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Howlin Rain: The Long Follow

IV. A Short History of Howlin Rain

David Katznelson is sitting on a driftwood-like wooden structure in front of a cafe run by surfers and ex-punk rockers a few blocks from San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, on the N-Judah light rail line. He used to work in A&R at Warner Brothers. Now, he lives in runs his own independent label, Birdman Records, and puts out arcane reissues, like Sun Ra’s Space Is the Place.

Katznelson had The Gris Gris and a few other psych bands under his wing when Miller sent him a disc of his new side project, The Vultures—which turned
out to be the first Howlin Rain record. The album starts rootsy, jangly and loose—like a laid-back banjo band with Rod Stewart singing. Acoustic guitars shuffle. And then, a little more than halfway through the second track, “Calling Lightning with a Scythe,” the electric guitar roars in.

“I thought it was the most infectious song,” Katznelson says, “but it was when the guitar solo came in, which is like this lawnmower going off into a very close mic—it was the most noisy, wonderful guitar solo of all time, in my opinion. I was like, ‘God, this has to be on Birdman—this is exactly what it’s all about, for me.’”

After a night listening to the elements wail around his family’s cabin on the Eel River in Northern California, Miller renamed the band Howlin Rain and went on tour. At that point, the band was a trio, with Eureka homeboy Ian Gradek on bass and banjo, and John Moloney, of Sunburned Hand of the Man, on drums. Then, two weeks into the tour, Moloney quit the band and took the van, leaving Miller and Gradek stranded in Atlanta.

Miller brought in new musicians to begin making the next record. He began to pillage the prog-metal-stoner-rock band Drunk Horse—multi-instrumentalist Joel Robinow played keyboards while Eli Eckert contributed bass and guitar to the sessions. Gradek remained on bass. Another Eurekan, Mike Jackson, played rhythm guitar, and Garett Goddard played the drums.

That’s about when, as the legend goes, Rick Rubin—founder of Def Jam and Def American, producer of Run-DMC and Aerosmith, The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, Johnny Cash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Petty and Slayer, he who changed music seven different ways—read Arthur magazine’s October 2006 cover story on Miller. Rubin liked how he thought, how he saw. Rubin had been a Comets fan. Now he reached out.

V. The Man Comes Around

He drove out from the madness and the traffic, rattled through the valley and the smog and down the scorched brown canyon. Past the peace signs and the hippie communes, the swimming pools, the beat up trucks and the gleaming machines. As he neared the sea, he found the turn. Through the scrub forest, up a narrow, winding road, tunes cranking and the window down, California in his nostrils, the hot baked clay earth, the manzanita and the salt. He announced himself to the electronic box and the iron gates swung open.

He wound up the drive, out of the canyon, over the top. A manservant led him to a chair overlooking the vast ocean. The sun was high in the sky. They brought him an enormous bottle of water. It seemed like it had come from the center of the earth.

And then he arrived. He wore sunglasses and a tan. His hair was thinning on top, shaggy and wild. Gray had begun to drip down the front of his dark beard. He was grizzled and large, sweatpanted, his presence enormous. He greeted him in a quiet voice,and touched his hand. He led him into the sanctum.

VI. The Long Follow, Part One: A Magnificent Fiend

I first saw Howlin Rain at the Great American Music Hall, in March, 2007. I had gone to see the Wooden Shjips open for Texas psych godfather Roky Erickson. Howlin Rain played second. They had a classic rock lineup, a Southern-fried rock sound reminiscent of The Allman Brothers Band or Delaney and Bonnie. With black hair, sizeable muttonchops and a long-handled moustache, the singer and guitarist looked like a raven Duane Allman. His voice was a hoarse growl, pitched at full throttle, like those old guitar rock records that you find buried in the stacks. Like Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac or Rory Gallagher. Like 1971. For a music writer with his finger to the wind, awaiting signs of the return of rock, it was a revelation.

I put myself on the beat. I hunted down Howlin Rain, got a hold of their debut record, which Birdman had released in May 2006. I learned that Rubin had just signed the band to American. I interviewed Miller by phone on September 13. He had been packing to fly to Austin the next day, to begin a tour opening for Queens of the Stone Age.

The band’s next record was already essentially in the can—and Rubin wanted it. Katznelson wasn’t about to stand between Miller and opportunity. He made a deal: American would release the new album on CD and Birdman would release the vinyl. Moreover, Rubin would give mastering notes. Miller sent the record to Rubin, but Rubin didn’t like the sequencing. He thought it hit “El Rey” and slowed to a stop.

“Rick just came out of the gates honest about what he loved about the record,” and brutally honest about the things that weren’t working, Miller told me on the eve of Magnificent Fiend’s release. “‘This is not a boring song, it’s a really good song, but you’ve got some boring stuff that’s doing tremendous damage to it.’ That’s hard to hear. Like, really? Fuck. I though that I just shit gold…No matter how much humility an artist has, they compulsively believe that they shit gold.”