Audible, Edible: Middle Maki Music, and San Francisco
Elia Vargas
Every city and every community has its hidden gems. On the onset of any new grand discovery my first thought is, "wonderful, incredible, amazing," and then immediately to follow, "of course!" That is to say, "of course this wonderful thing that I didn't know about was here." I simply had to find it, to know that the world could align in such ways.
Such was my feeling when I happened upon Elizabeth Maki and her family/band Middle Maki. Before I had my own radio show at Pirate Cat Radio, I worked as an intern for Baghdad By the Bay, a very good program at Pirate Cat that hosts many up and coming San Francisco bands. Ups to Rick, the host; he taught me some things. While working under him as the "stupid intern" I scheduled Middle Maki for an interview. The twin set, Elizabeth and her brother Spencer, joined me in the studio to guide me through their influences and thought processes. The full band consists of Elizabeth Maki (banjo, vocals), Spencer Maki (guitar), Anna Levitt (fiddle), and Jack Kodros (bass).
To tell you the truth, I don't remember a lot of what was said in that FM interview. My relationship with the band, and the three siblings from the east coast residing in the same living corridors, has since grown in magnitude. After the interview, Elizabeth, invited me to a semi-regular music cook-off... thing. We decided to make a One Night Music... thing, out of it. The night of the recording was Cornbread and Chili. Smells of the Midwest permeated the living room as the band played for One Night Music, and for friends, the song A Month of Sundays, to be recorded in studio just days later.
The oldest of the three siblings, Morgan is a butcher at the family owned San Francisco market Bi Rite, near Dolores Park. Although the store is not a cooperative, it does harbor many of the proper values of labor treatment and purchasing decisions that warrant it a moral consumer option, and a positive community resource.
Why is this important?
It is integral to the positive community cultivated by the Makis: good food and good music - a combination that caused social catastrophe to Shakespeare and revolution of the artisan class; a sentiment entertained in the band's new EP Port Adieu. Morgan is not actually in the band, but he DJs and cooks, and that, plus band, equals amazing nights at their home in the San Francisco Mission District. Each part could stand alone, but the splendor of it all...
heart.
elia
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Public Relations on 02/13/2010
A little while back, Elia of One Night Music and Pirate Cat Radio came over to our house and recorded a lovely video of us playing Month of Sundays in our living room. In celebration and cahoots here it is (Autumnal Fire makes a cameo):