Mann and his backing trio are texture aces. The bedrock of Daytime Ghost is laden with fuzzy, 4-track acoustic guitars, and conventional rhythmic support from bass and drums. All this enlivened with narrative by Mann's Elvis Costello-like voice. The album has a reacquainted feel, similar to finding buried vinyl, and a sound that wallows in lo-fi, vintage production. Further influencing the nostalgia, Daytime Ghost clutches on to classic Americana inspiration — the vagabond — suggesting that it's an album that seems created for road music. – West Coast Performer Magazine

Drawing from indie rock sounds and songwriter senses, Jake Mann's music chases a haunting tune through the degraded landscapes, late night reveries, and lost affairs of a smart small town. Arranged for quartet, the overdriven guitar and drums lay a foundation for crooning vocals, melodic basslines, and understated leads.

Jake came up as a songwriter in the microcosmic scene of Davis California, forming flatland-pop outfit The Zim-Zims in 2002 to bring his 4-track recordings to the live stage. He worked out compositions over 3 years of shows in California and two independent releases (s/t full-length, 2003 & Go Where You Are EP, 2004). After completing the Solo Electric EP in 2005 and relocating to San Francisco, Jake joined up with Crossbill Records and completed Daytime Ghost; collaborating in the studio and on-stage with Payam Bavafa (Sholi), Garrett Pierce (solo, 60-Watt Kid), Carey Lamprecht (Jackpot, Jolie Holland), Adam Aaronson (The High Speed Scene), and Andy Lentz (Mad Cow String Band, Alkali Flats).

"Daytime Ghost doesn't fall into the traps that so many solo artists do. Balancing the density of a full band work with the unique vision of a single authorial voice, the album is a strong, engaging work definitely worth checking out." - The Bay Bridged

"The new record is a real smart-rock charmer, the kind of road-trip soundtrack that deepens and gets better with repeated playing. Beginning with his former band the Zim-Zims, Mann has come across as the perfect NorCal analogue to some of greater New York's finer post-Velvet combos, both as a narrative songwriter and as a guitarwielding texturalist. Here he's provided a cornucopia of sonic film footage. Ever see that haunting video of someone's motorcycle trip to Prypiat, near Chernobyl? Daytime Ghost would provide a perfect complement to that." – Sacramento News + Review

Photo by Leah Johnson

Photo by Sarah Klinger

Photo by Sarah Klinger

Visions of California

by The Bay Bridged
Posted on 29 September 07

Maybe it's like this everywhere, but, living in California, you can't escape the state's rich and colorful history, and the promise of opportunities that has brought waves of immigrants from across the country and the world. If the American Dream exists as an idea beyond a cliche, the promise of life in California has its own unique feel, influenced by the state's unique growth and the role migration continues to play in its major industries.

As California changes, so do the challenges raised by its mythology, and new artists are emerging to capture and struggle with these evolving issues while still looking critically at the past. On recently released albums, two San Francisco musicians, Jon Bernson of Ray's Vast Basement and Jake Mann, seek to reclaim these themes, examining issues of development and urbanization, of industry and the little guy, and how these big ideas impact real life.

Drawing from his upbringing in the Central Valley, amidst increasing development and urbanization for the agriculturally-driven region, San Francisco's Jake Mann examines too how industry affect individual lives. On his brand new album, Daytime Ghost, Mann captures tales of isolation and loss in his own powerful and unique way, drawing from professed influences including Pavement and other low-fi indie rock while also incorporating elements of spoken word, classic pop, and moodier sounds. Despite all of the musical twists and turns, though, Mann's voice and unqiue sound remains commanding throughout.

Most singer-songwriter music falls too far onto one side of the personal-political divide, coming off as either melodramatic or preachy. Bernson and Mann both manage to straddle the divide like experts, telling interesting stories from unique viewpoints. Combine these skills with some great music and you've got two new albums that make for great listening.

Catch Jake Mann's show tomorrow night.

The Bay Bridged Interview with Jake Mann

by The Bay Bridged
September 4, 2007

Although factually accurate, it feels like a disservice to call this week's featured musician Jake Mann a "singer-songwriter," perhaps because his new album, Daytime Ghost doesn't fall into the traps that so many solo artists do, balancing the density of a full band work with the unique vision of a single authorial voice. The album is a strong, engaging work definitely worth checking out.

