Simeon Flick grew up in Northern California as the child of musician parents, and was thusly exposed to music at an early age. Some seminal moments include listening to The Beatles, KISS, Led Zeppelin, The Knack, Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, Miles Davis and the Grateful Dead on the turntable at home, and presenting his own lip synch concerts to some of the same music at the daycare center. Anyone witnessing the painstaking way he would build guitars and drums from chairs, paper and random pieces of wood probably could have predicted that he would end up pursuing music as a career. There wasn't a strong inclination to study an instrument during his childhood, however, especially not when the clarinet was forced on him in fifth grade. "It was either that or sing in the choir!" he says.
It wasn't until early adolescence that Simeon expressed interest in learning music through an instrument--the drums, which his mother wouldn't allow. The next best thing seemed to be the guitar, which he began learning in earnest shortly after hearing the guitar playing of Eddie Van Halen on 1984, and Alex Lifeson on Rush's live album 'Exit, Stage Left'. "I wanted to learn the solo on Van Halen's 'Jump' and Rush's 'La Villa Strangiato'! Rush in particular seemed to have this atypical sophisitcation and dignity about their presentation that was kind of a positive influence as far as helping me feel okay about doing music for a living later on."
"In retrospect, I'm glad I was encouraged to learn a melodic instrument first, because it put me in touch with my true musical voice and provided an all-inclusive musical vehicle to siphon off the strain of my adolescence."
High school saw Simeon's emergence as a nascent musical force. He fronted essentially the same lineup under a million different names and went through various listening phases, including a newly emerging musical form called hip-hop, along with the staples of classic and progressive rock, pop and heavy metal.
Simeon also got his first taste of what would come to be known as alternative music, the signature of his generation and the music closest to his heart. He was first inspired in this direction from listening forays into early eighties punk rock. He formed a group with two friends, for which they chose a very improper and offensive punk-style monicker, and began exploring this newly emerging, eclectic musical style. They modeled their three piece indy-rock ethic after popular local underground bands like Picasso Shark and the Indigo Zeros.
His interest in classical music, in particular that of the classical guitar, also piqued at this time, and he began to both formally and informally explore fingerpicking styles on his mother's old nylon string guitar. He also tried his hand at composing the first of his own classical guitar pieces.
At fifteen he began to write his own music and lyrics and started to branch out and learn other instruments, including bass guitar, keyboards, the ever elusive drums and his first tentative stabs at singing.
Simeon also began exploring different musical mediums. During his senior year in high school he helped write and perform music for the drama deparment's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which gave him a feel for the theatrical possibilities in the application of music that he has continued to explore throughout his career.
The main highlights of this period include two performances with his band Nemesis–one during a lunchtime concert and another at his school's 'Senior Frolics' talent show.
"Senior Frolics was so rock and roll!" Simeon exclaims. "That was my chance to step out of the shadows and finally be heard. It was classic...I pulled out all the stops, including rock-god poses and guitar histrionics. It felt like a victory for the underdog."
* * *
College saw Simeon's arrival in Southern California, to a small liberal arts university in the quaint Inland Empire town of Redlands, just east of San Bernardino. "I was wanting to be close to LA, and I wanted to attend a school with a good music program," recalls Simeon. "I was kind of kidding myself in thinking I would be studying architecture like I'd originally planned!"
It was during one particular morning session in the introductory music class at the University of Redlands that Simeon discovered he was in possession of perfect pitch, or the ability to identify the pitch of any tone one hears. "The teacher went off on a tangent and started playing notes to see if anyone knew what they were...the whole class was blurting out wrong notes and the teacher zeroed in on me–along with the rest of the class–because I was the only one consistently naming the pitches correctly. I was revered as a freak for a short time after that!" He couldn't have asked for a more acute reassurance that he'd chosen the right major.
Simeon began formally studying the classical guitar with the late Terry Graves at the University of Redlands in the Fall of '88. Mr. Graves was the director of the guitar department, as well as an accomplished worldwide ensemble player, comprising one third of the De Falla Guitar Trio.
"Terry was a great mentor in terms of getting me mentally focused on the crucial elements of a good performance," Simeon recounts. "He taught me things that have crossed over into the other avenues of my musical expression, such as meditations to keep one focused and relaxed on delivering the best possible performance, along with the traditional technical exercises and concepts that helped me wrap my mind and fingers around the classical philosophy. I owe the solidity of my guitar technique to the classical training I received under Terry. He also encouraged me to continue composing and performing my own classical pieces for guitar, and supported my extracurricular musical endeavors wholeheartedly."
