About ten years ago, Beachwood Sparks were playing a set at Sasquatch music festival, on a giant stage in a huge field—to no one.
“I don’t even know if 30 people were watching us,” remembers bassist Brent Rademaker. “And there was, like, Imagine Dragons playing so loud next to us. It was like a bad dream.”
Adding insult to injury, a former member of guitarist/vocalist Chris Gunst’s pre-Beachwood Sparks post-hardcore group Strictly Ballroom, Jimmy Tamborello, was playing with festival headliners The Postal Service. “We played that miserable show that had no feel and no chemistry, and Jimmy’s playing in front of 18,000 people singing the words to every song. It was just like, ‘God, get us fucking home,’” says Rademaker. “And we had to drive some shitty van all the way back home. It was so bad.”
Perhaps the, shall we say, more conventional musical taste buds of the early 2010s weren’t overly receptive to the band’s pioneering blend of indie rock, country twang, and folkie three-part harmonies, but nowadays, when you’ll find the word “country” modishly affixed to any number of unrelated genres (emo, ambient, whatever), it seems the indie world has finally caught up to Beachwood Sparks.
And not a moment too soon. After releasing two great albums and an EP on Sub Pop Records in the early 2000s, coming back in 2012 for one more (preceding the ill-fated Sasquatch set), Beachwood Sparks went on indefinite hiatus (they never formally broke up). Now they’ve returned with new record Across the River of Stars, produced by Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes and released on Rademaker’s own Curation Records label, and featuring original members Rademaker, Chris Gunst (guitar, vocals), Farmer Dave Scher (pedal steel, vocals), along with drummer Andres Renteria (Nick Waterhouse, Bloody Death Skull) and Jen Cohen, a former member of San Francisco noise pop legends the Aislers Set, on keys.
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Synthesizing several eras of L.A music—think Asylum Records meets the Paisley Underground hanging out at the Jabberjaw—Beachwood Sparks were turn-of-the-millennium purveyors of cosmic American music whose non-trendy approach stood out of time, and as a result sounds a lot less dated today than a lot of the band’s contemporaries. “There were kind of like cowpunk-y bands and there was this burgeoning Americana thing, but that’s not what we were,” says Rademaker. “We were bringing country into indie and there wasn’t anybody doing things like us, doing harmonies over indie music and indie chord progressions.”
“That’s the cool thing about Beachwood. A lot of our fans came from this jam-adjacent Americana world, but if you look at the photo shoot we did for Magnet Magazine, I have an Unwound shirt on,” he continues. “We came from indie—we had like four Byrds records and two Burrito Brothers records. I don’t even know if we had all the Gram [Parsons] solo albums yet. We still had a lot to discover and that’s what made it really fun. We weren’t know-it-alls in the scene of what we were kind of getting tagged with.”
Across the River of Stars handily picks up where the band left off, announcing itself with a sweeping piano glissando before bursting into being with pedal steel and a wash of silvery harmonies, while also slotting in perfectly with the current vogue for all things twangy. But according Rademaker, if they’d foreseen how many bands of their vintage are currently making new records and/or on endless victory lap tours, they probably wouldn’t have come out of hibernation at all. “I think that would have stopped us because we don’t want to look like we would do something that everybody else does,” he jokes. “That has always been one of our big problems, to be scared to be seen as normal and doing what everybody else does—and then we complain about why we didn’t make it.”
The music world has welcomed Beachwood Sparks back with a slate of show offerings, including slots at Primavera Sound and Newport Jazz Festival, which they had to turn down for timing issues. But after so many years, the band finds it easy to remain zen—they know what’s most important. “When we have to turn down a festival, Chris and I always talk about, well it could be another Sasquatch Festival, so don’t worry about it,” says Rademaker. “I care about other bands more than I care about my own band, so going and playing festivals is super fun. I get off on going to see so many good friends and other bands play those festivals—but the thing that burns people out is promoting shit. Somebody who’s helping us with PR is like, ‘Oh, I’m talking to these TV shows. I’m like, Yeah, I mean, I’ll do it if it’s down the street, but I’m not going to spend any money and go out of our way to play on TV. Just to say we could play on TV. It’s got to be fun, you know?”
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As Rademaker has been touring since time immemorial (the 1980s), with the Beachwood Sparks and others, we thought it’d be apropos to get some of his insights on making life on the road a little more palatable—especially in these days of endless pontificating by people who know zero bands and have gone on zero tours about how touring is hard and no one makes money and blah blah blah. At the end of the day, Rademaker says, it really is about remaining positive and realizing how lucky you are to be able to tour in the first place. “Every promoter, club manager, sound man, cop who pulls you over at every checkpoint outside of El Paso—just put a smile on your face and be nice and know that touring is like a privilege,” he says. “It feels like everybody can do it, but they can’t, so if you get that far, don’t blow it.”
Below, Rademaker shares tips for life on the road, covering everything from how to make the most of your rider to navigating the backstage obstacle course. Some of these tips were learned firsthand while others picked up along the way from folks such as Jonathan Richman and Neal Casal, a musician who passed away in 2019 but whose wisdom lives on in every band who orders their hamburger plain.
