Author: Alicia Bay Laurel

Hiya Hayama!

Posted on by in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors and tagged .


I spent April 25 and 26 flying from LA to Tokyo, and was kindly met at Narita International Airport by my friend Koki Aso. Between the gasoline and toll roads, the round trip cost him about $70. I pressed newly minted yen from the airport money changer into his hands, but he took little of it. The patience and generosity of this man is monumental. Upon awakening from eight hours of deep slumber on a floor futon in Koki’s home office, I dug the view of the ocean and hills of Hayama (HI-ah-mah) from Koki and Ayako’s second floor balcony. They live in a very Japanese house on a steep hill, only two blocks from the beach. I love it here already.


The Japanese take their cherry blossoms (which they call SAK-ur-ah) very seriously. Even the animation on my rental cell phone screen shows a young couple bicycling through a shower of cherry blossoms, and Ayako thinks that, as the seasons change, the animation will be changed to match.


The cherry tree in front of Koki and Ayako’s house is blooming a little later in the season than most. They are pleased I came in time to see it.


The plums bloom in March, and already there are ume (pronounced OO-may) (plums) that Ayako will use to make umeboshi (salted pickled plums), a fabulous condiment whose vinegar I use to make tofu taste like cottage cheese or yogurt (depending on the texture of the tofu).


I couldn’t wait to take a walk around the neighborhood, and Ayako kindly obliged me with a tour.


At the end of the street where they live, a Shinto shrine (called a JIN-ja) overlooks the ocean.


The red torii (TOHD-ee-ee) (gate) is the dead giveaway it’s a Shinto shrine rather than a Buddhist temple, although some places of worship in Japan combine both religions.


Ayako was as stumped as I was as to why the shrine’s funerary statues wore red bibs.


I picked up where I left off last trip to Japan, photographing their creatively designed manhole covers. Have you ever seen one in the USA with cherry blossoms on it? Hayama’s got ‘em.


Lordy, here’s one with an alien on it!


Looking down from the seafront street, we gaze upon gardens of sea plants swaying in the amazingly clear water (considering that Hayama is one of the closest beaches to the mega-metropolis of Tokyo).


And, across the water, snow-capped Mount Fuji rises above the clouds. I had to disproportionately increase the color depth on this shot to make it more visible, since the air was hazy. But, I mean, isn’t it, like, HUGE?


We walked in Standing Stone Beach Park.


A smiling lady dressed in farming clothes was out gathering shells.


Mount Fuji is vaguely visible from the beach park…


…and beloved Oshima island is barely visible on the horizon as well.


Ayako prepared us a gorgeous, healthful breakfast when we returned to her house: grilled saba fish, freshly picked cherry tomatoes and peapods from their garden, nattoh (sticky fermented soybeans, an excellent fortifier), a richly flavored tea made from roasted black soybeans from Hokkaido, and miso soup with daikon (long white radish) in it. When I eat traditional Japanese food, I feel so good that taking vitamins and other supplements becomes superfluous.

The next morning, Ayako sent me off to Haneda airport with a packed picnic lunch of individually wrapped small treats on a small tray wrapped in an elegantly printed large cloth napkin: pickled cabbage, homemade umeboshi, two cherry tomatoes and three peapods, half a hard boiled egg, two rice balls riddled with sea vegetables, and a small portion of grilled chicken. Ohashi (chopsticks) included!


Mari (on left), Ayako’s friend, came over, and they went out for a while together, leaving me alone to practice vocal technique exercises without disturbing anyone (Koki’s at work today).

Ayako’s husband, Koki Aso, is the journalist who came to Hawaii to interview me for Be Pal outdoor living magazine in May 2005 and determined to help me tour here in 2006. He managed to convince the people at Artist Power Bank, an environmental arts organization in Tokyo, to fund my trip and put on two concerts and a workshop for me.

I then contacted my other friends in the music business in Japan and cobbled together a four-week, eight-concert tour in October 2006, all of which is journaled on this blog. During the October trip, I met the organizers of two music festivals, who each invited me to play at them this May, so this time I bought my own plane ticket and am performing sixteen times in seven weeks, selling the Japanese editions of my books and CDs as I go.