Of course these "endeavors" included playing in a string of inconsequential bands with a new group of like-minded musicians during his first two collegiate years, specializing in the hip alternative covers of the day as well as a slew of mostly instrumental originals.
In the summer of 1990 the extracuricular musical endeavors grew to include the founding of his first bona fide, stylistically distinct, professional band, which played original music of a like that suddenly seemed to be emerging all over the country, but most remarkedly in a city two states up the coast: Seattle.
CRUX was cofounded by Simeon, a college friend named Tom Ackerman (vocals, who went on to play with Skiploader, Sunday's Best and now The Kite Eating Tree), a friend of Tom's from Riverside named Bob Penn (drums, now of Wagner and Coco B's), and a man from the desert named Glenn Ziepke, whom Bob had brought along from their previous band, Sinister Fiend. Vallodin Wolfe (now working for The Agency), another U of R student, replaced Glenn on bass guitar after a few months.
"A CRUX gig, for me, entailed something akin to a primal scream session!" Simeon recalls. "The shows were a huge release, like therapy...and as a group we felt like we were a part of the movement going on in music at the time that was spearheaded by bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Fugazi and Mudhoney."
Hilights from Simeon's two year tenure in CRUX include sharing bills with the likes of Excel, Voodoo Glow Skulls, The Skeletones, Rocket From The Crypt, Brother Vibe and Spiderworks, recording an EP (Harvest, 1990), an LP (Slump, 1991), demoing songs for major labels at A & M Studios in LA, and performing at such LA clubs as Raji's, Coconut Teaser, Club With No Name, and the world-famous Whiskey A Go Go on Sunset Boulevard.
Simeon recalls one star-studded evening with great revery...
"It was the summer of 1991, probably our peak period as a band, and we had this bizarre gig up in Malibu. We spent the afternoon on the beach, loitered around the venue, and then the celebrity sightings started. Whoopi Goldberg putted by on a scooter(!)...Emilio Estevez was holding court with a bevy of women while we played our set...but the best of all had to have been right before the gig.
"We heard this rumor that John Bon Jovi was in the Albertson's adjacent to the club, and since we needed beer anyway we figured we'd head next door and investigate. Sure enough he was there, but we were less thrilled by that than the fact that he happened to be hanging out with Eddie Van Halen! They also happened to be there to get beer, and we approached them outside. Tom introduced all of us, one at a time, and when Tom got to me, Ed saw me lurking in the background, probably looking not the least bit star-struck(!), and said, 'Sonofabitch!!' in an icebreaking kind of tone before warmly shaking my hand. Then we all posed for some pictures together, with our drummer Bob piggy-backing Eddie and John posing seductively, with his shoulder strategically set as part of a cheezy rock pose that gave optimal exposure to the Superman tatoo on his arm."
Another amusing anecdote finds the four bandmembers on an LA set for the video shoot of Weird Al Yankovic's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' parody, 'Smells Like Nirvana'.
"Our friend Nicole Kornblum was a CRUX fan who also happened to be an avid Nirvana acolyte and a grunge afficionado in general," Simeon recounts. "She was actually in the original 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video–you can see her sitting in the front row of the bleachers with a striped T-shirt, Converse sneakers and shoulder-length hair–and she told us about the hush-hush call for the Yankovic parody.
"We showed up in LA and had to wait for a good chunk of the afternoon...I was already out of my head with excitement, but when I saw that Tony Hawk–who even then had already established himself as the Michael Jordan of skateboarding–was there to get in on things, that just took it up to another level! I ended up sitting almost right next to him on the top row of bleachers.
"The experience of filming the video was insane. It was filmed on the same sound stage, with essentially the same props, but the energy was manic, different. Everyone was eager to outdo the Nirvana version...so when the director gave the cue to start frothing the mosh pit out of the bleachers, people went NUTS!
"We had an ulterior motive for being in the video: one of us made sure to wear one of our band's T-shirts so we could try to get it on camera. I think Val got that job...he was the lightest out of the four of us–probably the sneakiest as well!–and thus he could ride atop Bob's shoulders more easily and hopefully facilitate the exposure. I'm not sure if we managed to get our band's shirt any screen time!...(I think they were on to us!)...but we were really elated about being paid scale for a few hours of fantastic work."
