San Diego Acoustic Music

Back then, I was still in college, and between exams and term papers, caffeine was the drug of choice. A nearby coffee house provided one of the few respites from the campus crowd. I stumbled into it one evening, and Bell was performing, then as now. After an hour of good coffee, good music, and no progress on homework, I thought to myself what a tragedy it was that she wouldn't get a chance to be recorded---LA night-clubs were the nearest venues that attracted any sort of major-label executives, and this beautiful, acoustic sound wasn't hip enough to pull any down our way.

With a strum across her strings, Bell ends her first set and pulls me back into the present. I can't help but wonder at some of the changes in San Diego acoustic scene over the last few years. There's coffee houses on every corner of the county, the musicians are getting the recognition they deserve (Jewel, San Diego's most well- known singer-songwriter, just made her major-label debut on Atlantic), and I can check out a variety of performers, all without worrying about my studies. The scene may have been around for a while, but it's so happening now that I sometimes imagine it as the next Seattle---though it's certainly music of a different sort.

Thanks to MTV, it's easy to think of acoustic as unplugged, but that's no where near the truth. Sitting at my table during her break, Bell tries to clarify things for me. "What I do is acoustic because most of the songs I play are written for acoustic guitar." It's not re-vamped rock n' roll. It's acoustic from the inception. And that ends up being the only real unifying factor on the acoustic scene.

Every artist has their own tag for their style. Ask musician John Katchur, and he'll talk about "new- folk," while Steve Denyes plays "traditional-folk," and Steve Harris points to "soul." Influences also provide revelation to a musician's style. Christopher Prim pays homage to Bruce Cockburn in his vocal inflections, Don Everett Pearce holds Bob Dylan in reverence, and Mary Dolan, surprisingly, credits the Beatles.

Though the scene is made up of styles that are as diverse as the people playing and the places they frequent, a lot of the performers are native San Diegans. Music can be a product of its environment, so locals may have an easier time relating to the source and content of a lot of the songs (John Katchur's CD, for example, is called "Mercy Road" and dedicated to Cara Knott).

That doesn't mean you won't have your perspectives challenged. Steve Harris is one of the few Black artists on the scene ("I only know of one other Black male performer," he says), and he brings with him his own unique slant. He'll tell you that "anger and desperation in the [acoustic] form is unusual," and then he'll pull out his guitar and show you what he means. He plays with a vengeance, gripping the guitar neck with his left hand and slamming across the strings with his right; all the while his voice rages and his face contorts with the power and emotion of his words. But even with this raucous style, he prefers the smaller coffee houses. Citing the Inner Change in PB, he explains the ideal location as, "small, dark and intimate... where I can step out of my skin and walk around."

If that situation sounds intimidating, don't despair. Christopher Prim is a performer an entirely different attitude. He points to the Wiki-up in Hillcrest as his favorite venue, and for the exact opposite reasons as Harris. "I like the Wiki-up because it's big, it's roomy. I don't like some coffee houses because I feel like my music should be appropriate to the space, and being loud would be overbearing."

Loud is relative when it comes to acoustic music---no matter what Prim says, you'll probably never leave a coffee house with your ears ringing, not even from him. He has power, but his precision keeps the sound clean and polished like brass, while his vocals roll and pitch with emotion.

Probably the most common term used for the acoustic scene's musicians is singer-songwriter. The term tends to over-emphasize the vocal aspects of the performers, but there certainly are those who, like Prim, have great voices. Del Mar local, Steve Denyes shines when it comes to his vocal strength. A few of his songs are a-capella, and he sings them with such force, he has to step away from the mike to keep from blowing his PA out. He's no slouch on the guitar, but the impression his voice leaves is so strong, it overshadows anything else he does. "People tend to comment on my voice," he says. "But I like to think it's my song writing."

