Last Spring Turns...9!

It’s 2010. I’m working as an Associate Registrar at the Art Institute of CA-San Francisco (AiCA-SF), a for-profit institution that will later implode in a major fraud scandal. At the time I do not know this explicitly, but I suspect something is quite wrong and it forever changes my outlook on both “non-profit” and for-profit higher education institutions and predatory lending. After being laid off during the Great Recession, I take the first job offered to me, believing those around me who tell me I’m “lucky to be employed.” As a recent college graduate with a music degree and an obscene amount of student loan debt, I feel a sense of kin with the students of AiCA-SF.

The AiCA-SF has an audio production program and a brand new recording studio. As part of the registrar’s office I am well acquainted with the academic directors of each department, so when the Audio Production director offers to let me record in the studio for free, I decide it’s exactly what I need. By that time I know what AiCA-SF is about. I am quietly coaching students on the side on how to register their complaints so they are on the record. I am witness to the roll out of the new veterans Post-911 GI bill, and it is a disaster. My eyes are opened to the severe dysfunction of the VA and I am not surprised when top leadership is accused of corruption. AiCA-SF ushers in a new class of veterans, many of whom are excited for new opportunities, unaware that schools everywhere are actively recruiting them so that they can get a piece of the government’s money without offering any additional support. Because I personally know the directors, advisors, and faculty of each program, I know students received a good education. But I also know several students were accepted who were not stable and now had a $100k bill for an education they were not able to receive. If they had problems, they had to call a 1-800 number. I was looking for an exit, and making an album during my work day seemed like a great idea.

I don’t have the money to hire musicians, so I put an advance on my credit card, and I scramble together a set list. I ask Jimmy, a drummer that I’ve seen gigging around town, to record with me and help me assemble other musicians. I ask my old college friend Jesse who has recently moved to town to play bass. Jimmy recruits his friend Jack, a wonderful guitar player. A friend from Stanford Jazz Workshop informs me that tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens is in town and I should reach out to see if he’d be open to recording. Amazingly, he is. My flutist friend Gerald rounds out the ensemble.

It’s a mess, and it’s amazing. I have no idea what I’m doing, but with the help of my teacher, Kitty Margolis and her guitarist Brad Beuthe, I have some beautiful arrangements to work with. Dayna, a master player, becomes a teacher to me as I watch him slip into a producer role and gently coax the music into a more cohesive idea with simple questions and encouragement. That support stays with me for a while. It is a lesson I badly need to learn: Let people help. Find allies. The right musicians for a gig will lift your music somewhere new. Let it go there.

My friend Rusty once got out of a work meeting and said, “I feel like I just gave blood.” That’s what Last Spring felt like to me. I was clueless and still battling too many inner demons to properly enjoy what was in front of me. It was a crash course in record making, full of mistakes. It was a huge undertaking to do alone and I paid a bitter mental price. And yet…I made something that was not there before and for the first time, I shared my original music with the world.

My biggest regret is that I couldn’t be in the moment. If I had taken a moment, I would have realized I wasn’t alone at all. Nathan, the director of the Audio Production Department, was at the board supervising a bunch of enthusiastic students. Jimmy, Brandon, Jesse, Jack, Dayna, and Gerald all showed up to this tiny little recording studio in the Tenderloin and brought my songs to life in ways I couldn’t imagine. Kitty coached me through my first record, and her husband Alfonso would later step in to help produce, pulling out sounds and colors in the mix that my ears could not discern. Gary Hobish mixed and mastered, and helped me patch up parts of the record in his studio in Daly City.

When the CDs were finally pressed, there was a color problem and the deep forest green color I expected was returned as sewage water brown. I bought an address list of jazz journalists for $75, only to have half the emails bounce. I sent out the CD to radio stations. No one replied. I did a successful crowdfunding campaign. My family and friends pitched in with enthusiasm. I asked for $2500, too ashamed to admit that costs had bloated far beyond that, even when I hadn’t paid for the studio time.

Here is a final vignette: I am in a parking lot in the Tenderloin with some band members and we are disbursing for the day. Pigeons are everywhere, pecking at bits of trash, chicken bones, and used needles. A seagull flies in and begins attacking a pigeon. I watch in horror as the seagull tears the wing of the pigeon, intent on eating it. I flag down a band mate and beg him for a ride a few blocks back to the school so I don’t have to witness the impending carnage.

I still shudder. Last Spring may sound smooth, but it was fraught with inexperience, cognitive dissonance, and pigeon murder. Did it have to be that hard? Absolutely not. But it would take me many years to figure out how important it is to reign in an anxiety-prone mind.

I quit AiCA-SF in 2011. After riding high from a trip to NYC to accept an ASCAP Award for one of my compositions, I decided it was time to try to take some time off to devote to my music. I had no savings, just a big recording project to bring to the finish line. Finally, on August 19th, 2011, I released Last Spring.

If I told my 2011 self that my next record would be 9 years away and done in the middle of a pandemic, I know I would have laughed. “That sounds about right!”

Boston is a different town than San Francisco. I am a very different person than I was in 2011. Throughout this time, I kept writing. I kept making music. I kept promising myself I would record again, and I would get it right. I think you’ll hear all of this in the new EP. But without Last Spring, I wouldn’t know half of what I know now.

You can listen to and purchase Last Spring here.