* * *
Simeon graduated from the University of Redlands in the Spring of 1992 with a Bachelor of Music degree in Classical Guitar Performance.
He also graduated from CRUX, as he was dismissed from the band in August.
"I think I got let go because I didn't change fast enough, my guitar playing and sound wasn't 'punk rock' enough, and apparently I got more attention than Tom(!). It was strange, because in my gut I knew we had outgrown eachother, could feel the end coming, wanted it even, but I didn't have the self-awareness to proactively make the change happen for myself. Still, I'll never forget how much of a shock and a letdown that last band meeting was."
Simeon used the new freedom to explore the possibility of a life outside of Redlands, traveling to the Bay Area in September to investigate a city close to his hometown; Berkeley, California.
Before he departed, he managed to start a collaboration with a friend still attending the U of R, a one Michael Park. Michael had recorded a few of his original songs at a mutual friend's studio, and was in the process of putting a band together to play his material. Simeon seemed to be the perfect musical and personal foil to give life to Michael's compositions, so they began to collaborate. They wrote one of their most memorable songs together during one of a handfull of jams in the basement of the same U of R dorm where Simeon had lived some two years before. Senorita would become arguably the most requested song in their canon, and would ultimately go on to be featured as background music on an episode of MTV's Road Rules.
As if to completely free him from his past and focus him on his musical future, Simeon experienced the horror many musicians face at least once during their careers; the theft of all of his guitars (four of them, along with most of his tape collection) from the back of his car in a Berkeley parking lot. The shock of the event inspired his exodus from the oppressive city back to Redlands, where his immediate future awaited him.
"I think I was a bit numb after the theft...but in a way it knd of helped me leave CRUX behind and provided a wiped slate for me to reinvent myself. I was eager and relieved to get back to Redlands where it was safe(!), and where friends were waiting, and give this new band a shot. I remember thinking that musically I was ready to try my hand at some singing, even if it only entailed backing vocals at first. I was ready to let my voice emerge in every implication of the phrase."
During Simeon's absence, Michael had managed to recruit a bass player and fellow student named Dave Napolitan, and with the addition of drummer Steve Moretti–another U of R attendee–in January of 1993, Sages of Memphis was born. Moretti was quickly replaced by Michael Ryan, a born-and-bred Redlands local who added a more seasoned, jazzy feel to the Sages sound.
The band took their name from a line in 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Simeon found himself changing musical direction in an unforseen, emphatic way.
"The people who knew me from CRUX were pretty surprised when I turned up in Sages playing hippie jam rock a la Dave Matthews, Santana, Phish and Blues Traveler! My shift in interest corresponded with the sounds of those aforementioned bands that would rise to ascendancy in popular music two years later. I never questioned it...it just felt like a natural transition...and I did bring some remnants of the grunge mentality into Sages...but my friends and old bandmates were, nevertheless, initially thrown off."
Highlights from Simeon's four-year tenure with Sages of Memphis are many and varied. Not some five months into their existence, they were asked to be the opening act on a bill for the University of Redlands' annual Spring music festival--Mayfest--which was slated to be co-headlined by one of their heroes, Fishbone. Also on the bill was School of Fish, an up-and-coming act that was garnering frequent airplay on Southern California radio stations at the time. Rounding out the evening of music were two familiar local bands from Simeon's CRUX days, the Skeletones and Voodoo Glow Skulls. The "local Redlands heroes" were featured on the front page of the Redlands Daily Facts the following day, an honor which none of the other Mayfest bands could claim.
They managed to cobble together their first demo tape in time for their Mayfest appearance, a six-song opus they entitled 'One Take Jake', simply because each song was recorded live in one take ("except for Sister Everything, when Dave fell asleep and Sim got food poisoning," the J-card deadpanned).
They eventually made it in to various studios for more prolonged, professional recording efforts, and produced two full-length albums: 1994's 'Jewel', recorded at SRO studios in Fontana, which contains many a popular live staple (including Butterfly, which was also featured on another episode of MTV's Road Rules), and 1997's 'Year Of The Elepant', recorded at Waterworks West in Tucson, AZ by Jim Waters, whose credits include early Sonic Youth and the John Spencer Blues Explosion.