Ocean Beach Idyll

Posted on by in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.


After we left the Adams Avenue Roots Festival, Jodi Shagg showed me the latest incarnation of her wonderful store, In Harmony Herbs and Spices.


She and her partner, herbalist/teacher James Green, remodeled the storefront in quaint, laid back Ocean Beach with elegant wooden moldings and filled it with magical gifts and a goodly supply of herbal remedies and books.


The store’s gorgeous exterior sign, hand-painted for Jodi by her friend, artist David D’Amour.




Jodi and I took a sunset walk along Ocean Beach’s beach and pier.


After our walk, we met James Green and their friend John (owner of Coastal Sage garden store) and his wife Serena (above), and daughters Shenandoah (above), Danielle and baby Nele Belle (above) at El Rancho, Ocean Beach’s Mexican restaurant, for supper. I ordered their signature tamale filled with mole (unsweetened chocolate) sauce and shiitake mushrooms, but they’d sold out of that item for the night.


A good time was had by all, although Danielle (above) had frolicked with such gusto at the Earth Day Festival in Balboa Park (including face painting) that she fell asleep next to John (above) before her dinner came.


I admired the restaurant’s collection of Frida Kahlo reproductions and photos.


This is the view from John and Serena’s house, where I spent the night before.

I was driving back to Los Angeles late that night on Highway 5, when heavy rains whipped my driver side windshield wiper to shreds. I stopped at the first gas station I could find, and, miraculously, there encountered a fellow traveler named George who was recharging his cell phone at the station’s electrical outlet, and who expertly repaired the failing wiper blade. I offered him a CD in appreciation, and he selected Living in Hawaii Style, saying it would brighten his long drive to San Jose that night. Angels are watchin’ over me.

Adams Avenue Roots and Folk Festival

Posted on by in Blog, Concert Tours.


April 22, 2007. I played and sang songs from all three of my CDs at the Adams Avenue Roots and Folk Festival in San Diego, California.


Hmmm, how could I have handled this differently? My niche audience is predominantly cultural creatives, and I was booked into a country western bar in a large tent that was part of the festival. Four country western bands played before me and one after me – for example, in the photo above, High, Wide and Handsome. I didn’t let that stop me from doing what I’d been hired to do, but I thought wistfully about the Earth Day Fair in Balboa Park, which was happening simultaneously, knowing that was where the San Diego contingent of my tribe was listening to music that day. I had spoken there in April 2000, kicking off my eight-month cross-country tour for the 30th anniversary edition of Living on the Earth and my first CD, Music from Living on the Earth.


The people attending the AARFF looked conservative, but the people playing music and running the craft and import booths did not. My (enthusiastic) audience at the Beer Garden consisted of the excellent western swing band that played before before me (above) and the band after me, Mark, the friendly sound guy, my friend Jodi Shagg, who kindly came with me and helped me with my merchandise table, and a couple dozen not-so-country-western types lingering in the bar after the two-steppers stepped out for some fresh air while the hippie girl in purple sang her folk songs.


If I’d been booked on one of the three outdoor stages at the festival, I would have fit in. At one stage, for example, I heard a delta blues guitar player and singer, a Celtic trio, and a Kingston-Trio-style folk ensemble (above). But I didn’t know that ahead of time, and, in any case, I wasn’t the one booking the acts. I got the gig through Sonic Bids, and was grateful.


At one booth I bought a stack of silk scarves made from vintage saris to bring to Japan as gifts. The importer, Roberta, plays bass guitar and exudes Brazilian joie de vivre. The booths burgeoned with tie-dyed clothes, bellydance costumes, embroidered patchwork fashions, handmade pottery and folk art jewelry that dazzled my eyes, but made me wonder whether the vendors were making any sales from the hot dog and beer crowd.


Bluegrass jam session at the booth of Old Time Music.

ASCAP Expo 2007, Day Two

Posted on by in Blog.


On the second day of the ASCAP Expo, I attended a lively class on collaborative songwriting taught by three illustrious New York songwriters whose collaborations include some pop hits. Organized by Keith Johnson of ASCAP’s New York office as a birthday gift to himself, the standing room only audience enjoyed stellar performances and high level industry shop talk. Above, Keith opens the class.

