns of Sergio
Leone. It was curated by Estella Chung, Associate Curator of
the Popular Culture department, and Sir Christopher Frayling,
renowned authority on Leone and author of the book, Once Upon
a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone. Chung recalls
a related evening event at which Alessandro Alessandroni-the
‘whistler’ on the Morricone/Leone soundtracks-performed
in the museum plaza. “We had over 900 people and you could
hear a pin drop.” She elaborates on the awestruck fans,
“The people who love Leone and Morricone love them passionately.”
Thomas is certainly a testament
to that fact. He appears to take great pleasure in providing
the details of Leone’s films’ philosophy and of the
Spaghetti Western genre itself. He explains that the underlying
tone is biblical in nature. Raised Catholic, Thomas sees a lot
of parallels between biblical stories and Westerns. The Bible
is, after all, not the sole jurisdiction of redemption. The central
figure in the Spaghetti Western is, he adds, the ethereal nomad.
Western superstar Clint Eastwood first rose to fame playing such
elusive outsider characters in Leone’s films. “I like
to romanticize the mystique of the drifter ghost/pale rider,”
says Thomas.
CAMERA IN ONE HAND, PISTOL
IN THE OTHER
The saloon doors swing open,
and in walks a man who nobody’s seen before. It’s unclear
who he is, where he came from, or where he’s going. And
with his dusty hat pulled down over his heavily-bearded face,
his identity is as free-roaming as the tumbleweeds he rides alongside.
It was with this idyllic notion of the mysterious stranger that
Thomas set out to create the ever-morphing, hard to tie-down
L.A. branch of Spindrift-a band boasting over a dozen rotating
members coast-to-coast. On tours to the East Coast, members from
Delaware may join in, many of them from other bands. Thomas is
the linchpin between them all. Spindrift’s other West Coast
players are Henry Evans (bass and guitar), David Koenig (harmonica
and guitar), Morlocks guitarist Bobby Bones, Jason Anchando of
the Warlocks (drums), Cameron Murray (keyboards and tambourine),
and from the BJM, Dan Allaire (drums), Frankie Emerson (mellosonic),
and former keyboardist Rob Campanella (percussion). It is in
the latter’s North Hollywood studio that Spindrift records
their tripped-out Western sounds. Campanella is coincidentally
the son of Joseph Campanella, who appeared on Western TV shows
like Shane, The Big Valley, and The Wild Wild West.
Such peripheral influences
fed Thomas’ hunger to make his own Spaghetti Western, a
sort of homage to his god, Leone, with its own brand of added
psychedelic flavor. Several years ago, he created a fictitious
soundtrack for a non-existent spaghetti Western called The Legend
of God’s Gun. This bizarre excursion into post modern references
to pop cultural entities, that refer to other pop cultural entities,
seems apropos in light of Leone’s own cinematic concept.
“Leone was influenced by film,” says Chung, explaining
that the director had never even been to the United States when
he made A Fistful of Dollars, starring the young Eastwood. He
was apparently inspired by Western movies, which is why he called
his films, “Cinema Cinema” (films about films). “His
influence was really another media,” says Chung.
Thomas was happy with the
resulting soundtrack, influenced by Italian Western movies, influenced
by American Western movies. So he went on, for his own enjoyment,
to craft the concept for the non-film’s trailer and discussed
it with Mike Bruce, then-bassist for psych-rock band the Low
Flying Owls, who was eager to direct. Bruce, who never went to
film school but crafted a niche for himself making videos and
the occasional short film, was equally taken by the Spaghetti
Western genre. “When Sergio’s movies came out they
were like what Pulp Fiction was when it came out, almost punk
rock,” he says. Bruce is a fan of all cinematic things Western-everything
from the wholesome but nostalgic Little House on the Prairie,
to the pungent and sophisticated Deadwood series. But when it
comes to Spaghetti Westerns, he is quick to differentiate them
from their traditional American cousins (the films of John Ford
and the like). “In a lot of Spaghetti Westerns, the hero
has some supernatural ability or quality that’s mysterious,
almost other-worldly, surreal, and not able to be killed.”
It was precisely this quality
that attracted Bruce to Thomas’ proposed project. “I
want to make a movie where you feel drawn into this other world,”
he says. Like some delectable drug, The Legend of God’s
Gun gave way to a greater hunger as it metamorphosed from soundtrack
to trailer. It wasn’t long before Thomas and Bruce were
making plans to expand it into a short film. Most recently, the
project has taken on a life of its own as Bruce’s first
feature on mini digital video as both director and co-producer
(alongside Thomas). Originally, caricatured characters had to
be fleshed out and given a back-story while other amateur actors
dropped out of the project, leaving the team with a cinematic
mess. “This whole process of making this movie has been
completely backwards,” muses Thomas. What better way to
embrace the spirit of the outlaw?
So Spindrift, Bruce, and
friends set out to make a feature film about a little, godless
town called Playa Diablo and a demented preacher man who sets
out to proselytize his own breed of religiosity. Early filming
of The Legend of God’s Gun took place in the desert or around
public parks and begot its own set of adventures and curiosities,
including snakes nestled in camera equipment, people taking mushrooms
and “freaking out in the desert,” as Thomas describes
it. “Maybe half the movie people were on something.”
Even the horses managed to get wigged out, with one running off
and ultimately falling on top of a cast member. “We’re
all actually scared of horses,” Thomas admits. And apparently,
park rangers have been known to provoke, if not a similar fear,
at least some good old healthy outlaw disdain.
Like something out of indie
long-hair-versus-authority-figure film Easy Rider, it ultimately
ended up being the funky looking God’s Gun crew versus the
“evil” rangers, as he dubs them. At one point, a crew
member was even thrown in jail. “If you take a rock n’
roll band out to the desert to make a movie, what do you expect?”
Thomas asks rhetorically. Such authoritarian setbacks to the
film’s agenda propelled the filmmakers to rent out the ghost
town of Silver City in Kern County for some of the pivotal final
shoots. “We were out there filming guerilla style,”
says Thomas, recounting how they transformed friends’ living
rooms into chapels and garages into saloons. Desperate for actors,
Bruce and Thomas went the friend route. Members of the Joshua
Tree desert/Western inspired psychedelic band Gram Rabbit were
among them.
- For the band, who also contributed
to the film’s soundtrack, it was a natural fit. “We’re
all attracted to the same essence of the desert, that old special
Western cosmic other-worldly feel that you only get in this part
of California,” says Gram Rabbit front woman Jesika von
Rabbit, “It’s very trippy, a million shooting stars…”
This landscape has attracted bohemian artists for decades and
continues to do so. Recently, generations collided when von Rabbit
found herself at Pappy and Harriet’s Honky Tonk in Pioneertown
(the old Western set that saw the likes of Gene Autry) at the
same time as Led Zeppelin rock icon Robert Plant. “I sang
impromptu duets with him like ‘Fever’ and ‘Sea
of Love,’” she excitedly recalls. “I still manage
to get in a fair share of trouble out here.” Von Rabbit
adds with a note of oddly-placed hopefulness, “I’ll
probably die out here.”
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