In the Fall of 1993 Simeon capitalized on an amazing opportunity by transcribing two songs for the guitar tablature edtion of Stone Temple Pilots' first album, Core, which was subsequently published by Amsco. "I transcribed 'Dead And Bloated' and 'Sex Type Thing', which was the big hit off that record at the time. It was a nice little sideline that got me published and also paid fairly well for the work I did. It was a great experience."
Sages of Memphis had the rather inversely portentious privelege of sharing bills with bands that would go on to greater success. They also continued the trend they started with their Mayfest appearance by performing with bands that had made it big in the eighties and have since faded.
Between '94 and '97, Sages shared the stage with a pre-'Date Rape' Sublime, The Untouchables, Geggy Tah, Matt Nathanson, showed up in Lake Havasu for an aborted Spring Break gig opening for the Romantics, and played on a bill in Arizona with a then relatively unknown band called No Doubt, who would release 'Tragic Kingdom' shortly thereafter. They also played on a dream bill at Clairemont College with Leftover Salmon, who were the paragons of the successful underground jam-band ethic that Sages of Memphis sought to emulate.
Simeon made the tough decision to leave Sages of Memphis in April of 1997, shortly after the release of 'Year Of The Elephant'.
"It felt like it was time to move on in a lot of ways," Simeon reflects. "There's a mild stigma attached to being a hanger-on in the town where you went to college(!), although we did enjoy a great deal of local celebrity and success on and off campus, and were even starting to take stabs at playing LA. But we were big fish in a small pond; we needed to expand our horizons by relocating to a new town with a bigger and better scene. At the very least we needed to start touring more extensively. I didn't see any of this happening because as a band we seemed to be very dug in and insulated, too comfortable, not wanting to risk a change, or risk the possibility of rejection or failure in a more critical environment.
"I was also starting to come into my own as a singer/songwriter, which brought me into conflict with Michael's continuing vision of the band as an exclusive vehicle for his music. After four years of personal woodsheding, and even through a kind of informal mentorship from Mike, I was starting to bring in good material that was being overlooked. I had grown too much and was ready for more responsibility than our band dynamic could allow. I think also that by '97 we had pretty much missed our window as far as anything big happening for us as a band. I felt ready and eager to tackle a different kind of music that I'd been working on, music that didn't fit in under the overall rubric of Sages of Memphis material.
"I regret leaving when I did in that we'd just put out a record we had to pay off...but I think everyone realized that it needed to happen, even though my decision ended up releasing a world of hurt and conflict and, eventually, separation between us. Hindsight is 20/20...I know now that there was no stopping the accelerated alchemical frenzy of my own evolution. I had to break away and explore my own potential, not as a focally distracted side project, but as my sole endeavor. I needed it to be okay for me to grow."
* * *
Simeon had spent most of his twenties playing in bands, so it was a natural decision for him to refrain from forming another group in order to take a break and reassess his creative impetus.
"I went from a band where I got canned for not changing fast enough to a band where I had to leave because I changed too much! I think I finally got to a point where I realized I had something to say, was the only one who could say it, had the necessary talent for it, and needed to make my saying of it a full-time endeavor. At the very least, I was shell-shocked from all the stereotypical band drama and trauma and needed to spend some alone-time reevaluating my needs as a songwriting musician. I was itching for indemnifying self-reliance."
Simeon continued to teach music to guitar and bass students at Sliger's Music in downtown Redlands (he'd been teaching there since 1995), while he simultaneously demoed new and old material on his recently purchased four track recording machine. Some of these songs represented a progression on a solo artist style he'd begun developing as early as 1992, and aspired to lyrical and conceptual complexity as much as musical depth and sophistication. Other demos took on a heavier tone that seemed to draw their sonic influence from Simeon's past musical exploits in CRUX, but also seemed to bear the fruit of various accumulated influences, including Fugazi, 311, Quicksand, Primus, The Police, and the classic R & B and funk that his brother Nathaniel brought into their reemerging musical collaboration.
