California places a distinct sonic stamp upon the music born within its boundaries. Owens had his Bakersfield, Parsons his Joshua Tree, and Malkmus his Stockton, and in their tunes you can hear dust, desert highways, and skateboards gliding over suburbia. The Donkeys have San Diego, and from that environment have woven a fundamental ease in their music – a rock, a roll, a sway, a slide – you could even call it a breeze.
On Ride the Black Wave, The Donkeys continue their easy rolling, classic vibrations, but add a mystery and tension that make this record their most lyrically and instrumentally compelling.
Recorded at San Diego’s Singing Serpent and mixed by LA’s Thom Monahan, the Telecasters have a golden shimmer, the drums seem to echo with a regional reverberation. The notes coming off the Rhodes float on like beer-buzzed afternoons, but just when you get lost in the hypnotic swirl of “Sunny Daze” the churning guitars begin to circle like sharks, reminding us of the realities beneath all beautiful surfaces. Ten tracks deep, Adrianne Verhoeven of San Francisco’s Extra Classic appears like the mythic Calafia herself, delivering a vocal that would bring Cortez to his knees.
So, it is with Ride the Black Wave that The Donkeys add their own stratum to California’s ever expanding musical frontier, while maintaining their golden “shine” as well as interjecting a tension with the sun and beauty. The record hypnotizes as much as it awakens; it poetically puts us at ease while we sit in traffic, peck at our keyboards in cubicles, or conversely, it accompanies us as we ride along desert highways, or sway with our lovers. It is about home; it is about waves, and surrendering to their movements, trusting that they will take us to where we truly belong.
3/16 – 3/20   Austin        SXSW
3/21/2015    Berkeley    The Starry Plough
3/23/2015    Portland    Holocene
3/24/2015    Seattle     the Sunset
3/25/2015    Bellingham    The Shakedown
3/27/2015    Boise    Treefort Festival  – Main stage
3/28/2015    Salt Lake City    The Garage
3/29/2015    Las Vegas    Bunkhouse Bar
4-3-2015    San Diego    Soda Bar
4-26-2015    Albuqueque    Low Spirits
4-29-2015    Memphis     The Hi Tone
5-2-2015    Birmingham   Firehouse
5-3-2015    Asheville    the Grey Eagle
5-5-2015    Washington     DC9
5-6-2015    Brooklyn    Shae Stadium
5-7-2015    Pittsburgh    The Brillobox
5-8-2015    Cleveland    Beachland Travern
5-9-2015    Cincinnati    MOTR pub
5-10-2015    Chicago    Schuba’s
5-12-2015    Denver    Hi-Dive