The National Music Sanctuary is planted.
The National Music Sanctuary is planted.
Where it all started. A Dangerbag is born.
My friends say I can tell a story. Another thing my friends say is, “Ed needs a volume knob.” I’ll let you be the judge. But as this Substack is about the National Music Sanctuary and how and why I founded it, you’ll have to sit through a little bit of backstory.
In 2012, I started to muse of a new world. Having relocated from NYC to the Central Coast of CA (specifically Monterey), I was experiencing culture shock. I’m a bicoastal transplant. Born in CT, raised in RI, and schooled in CA (both high school and college). I lived the first four decades of my life, half in the West and half in the East.
I lived in Southern RI. I lived in Southern VT. I lived in Northern Virginia. I lived in Portland, OR, Los Angeles, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, San Diego, CA and now I found myself in Monterey, CA.
In Monterey, I found myself surrounded by affluence. For those that don’t know, Monterey sits on the coast of California at the southern side of the Monterey Bay. Its populace is made up of old families that came to California for the gold rush (or the farming of Salinas, or the fishing industry of Cannery Row, or the Naval Post Graduate School or the Defense Language Institute), and settled. New money families came later, settling in the Monterey Bay as Silicon Valley boomed.
A natural draw due to its temperate climate and breathtaking coastal views, Monterey is a magnet for celebrities of all types. Think John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Jimi Hendrix (he lit his Stratocaster on fire here), Clint Eastwood, Flea, or Joan Baez. The list of celebrity’s that neighbor this stretch of coastline is long.
For the working class, the Central Coast is a challenging place to call home. The class disparities are extreme. You have Pebble Beach, a Malibu of NorCal (but gated with security guards), living side by side with immigrant farm worker communities. Either your grandparents bought homes that they handed down to your parents (and eventually you), or you’re flush with new tech money. Or you are working class and can barely afford the extreme cost of living! I’ll let you figure out where I’m positioned on that scale.
In the years I’ve lived here since 2010, the rents have increased over 56%. The dawn of AirBnb, the encroaching Silicon Valley immigration, and the highly regulated building ordinances make housing scarce. Any new construction that adds to the housing availability is expensive to build. Developers must recoup their investments with either high rents or high listing prices. Consequently, all housing in Monterey County is barely affordable housing!
But as this post isn’t about regional economic conditions or the history of Monterey County, but rather the founding of the National Music Sanctuary, let me get back to the task at hand. I chose to live in Monterey, so I had to find a way to overcome its shortcomings culturally. Luckily, I had easy access to San Francisco and Santa Cruz. With a relatively short drive, I could see shows at the Fillmore or the Warfield or the Berkley Greek Theater (or Slims or the Great American Music Hall). Or I could go to Palo Alto for shows at Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater, or to San Jose to the Mountain Winery. Or if I wanted a shorter commute, I could drive to Santa Cruz, CA.
As the Monterey Bay is along Highway 1 (the most west of all CA highways), it is a stopping point for the West Coast tour schedules. Bands move up the shoreline from San Diego to Vancouver. Consequently, coastal California towns get no shortage of great musicians. But because of limited night clubs, you have to drive if you want to see world class music regularly. And remember, I’m still trying to capture the vitality of New York City at this point.
As those that have lived in NYC will tell you, there are few American cities that compete with the culture of the Big Apple. It’s rumored New York City is the center of the world. That was certainly my experience while I lived there. Perhaps it was the cohesion of the post 911 NYC. Perhaps it was because I was raised on a rural farm in south eastern RI. I don’t know for sure (or would rather not pretend I know as much as a native New Yorker). I can say NYC was exciting while I lived there between 2002 and 2008. Amazingly exciting! And that six year sliver of time is the important spring board that leads to the subject of this Substack post.
So why, you ask, did I title this post “The National Music Sanctuary is planted?” Good question. I’m getting there. Without pontificating on why I am who I am for another three paragraphs and filling you in on all the boring self involved bullshit the entire last two decades seem to have been based upon, let’s get back to my first official Substack post, “Cha Cha Cha.”
The point I’m trying to make is I was bored when I moved Monterey. And for a town that birthed the Monterey Pop Festival (and is home to the annual Monterey Jazz Festival), there is little to no live music scene. So instead of driving to other cities to see live music, I decided to bring the live music to me. Because, why not, right? I was living in the age of content creators, and how hard can it be?
I should backtrack slightly (even though I promised my personal life isn’t important). I forgot to mention I have a problem with bridging material. Insert smiley emogee symbol here (or whatever the latest hieroglyphic you prefer to denote sarcastic campiness). In case you are asking yourself, why is this builder talking to me about a National Music Sanctuary? Here is a paragraph to prevent epigrammatic writing.