Simeon and Nathaniel hadn't played together in a band scenario since the 'Nemesis' days in high school, but had nevertheless found time to jam during holiday get-togethers at home. Nathaniel had been living in Arizona since 1993, playing bass with many high profile performers on the Arizona circuit, including Freddie Duran and Calvin Jones, and would occasionally come out to Redlands to visit. Simeon had been contemplating another change in musical direction as early as 1996, when their collaboration took on a more inspired air. Occasionally, between late '96 and '97, when one of the brothers visited the other, they would rehearse as a three-piece, with a friend of Nathaniel's named Dave Cates (Jimmy's Chicken Shack, Amazing Radio Prophets, Carden, Brimstone Flowers) behind the drum kit. "In retrospect," Simeon reflects, "our budding mutual exploration of music was one of the undeniable catalysts that precipitated my decision to leave Sages. However, I didn't rush in to a new band with them because I wasn't keen on moving to Arizona, and also needed time to reassess my life direction without immediately jumping into a new distraction."
In the meantime, Simeon used the new freedom to explore other opportunities for musical growth.
In the fall of '97 he signed on to be the drummer in an unorthodox backing band for the University of Redlands' drama department production of the Sam Shepard play 'Curse of the Starving Class'. It was his first such experience with drama-related music since participating in his high school's production of Twelfth Night, and the old air of creative fulfilment from the stage filled his senses once more.
"We basically did an opening set, which consisted of covers by the Who, The Band, and other bands of the period (the play is set in the '70's), and then we would bring it down as the first act began, popping in occasionally with incidental music for certain scenes. Then we would play into the intermission, and at the end of the play we would do the big rave-up recap, where all the actors would come out and receive their ovations and take their bows.
"I remember having to do a drum solo of sorts during the opening set...I wasn't playing on the best drumset in the world, and on the second night the kit got the best of me(!). I went into the solo and dropped both my sticks!! Now usually, if you drop both sticks you can just keep the bass drum going with your foot, but one of the sticks fell into the bass drum pedal and totally jammed it to the point where it didn't work and I had to stop playing completely to get it out of the way! There was this painfully huge chasm of silence where I was supposed to be 'going off' and I was totally embarrassed.
"It really was an amazing experience, to be such an integral part of the play...it was my first professional engagement on drums; I got paid a couple hundred dollars for a four-night run, which was a great holiday supplement to my teaching income.
"The play had kind of an apocalyptic, Doors-esque feel about it, and it's funny because for a lot of it I ended up channeling John Densmore...a lot of the types of drum beats and fills he did with the Doors worked perfectly with the incidental music needed for the play. Out of the same spirit of onomonopoeia that the Doors used so skillfully in their music, I tried my best to be involved with and accentuate what was going on in each particular scene for which we were providing ambiance; during one particularly intense monologue, the central character mentions something about a 'heartbeat', at which point I would pound out an insistent heartbeat on one of the toms. Feeling so intertwined with the drama really left this indelible impresson on me.
"As 'the band', we were treated with a combination of half-joking, half-serious reverence and suspicion(!). There was kind of a division between the actors and musicians offstage...it was a unique situation really; I can't recall ever having seen a play with a contemporary rock band providing the music!...but we all seemed to bond during the shows, which is the wonderful norm when a group of people are focused on the same singular purpose."
Two of the 'Curse' band members, Jeremy Donald and Dan Sloyan (whose shoddy drumkit Simeon had borrowed for the play), also happened to be big Police fans, and a plan was quickly hatched to form a Police tribute band to play parties on the U of R campus. Dan undertook the difficult role of 'Stewart Copeland' on drums, Jeremy slid into Andy Summer's guitar-god shoes, and Simeon stepped up to play 'Sting' on bass and vocals. As if primed by their experience together in the play, they threw themselves into the drama of their respective individual and collective roles by wearing apropos stage gear (Simeon even dyed his hair blonde), adopting British accents, and even pretending to feud in the manner for which the Police were purportedly infamous. The choice of a name was the easiest part of the whole affair; something different, yet the same–The Cops.
The Cops played a handfull of gigs during the University of Redlands' graduation festivities of May, 1998 and 1999. "I've never been a part of such a well-oiled hype machine!" Simeon reflects. "Our appearances became these much anticipated, much ballyhooed affairs, thanks in no small part to the U of R's Johnston Center community, Dan Sloyan's status within the community, and his promotional acumen (he's the son of an LA music industry bigwig).