Gordon Chambers, a singer/songwriter/producer, had always dreamed of being a professional musician as a child, and, truly he has a gorgeous voice, in a style reminiscent of Stevie Wonder. His first hit song, in 1994, was The Brownstone Song.

Barry Eastmond, a pianist/songwriter/producer, played some fabulous post-bop jazz to demonstrate his orientation before going into pop songwriting. He learned the forms and conventions of writing in this genre while working as a recording session player for pop music, and wrote a hit song dedicated to his wife, “You Are My Lady.”


He and Gordon collaborated on “I Apologize,” which they performed for us (above photo). He said he thinks about pop songs like a producer, “Is it radio? Get to the hooks. The more hooks the better, because that’s what people remember.” Gordon added, “A hook is something cool to say in today’s language.”

Phil Galdston has written songs with both Barry and Gordon, but his collaboration story was about writing Vanessa William’s hit song “Save the Best for Last” with reknowned songwriter Wendy Waldman who was nine months pregnant, but worked on the song for two days straight with Phil, with no sleep. The song began as an afterthought while they were working on another tune that still has never been produced.

Phil had thought of the title and jotted it down weeks before. He told us that professional songwriters constantly write down ideas, scraps of conversation, and interesting word and musical phrases for later use. To this end, Phil recommends taping everything that happens during a songwriting collaborative session. Gordon recommended that we “listen to phrases people say that hit your heart.” Said Barry, “The hits I’ve had in my career came from my real life and my heart.”


After the class, I met Martin and Jude, founders and producers of the invaluable Musician’s Atlas, which gives current information each year on venues and media for touring performers.


Riccola Company, which makes herbal throat lozenges (and heaven knows, singers use throat lozenges from time to time), made an advertisement at the conference, with three singers and lots of free samples.


The back of the Hollywood Wax Museum, as seen from the parking lot exit of the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, as I left the ASCAP Expo.

ASCAP Expo 2007 Day One

Posted on by in Blog.


April 19, 2007. I attend the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) Expo, an annual conference for songwriters, composers, music publishers, and music producers, at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, the same place I attended the TAXI Road Rally (conference) last November. I’ve been a member of ASCAP since 2000, when I released my first CD, both as a songwriter and as a publisher. ASCAP is what’s known as a performance rights organization, that is, they collect money from radio stations, television and movie companies, and elsewhere copyrighted music is performed, on behalf of publishers and songwriters who are members and distribute it to them.


My primary interest in attending conferences of this sort is to learn more about the business of music, so I attended a panel called “Making Money as a Songwriter, Composer and Music Publisher,” moderated by Todd Brabec and his twin brother Jeffrey Brabec, authors of Music, Money and Success: The Insider’s Guide to Making Money in the Music Business. Todd is the Executive Vice President of Membership at ASCAP, and Jeff is Vice President of Business Affairs of the Chrysalis Music Group, one of the largest music publishers in the business.

The third panelist, Ned Hearn, practices entertainment law in San Jose, and specializes in issues related to digital distribution of musical compositions.

They agreed that sales of CDs and the fortunes of record companies have been sliding down due to illegal downloads and filesharing of music from the Internet. One of the few areas that music sales are flourishing is cell phone ring tones, which used to be only available as midi versions of licensed melodies, but, now that the phones can play actual recorded songs, licensing of studio master recordings has picked up.

They also urged us to research unexpected venues for sales of recordings – musical toothbrushes and the famous singing fish (a faux bass on a plaque that lip synchs songs like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry; Be Happy.”)


Much more optimistic were the panelists on “You’ve Got to Be Kidding: Writing Children’s Music.” Moderated by folksinger/songwriter Tom Chapin (far left), the lively panelists (left to right in photo): Dennis Scott, Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, Dan Zanes and Paul Williams.

Mr. Williams, lyricist/composer of some of most beloved songs of the twentieth century, introduced himself thus: “Originally I set out to be a sex object. I was an out-of-work actor and I wrote songs to cheer myself up. My most successful songs were codependent anthems.”

Tom Chapin, when asked the difference between songs for children and songs for adults, replied, “A song for an adult is ‘I’m talking to you.’ A song for children is ‘I’m talking to you and your five-year-old.’ ” He advised us not to dumb down the lyrics or talk down to kids, simply to be clear, unlike, say, Bob Dylan’s lyrics.