Real quick, at forty years old I went back to college to finish a bachelors degree I had decided was pointless earlier in my life. The easiest way for me to finish my bachelors degree was to finish the degree I started in my twenties. Yes, I got a BA in filmmaking. How pointless can an education get? Judge for yourself. This is from a short documentary series I also do, called Shared Vision. It’s archived to the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Remember the 2008 financial crisis was hard on the working class, and specifically the building trades. So remember readers, not all bad life decisions are strictly your fault alone! Or another way of saying it would be, behind every bad decision Wall St. is likely lurking.
Long story short, I do love art, music and film, but I hate the entertainment industry. So with the exception of a brief time I worked in film and TV in my early twenties, I swore if I did entertainment again, I would’t do it in Southern California. In the mid nineties I’d lived and worked in LA. I was a grip for a short time. I worked for the The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Warner Brothers (briefly on a commercial, think the reboot of the singing frog days), a Tracy Lords and Downtown Julie Brown independent film about date rape (oh the irony) and numerous other independent productions. And although I’d loved theater and playwrights (and John Cassavetes, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Emir Kusturica), my experience in LA was mostly a heart breaking lesson in vapidity. Cue “Just a good old boy…”
Maybe it was turning forty. Maybe it was insanity. Or maybe it was great marketing by Google, but I became convinced I could be a content creator. And so, the National Music Sanctuary was born. At the time, there were only a hand full of in studio live music programs. Think Austin City Limits, or KEXP Presents, or AudioTree, or Jam in Van (although when I started JITV wasn’t rolling yet). Now there are literally thousands.
My inspiration was Mark Maron’s WTF podcast and the JRE. I was convinced a small samurai crew could be earth shattering. I wanted complete control and I didn’t want to be told what I could and could not say. I figured if Mark and Joe could make content on their own terms, I could too!
Somewhere along the line, crowd funding started. I made this Patreon pitch video. It was the beginning stages of Patreon, as Kickstarter was gaining momentum. I hired some illustrators and rented some camera lens. I wrote a script about my mascot, Dangerbag, and made him a superhero on a mission. Dangerbag is the National Music Sanctuary’s trademark. He’s pictured below in a zoot suit with a camera for a head. In fact, you can buy apparel in his honor should you be so fashionable!
It was 2012 and crowd funding was the rave. Movies like Anormalisa written by Charlie Kaufman had just made record funding on Kickstarter. The Coolest Cooler had raised 13 million dollars. Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet (I know, I can’t even believe life without Stories either), and TikTok hadn’t been conceived. Regardless, I was a believer. Like any good idealist dreamer, I didn’t see why the next big thing couldn’t be the National Music Sanctuary. I was going to be a “viral content creator!” I was going turn the music industry on its head and shake all the glory from its bill folds!
It’s amazing what intention and unbridled hubris can create. Somehow with only a B.A. in Cinematic Arts from CSUMB, I managed to shoot and record Todd Snider, John Craigie, Ruthie Foster, John C Riley, and a slew of other extremely talented musicians. I’ll return to this story in future posts, but in the meantime, see for yourself below.
National Music Sanctuary Videos
I was able to secure a professional recording studio by partnering with my alma mater, CSUMB. The studio had two control rooms. It had the same model MTA (a 40 channel analog mixing console), "OK, Computer,” was recorded on. I cajoled the allegiance of another east coast transplant, a talented PHD named, Lanier Sammons. Lanier taught audio engineering to future studio engineers. He liked the idea of allowing touring musicians into his campus studio. His students got a chance to work with professional musicians, and I got a professional studio to hone my producing and directing. And as long as I included the students, I wasn’t charged for studio rental or sound engineering. Now that’s punk rock!
I also learned quickly that musicians would show up when I told them it was a free recording and a free edited video. I pulled my friends in as camera operators, first my college mates, later my professional IATSE brothers. As I had no real budget, I did the best I could. Gas money and free lunch to start. Later, I paid my crew. I hired my old friend, Steven Lasch, to design the print media. He’s cool. Check him out.
I often edited the sessions. I spent hours reviewing the audio mixes and working with the engineers to hone the final mix. Eventually, I was able to hire an entertainment lawyer to draft crew and talent contracts and secure publishing rights. What started as a dream, is now a record label.
I will continue to update my Substack as I head to NAMM this month. My goal is to document the hurdles I’ll face this year. My intention for NAMM is networking. With all the ease of social media, and my years of doing it without a real budget, I decided old school networking is needed.
At NAMM, I’ll reach out to other music professionals and see if any sponsorship opportunities arise. I also have development meetings planned for this year. Perhaps a more established company will see the upside of helping me build the National Music Sanctuary. I will chronicle it all here.
I’m not sure what is too long for Substack, so at the risk of sounding verbose, I’d say that’s enough for my first post. Please check out my Patreon page if anything I have said has inspired you. Money helps. True story.
National Music Sanctuary Patreon
I’m also on IG and Twitter, should you prefer those ai vultures.