"We had a hillariously strict hype protocol for the shows(!). First, we wouldn't go onstage until the venue was packed with people. Then we would have this announcer, Steve I think his name was, get on the mic and hype the crowd to a frothing frenzy. For a few of the shows, Steve introduced us as though we were a contender for the heavyweight title(!), declaring our combined weight along with the catchphrase 'Let's get ready to rummmmmblllle!'. By the time we would launch into the first number, usually 'Next To You', the intoxicated crowd would go nuts. We were almost like celebrities around campus! The gigs were extra memorable because they were like an emotionally charged farewell to graduating students; I was familiar with many of them on some level."
* * *
In the Spring of '98, Simeon began contemplating a major change of direction. Since his own graduation from the U of R some six years prior, he had continued to maintain a semi-regular practice regimen on the classical guitar. In his spare time he would hone his technique and steadily add to his repertoire with his own transcriptions of Domenico Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas, as well as many of the key 20th century guitar compositions that comprise the essential modern repertoire. Inspired in part by his consistent post-collegiate work, and by his desire to once again be on the learning side of the teacher/student paradigm, Simeon applied to the graduate music program in classical guitar at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
"I think I was ready for a change all around, ready to try something different with my life in a brand-new place," Simeon says. "I'd been in Redlands for a cumulative ten years, and felt like it was time to leave the safety and ennui of an all-too-familiar town to broaden my horizons. A graduate program that would continue to build on what I'd already learned–as well as straighten out some of the bad habits I felt I'd accumulated–seemed like the right course of action at the time."
Despite having received nothing more than pending approval from CU, Simeon packed up and moved to Boulder in October of '98, and was finally accepted into CU's graduate music program on a probationary basis in November. He began studying with Charles Wolzien, the director of the classical guitar department, in January of 1999.
"Charles gave me what were arguably the most helpful four months of lessons I've ever had. By the time the semester ended all my bad habits were corrected, both my left and right hand techniques were up to speed, and my tone and projection were increased exponentially. I was easily able to satisfy the conditions of my probation."
One of the non-collegiate hilights from Simeon's first months in Boulder include two recording sessions in a new acquaintance's basement studio, where he was able to add drums to some of his four-track demos.
"It was the first time I'd played drums on any of my recordings, and it was really exciting to have these completed demos of my music with me playing every instrument! I was conscious of a certain reassuring indemnity developing from that evolving self-sufficiency; I knew that the more things I was capable of doing on my own, the less outsourcing I would have to do, the less dependent I would be on other people for the fulfilment of my musical vision. It's kind of sad how negative band experiences can shape someone that way...still, it has led to a lot of positive growth and development for me and my music, and I think I was headed in this direction anyhow."
Simeon continued to write and demo new material through the winter, but found it difficult to pursue his muse once school officially started in late January of '99. "Those demos with the drums on them got me through four months of graduate school, during which I was unable to write or record anything! I was only enrolled in one class (the hardest in the major), and taking lessons with Charles, but I had absolutely no free time for my music."
The epiphany came when, upon pulling an all-nighter to complete the monolithic end-of-term paper for the aforementioned "hardest class in the major," Simeon realized that he didn't have the same passion for classical guitar that he did for the music he had been writing, or even that his term paper subject himself–Andres Segovia–had had for the classical guitar. He made yet another tough decision and dropped out of CU Boulder after only one semester of enrollment.
"Everything in my circumstances and environment–not to mention my heart–were conspiring to tell me that an advanced degree was not what I needed or wanted," Simeon states. "The irony of being in a graduate music program was that I felt completely separated from music in general, not to mention my own. The cost/benefit analysis of remaining in CU Boulder's music program was projecting an uninteresting and umpromising future, most likely in teaching, in an instrumental field that is paradoxically still struggling for respect and prestige and yet glutted with hopefuls. Then, during my last lesson with Charles, I think he decided that he needed to be harsh in order to motivate me to keep my work up over the summer(!). That lesson left a terrible taste in my mouth and was yet another catalyzing agent in my decision to drop out. After that, I didn't look back; I was done with school."
* * *
Simeon arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona, in December of 1999, having just evaded the first of the Winter snows out of Boulder. He had postponed the exploration of a new project with his brother and Dave Cates in favor of testing the graduate school waters, and it felt like a good time to take this erstwhile impetus off the back burner. The experiment in higher education had been somewhat of a wash, his twenties were quickly coming to a close, and he wondered if there wasn't still hope for a shot at the brass ring with a band. The idea of a solo career was, once again, temporarily shelved.