Lyrically, the new album contains poetic examinations of themes of urban decay and development, no doubt influenced by Jake's upbringing in the Central Valley and his job as a mapmaker. In the interview, Mann jokingly dismissed the spoken word verses in a few songs as an opportunity to skip writing vocal melodies, but they're more likely indicative of Mann's general willingness to take risks that pay off well.

Mann draws from lower-fi sounds and a professed Pavement influence, incorporating the use of tasteful diverse instrumentation as well as the support of talented local musicians and fellow alumni of the Davis music scene, like Payam Bavafa from Sholi and Garrett Pierce. There's a real sense of propriety to the music, which compliments Mann's lyrical imagery well.

We've included four songs from Daytime Ghost in the podcast, along with our interview with Jake, which we conducted last week at The Bay Bridged studio.

The fine folks at hanx.net (An americana-focused site in Holland) just published an interview on their website along with their review of "Daytime Ghost".

HANX.net (Netherlands) Interview

Here's the interview in English:

JAKE MANN – THE MUSIC ISN'T GOING AWAY IF NO ONE HEARS IT BUT ME

Where did you grow up (town/area) and has this place/upbringing influenced your art?

Watsonville, California. It's about 2 hours south of San Francisco near the coast. Traditionally a farming community (strawberries, apples, lettuce), like many towns in California, it's now struggling between staying in food production and growing houses for more and more people in the state. I've watched many apple orchards pushed out for higher-paying (and higher water-use) crops in my lifetime. It's a pretty brutal sight.

I went to university in Davis, California, out in the Central Valley. Farming's a lot larger in scale there and the struggles between agriculture, real estate development, and environmental issues are somewhat overlooked and more pronounced at the same time. It's a harder landscape to love (flat, hot, vast, often bleak) so I think it doesn't get treated with the same care as the higher-profile places on the coast. I studied Landscape Architecture and Geography with a bioregional planner and an experimental photographer, so my interpretations of that one place brought me in touch with the changes on the landscape over time. Sometimes the practical side of these problems seems to have no solution, and for me that frustration started coming out in photography, poetry, and eventually in song writing. I found I could put together impressions of the history, conflicts, emotions, and imagery in songs that I didn't feel could be readily delt with in the practical world of conservation planning. Davis is a college town, and there's the whole bag of relationship issues you go through in that time of life that plays into my song writing as well.

Where do you live now?

San Francisco, in the Mission district… home to most of this foggy city's sunshine. S.F. appeals to my sense of impatience, but it's sometimes a little high-brow (conceited) for my rural tastes.

Are you a fulltime musician? No. Or do you do other work too? Yes.

"I banned myself from working on bikes in November?"

I work on bicycles as a hobby, fixing up vintage French bikes for friends. I got pretty obsessed with it last year and wasn't focusing on writing and recording music, completing the album. Mike Leahy (Crossbill Records label manager) was encouraging me to get back on it. My friends' band, Sholi put out a great 7" single around that time on KDVS recordings, and that was a real kick in the pants to get me back into my record. I had to stop the bike work to clear space in the garage and focus on making the tunes come to life on tape.

Motorbikes? If motorbikes: I ride a BMW GS 1150…

(my roommate rides a 1970's BMW R-90-S)

If bicycles: I ride a fine one too… what kind? I really enjoyed the sturdy bikes we rented in Amsterdam from Bike City… they all had an integral back cargo rack and you could give your friend a ride side-saddle style!

Do you like books? Your lyrics (though hard they are hard to grasp for your average Dutchman) suggest some poetry? Mudflat suggests a love for stories at least.

I love getting lost in the world that books create, especially if it crosses back into the world we live in… John Steinbeck, Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Phillip Pullman. More recently, Haruki Murakami's works have been pretty influential to my opinion of how a story should be put together. I like stories that start in a normal world and bend slightly into the fantastic (but not too far). I can't handle fantasy…too many assumptions at the start. Everyday life is a weird-enough point of departure.

Other arts that influence your music (visual)?

Wayne Thiebaud's landscapes have always been compelling… he paints a hyper-reality that's been very inspiring. He makes the Central Valley look beautiful. Any good documentary photography that scratches under the surface, especially environmentally based stuff that's beautiful and dark at the same time.

What were The Zim-Zims about? Should we, after hearing Daytime Ghost, try to get the music of the band?