Dennis Scott, who has produced music for Sesame Street, was astounded to learn that all two hundred of the songs Fred Rogers sang on his still-syndicated children’s TV show Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood were written by Rogers himself. Dennis attempted to create a tribute album, recording famous singers performing Mr. Roger’s greatest hits. He was astonished that no record company would buy the idea, even though they all said it was wonderful, and he concluded that today it’s better to do it yourself than wait for a record company to do it for you.’’

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer advised us to perform for free for children in hospitals, day care centers, and after school programs (“They will NEVER turn you down, and if you can actually entertain kids who are sick in bed for more than thirty minutes, you are a genius.”) Cathy and Marcy work together as songwriters on film and TV projects, and also perform folk music for adults and for children at different shows.

Dan Zanes, a prolific writer of children’s songs, is a rock musician who wanted his daughter to have high quality music, and began by writing songs for her. He told us he writes from the child part of himself.

5 Minute Chummus

Posted on by in Recipes.

In a food processor bowl, combine the following (organically grown) ingredients:

One can (approximately 15 ounces) drained garbanzo beans (or 2 cups boiled or pressure-cooked garbanzo beans, very soft) Set aside the water you drain off the beans in case you want to use some to thin your chummus.
1/2 cup tahini (finely ground sesame seeds, thinned with sesame oil)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon pressed garlic (puree) 3 small cloves or 1 large clove, halved but unpeeled – which makes the garlic press much easier to clean afterwards
Sea salt or pink Himalayan salt to taste (start with 1/4 tsp)
Cumin seed powder – one or two teaspoons (to taste)
White pepper 1/2 to one teaspoon (to taste)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Blend until smooth. Correct the proportions according to your taste, if necessary. Serve in a beautiful dish, garnished with a pinch of paprika dusted on top, plus a drizzle of olive oil, and maybe few pine nuts and/or whole garbanzos, and maybe a sprig of parsley. Accompany with any or all of the following: kalamata (black Greek) olives, toasted pita triangles, peeled sliced cucumber, sliced bell peppers, freshly washed and drained romaine lettuce leaves.

Variations: add one of the following before blending:

one quartered, seeded, roasted red bell pepper
one tablespoon sundried tomatoes soaked over night in olive oil
freshly washed and well drained basil leaves (about 1/2 cup)
freshly washed and well drained cilantro leaves (about 1/3 cup)

Substitutions:

One cup really soft cooked red lentils for half of the garbanzo beans (adds to the color if you’re using the red bell pepper or sundried tomatoes in it)

Movie to enjoy with your chummus:

West Bank Story, a twenty-minute Oscar-winning musical comedy about peace in the Middle East, created in 2005 as a master’s degree project by Ari Sandel, then a film student at University of Southern California. The only problem with this choice is that you might spray chummus all over yourself from laughing.

Easter in the Santa Monica Mountains

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Sunday April 8, 2007. Today I attended a boho Easter festivity at the old Frank Lloyd Wright estate high on a mountainside overlooking Malibu town and the ocean.


Several dozen adorable children gather for egg hunting, and twice that number of fullgrown creative geniuses are following them or happily chatting at the lavish potluck buffet. Wright’s grandson Eric Lloyd Wright, also an architect, and Eric’s wife Mary, the owners of the property, invite their Topanga-Malibu artist neighbors to celebrate with them on every major holiday. My only previous visit, 4th of July in 2001, was unforgettable. From their eagle’s perch I could see simultaneous fireworks displays at every beach town on the coast of LA County. No anthems sung—just a drum circle.


Our gracious hostess, Mary Wright, and my dear long time friend Leslie Doolin, artist and founder/co-owner (with her sons Matt and Paul Doolin) of Topanga Art Tile. Leslie invited me to the party.


On the hilltop above the party…


…is a ceremonial circle of stones…


…where Paul and Maureen Doolin were married a few years back. Now they’re here with their son, Liam, an avid egg-hunter.


An oak shelters the spacious deck with its outdoor kitchen and buffet tables…


…below which extends a lawn perfect for picnicking or summer wedding receptions.