Three Faces immediately began rehearsing upon Simeon's' arrival. They took their name from the one song Simeon had contributed to the second Sages of Memphis album, 'Year Of The Elephant'. It may not have been the best choice of names for a band, but it reinforced the emerging notion that Simeon was now the creative center and frontman in his musical endeavors. The fitting nomenclature symbolized the culmination of his post-Sages efforts to find his own voice and the new vehicle in which to express it. It also signified an apropos return to simplicity in that the choice of a three-piece band format left ample room to stretch out musically, but it also demanded extra care and conciseness in composing the material, the kind of attention to craft that Simeon had already begun to give his music as far back as his late Redlands period.
Simeon rose to the challenge and began to write material that was as sophisticated as it was simple.
"I really got into pop arrangement at this point, because I figured that this was the best way to make something happen for us as a band. I made a conscious effort to compromise for the sake of accessibility wherever possible, and yet maintain an interesting and innovative feel to the music for my own and my bandmates' enjoyment. The idea was to sneak the innovation in under the radar, which was essentially what the Police–our primary collective influence–had done in the early '80s. Dave was also the kind of drummer who played best and reacted more favorably to high-energy, gripping music that jumped out of the speakers and immediately grabbed the listener. So the pop philosophy was externally reinforced, and this was where 'accessibly innovative' began to take shape for me."
"My biggest influences at the time as far as how I wanted Three Faces to sound were the Police and Jeff Buckley," says Simeon. "The Police had this amazing knack for sounding like ear candy on the surface and like cheeky, brilliant virtuosos to the more learned and discerning listener; it's an unbeatable combination. There's a wider range of people being stimulated than just your average pop music listener. When you're popular and successful AND you have the respect of your fellow musicians, you're in a very unique, amazing place. I wanted our music to be a creative achievement at every level of discernment.
"Jeff Buckley wasn't so much an influence as an utter mentor. I completely absorbed him to the point that I was essentially a Buckley clone when I first appeared on the San Diego scene in 2001! At this particular time, he was the only one who had created music that I could relate to as far as providing a like-minded paradigm for my own writing. I'd been searching for a guide and he fit the bill perfectly with his virtuosity and approach to dynamics. As I was to learn later, he was a trained guitarist first and a singer later, like me. He was pushing himself to grow and be his very best as an artist, just as I seemed to be. He'd had an absentee musical father as a child and had a sensitive artist's disposition prone to bouts of melancholy, which rang a familiar bell as well. And he was wild, utterly wild in his musicality...
"The circumstances all conspired to intensify the posthumous bond I and many others formed with Jeff: I was in the middle of a protracted, emotionally difficult breakup, and there seemed to be a simultaneous swell in the increasing post-mortem appreciation of him and his work on the music scene, heightened mainly by his untimely, tragic death. The millenium was also drawing to a close, which also coincided with the end of my twenties, the dreaded 'Return of Saturn!', the end of my youth.
"I was really putting a lot of work into my voice at the time and Jeff became an ad hoc teacher. I learned the ins and outs of vibrato (it's taken a while to slow my vibrato down from the rapid warble he surely gleaned from his French influences), hashed out my high range falsetto, and worked hard to develop the sustain he'd exhibited on his version of Leonard Cohen's 'Halelujah'.
"On the other side of the coin, I came to appreciate the individuality of my voice in terms of being aware that I was capable of some things that he didn't seem to be just from listening to his recordings (although we are both Tenor I's, I seem to have more bass in my timbre, for instance).
"It was around this time that I decided to cut out any and all forms of smoking in order to completely dedicate myself to developing my singing voice to its fullest potential. There was more than one caveat against smoking, however: both my paternal grandparents had died from complications related to smoking-incurred illnesses. So it was a no-brainer."
Three Faces entered John Herrerra's Clamsville studios in Mesa, AZ in March of 2000 to record their three-song demonstration CD. The demo was never properly titled, packaged or released under the Three Faces monicker, but it would later form the basis of Alpha Ray's DemoEP in San Diego. Despite nascent signs of the intra-band tension that would ultimately doom their collective musical association, they still managed to capture the essence of their brash-yet-polished sound with the in-your-face production on the 3 songs, 'Wire Aunt Godiva', 'Retrograde' and 'Tremore'.