The Zim-Zims was my project before this album/group. I'd been writing and recording at home by myself for several years before. A buddy of mine was putting on a locals-only music festival and said I should get a band together for it. I started playing with a couple friends and the whole focus switched from recording to booking gigs and playing out across the state… chasing that adrenaline rush. Some talented players worked on the project and brought great musicianship to the songs. (Eric Ruud of Sholi and Legubiton, Teddy Briggs of Chief Briggum, Mike Talbot, Blair Trigg, Derek Burrill) I'd never thought the songs would get to sound so big as they did then.

Subject-wise, the material was covering some of the same ground as 'Daytime Ghost'. Songs about degraded landscapes, weird stories, literature, lovesongs. If people are into the song writing on the new album, I'd recommend they check out the Zim-Zims' full-length (2003) and 'Go Where You Are' EP (2004). We're working on re-releasing those digitally through Crossbill Records, but anyone can write the label or myself if they'd like to get them.

What music/musicians influenced you or still influences you? Pavement? Elliott Smith? Who influenced your guitar playing? And your writing?

So much. The longer you live too, the more those influences get blended into a big stew that you feed from. Pavement for sure… great lazy tunes and obscure lyrics. Hefner from the U.K… desperate drunk lovesongs. My brother turned me onto Elvis Costello's 'My Aim is True' pretty early on and that's stuck with me. The first time hearing the Velvet Underground was pretty influential… the simple rhythms and stripped-down melodies resonated with me immediately (and I loved the almost-bad but brilliant noisy lead guitar playing). I guess Elliott Smith had a somewhat similar impression sound-wise, but I heard his music much later. Anything that isn't overly complicated and thrives on non-technical guitar playing I tend to like. Simplicity is where it's at. Greg Brown from CAKE has some of best guitar tone ever. And of course Neil Young is a great model for simple, powerful sounds. More recently Beulah, Ted Leo, The Walkmen.

Where did you learn to play all these instruments?

Piano lessons when I was a kid. Guitar in middle school… I learned from older friends and stayed in my room all summer playing along with Grateful Dead radio shows. Started electric bass in high school when I realized what a cool role it played in a group. (And there was a surplus of guitarists around, as usual) Bass got me rehearsing and performing with older players that were more accomplished, so it was always challenging. I also played upright bass gigging in jazz bands and making some money… right up until the swing revival hit and people started calling me "daddy-O". There was always a drum set around 'cause my brother had played quite a bit. I started learning that to make a complete "band" for early home recording projects with my buddy Eric Hirst. I have to credit my parents for being very supportive of my musical pursuits through the years. They still come to a lot of my shows.

Andy Lentz and Garrett Pierce are on Crossbill too. Would you consider yourself 'a scene' (maybe 'a circle of friends')? How important is Michael Leahy here? You work a lot with Garrett – on his album you play as well?!

Well, we're a 'scene' in our own minds for sure! We used to sit around talking music and kind of wishing we were involved with these other groups of musicians. Now it seems we're so busy with our own projects (recording, gigging) that there's no time to worry about it. Michael Leahy is very important here. He's doing this as a whole-hearted afficionado of good music and song writing. He's a sports guy too and I always say he runs the record label like team coach… getting each player motivated to do their best for themselves and the other guys we're working with. It's a great way to do things. There's no way we'd have got this far (or had as much fun doing it) if it weren't for Mike. He's a one genuine and generous dude!

Garrett and I hit it off right when we met. The guy is hilarious and a great musician. We all got inspired by his motivation to make music happen 'for real'. Right when the Zim-Zims broke up in 2005, he was starting to record 'Like a Moth' and I was glad to lend a hand with some of the process. I ended up playing drums for his live group. When I got the songs together and started gigging for 'Daytime Ghost', he was down for playing bass and singing backup. We live in the same neighbourhood in SF now and are doing back-to-back sets with each other this weekend. It's a nice arrangement. Andy has been the go-to guy for strings and I was glad to have him play viola and violin on the record. We have a running joke that he's in every band in Davis. I'm also joined frequently by my friend Carey Lamprecht who's an amazing violinist and brings a real cool sound to the group.

Is your Solo Electric EP still available? Can it be compared with Daytime Ghost? Do you consider Daytime Ghost as your 'first' (regular) album?