Don’t go on tour with someone you hate
“I think the number one tip is don’t go on tour with somebody you hate because there’s nothing more embarrassing than fighting on some highway or rest stop in the middle of Illinois or in another country.”
Ask for Socks
“If you’re big enough to get a rider, ask for some socks—not white, for dark socks—because you’re going to need those. You don’t want to be some diva, but a good tip is to make sure anything that you can get on your rider are things that can last in the van, like socks—or stock up on batteries for your pedals.”
Organize your merch
“Have your merch in something that can easily get from the van to the venue packed up and mobile. You don’t want to be in a van with a bunch of boxes of CDs and records and T-shirts all over the place. I’m assuming that people can’t afford tour managers so just rolling up the T-shirts into a small roll and writing the size on there will help you so you don’t have to sit there in the dark with your iPhone looking for sizes. Use that painters tape that won’t leave residue and take a sharpie and write an S or an M or L on it. If you roll them up, that doesn’t take up much space.”
Don’t be a diva (and don’t let your bandmates be divas, either)
“If somebody in your band is being a diva, that’s a dangerous thing. You’ve got to take them aside privately and talk to them about it, but don’t talk about it in the moment. If the sound person is mean to you during the soundcheck, don’t start a fight then, just get through it. Don’t create that little drama triangle because those are the obstacles: your load-in, your soundcheck, the merch split if the club’s gonna take a percentage of your merch, and then getting paid. Those are the things to navigate. If there was a little board game, those would be the things you’d want to win and just make them as smooth as possible.”
How to get the low end you want (according to Jonathan Richman)
“Beware of the ‘heavy metal sound man’ if you’re a folk band. Here’s what Jonathan Richman told us. When we started playing festivals and bigger clubs—and we’re not a powerful rock band—[Richman] said, “In a very nice way, tell the sound man, ‘Half power on the subwoofers. That’s the low end.’” It was on my birthday in Spain. He’s like, “They’ll know what you mean because they really want to make it loud to impress their girlfriends, you know?” And I was just like, “No wonder you’re Jonathan Richman. You’re fucking so cute.”
Respect the headliners
“If you’re opening for somebody, figure out how to read the situation backstage. You don’t want to force yourself into somebody’s dressing room. You want to try to create a relationship, but you have to realize the headliners who are nice enough to have you on their show, nine times out of ten, they’re been touring a long time, and they have their boundaries and their system worked out.”
Respect the crew
“You really have to respect the crew. No matter what level you’re on, you have to respect the crew. If it’s at a club or a backyard party, you have to respect the pride of what people are doing because your time is onstage and you can make it cool—but it’s easy to kind of lose sight of that.”
Respect the van
“Your van is your livelihood, so you have to make sure that you check the oil and check all your fluids and stuff like that. And when you drive in the hills, like in Idaho or the Smoky Mountains, do not overpower your vehicle, especially if it’s full of gear and people or if you’re pulling a trailer. And know who the best drivers are: the ones that can be counted on on the long stretches or the ones that are better in city driving. Some people are better drivers than others. Some people like to do it.”
But if the van does break down…
“Once we were on our way to Spokane, we were going through the hills in Idaho, and I noticed that we were going really fast. And I was like, ‘Hey, take it easy on the van,’ and it was like ‘Fuck you, don’t don’t backseat drive. Don’t tell me what to do.’ But I knew it and we drove it way too fucking hot up and downhill, and the thing fucking broke down—we were literally in the middle of nowhere. We were more than 200 miles away from Spokane. And it wasn’t like [the van] overheated. It was one of those things that you can’t fix, it’s not like a hose.
The guy that pulled up, he said ‘I can put your van on the back of my truck and I can drive you to Spokane and then you can take it to the Ford dealer there and get it fixed, but you’re not allowed to be in the van, so you guys have to stay down the whole time because it’s illegal for you to ride in it and it’s super dangerous.’ We were 200 miles laying down on the seats while this guy put our van up on the back of his flatbed and he drove us all the way to the show. And we paid him a lot of money to do it.
We made the show and then we called Sub Pop and we said, ‘Our van’s in the shop. We can take care of the hotels but can you pay to get it fixed?’ It was like three grand to get it fixed. They paid for it, but this is why we got into debt—and the more in debt you go in with your label, the less rad your music sounds to them. You’re not geniuses anymore, you’re just another band in debt. That shine wears off a little bit. So a good thing is to have some support at home whether it’s a record label or a manager or your rich parents because if we didn’t have support—and that wasn’t the only time it broke down— to help us…just don’t go out without a home base and don’t go out without some some support at home.”
Neal Casal’s Tip for Not Getting Sick on the Road
“Neal Casal was a road dog. He played guitar with everybody—the Chris Robinson Brotherhood was a touring band, they were like a mini Grateful Dead, but before that he played with Lucinda Williams and just anybody. He was a hired gun for so many bands. He played a lot with Ryan Adams and he toured a lot. He taught me this: If you’re not a vegetarian and you’re touring and you don’t want to get a stomachache from eating weird food in weird parts of the country, just get a plain hamburger with nothing on it. No lettuce because when people wash lettuce and tomato and cut it, there’s a lot of germs that get spread that way. But at least the burger, ask for it to be cooked well done. Just a plain hamburger will get you through a lot when there’s not a lot of choices.”