Bell has been approached by a young woman, coffee in hand, and they're talking about "I Want You," one of Bell's compositions. Songwriting is an area where Bell shines; she's especially adept at weaving multiple themes into a single piece. The song they're discussing is particularly impressive because it works at two levels. At one it's romantic love song, but at another it speaks of love of a higher source. Bell explains to the woman, "I like to write songs with different twists... I like imagery and subtlety a lot. I want people to think."

From the 50's on, coffee houses have been associated with heady, contemplative types who spend their evenings reading poetry and philosophizing. That is, of course, an exaggeration, but the thinking-person's aspect of the coffee establishment is still with us. Don Everett Pearce describes a good coffee house as one with "books, wood-floor, wall paintings---the creative food for the soul kind of atmosphere. It's the art kind of thing." He's given a near-perfect description of the Art House in Carlsbad, a place he's played many times. Pearce has a rock n' roll charisma, he moves to the music, waving his guitar and shaking his legs like he really feels it.

Feeling is, after all, the thrust of any art form, and the performers who can capture and evoke it are the best. Mary Dolan builds her repertoire with art in mind, and she says she chooses "songs that speak to me. I have to feel a song to sing it for someone else." Unlike Pearce, she's not really active on stage, but she pumps out her music with such passion her hand blurs (had John Lennon used an acoustic guitar on the opening riff of "Revolution," he'd probably have sounded something like Dolan). Both she and Pearce are enthralling to watch because you don't just hear their emotion, you can see it emanating from on-stage.

The performer's stage-presence is part of the live music experience, and artists tend play off the audiences differently. John Katchur is one who works at keeping his audience attuned to the music. "If they start to drift," he says. "I pull people in by interacting with them." He's subtle and understated in this interaction. While playing a call-response tune, rather than coaching the people to join in at a given moment, he waves and nods to them until they fill in the missing lyric.

Like his personable rapport, Katchur plays a subtle, sweet guitar, making it ring as he fills out the low-end with his voice. One particular evening at Mikey's in Poway, my table was wedged between a group of grunge-looking teenagers and three grandmotherly women with gray locks, but both groups flanking me were equally attentive to Katchur's hypnotic guitar and hung on his every word. Rightfully, he gets a lot of satisfaction out of his range of appeal, and he seems to understand the reason behind it, "I try to play songs I like, ones with lyrical content. People are into lyrics; it's not so much a certain age, but a certain type."

The audience is the biggest part of the atmosphere at any given coffee-house (and you can't judge them by age or dress). Thus, live is the best way to take in the acoustic scene---but, if you're so inclined, you can still get catch a taste of it from your very own home. Almost all the performers have tapes or CDs, and some of them even get airplay. Your best bet in that regard is KKOS. Their Local Show plays a range of acoustic performers. Katchur has also had the opportunity to play one of their "back porch" concerts, a live broadcast that they do every week or so. It's the closest you can get to the acoustic scene without really being there.

Bell's husband has been filling during her break, a competent slide-guitarist in his own right. They met through friends, completely independent of their musical skills. She takes the guitar playfully from him, and her voice is soon echoing through the coffee house. The scene reminds me how talent-rich San Diego really is, and the music sends my mind wandering again.

My memory returns me to a fairly low-key coffee house in La Jolla. Studies were again the norm--- fortunately none of it was mine---but this time it was Denyes performing. As is typical with most acoustic musicians, Denyes launched into a story about his experiences abroad. He talked about a minstrel he came across during a party in Scotland who forced each party- goer to offer up a talent, anything from a song to a word of wisdom. "In that vein," Denyes said, "I'd like to give up the mike to anyone who might have something to offer."

After a brief silence, one guy set his coffee down, and jumped onto the stage. Borrowing the guitar, he slid into a near-perfect impression of James Taylor. He surprised the hell out of everyone in the place, and Denyes, strapping his guitar back on, quipped with a grin, "I'm never doing that again!"

There's a lot of talent out there. You don't have to go very far to find it---it's as close as your nearest coffee house. So check it out while you've got the chance; you never know which of our local performers will be discovered next and spirited away by the lure of a record contract and national tour.