the hum / By Bob Doran

Epic

The Mermen, plus blues and Floyd at ATL, Bluejayz and other music for grads

(May 14, 2009)  Mermen guitarist/leader Jim Thomas doesn’t like to tour. He doesn’t even play all that much in Santa Cruz or San Francisco, the coastal cities where he spends most of his time. He has a studio at home, but it’s been a long time since he’s released a record. Thomas says he’s almost done with a new studio album, his first in 10 years, which he won’t talk about aside from promising it will be “epic and crazy.”

Epic is the perfect word for the Mermen sound, which always makes me think of huge waves, and in particular Mavericks, near Half Moon Bay, where they ride waves big as mountains. “We play the Mavericks contest every year,” said Thomas, “on the point there, outside. They didn’t have it this year because the waves didn’t show up. You know I’ve done music for two Graham Washburn documentaries … ” he tells me before bouncing to another topic.

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Washburn is a big wave surfer/filmmaker, so we’re talking “surf” music at least on some level, although Mermen music goes way beyond anything Dick Dale or The Ventures came up with, with Thomas’ layers of looping guitar lines merging into waves of sound.

At some point in the conversation we shifted from discussion of the soundtrack for the surf film Endless Summer (he says he’s played the music over and over until it’s become part of him) to an analysis of “Unto the Resplendent,” the opening track on his last album, The Amazing California Health and Happiness Road Show. “After doing that song, and recording it, I listened to it and all of a sudden I realized it was like Jack Nitzsche’s song ‘The Lonely Surfer,’ but I also I consciously put all these elements in the song about the West, and the Donner Party, and San Francisco, and Jerry Garcia, and the psychedelic thing.” (It should be noted that Mermen songs are all instrumental.)

“Sometimes, when I write a song,” he continued, “I think what the fuck is this? What is this piece of music? Over the years I’ve pondered a lot about the West Coast, and the idea of coastal California being this mythological place. If you’ve seen Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man, you know how Johnny Depp is on this train and keeps going West through layers and layers of civilization: He goes from cities to farmland and it keeps getting wilder and more out of control. Then he’s in this fucking boat going out this river into the ocean. I see that as about the Western Movement thing, all these people who came west looking for something, same with the song. When I had to think of a title, I wanted something almost military, but religious. It came to me. I saw the Western Movement as like ‘Unto the Resplendent.’ One of my better titles, I think.”

And I agree. And the music? Epic and resplendent.

Given the fact that this is a band that hardly ever tours, if any of this sounds intriguing, you should come see The Mermen play Saturday night at Humboldt Brews. You know I’ll be there.

Ironically, around the same time Saturday at the Arcata Vet’s Hall, the Humboldt square dance and old time folks — caller Tara Stetz and the Striped Pig Stringband — host a dance benefiting the Surfrider Foundation. (Somehow I imagine the surfers will be a HumBrews.)

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