Lake Street Dive

Credit Shervin Lainez

After nearly two decades and one pandemic fronting Lake Street Dive, singer Rachael Price says the challenges of the Covid-19 era have brought the band closer together.

“We value our togetherness in a different way, because we couldn’t see each other for a couple years,” Price says. “We’re feeling really excited about making music. We’ve always been excited about it, but it feels different now.”

Lake Street Dive is scheduled to perform at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on October 4 and 5, nearly a year to the day after their last San Diego show. Price says she requested adding a second show at Humphreys for this tour, both because of the venue itself and its location.

“We like the boat listeners,” Price says of the people who sometimes listen to Humphreys performances as they float on the water just outside. “We thought that was cool.”

While in San Diego, Price says the band enjoys how there are “so many fun, beautiful things to do throughout the day.” They like to do outdoorsy things between shows, such as hiking and playing tennis or pickleball. “If there’s some sort of adventurous activity we can do, that’s what we lean toward,” Price says.

The band, which formed in Boston in 2004, is known for defying genre labels and instead embracing several musical styles simultaneously. Their latest release, a six-track EP of cover songs called Fun Machine: The Sequel, is no exception.

Released in September by Fantasy Records as the follow-up to a 2012 set of covers, the new EP that Price describes as “long overdue” gives the Lake Street Dive treatment to songs made famous by Carole King, Dionne Warwick, Bonnie Raitt, the Pointer Sisters, the Cranberries and Shania Twain.

The track list was hand-selected over a couple of weeks by Price, bassist/background vocalist Bridget Kearney, drummer/background vocalist Mike Calabrese and keyboardist/vocalist Akie Bermiss. The band started with each member contributing favorite songs to a large playlist. From there, everyone identified their top five picks, and the trimming continued until the track list was set.

Price, a strong and soulful singer, says deciding how to apply her voice to a song’s lyrics played a big part in the selection process. Band-written liner notes suggest joy and self-reflection were also factors, with Price’s immediate decision to record Raitt’s “Nick of Time” after hearing the lyrics in a new way serving as one example.

Price says the band aspired to record the EP “as simply as possible,” with the live feel of their version of Twain’s “You’re Still the One,” being a perfect example of that goal met. On other tracks, Price says the band “got a little too excited about the production,” though those recordings were “really fun too.”

Lake Street Dive, hero

Credit Shervin Lainez

The groove is what they change most while covering these songs, Price says, citing their 1980s pop take on the Cranberries’ “Linger” as “a very Lake Street Dive move.” But in songwriting, the band takes a fluid approach to material.

“We wouldn’t necessarily say, ‘I know exactly how to write a Lake Street Dive song,’ because everybody writes a little bit differently,” Price says. In the early years, everyone brought songs to the table that the band collectively refined. But Price says they now write together, “There’s a lot more collaboration, which changes the types of songs that we end up writing.”

In addition to changing their songwriting approach, over the years, the band has identified a performance style that works for them. When Lake Street Dive was starting out, the band’s first task was to simply get their audience’s attention. Price says they would put “as much energy as we possibly could into every moment,” an approach she describes as an “insecurity or fear that this was the moment we had to seize.”

Price says there is “a lot more maturity” at a Lake Street Dive concert in 2022. “We’re not really scared of the quiet moments, and we realized that they really help the show,” Price says, adding that the band’s focus for concerts now is “creating lots of moments.”

Lake Street Dive owes a lot of its success to that ability to create moments, with viral street performance videos and late-night music spots throughout the 2010s pushing the band onward and upward. After seven studio albums and countless live performances over the course of the band’s career, Price says the “genre-less music” that in many ways defines them is something they are comfortable with and actively embrace.

“We are captivated by the idea of constantly changing up what we do,” she says.

The post Lake Street Dive Revisits the Past appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Livewire, exterior

Credit: Madeline Yang

When Sam Chammas pulled up to our interview in his signature lime and Kelly green Volkswagen bus (big Scooby-Doo vibes), wearing a polo shirt bearing an embroidered Jabba the Hutt in place of the iconic swinging equestrian, I instantly recognized a fellow nerd. He’d asked our interview be conducted in a comic book store. An odd but telling environment to talk about Live Wire, North Park’s beloved bar he opened with Joe Austin in 1992. This month, it celebrates 30 years.

In the late ‘80s, Austin and Chammas worked at San Diego State’s college radio station KCR, a.k.a. “The Live Wire,” playing good and weird music that mainstream radio stations ignored.

