Chase Frank superstar

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

Chase Frank started music demure on the third-chair cello in an adorable trans-scholastic children’s orchestra, and was it all over the moment she first heard an electric guitar? Well, actually, she says: “I grew up in Long Beach with a single parent—the records my mom had that we listened to regularly were Stevie Wonder, who I loved, and Jesus Christ Superstar because she was a Sunday school teacher and tried to use it. I heard the electric guitar—‘My mind is clearer now . . . ’—and I was like ‘What the fuck?’ I remember the moment—‘Mommy, what’s that?’ I could not believe how that guitar made me feel—it was like Tommy! My Tommy moment. I was blown away by the guitar tone and how mean it was.”

That fed into Hendrix, and slowly Hendrix fed to Harvey, and between notable other accomplishments—like her Songwriters’ Supper Club at DiPiazza’s, or bringing Allen Ginsberg to Long Beach for a spoken-word festival she set up because she couldn’t afford to go to him—she hacked and hammered out the sound and voice she needed. She says she used to go watch Nels Cline play—Fibbers days or solo—and routinely stole ideas from his set-up (“I tell him all the time! I asked him to give me lessons!”) and worked up the reserve to let every musician she’d played with leave. Every time she’d add members to her music, it just kept getting prettier, she says, which was the wrong direction. It took three years (and solo tours, which she says she hated!) to match her songs to the mean guitar she needed—“The white-hot level I wanted to express!” she says. “I think life is pretty fucking angsty! Pretty nervewracking stuff, and I don’t mind getting into it!”

Her new album—white cover, white heat—was seized when the label got busted and the cops took every computer in the house. Start over? “Hell no!” she said, and she called the police every week—“They knew who I was,” she laughs—and the day the unrelated evidence kicked loose, she was the first person they called. Seven of those songs made January’s Midnight Manor EP—Chase with handpicked backers like Ahmad Jamal (drums/keys/sometime MC) and LaDawn Best (drums but what drums!) for lean clipped loop-unit-blues with iron vigor like PJ Harvey and a little of the outsider wildness of guys like George Brigman or Michael Yonkers. The Trust Us comp’s wobbly punk-waltz “Bipolar Belle” is the odd one; Manor likes more a pounded-down lattice of guitar under Chase’s particularly dramatic vocals: “Whatever you do, don’t claim you’re a friend of mine!”

“A lot of people think I’m a real Debbie Downer!” she says. “But everyone has a voice. I’m sure a lot of people said that to Nick Cave, too—‘Damn, Nick, can’t you write a happy song?’ And that pissed him off more and the songs got better. The stuff I listen to is pretty raw, and when you hear that, it makes you feel good. You feel the human condition there—you’re not alone.”

Now she is no longer alone either—longtime friend Ahmad is now official (“I’m a spaz, he’s not—it balances out.”) for the live sets—but she is also finally leaving hometown Long Beach for Austin, where positive notes at last year’s SXSW percolated a decision into action. (“They want music to happen in Austin,” she says. “They aren’t trying to shut it down constantly.”) This week’s show in Echo Park will be her official goodbye, except for one funny one that showed up only when she was all set to leave—California unready to relinquish commitment over another hometown girl: “We were invited to play a huge show at Safari Sam’s on July 26—a huge label showcase. I never played on a thing like that in my life, but fuck it—I’m leaving LA, I might as well try.” she says. “Shit, why not?”

RUBBISH WITH CHASE FRANK, THE PITY PARTY AND MALIK THE FREQ PLUS ART BY RONALD DZERIGAN AND CAROL POWELL ECHO CURIO | 1519 SUNSET BLVD | ECHO PARK 90026 | MYSPACE.COM/ECHOCURIO | THURS 8PM | $5 | ALL AGES

Tags: chase frank, echo curio, Long Beach, Music, nels cline