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San Diego Troubadour, May, 2005 Saving Room for Dessert By Chuck Schiele I've always said that my favorite souvenir from being in the music business is in the people I've gotten to meet and gotten to know along the way. Besides huge dollar amounts, of course. I met Simeon Flick (who insists his name is not some made-up Hollywood name) about a year and a half ago on a gig. It was one of those nights where a coupla guitar players made sure they introduced themselves to one another before the night was over. About a year ago, I reviewed his CD Soliloquy. And by now, after quite a few gigs as backstage pals where we generally drink beer and borrow each other's batteries and guitar chords, we've actually started to become good friends. What a great angle from which to write about an artist and what's on his mind. Enter Simeon Flick. "I can eat a horse!" he replied when my fiancee, Joanna, asked him if he was hungry at a recent soiree at our home. It was a weird little soiree. Half of the invited guests happened to be in the middle of a three-day fast. Simeon and I were chatting by the barbecue, taking delight in how this little "twilight zone" factor will render more seared ahi and chicken for him and me. Pretty soon we were sitting at a table in the kitchen listening to the Kind of Blue CD by Miles Davis. We're drinking red wine, in complete awe of the food, and scarfing to "So What." Listening. We listened for a long time. The funny thing about Miles is that he's one of the few who plays music that makes musicians shut up for a second. There we were. A warm spring California Saturday night at the beach. Roasted Potatoes. Friends carrying on in the backyard twilight. Coltrane's taking charge of his 32 bars of freedom and all we can say is nothing. Shaking our heads, listening to the masters. I tried a cheeseburger. We started chatting about music. Now, I knew the first time I saw Simeon play that he was a well-educated musician. Simeon's intelligence – and his intelligence for music – is an obvious thing. I could tell for several reasons, but mainly by his choices when it comes to chord selection, composition, and how the melody is related and incorporated. Simeon is a composer as much as he is a songwriter. With fluency, he's extremely adept in classical, jazz, and rock music forms, throwing each into his own music stew where it is seasoned with equal amounts of homage and disregard for what has already been done. He manages that fine line with apparent ease. With complete modesty, Simeon is a fierce and underrated guitar player, not to mention a killer alto with a big brain for intelligent rock poetry. We swigged the last of our wine and poured some more. We noted that Kind of Blue is one of the best things ever accomplished in music. And I realize we have enough time to sit and chat a bit, when it occurs to me to ask, "Where did you learn to play music, Simeon?" Miles was still blowin' in the background as our friends were still out in the backyard fasting by the food table. In the comfort of being a coupla music dudes talking about music dude stuff, Simeon explained, "Well, I started playing guitar when I was 14. I took a month of lessons, but, it didn't take long before I was better than my teacher, so I was self-taught after that. I took a couple of classical guitar lessons but didn't really get serious about it until college. I began singing, writing lyrics, playing bass and drums and had a few college-prep piano lessons during the same pubescent timeframe." "Didn't you go to Berkeley or something?" I pried. "I studied classical guitar performance at the University of Redlands and graduated with a bachelor's degree in music in that major in 1992. I studied briefly for a master's in the same major at the University of Colorado, Boulder campus in the spring of 1999, but dropped out. Ironically, there was no time for music, you see. That was the best and perhaps the most expensive three months of classical guitar lessons I've ever had, although it corrected all my bad habits and increased my tone and volume, exponentially. I took a couple months of voice lessons from Tricia Moorea in late 2002, early 2003, which have helped me build my voice up to where it is now." The Miles Davis CD finally ends and the kitchen is without music. We decided to hit play and listen to it again (a sort of why not approach to "So What"). I asked Simeon if he has played a lot of jazz since then, because he often brings that language into his own music. "Yeah, a little, but I intentionally left jazz as a frontier on guitar so I could 'invent' it for myself. I've been improv-soloing since high school and wanted to have something I could save just for myself, some free territory to explore in my own way. I like to do that sometimes because then my take on the 'frontier' stands a chance of being somewhat original, possibly even innovative." Simeon