Page 64 - Sonoma County Gazette - January 2020

by Leslie Curchack
In the Midwest, he joined Lonnie Mack on the classic King label for a
year and backed up the Coasters, the Four Tops, and Little Anthony & the Imperials, with a band called the Click. In El Paso, he worked in “an all-black club including ten frightened white people hiding in the corner,” he says, and briefly played with James Brown. They didn’t get along.
An Evolutionary Current
Keyboardist Howard Wales will be in the spotlight at Cotati’s Redwood Café on Jan.11, with what he calls “an organ trio,” backed by guitarist Terry Haggerty and drummer Kevin Hayes.
Wales has led an improvisational lifestyle which carries over to his music. “I’m totally original. I don’t do cover songs,” he says in an early December phone interview from his current home in Weaverville.
He began performing in hometown Milwaukee, playing pop music on his Hammond B3 with local bands starting at age 20, before hitting the road for points unknown. Along the way, he acquired a 1949 Chevy panel truck from a judge for $85. His Hammond B3 traveled inside. Occasional hard times saw him subsisting on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and salads.
A decade ago I was about to have a grandchild, and a more real sense of the future was dawning on me. Reading the work of Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy and others at that time, I was moved by their insistence on a new story of a more sacred relationship between humans and the earth. A realization began to grow in me that I needed to do something bigger than I’d ever tried before, for my granddaughter and her future and for the future of our beautiful world which was clearly in jeopardy.
Wales arrived
in San Francisco
in 1968, where saxophonist Martin Fierro helped him get
a job in a tortilla factory and invited him to play on
the soundtrack
of the film, El Topo, described by a critic as an absurdist acid Western.
Elvin Bishop, and Harvey Mandel (Wales played on two of his albums), among many others, at the Matrix on Fillmore St. Wales hosted their Monday night jam. “It got really weird,” he says. “Everybody was there. Garcia came down all the time.” Wales also recalls performing at the rock meccas, the Fillmore, the Avalon, and the Family Dog. “It was a renaissance period. The whole scene was developing. Everything, including the people, was original.”
From 1970-72, Garcia and Wales collaborated, leading them to
A talk with Trathen Heckman, head of Daily Acts, started me on a collaborative project of making annual calendars with my nature photography as a benefit for them. The “In Love With Earth” calendar has grown and thrived these past 10 years, and each year brings messages and images to an ever-larger audience, to inspire love and cherishing for our amazing planet and its life. It highlights Daily Acts transformative solutions in building local sustainability and raises money to help them carry on their work.
Wales became a member of the blues-rock band A.B. Skyh in 1969 and jammed with Jerry Garcia, Santana,
With Daily Acts’ help, I found a way to use my art to promote a deeper understanding of ecology and the inseparable wholeness of the world. I also learned about the value of community building and noticed the little expansion of community the calendars themselves created. The project would not have succeeded without those who support it in different ways, from help with design to the people who faithfully buy one copy each year, to those who buy 30 copies to give to their friends.
I very much appreciate the support of the Sonoma Gazette as well as the many local businesses that retail the calendars at holiday time: the Mail Depot, Petaluma Market, Rex Ace Hardware, Copperfields, Cottage Gardens, Community Market, Sebastapol Hardware, Point Reyes Books, Nancy’s Fancy’s, and more. All this connection and support leads to more of the same, and I feel our power and hope as a humanity is in this interwoven fabric of connectedness, based on a culture in tune with the natural world.
PHOTO: Robison Godlove
Wendell Berry, the poet, tells us not to lose hope because we were made for these times. Hope is not easy, for the realities are harsh, and even my nine-year- old granddaughter expresses worry that she won’t be able to have a full life.
too weird, too quick.” Bill Kreutzmann considered him “a madman on organ, insanely brilliant.” Wales describes himself as “way out there.”
Yet my own changes these ten years - from feeling overwhelmed and self- enclosed - to feeling creative and connected within a strong community - give me hope that perhaps there really might be an evolutionary current moving us towards a new way of being in relationship with Earth and each other.
Exclusively an instrumentalist, Wales once said, “Jammers have no fear.” This has led to many backup roles. “Keyboards players don’t mean anything,” he adds. “They aren’t recognized compared to guitars.”
The 2020 “In Love With Earth” calendar is available at: earthlovinglens.com, as well as the retail stores mentioned.
“And now let us believe in this New Year that is given to us.” –Rainer Maria Rilke
From 1976 to 2014, he’s been on a lot of studio albums and demos. Another album with Wales and Garcia, Side Trips, released in 1999, was recorded at a long-ago Matrix jam. “I’ve been with the bad, the ugly, and the great,” says Wales. He has even backed up strippers and castle (baton) twirlers.
record the jazzy, all-instrumental album Hooteroll in 1971. Wales wrote 85-90% of the music, he says. He performed on three songs on the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album – Truckin’, Brokedown Palace, and Candyman, though he never became a bandmember. Bob Weir thought he was “much
“I’m a freebird, man. I’m gonna die that way.”
64 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 1/20