The 'Solo Electric EP' is available from Aquarius Records in San Francisco (www.aquariusrecords.org) or again, write to the label. That CD was put together from live radio appearances and home recordings… it's very stripped down compared to 'Daytime Ghost'. Things were difficult not having a full band… I wasn't sure how to get the music going again. Mike played me 'Back To Basics' (Billy Bragg) one night and it was an inspiring example of just one guy and an electric guitar making big sounds. It seemed like a long time before a full-length album was going to be complete, so I tried to put that EP out right away as a mid-point between the Zim-Zims releases and 'Daytime Ghost'.

The new record feels like a continuation of the ideas that had been fleshed-out along the way with the Zim-Zims, and a previous solo record ('Consumed', 1999). Maybe it's my 'first' regular album, or you could see it as the fifth. 'Daytime Ghost' is certainly a more thematically consistent record than my previous efforts.

R.I.P. Turtle House 1996-2005?

It was a big 10-person 1920's boarding house rental in downtown Davis. The rent was cheap. Someone had hung a painting of a turtle on the top deck and the name stuck to the place. A rotating cast of characters lived there over the years. A couple long-term residents had their friends move in to open rooms and it developed a great community atmosphere and held a lot of memories for everyone that had lived there or had friends there. Many, many epic nights, BBQ's in the yard, romances, drama over the years. We'd work in the garden and dance to bands or DJ's in the basement all night. The Zim-Zims recorded their first album there. Garrett did some of the recordings for 'Like A Moth' in the basement. People who'd moved away would come back when they visited town to find friends or see what was going on. The landlord eventually sold it and the new owner evicted everyone to renovate and ended up doubling the rent after. It broke up the community some. Cool people have since moved in and are making art, doing shows there, but it's a different scene and they're starting from scratch. We couldn't call it by "the Turtle House" after they ripped out the garden and 'cleaned it up'…it lost some soul in the process.

Wallfollower is dedicated to some people. Among them your grandmothers Mary & Elizabeth. Tell us about them and their wild days?! Fine play of words by the way!

My grandmothers were from the 'Greatest Generation'… the folks who lived through the great depression and the ramifications of WWII here in the U.S. One was from old Tennessee, the other a daughter of Croatian immigrants. I always caught references to wild nights, dance hall parties, and other shenanigans in their stories (sometimes from their old friends after they'd passed away). There's a sense here that the hippies in the 1960's were the first to really "cut-loose" and have a good time (especially now with the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love going on). It sometimes overshadows the wild days that happened before them when people were struggling through the Depression and war-time, still making sure they made time to celebrate. "Wallfollower" is a kind of a tribute to that. The forgotten good times.

Almost all of the songs on Daytime Ghost have these hidden melodies. First the rhythm rules and then they arise, slowly but surely.

Maybe that's the Velvet Underground influence again… to just set up a solid drums, bass, and guitar foundation and start putting melodies (vocal or guitar) over it. Coming from a rhythm section background, I'm trying to think about the song's foundation from the start. So, even when writing lyrics and melodies, the drum beats, punches, and stops are also on my mind. The melodies tend to stick close to what's outlined in the basics of the song. There's also this feeling that you're chasing the same "ultimate" line in your head with every song that's written.

Most of the lyrics are quite enigmatic (Edie In Hades, for instance). How important are these lyrics? [Why didn't you] add a lyric sheet?

I'm sorry you didn't get the lyric sheet with the album! I will send one to you and probably post the lyrics on my website soon for people to check out. (The CD's we're selling at shows have the lyric insert included.) I think the words are very important to the songs, which I guess is why the vocals are mixed in such a way that you can understand them. Funny enough, I think "Edie In Hades" is probably the least lyrically important song on the record. It's sort of a joking song, trying to mix up Edie Brickell and Paul Simon's marriage with the Persephone and Hades myth. I use to have a real crush on her when I was 17 and was disappointed when she was swept away by this older folk singer!

If the lyrics seem enigmatic, I think it's because I'm trying to walk a fence between being literal and painting a more abstract picture. It's a balance of being earnest and guarding the story a bit so you can actually sing this stuff in a way that people can listen to. "Take You For A Ride" was written as a sea-faring mutiny song… it's a metaphor for my old band mates leaving the group and me feeling abandoned. "Beat The Drum" is about moving to the big city and going up against the scene there… with a lot a references to the rural landscape where I'd come from. There's an attempt to throw a lot of elements together in a song…landscapes, emotions, situations… it's often collage work. My notebook rarely contains concise lyrics all on one page, stanza-for-stanza. (sometimes, if I'm lucky!) Songs can come together in a day or two, but it's often a process that takes months or more.

