A few months back, I was at a local watering hole with my friend Joe who you may know from Ojai Healing Movement and the advertising place mats you see in the restaurants around Ojai, and we’re sitting there yucking it up and there’s a handful of Ojai’s resident recording artists sitting a few tables away and among them is this adorable blonde smoking cigarettes and laughing and going on with these guys. And it came out that this young lady is known as Lissie.

I had not heard of her, which isn’t that surprising since there’s a lot going on these days and this little Valley is in a constant state of change. But I went home that night and googled her up and thus began my fascination with this rising musical superstar.

Fast forward to last week. I had made a few requests to our favorite ukulele strumming, surfing science teacher Jim Bailey, to get me with some podcast guests, and what do you know? Well, he hooked it up proper and put me in touch with Lissie and she said “Yes.”

So I went over to her place and we sat on the porch and visited for a few hours. Now, I could take hours to go through our two hour conversation and edit it down, but instead I just leave it as is in all of its glory to let you decide which parts to edit out, skip over. I suggest listening to the whole thing. Get inspired by this driven, confident young woman. We cover a lot of ground and the conversation bounces around a bit, but ultimately I really enjoyed this one a lot and I hope you do too.

Thanks for checking it out. You can hear Lissie perform when she hosts the Beachwood Rockers Society at the historical Deer Lodge roadhouse on April 6, 2013. Check the link for details.

 

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Since the mid oughts when I created my first Cafe Press store and brought the Ojai Face into existence, the desire to print, publish, fold, spindle and mutilate the word OJAI has driven me to the edges of prurient folly.

Recently, I’ve been taking iconic images from pop culture and esoteric symbology then skewing, warping, pasting, blurring and sharpening the Ojai Face onto them. Perhaps you saw the GONZOJAI tribute to Hunter S. Thompson.

I present to you the PSYCHOJAI. I love this. The whole concept of merging and recreating recognizable art from a themed word that in itself is unusual enough to form a recognizable face shape that can be plastered all over things. Obsessed much?

 

 

so then there’s the next one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a little corny to me to call this Baphomet Ojai or BAPHOJAI. It harkens to my love of the mysteries, the arcane, the magickal, occult and esoteric. This spirit is alive and simmering in Ojai, I’m sure. Betwixt the Theosophists and some of the more eccentric yogis, I’m sure there’s tens of people who’d smile at this design.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m putting them in the store.

My upper Ojai neighbor Rain Perry swings by the barn to folk things up a bit. We shoot it about family, songwriting, and Keanu Reeves. I heard Rain perform last year at the Ojai Art Center Jammin’ series. And its one of the few times in my life when live music actually got me misty eyed. It was something about her warm inviting accessible sound and then these simple poetic emotionally layered lyrical melodies. Truly amazing.

It’s good to get to know her better. I wash Rain’s windows and I’d like to wash yours too. Learn more about Rain on her website. And send her some dopamine bursts by retweeting her @rainperry and liking her facebook statuses. Here’s a link to her reverbnation.com page. You can hear all the songs that I play on the podcast here. I believe her version of Let’s Get It On is the best cover of that song EVER.

Enjoy the show.

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