"It was the first time, besides the recording of 'Three Faces' with Sages of Memphis in '96, that my own songs were properly recorded," Simeon recalls. "It was quite a rush...we were all excited about the material and for our prospects as a band."
During the initial months of developing the band, Simeon had the opportunity to get involved with a company called Motivation Through Music, which was the brainchild of a one Robert Van Arlen Smith, whom Simeon had met through new mutual friends. It represented yet another opportunity for Simeon to blend mediums and also stoked his dream of finally leaving the world of day jobs behind and becoming a professional musician. This time it was in the support of Robert Smith as part of an ad hoc backing band that helped Robert weave musical principles into a program that was designed to boost the morale, and ergo the productivity, of the employees and corporate heads of the client companies.
"MTM gigs were very rock n' roll, very theatrical," Simeon remembers. "But they also seemed productive, professional, almost revolutionary in a way...a seemingly incongruous mixture of left and right-brained worlds.
"A couple of us would meet with the client ahead of time and develop their own 'theme song' and tailor a program for their specific needs. Then we'd go do the gig at the company or convention hall, playing the theme song and providing musical examples for Robert as he needed them.
"One of the best moments in the program had to be when we would pull out the 'Boom-Whackers', these colored plastic pitch pipes that were made by some guy in Northern Arizona. Each pipe was pitch-tuned and had a corresponding color. These were passed out to different sub-sections of the audience and were used to encourage not only intra-corporate unity but also effective communication between departments of often disparate function. Seeing these grown men and women playfully banging these things, even knocking out a cohesive melody on them, was a constructive regression of Romper Room proportions!"
Another hilight had the MTM team making two trips to New Jersey/New York in the Summer of 2000 to do the show for a big corporate client there. "It was my first time visiting that part of the East coast so I was really excited just to be able to travel as part of my job. We actually got to go in to New York City one night and take in a little night life; we wandered around Soho and the clubs on Bleeker street, feeling the humid Summer air and reveling in the newness of it all...we were also somewhat revered, almost like famous rock stars, by the client employees...so it was all quite exhilarating."
MTM was fulfilling on many levels, but it ultimtely failed to provide the necessary financial stability for Simeon's new life as a professinal musician. The company was in its initial development phase during that time, and Smith couldn't afford to pay his team much more than a prefunctory, sporadic wage. As the summer drew to a close, Simeon bit the bullet once again and applied to yet another temp service for work. (Simeon had worked occasional temp jobs all through his twenties, and had held several temp positions in as many diverse fields during his time in Boulder in order to make ends meet.)
Meanwhile, things with Three Faces were simultaneously grinding to a halt due to intra-band tension arising from conflicts of interest and creative differences between all three members. The website had been designed, and a couple of live show performances–at venues like Bash On Ash–were given, but it wasn't panning out. Both situations came to a head at the same time, and the aftermath found Simeon without a drummer and with his dream of a life lived through music dashed by the resulting necessity of a new full-time temp job working for the state of Arizona.
Simeon thus found himself in as desolate a headspace as when he'd first arrived not some nine months before. Once again he took his creativity inward and continued to write new material whenever his schedule allowed. Many of the songs that he wrote during this "Arizona period" have become staples in his current solo artist repertoire; 'Can't Wait 'Til I Die', 'Do It & Leave', 'Good Graces', 'Surrender Song' and 'Ingenue' would eventually find their way onto his second solo record, 'Indigo Child'.
"My State temp assignment was great because I still had a lot of free time for me to keep in touch with people via email(!), and for me to explore and hash out new song ideas. (The low cost of living also allowed me to simultaeously save money.) Inbetween intermittent filing and admin assignments I was working up lyrics to exciting new songs, surfing the net for opportunities for my music, and plotting the Flick brothers's escape from AZ."
Simeon began consistently daydreaming about leaving the arrid, blazing hot wasteland of Arizona behind him for someplace new and more temperate and promising and alive in a way that was antithetical to the futility he had experienced in the desert. Scottsdale had been nothing but the disappointment of failed potential, friends that had been gained and then seemingly lost in the blink of an eye, and the virtually nonexistent local original music scene. So it was that in the last quarter of 2000 he and Nathaniel prepared to move out West, return to their native state of California and pursue music in a town Simeon had had his eye on since his earliest days in Redlands: San Diego.
To Be Continued...