There is something dark about Daytime Ghost (emphasis on the low tones?) and yet it has some shiny elements too. And [there are] these tiny, 'make you smile if you come to think about them' elements of humor (Beat The Drum (?)). Would you [also] consider it this way?

Yes, it seems like the darker side of things came out on this record…I had a few friends ask if I was 'OK' after they'd heard it for the first time. I'm an optimistic pessimist, so I suppose the songs, the sounds, reflect that. It's good to have that contrast between dark and bright, sardonic and elated, all in the same tune. It creates a good tension that gives the song some internal strength. Writing a purely dark/down or completely happy/pop song would be very difficult for me. There has to be something "off" or it won't sound interesting. You could say that the equipment used on the record, the places it was recorded, and even the album artwork ascribe to that idea.

Future plans?

Keep writing, recording, and playing shows. The music isn't going away if no one hears it but me. I'd like to do another EP soon and maybe put some more experimental / noise / field recording compositions to tape. Touring in the U.S. and Europe would be great, especially with friends. Working on music and art is a good time. Helping people get their projects rolling… maybe someday we'll all live to do exactly what we want to.

West Coast Performer Magazine

Mann and his backing trio are texture aces. The bedrock of Daytime Ghost is laden with fuzzy, 4-track acoustic guitars, and conventional rhythmic support from bass and drums. All this enlivened with narrative by Mann's Elvis Costello-like voice. The album has a reacquainted feel, similar to finding buried vinyl, and a sound that wallows in lo-fi, vintage production. Further influencing the nostalgia, Daytime Ghost clutches on to classic Americana inspiration — the vagabond — suggesting that it's an album that seems created for road music.

Sacramento News + Review

by Jackson Griffith

"The new record is a real smart-rock charmer, the kind of road-trip soundtrack that deepens and gets better with repeated playing. Beginning with his former band the Zim-Zims, Mann has come across as the perfect NorCal analogue to some of greater New York's finer post-Velvet combos, both as a narrative songwriter and as a guitar wielding texturalist. Here he's provided a cornucopia of sonic film footage. Ever see that haunting video of someone's motorcycle trip to Prypiat, near Chernobyl? Daytime Ghost would provide a perfect complement to that."

Sacramento News + Review

by Jackson Griffith

That said, even when things are not hunky dory, politically or economically, people still make interesting music. Consider Jake Mann, the one-time Davis resident relocated to San Francisco who's just released a companion disc to last year's Daytime Ghost, helpfully titled, well, Daytime Ghost: Out-takes & Remixes.

This is some real trippy, long-drive, get-lost-in-the-Delta music, with plenty of low-fidelity hallucinatory thrum and squawk to thrill you if that's your fancy. There are two versions of the title track, of which the Mark Oi remix just kills, plus five others, including a sweet version of the top-notch "Satellite," an aurally prismatic "Tone Blows Down" and a Limon remix of "Take You for a Ride" that features some sweetly creepy synth tones. (And for you Bible Spice fans, there's a director's cut of "Valdez, I Go.")

Mann will play the Old Firehouse in Davis on Thursday, November 13. You can find his new record (like its predecessor, on Michael "Cool as Folk" Leahy's Crossbill label) at www.jakemann.org

Either/Or music blo

I might just be the worst blogger in the history of existence. OK, perhaps not. But considering I told Jake Mann that I'd write about his album Daytime Ghost last August, clearly something went wrong. I like to call it "getting a girlfriend," but even so, six months is a ridiculous wait for anything. This review is incredibly overdue, but better late than never. R-right?

Anyhow, the album starts off with some pretty fuzzy guitar playing, which is always a good thing. Indeed, the guitar playing is one of Mann's greater strengths - the fuzziness is just a bonus. The riff that kicks off Mudflat is damned good, so much so that it allows me to ignore my dislike of spoken-word material, which is quite a feat. His lyrical ability is not slacking, either; Edie in Hades starts off with a quite sinister lyric, "Somewhere in the depths of hell / They made a place for you," and though he sings it like he's said it before, it doesn't make it any less awesome. But like I said, the guitar playing is really what shines throughout the album, especially in Mudflat, Beat The Drum, and Wallfollower. The standout track for me is still the one I'd heard before, Take You For A Ride, which was on his single that I wrote about before. It combines good lyrics with good music and good singing, which I guess is what makes a song good! So again, if you are into guitar music, then Jake Mann is the mann (pun sadly intended) for you.

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