The children set off to find the eggs…


…and paddle in the pond…


…and cast for fish…


…and climb the geodesic dome.


Leslie and I tour the Wright’s house-in-progress with its sweeping views and elegant lines…


…and admire a friend’s baby on her first Easter.


Later, we hike in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and enjoy the view of the coastline past Malibu to Point Dume.


Leslie designed and made the floral tile framed mirror in her bathroom.


The latest addition to the Topanga Art Tile line: a circular tile emblazoned with a Sanskrit Aum, for Infinite Peace.

The Ishtar Rabbit

Posted on by in About Alicia Bay Laurel, Blog.

Happy Feast of the Great Earth Goddess Ishtar to you! May your garden and your mind be fertile as, well, …


I used to tell my lop eared bunnies, Nijinsky and Moonlight, that once a year, people worship rabbits. This never impressed them.


They had jobs. They were the recycling service in my wedding florist shop during the ‘nineties on Maui. Totally spoiled, they feasted on slightly imperfect lilies, orchids, rose petals, babies breath, gladiolus and all manner of green leaves, but distained iris, anthurium and protea.


Like cats, rabbits prefer to hide their excrement, and will use a litter box without prompting. Like the fisherman’s cat, the florist’s rabbit eats the most succulent leftovers from the work table, but, unlike cat poop, bunny poop is the fertilizer of choice for growing darn near everything. So they fertilized the exotic tropical greens in my garden that fattened my bouquets and arrangements, and they also fed the papaya, mango and banana trees. I used to refer to those excellent papayas as…um, bunny doo melons. (Sorry.)


They also entertained me while I worked, playing with my bare feet. Even though I weighed twenty times either of them, my feet were only twice as long as their hind feet, and shaped exactly the same way, which led them to suspect I was part rabbit. Truly, I felt honored to be trusted by someone so low on the food chain.

Vanity Fair Visits The Farm (aka World Headquarters of the Global Ecovillage Network)

Posted on by in Activism, Blog, Friends and Mentors.

I am always interested in the Farm because I attended Stephen Gaskin’s Monday Night Class metaphysical lectures in San Francisco, and later followed the story of the tribe that formed in those classes, became a cross-country caravan for the book tour of the book created from Stephen’s talks, and then created a rural commune. The commune they envisioned and created in Summertown Tennessee became arguably the largest and most influential commune of them all, launching numerous large-scale charitable projects, publishing books, founding and running a natural birthing clinic, and manufacturing and selling vegan, organically grown, food products. Eventually they created the concept of the ecovillage, inspiring the founding of ecovillages all over the world, which are connected through the Global Ecovillage Network. My friend, author/scientist/attorney Albert Bates, who joined The Farm in its early years, established and directed the Ecovillage Training Center, which is still teaching new generations to live off-grid while saving the planet.

by Jim Windolf
Vanity Fair
April 2007

The cultural cliché has it that the flower children danced at Woodstock, crashed at Altamont, and gradually shed their naïve ideals as they made themselves into ice-cream moguls, media magnates, and triangulating politicians. But the 200 people who live at the Farm—a 1,750-acre spread in the heart of Tennessee—have managed to hang on to the hippie spirit. It isn’t like they sit around talking about peace and love all the time, and hugging one another, and meditating, and eating tofu, and drinking soy coffee, and smoking weed, and criticizing the government, and making hopelessly earnest remarks—well, actually, it is like that, come to think of it. Farm residents do all that stuff, as I learned only too well during my four-day visit, this past January. But the Farm isn’t where you go to dream your life away in a 1960s-besotted haze. The place is active, fully engaged with the world. And it has a strong backbone in the form of 10 nonprofit companies and 20 private businesses.

Unlike the rest of us slobs, who sleepwalk through the workweek only to collapse at Friday’s finish line, the people at the Farm haven’t given up on the half-forgotten, laughable-seeming notion of making the world a better place. They have energy and enthusiasm. They take long hikes, they chop wood, and they actually bother to take part in marches against the war. They build their own photovoltaic solar panels, they grow tomatoes in backyard gardens, and they try not to be grouchy with one another. After dinner, when it’s time to wash the pots and pans, they don’t make a huge deal out of it by running the water full blast while listening to loud music, the way I do at home. For Farmies (as they sometimes call themselves), doing the dishes can be a meditative act involving a few inches of hot water at the bottom of the sink basin and some light splashing with a squirt or two of a non-petroleum-derived soap. They’re making a constant and conscious effort, in other words, to live without harming other people, animals, or the planet. So it’s not just some goofy lifestyle thing.