continues, "Other than that, one of the driving forces behind my art is this thing in my blood, this need to be new and different – to innovate and to be provocative." "You are," I state. "How do you get your ideas?" "My ideas come from everywhere and everything, from any medium. I've spent a lifetime listening to and watching everything like a sponge, scouring the sea bottom of pop culture for ideas and inspiration. I have the sensitivity to absorb people and things in their entirety ... artistic empathy." Convincingly spoken. He continues, "Believe it or not, some of my stuff has been influenced by unexpected sources: Beyonce Knowles, Justin Timberlake, stuff that wouldn't necessarily come to mind from listening to my music." "It doesn't come to mine..." I quip. We're laughing. "I'm not below learning something from anyone, even if it's from a musical genre I don't normally listen to. Like Louie Armstrong said (I think it was Louie): "There's only two kinds of music: good and bad." I agree. And with that we decide to take matters in to the studio where an impromptu jam is breaking out there. Until the wee hours we all passed the guitars around, singing songs to one another, the way we all like to do when we're not working. And we all knew we were having more fun than anybody else at this particular moment. And, as I recall, he played some of his stuff, my stuff. Off the top of his head he gave us some Steely Dan, Police, Yes, Rush (on my 12-string because it was just sitting there), a classical piece, and Earth, Wind and Fire's "Shining Star." A few days later we're on a gig together. We had a marvelous time and went on to make plans for dinner over the weekend. Simeon and his lovely fiancee, Allison, arrive, followed by the arrival of our friend and fellow music pal Matthew Stewart shortly thereafter. With greetings, we popped a cork and popped in Miles Davis again, still in awe of patience applied to good grapes and good music. And everyone started blabbing to the sound of chicken sizzling on the grill. Once again, we're talking about music and all the glory and agony that goes into living this life. We're talking about why we're here and why we do this and what it takes, when Simeon declares: "I think persistence is all you need, tenacity. You need to live and breathe it and be prepared for the long haul. Prepared to do it indefinitely and really commit to a more barebones lifestyle [which this country really doesn't encourage at all...F150 anyone???] It encourages having good, solid people around you as your support system. It also encourages you to wear as many of the hats as you can before you hand it off to someone else, versatility. I think Rilke said it best: you have to be able to answer an undeniable 'yes' when asking yourself the question, 'Must I do this? Must I wake up every day and do this because my very existence depends on it?' 95 percent of playing music for a living depends on your answer to this question." We head on out to show Matthew the studio, carrying on about the music scene (in and out of town), how things change, and why that's good. Simeon is optimistic more than most on the state of the arts. "I think it's definitely thriving on a grassroots level. The music industry has kind of burned out the commercial channels and now good music has gone where it truly belongs: underground. There's obviously a recession going on, so it's a bit hard to be an independent musician these days. We have to be frugal, thrifty, and have low expectations and a bottom line to match. Fan support has been pretty apathetic, if not minimal(!). So I personally have had to look elsewhere, or inward, for my sense of well being from the satisfaction I take in my music. It can be kind of demoralizing sometimes, but in a way it's been the catalyst for me to push as hard as I humanly can to develop as an artist. The great thing now is that there are even more resources than ever available to independent artisans of all types... especially the Internet, which has been essential in marketing my own music." Next thing I know there's another jam breaking out. And I am reminded of why I live this life, too. Simeon Flick is a versatile dude. He has released solo works. He plays in a band with his brother, Nathaniel in Alpha Ray. He's an enthusiastic contributor to the music universe. He sits in on your gig with no problem. He produces records in his own studio and appears on more than several recordings as a support player, such as the recently reviewed Lee Tyler Post CD in last month's San Diego Troubadour. Obsessed with language, his musical intelligence also takes form in the now-and-then music editorial. Regardless of his arena, whether it requires a set of headphones, a laptop, or an able ax – Simeon Flick is here with an appetite for excellence and irreverent originality in music. It's in the music around him, and in his own. Somebody pass me the peach ice cream and hit play. |