I won’t be here for this, but I recommend attending at least one of the events if you’re around Sacramento.
People sometimes do not know what to make of Jules Baenziger. “You kind of get stares,” said Baenziger, a 26-year-old, Roseville-raised singer-songwriter who goes by Sea of Bees. It happens at shopping centers in Granite Bay and at more traditional villages in the United Kingdom and Europe, the inhabitants of each joined in the curiosity that greets the unexpected. Baenziger’s bowl haircut and androgynous thrift-store wardrobe contrast with her voice, which is girlish when speaking, buoyant or plaintive in song. On Sea of Bees’ 2010 folk-pop album “Songs for the Ravens,” her vocals suggest backwoods traditionals and 1990s Scandinavian pop, with neither comparison quite sticking. “Her voice is just so distinctive,” said Robin Hilton, producer of NPR’s “All Songs Considered.” Hilton put “Ravens” on his 2010 top-10 list after Baenziger’s album of brightly produced, emotion-packed songs called out to him from the hundreds of submissions the show receives each week. “I try to listen to everything blindly, while I am working or doing something else at the same time,” Hilton said by telephone from Washington, D.C. “I am always looking for something that surprises me and makes me stop what I am doing. (‘Ravens’) did that. It is hard not to be mesmerized by it.” Released last summer, “Ravens” has picked up steam in recent months via supporters such as Hilton and Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, who placed “Ravens” among his top five for 2010. Baenziger’s recent U.K. tour inspired write-ups in the Guardian and Independent newspapers and several music magazines, and her song “Wizbot” will be included on the season finale of the CW’s “One Tree Hill.” Such high-profile attention is important, but Baenziger’s success also rests on her attention to fans. Warm, charming and a bit of a goofball on and off the stage, Baenziger personally greets fans before and after shows. Her early Sacramento shows drew a lot of customers she had chatted up from behind the counter at Peet’s Coffee in east Sacramento. She still sticks around, whether playing Luigi’s Fungarden or London’s 2,000-capacity Shepherds Bush Empire, where she has opened for well-known U.K. acts. “Why would anyone want to come to a show and then leave?” Baenziger asked last week while sitting in a studio at the Hangar, the Sacramento recording facility where she made “Ravens.” “There was something in the song they connected to. … I can’t just leave (after a show). That would be so rude.” “A lot of musicians will connect when they are onstage, but Jules wants to make a real human connection,” said Michael Leahy, owner of Crossbill Records, the Davis label that released “Ravens.” “She is not going to finish her set and go slump on a couch and call it a night.” Sea of Bees’ Facebook wall contains comments from fans from Brighton and Bristol thanking Baenzinger for her time after the show. “I think she is just really sincere,” said John Baccigaluppi, owner of the Hangar, publisher of the recording magazine Tape Op and Baenziger’s manager and close collaborator on “Ravens.” “As a musician and a person, that is just really rare.” It was Baenziger’s voice that first impressed Baccigaluppi, whose studio gets booked by local acts and by such out-of-towners as Wild Flag, the post-Sleater-Kinney project of SK guitarist Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss. Baccigaluppi heard Baenziger singing with a band at the Hangar a few years ago and immediately recognized something special. A friendship formed, with Baccigaluppi intent on translating Baenziger’s ideas. “She couldn’t articulate it very well, but she is much better now,” Baccigaluppi said. She was always highly musical and experimental, learning to play the slide guitar, an instrument she previously did not know existed, within a short time. On “Ravens,” she plays a little bit of everything. Like so many rock musicians, Baenziger first picked up a guitar to try to impress a girl. The girl sang at the Roseville church Baenziger attended, and had recorded her own EP. Baenziger, using an old one-string guitar she found in her family’s backyard shed, tried to duplicate a song from the EP. She received a better guitar as a gift a year later, learned some chords and presented the object of her affection with a song written just for her. “I went up to her one day, and said, ‘I wrote a song for you,’ ” Baenziger recalled, still shy about the experience. “And she said, ‘Cool, that’s nice, Jules.’ There wasn’t that appreciation I was expecting. … She liked guys.” Baenziger knew she was gay around age “2-ish or 3,” she said with a laugh, when her pretty baby sitter tried to get her to sleep and “I just wanted to keep my eyes open” to look at her. Baenziger performed at church, and said singing gospel-based music still informs her songwriting. But she left the church when it no longer seemed a friendly place for her. She moved to Sacramento and played music around town. But she still wasn’t ready to explore her sexuality. “Ravens” reflects her imaginings of what love might be like, with songs written from a distance allowing for angst without true sadness (on the effervescent “Sidepain,” Baenziger sings, “Are you winning as I lose, oh baby? You’re the sweetest pain in my side.”). Her next album will reflect her first relationship, started last year, said Baenziger, who last week happily spent time with her girlfriend in Sacramento during a break from the road. This week, she starts a string of New York dates likely to draw new lesbian fans, just as her U.K. shows did after she discussed her sexuality in the British press. Instead of going the burn-out route of piling Baenziger, backup singer Amber Padgett and other musicians in a van and playing tiny clubs in different cities, Team Sea of Bees has taken a “residency” approach, booking several dates featuring Baenziger, Padgett (and sometimes a pick-up rhythm section) in one city, building word of mouth in the process. The strategy was part of Baccigaluppi’s answer to a half-serious question posed by Baenziger not long after they met: Did he know how to make her famous? “I wanted it so badly, it was in my heart and in my head, but I didn’t know how to go about it,” Baenziger said of pursuing a career in music. Baccigaluppi answered that he did not, but he believed he could help her achieve a “middle-class career” like that of San Francisco singer-songwriter Andy Cabic of Vetiver. “I see more people like that, making a middle-class living,” Baccigaluppi said. “They are not rock stars, not millionaires. … The days of ‘Dude, we got a record deal, we got it made’ are over.” The new approach entails touring, song placements in films and TV shows, and ensuring the music reaches the right people, like Hilton at NPR. Nobody is getting rich off “Ravens,” but the album is selling in the thousands, Leahy said – not bad for an independent record by an unknown artist. The NPR exposure helped, said Nicholas Lujan, co-owner of Sacramento’s Phono Select record shop. Phone Select offers “Ravens” on CD and vinyl, and quickly sells out of each shipment it receives. “We get everybody from teenagers to people in their 60s, saying they heard about it on NPR,” Lujan said. Baenziger now makes a living from music, having left her job at Peet’s. Going back is an option, she said, but she is not planning on it anytime soon. “I think I have momentum now,” she said with a grin.Sea of Bees is toast of public radio for yearning, beautiful songs
cmeyer@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED SUNDAY, APR. 17, 2011
