The first
author introduced on our site is someone whose books have been
on my shelf (and in my heart) since the early 70’s. As young
back-to-the-land homesteaders headed for the idyllic country life,
many books were needed to give us suburban transplants some sorely
needed guidance. A number of us had never even seen a vegetable
garden before!!! Let alone know how to can, freeze etc. without
killing ourselves in the process!! And during that time, amidst
all the other purely practical books..”Living on the Earth”
was born. Hand-lettered and illustrated by Alicia, it was loaded
with practical advice of all sorts in a wonderfully whimsical
manner...weaving spirituality with earthiness. Her works have
always been a reminder to stay true to my heart..and to retain
simplicity in lifestyle, love for all and stay high naturally
by being in love with life.
Alicia
says of herself: I am an Artist, Author,
Vocalist/Guitarist, Songwriter, utopian dreamer, health food consumer,
gong collector, email addict, rainforest gardner, jazz buff, inner
spirit listener, night owl, ethnic music fan, friendship tycoon,
road warrior, housewife, herbology student, florist, amateur botanist,
altar builder, free spirit."
-Elizabeth
Lunt- June
2003
'How
To Make Peace' by Alicia Bay Laurel
Known
by the public at-large primarily for her 1970 best-selling book,
Living on the Earth,
and her other writing and illustrating projects, Alicia Bay Laurel
also established a fascinating musical history long before she
finally made it onto a recording.
Laurel studied piano and clarinet as a child, gravitating toward
pop and boogie woogie pieces, but it wasn't until seeing Bob Dylan
in concert in 1961 that she became enthralled by music and performing.
A brother taught her basic folk guitar not long after, and by
1964 she was learning open-tuned guitar from John Fahey, who was
at the time married to her cousin Jan Lebow. Laurel listened and
studied Fahey's recordings, as well as folk, world, ethnic, and
jazz records, and particularly the work of Mose Allison, the Swingle
Singers, Barney Kessel, Kimio Eto, early Dylan, Donovan, and Judy
Collins.
When she gravitated to San Francisco in 1966 as a 17-year-old,
Laurel made the rounds of coffeehouses and small clubs and played
wherever and for whomever would have her, everywhere from in the
park to playing privately for friends, writing her own original
material all the while. In the late '60s, she joined the Wheeler
Ranch commune and played in a group that became the Star Mountain
Band and eventually had its own commune next door.
A
page from 'Living on the Earth'
It
was in 1970 that her book, Living on the Earth, was published
to widespread acclaim and found its way onto the bestseller list,
but the book was always a part of grander project that included
Laurel's original songs as a soundtrack. During the television
and radio rounds to promote the book, she would frequently perform
some of the tunes, including in a KQED-TV special made about the
book.
After leaving Wheeler Ranch, Laurel spent two years traveling
with avant-garde composer Ramon Sender, one of the founders of
the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s along with
Mort Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley. Laurel learned
a lot about scales, modes, and tunings from Sender and created
a book with him in 1973 published by Harper & Row, Being of
the Sun, which included a lot of that musical information. Sender
was also one of the inventors, along with Subotnick and audio
engineer Don Buchla, of the first synthesizer on the West Coast,
the Buchla Box.
In
1974 Laurel moved to Hawaii, where open-tuned guitar was a traditional
part of the national ethnic music tapestry. She learned to play
and sing Hawaiian music from numerous teachers, including Auntie
Clara Tolentino, slack key guitarist Uncle Sol Kawaihoa, twelve
string player Wesley Furumoto (with whom she played in a duo for
two years), and jazz guitarist Sam Ahia, and learned nearly as
much by seeing the live performances of Auntie Alice Namakelua,
who was the court musician to Queen Liliukalani as a teenager,
and listening to the early recordings of Keola and Kapono Beamer.
During
the 1980s Laurel spent three years in California studying jazz
guitar and, with Pamela Polland, vocal technique, while teaching
at the Los Angeles alternative school Hearlight. She fell in love
with the early music of Michael Franks and Brazilian pop, and
built up a repertoire of jazz standards and Brazilian tunes in
addition to her Hawaiian songs. Upon returning to Maui, Laurel
continued to study vocal technique and taught at Haleakala School.
She returned to California for year in 1984 and began gigging
in restaurants all around Sonoma County before returning again
to Hawaii and continuing to perform constantly as well as opening
and running a full service wedding business for eleven years.
In
1996 she teamed with avant-garde drummer/composer/synthesizer
player Joe Gallivan, the test driver of the first Moog drum, and
they developed a long-term working relationship. Laurel aided
Gallivan with his company and label, newjazz.com, and thereby
learned how to put together and release her own CD. In 2000 she
recorded some of the original folk songs that she had written
during her commune days in the late-1960s and early-1970s and
released it independently as Music from Living On The Earth, supporting
the album by playing more than 70 shows over the course of the
year in 25 states across the country. She also developed a one-woman,
one-act play called Living on the Earth-The Musical based on stories
from her best-selling book and those songs, and began discussions
to turn it into a screenplay as well. The following year, Laurel
set to work recording Living In Hawai'i Style consisting primarily
of her original Hawaiian slack-key pieces, and made plans to work
on a jazz and blues album, What Living's All About, produced by
Gallivan. — Stanton Swihart
Wheeler
Ranch
[1967-1973]
Wheeler Ranch was founded by landscape artist Bill Wheeler on
a 320-acre ranch along Coleman Valley Road. Wheeler opened the
ranch to everyone after county authorities began rousting the
residents at Morning Star Ranch. When Morning Star was leveled,
Wheeler Ranch continued as a quintessential hippie commune until
the bulldozers arrived in 1973. Wheeler Ranch was written up in
the June 1970 issue of Harper's. The book "Living on the
Earth", a best-seller in the early '70s, was written while
author, Alicia Bay Laurel, was living on the ranch.
For a time in the early seventies these places were a haven to
people who, for whatever different reasons, had come together
with a desire to live close to the Earth ~ to "return to
their roots" ~ to get "back to the land."
They where, and still are, people tied together as a tribe, linked
by their experiences on open land ~ kindred spirits that found
themselves living much as our pioneer ancestors must have ,without
the "luxuries" of electricity, running water, or indoor
plumbing.
The grinding wheels of laws and "redneck attitudes"
where the things that eventually shut the ranches down, but the
community spirit and love for the land lives on in the hearts
and lives of all that experienced that magical time .
