Deborah Crooks is a performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco. She is an intimate and edgy artist whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.

Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP "5 Acres" in 2003 produced by robertadonnay.com Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd.

In 2007, she teamed up with local producer benbernsteinmusic.com Ben Bernstein to complete 2007's "Turn It All Red" Ep and inaugurate work on a full-length disc.

Deborah's many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the
GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009's California Music Fest as well as MacWorld 2010. She has toured the Northwest as part "Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness" (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.

Home to Jo’s Coffee, The Continental Club, Guerra’s Tacos, Hotel San Jose and Yard Dog Art Gallery, the South Congress District  is my favorite place in the city. And they host their own unofficial SX San Jose event with live bands, drinks and general bonhomie.  We enjoyed the scene there before lining up for the Kelly Wilson and Bruce Robison show at the Continental Club‘s Gallery Annex. A little listening room upstairs from the main club, the Gallery small, cozy, and filled with keen listeners and avid fans of the married pair of songwriters.

I’ve long heard of how great Willis is and just recently caught the fact that she was collaborating with her equally accomplished partner. Rootsy, warm and excellent at their craft— she’s got one of those great sweet country voices— the duo and their band presented a spirited set of originals about love and heartbreak that made me believe in the power of playing music all over again.

MS: What I’ve noticed is that it’s all about the performer getting out of their own way. It seems like I’m always hearing from people [how] they love so much about their iPhone rehearsal recordings, and when they step into the studio to record things more cleanly, they don’t like it.

I know it’s not because the equipment in the studio makes them sound worse. What I’ve learned from my own experience and from working with other artists is that there’s this mental switch that happens when you step into the studio. There’s a lot riding on it. We put expectations on our performance and the outcome… often times an artist is thinking about trying to recreate that magical rehearsal session. To me, that breaks the performance because that’s the opposite of the mindset you were in when that magical rehearsal happened. You were just there… doing your thing… no expectations… no pressure. I honestly believe that when you can step into the studio with that attitude, you are closer to where you need to be to get that magical take. When you can’t, you just push yourself farther from it.


Q: How important is gear? Do you have any preference or thoughts on vintage vs. modern gear? As you set up Lost Monkey, what were must-haves and why?
MS: Gear is important to the point that you need something to record with and on to. Aside from that, there have been many great recordings made with gear that most audiophiles and engineers would laugh at. It kind of goes back to the performance attitude I mentioned before. That is far more important to me than gear. [It's] important to remember that most music listeners aren’t musicians or even hard-core audiophiles.

They want an emotional connection to a song … and they often can’t even say specifically why they do or don’t like a particular track. I believe the delivery and songwriting is what pulls them in … not the tones. After all that, different gear just gives you different colors to paint the music … and those colors range from vintage to modern to lo-fi to pristine. For example, with all the nice mics I have to put on drums, sometimes I reach for the old rotary phone handset I have wired up as a microphone. It sounds like total lo-fi shit when you listen to it alone, but when you blend that with the other drum tracks it can give the drums the right amount of edge they need for a particular song. I really like having variety. I often pick up things as I come across them.

My main must have for Lost Monkey was as many input tracks as possible so I could record bands live… to get that nice, tight energy. I’m running 16 simultaneous inputs using a Digi002 with an ADAT expansion. I have an 8-channel Tascam board that I use for preamps going to the ADAT and a few nice tube preamps I can use as well. I like the set up. It does well… would it be different if I had an unlimited budget? Absolutely. I’d probably have a 24 track tape machine and a vintage analogue console and preamps coming out my ears, because I personally like the colors that kind of gear brings… but I’d also keep my current stuff on hand. I like options.

Q: What producers and/or studio owners have particularly inspired you?
MS: I’ve been on a lot of sessions… on both sides of the mixing console. Through that I’ve seen it go down so many ways. I’ve found that there’s something to take away from every experience, whether it’s a new way to do something or a how not to do something.

 
Honestly, every single producer, engineer, studio and artist has taught me something. I observe and absorb a lot. I try to take everything in and incorporate it into what I’m doing. I find most of my inspiration [from] producers and studios that lean a little more towards that old school approach to recording. You know, getting a track down before you beat it to death and strip any and everything human out of if. I like it when a producer let’s the recording breathe instead of beating it into submission. A song is a living thing after all, and always serves you best when you let it be what it’s trying to be.

Q: Other than artists you’re recording and/or playing with, what/whose music are you listening too? Could you name three of your favorite albums of the past decade and why?
MS: I listen to everything… almost. And I listen to different things in different ways. I like that 10 people hearing the same song can hear 10 completely different things. Sometimes I listen to albums for the production. Sometimes I’m studying the drummer and sometimes I actually just like the song.

I really like Wilco’s production style and the chances they take in that respect. Glenn Kotche is an incredibly creative and tasteful drummer. Their latest album “The Whole Love” is great and I enjoyed listening to it from all those different angles. Also, I’ve been checking out Adele recently. She’s obviously an amazing singer and I find some of her less standard arrangements really refreshing. Again, I pull inspiration from all sorts of places. I can learn a lot from a song I don’t even really like.

It was a long day in the saddle, but after blowing through New Mexico, we made it to Austin, late late on Wednesday night/Thursday a.m.  Once upon a time people didn’t have iPhones, XM or Pandora Radio, on their travels but we don’t know they did it. Time to listen to some live music!

Kali dosa @ SBP

I like eating with my hands. It’s one of my favorite things about visiting India, this fork-free (unless you must ask), chop-stick-less way of consuming food. It’s efficient, and primal and sensual and nourishing all at once. The rims of stainless steel Indian dinner plates are ideal for providing leverage to fingers and thumbs, bits of chapati or roti. And what would a thali meal served on a banana leaf be if you took a fork to it?

Anyhow, I was thinking this, Friday morning, while eating my ‘last’ breakfast of my trip at the ‘Secret Breakfast Place.’ I wasn’t the only one among the party of 11 who convened for breakfast @ SBP, who was to leave Mysore soon, so a high standard of Indian breakfast was on order.

A KBJ student discovered SBP’s stellar idli several years back and word-of-mouth has led ever-widening groups of yoga students to the place. This is saying a lot as SBP is an out-of-the way tarp-covered shack on a side street in Lakshmipuram and while not so ‘secret’ anymore, you still need a friend to take you there the first time.

Friday’s party filled the two benches and two stools placed on the sidewalk to serve as a dining room. The seen-it-all proprietor took our orders with ease and quickly handed metal plates our way filled with idli and dosa, beet-root sambar and coconut chutney while a cook filled tins with idli batter and loaded trays in and out of a metal steamer. They served other customers who stood or crouched to eat, and handed some of us seconds. There would be no written bill: when we were finished, he told us how much, err, little, we owed (it would be a little over $5 for nearly a dozen people).

Yum. Delicious, inexpensive, fork-free Indian fare!