After graduation, they went their separate ways—Austin pursuing careers in hospitality and education, Chammas in engineering—until 1991, when Chammas called Austin with an opportunity to lease a recently shuttered bar at the corner of Alabama Street and El Cajon Boulevard.

“The Boulevard was a train wreck,” Austin laughs. But it was the start of the “microbrew revolution,” whose counter-culture attitude meshed with their indie music inclinations. It was a rare chance for two friends in their mid-20s to launch a “home-away-from-home,” he explains, where the jukebox only played what they wanted.

Live Wire staff meeting from the mid-2000’s (partner Thaddeus has hand on chin)

Courtesy of Livewire

Their eclectic decor spans everything from year-round Christmas lights and jackalope taxidermy to ephemera collected from bands like Rocket from the Crypt or funk nights curated by DJ Ratty. It’s less bar, more basement—exactly the unpretentious vibe they wanted to recreate from KCR. They just had to convince the neighborhood and police they wouldn’t carry on the unwelcome traditions of the previous tenants.

“We promised to be different,” says Chammas. And they have, despite being designated a dive bar by many patrons and publications. “Live Wire isn’t a dive bar!” he insists. Austin agrees. “I’ve never kicked the dive bar denotation, but frankly, ‘dive bar’ implies you don’t care about it. And we clearly do care.”

Despite an impressive three decades as a bar being slandered as a dive bar, there have been struggles. Like when a windstorm knocked a branch through the roof, destroying the women’s bathroom. Or when “the bureaucracy” tried to shut them down for allowing dogs. (Dogs are still allowed and encouraged.) Strangely enough, what nearly ruined them was craft beer’s growing popularity that started around 2008.

Livewire, pool

Credit: Madeline Yang

“[2008-2012] wasn’t our busiest time,” admits Chammas, pointing to the proliferation of nearby breweries and tasting rooms that siphoned business away from bars. “I thought, ‘Maybe it’s time to sell.’ But Joe said, ‘Let’s do the 20th [anniversary].’ And 20 was a big rediscovery. That marked a revival.”

In 2018, they made longtime bartender and GM Thaddeus Robles a partner. Austin says the move was “a no-brainer,” especially as he and Chammas get older and North Park continues to change. “I used to find bullet shells—now, it’s an empty kombucha can,” Chammas laughs. “That’s a real tell.”

But he’s grateful they were, and continue to be, able to connect with a mix of people: hipsters, industry folks, craft beer fans, indie musicians, the kids of kids who came to Live Wire at the very beginning, and big nerds like us. Anyone who abides by the “cold beer, warm friends” way of life is welcome. Chammas doesn’t see any of them stepping away anytime soon.

“I don’t see myself letting go of Live Wire,” he says. “We bring joy to people.”

Live Wire’s 30th-anniversary celebrations kick off at 7 pm on Saturday, October 1, at the Lafayette Hotel’s Mississippi Room (the same space where they celebrated their turnaround 20th).

The post North Park’s Live Wire Turns 30 appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Christian Gonzalez of Particle FM

Xayn Naz

San Diego’s never really been known to have a thriving experimental or electronic music scene. But Christian Gonzalez hopes to help change that with Particle FM, a DIY online radio station he created in October. The station is now raising money to set up a physical space.

Gonzalez, who first began DJ’ing at UCSD’s student-run station KSDT, was inspired to create Particle FM by online radio stations like Dublab, London’s NTS, and Lisbon-based Radio Quantica, on which he had his own show for a time. Particle FM’s shows run the gamut, featuring everything from mutant jungle and heartfelt pop to international music and ambient sensory experiences—but the throughline is that you’re unlikely to hear these sounds on mainstream radio.

Gonzalez created Particle FM because he was frustrated by the lack of diversity in San Diego’s music and radio scene. “Our goal really is to give underrepresented people the chance to share their music,” he says, including LGBTQ+, people from minority backgrounds, and all those whose music tastes fall outside of the mainstream. Currently, half the station’s DJs identify as women or nonbinary.

Since its creation, the number of shows on the station has doubled. And though the vast majority of its DJs are San Diego-based, they’ve found listeners in countries across the world. Particle FM hopes its future physical space will give more people the opportunity to get involved, especially those who may not be able to afford the gear necessary to broadcast from home

“I picture it as a nexus for camaraderie, creativity, and learning facilitated by a shared passion for music,” said Laurie Piña, the station’s community outreach coordinator. “I honestly think it’ll mark a turning point in San Diego’s underground, and its music scene in general.”

The post The City’s Very Own DIY Online Radio Station appeared first on San Diego Magazine.