Echo in the Canyon

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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“Echo in the Canyon,” the debut film from Andrew Slater, is a musical collaboration with Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers. The film traces the influences of California and Laurel Canyon on Pop and Rock & Roll. Peppered with rock stars from the 60s and 70s (including the late legend Tom Petty) this breezy, affectionate film gives a solid overview of the California music scene some fifty years ago.

In addition to history, the songs discussed are sung, interpreted by Dylan and numerous guest stars (including Beck, Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor).

The project became a concert.

Jakob Dylan is a roving guide, taking us along the hills of Laurel Canyon as he interviews Petty and other rock luminaries. Invariably, every musician says that Roger McGuinn of The Byrds is the visionary, the headliner who injected poetic feeling into rock music. McGuinn used a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar. Its effect was life-changing to everyone.

In 1964, McGuinn, struck by The Beatles, began releasing acoustic versions of Beatles’ songs. Then David Crosby joined up and the ‘California Sound’ was born, ushered by a unique twang and beat.

With songs like “Turn, Turn, Turn!” and a version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” McGuinn and Crosby excited the sandy sea pop of The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson wrote the album “Pet Sounds,” considered by critics to be one of the most influential rock albums of all time. The album was made in part with found elements: bicycle horns, layered voices and soda cans. One of the songs featured a Theremin for the first time. The album pointed the way to psychedelic music and inspired “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The musicians of Laurel Canyon all lived in bungalows clustered together. They worked and partied together, emulating the movie star community of Douglas Fairbanks, Boris Karloff and Errol Flynn. Instead of Fairbanks and Flynn, Frank Zappa was the iconic star who improvised accompaniment to Allen Ginsberg’s poetry.

Crosby is here legendarily unapologetic along with a hyperactive Stephen Stills. Do not forget the feverish mountain man of sound, Neil Young, stomping and whirling like a dervish. If this isn’t enough there is a bemused and delighted Ringo Starr talking behind prismatic spectacles, the Warhol-like Beck and the magical Mad Hatter Tom Petty reminiscing about thick musical tureens, long past.

Although the absence of Joni Mitchell and Jim Morrison can be thought of as glaring omissions, “Echo In the Canyon” has something for everyone, especially an awed Brian Wilson, a smiling Michelle Phillips and a Beat personified Jakob Dylan who wanders through a sun-bleached and gritty L.A. seemingly not yet glossed over by smartphones, cyberspaces, megaplex movies and macchiatos.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com