Read (a lot) more.

Passover Words by Iris Keltz

Posted on by in Activism, Blog, Friends and Mentors.

Next Year in the Oasis of Peace
by Iris Keltz 4/1/07

The cornerstone of Jewish tradition is the dialectic, the art of arriving at the truth through conversation involving question and answer. The rocky road to peace and reconciliation is paved through dialogue. At the Passover seder this year we will ask the four questions, (or maybe more.) In accordance with tradition we will retell the story of Exodus, from slavery to freedom. The precious gift of freedom has to be guarded by each generation but not at the expense of another people’s suffering.

During the seder, we say, “Next year in Jerusalem” a statement that raises many questions. For some, orthodox Jews, Jerusalem is a spiritual state not to be confused with a nation state. But Jerusalem on earth began over four thousand years ago as a Canaanite city and has known a succession of occupiers and conquerors—Romans, Byzantine, Persians, Umayyads, Abbbasids, Crusaders, Mameluks, Ottoman Turks, the British, the Jordanians and currently the Israelis. This year when we say, “next year in Jerusalem” can we imagine the possibility of sharing this war ravaged city, sacred to Jews, Moslems and Christians the world over?

Currently, hostile environment exists when progressive Jews and Jewish organizations dare to speak out. Let it be known, that Jews do not march in lock step and that AIPAC does not speak for all of us. To marginalize our voices diminishes all of us. When Dr. Norman Finkelstein expresses a profound disturbance that holocaust memory is invoked to silence criticism of Israeli government policies, know that he is committed to the survival of that country and he is a child of holocaust survivors. Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, focuses on the effects of a forty year occupation and the hideous separation wall that afflict the Palestinians. Both men believe that adherence to UN resolutions and International Law is the only way to resolve the sixty year old conflict that threatens to spread to the entire world. Instead of attacking these voices as anti-semitic or self hating, consider the wisdom they bring to the table.

Jewish Law explicitly guides us to ethical behavior. “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.” In 1998, I traveled on ‘Jewish Only Roads’ in a rental car with yellow license plates that identified me as a Jew which allowed me to zoom past checkpoints almost missing the turn off for Jericho, which was not honored with a road sign. Leaving the superhighway, I found myself driving on an old pothole-riddled road fit for donkeys. Palestinian towns do not get equal government funding for schools, roads and infrastructure, even when they pay taxes.

In the halls of Congress, I heard testimony from Israeli soldiers. One told a story of entering a quiet Palestinian village in the middle of the night with his platoon to arrest a young man. When an old woman stepped forward to protect her grandson, the soldier suddenly envisioned the face of his grandmother and knew that she would have stood up for him in the same way. The difference between ‘them and us’ dissolved and he left the army to become a Refusnik.

Some would have us believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is too complex for the human mind to comprehend. Throw religion, politics, government, nationalism into the same pot of stew and the result is indigestible. Remove the ism’s, the ideologies and the fear and we are left with this thought: Thousands of Palestinians are suffering human rights abuses as a result of a forty year occupation. The world needs open honest discussion within and without the Jewish community. The final solution will either create a true sanctuary for Jews and Palestinians—there’s land and resources for everyone to share—or it will condemn generations to ongoing racism, violence and war.

On my last trip to Israel/Palestine, I stayed at the Oasis of Peace, Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam. This utopian village was abnormally normal—Arabs and Jews lived as neighbors, sent their children to the same schools, sat in each other’s yards and shared the abundance. They prayed in silence in the white domed structure near the village cemetery. A rabbi once said, “The world rests on three things: On Justice, Truth and Peace.” Said another rabbi, “But these three things are one and the same: For if there is Justice, there is truth, and if there is Truth, there is Peace.” Next year may we all be living in an Oasis of Peace, where ever that may be.