How/who/what tf am I? Chapter 3

The circuitous path to a music career continues.

As always, you can listen to this essay instead by clicking the link below.

Before you read any further, if you haven’t read it already, you might want to go back and check out Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of this series.

I found my heart in San Francisco

If you’re thinking of dropping out of college with no plan, I highly recommend having a godfather who grew up in San Francisco and has an in-law apartment he stays in sometimes that he’s willing to let you live in for free while you find yourself. This makes things much better, and was the case for me.

I landed in SF in the early summer of 2008 and decided that I wanted to be free to pursue art, which meant I’d need a mindless day job that I could just “leave at work,” not like that draining college thing I’d been doing for two years. No. Now I was free to do something straightforward and simple so that my creative talents could be reserved for all the incredible art-making I had ahead of me. So I got a job waitressing at a brunch restaurant and immediately encountered a problem with this plan. The job was so exhausting I couldn’t do anything but lay on the couch when I got home. My shift started at 7am and went til about 2pm, which I thought would be perfect for leaving my evenings open. But I remember one day early on that I got home and took what I thought would be a nap at about 3pm, only to wake up when my alarm went off at 5am for the next day of work to start.

The idea that waiting tables is the stereotypical side gig for artists blows my mind. Waiting tables is one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done. Granted, not every restaurant is the same, and I learned a few things at this brunch restaurant about what to avoid in the future. Stairs, for instance. Aspiring young artists, heed my warning. Do not work at a restaurant with stairs. Carrying trays up and down stairs is a unique misery I wish on no one. (Later I would also learn that delivering room service is also misery. What happens if they don’t open the door? You just stand there in the hallway with a massive, heavy tray on your shoulder, waiting.) The point is, I was getting very good at balancing lots of plates on my arms, but not making much headway on the artist thing.

The artist thing, as far as I could devise, consisted of playing open mics and going out to see live shows on my own, which I was able to do thanks to a “job” writing music reviews for a music blog and getting paid in free tickets. I was going out a lot on my own, seeing and playing a lot of music, but not really connecting with anyone. I was lonely.

So I sought out an internship; something else to do that would put me in touch with other like-minded people and feel meaningful. I saw an ad for internships at Students For Sensible Drug Policy, an organization I’d been involved with in high school, and I decided to reach out to them. I figured friends awaited me here. People who cared about politics and drugs. My people. I was right. Friends did await me in the drug policy reform world. Here we are partying in the streets the night Obama got elected.

AND! A better job awaited me too. Because shortly after I started interning at SSDP, I found out that the college student at Ohio State University who I had interviewed for my 8th grade research paper on marijuana legalization was now on the board of one of California’s three medical marijuana dispensaries, Berkeley Patient Group. He hired me, and I quit the brunch gig and started working full time as… whatever the euphemism was at the time for “person who sold weed.” I got way better pay and could (actually was strongly encouraged to) smoke weed all day. Or “medicine” as we were instructed to call it.

Needless to say, this job was waaaaay chiller. It technically ate up more of my time, but I was far less physically exhausted. And I was making friends, and starting to play at house shows and underground gigs, finding my way into the Bay Area countercultures I knew must have been there somewhere. And then two things happened that changed my life.

1. I met my future husband. More about that in a moment.

2. The bailout. I’ll remind you that it was 2008. All this reckless and predatory behavior by huge financial institutions had wreaked havoc on the American economy and suddenly the headlines were that we were in an economic tailspin that might land us in another Great Depression. The Bush Administration’s solution to this was to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, aka The Bailout. Here’s what happened. These institutions, who knowingly did super irresponsible shit that caused massive parts of the economy to fall apart were given $700 billion of taxpayer money to… basically just continue to exist and be ok. No strings attached.

It’s hard to explain how angry this made me. I didn’t know much about neoliberal free market ideology at the time. I’d only taken one economics course at Reed, which annoyed me. But I seemed to remember that a big part of it was the idea that the market would “discipline” behavior that was bad for society. Like, a business would collapse if it wasn’t making sustainable business decisions, and that’s a good thing. That’s supposedly one of the strengths of this magical market thing. The market doesn’t suffer fools. So if this was the dominant ideology of our country, why the fuck were these private institutions being given money (our money) specifically to compensate them for the losses they were responsible for?

Well, the answer to that is twofold. First off, obviously, this ideology is not a genuine belief amongst people in power; it’s just a rationale that’s cited when it’s useful, usually when cutting government programs for poor people. The other thing was that these financial guys were saying to the world that they were the only ones who understood how to fix this. No one could be trusted but them! This stuff was very, very, very complex. Everyone was so intimidated by these economic concepts. Phrases like “mortgage-backed securities,” “derivatives,” “subprime lending crisis” made people’s eyes glaze over and led to a pervasive fear that this was too complicated for anyone to handle other than men who used these words confidently.

The UMASS Years

I felt personally attacked and so I took it as a personal challenge to prove to myself and anyone else that these terms were not in fact that complicated and that these men were psychopathic idiots and had no business being in charge of our tax dollars. I decided to give up on the artist thing (again) and go back to school. This time, for Economics. My parents were teaching at UMASS-Amherst, and when I told them I was scrapping the music idea and wanted to be a revolutionary instead, they said I should consider checking out UMASS, which had this incredible radical Economics department which had made the highly unorthodox decision to hire 5 Marxists in the early 70’s who built the department to be one of the few Economics departments in the country that actually treated and taught neoliberalism as a social theory (which it is) rather than like a hard science (which it’s not.)

So I made the decision to move once again and attend UMASS-Amherst to finish my degree. I’d study Economics and learn Spanish, shift my focus to social justice, and finally give up on this whole artist pipe dream once and for all! I gave my notice at work and started mentally preparing myself to leave SF and start a new chapter.

And then I fell in love.

You see, there was this guy that I worked with. His name was Tomás. Tomás was sweet, cool, handsome and funny. But since I was dating someone else for most of the year, and we were monogamous, Tomás and I had kept things purely platonic. But one day, about two weeks before I was about to move to Massachusetts and he was about to move to Ghana, we hung out at Dolores Park, and we kissed.

And then we spent the next two weeks inseparable. Ain’t that just how it goes sometimes? You go all in when you know it’s gonna end? But then once you’ve gone that deep, can you really let it end? Tomás and I were really similar in a lot of ways. He was also a musician who thought that’s what his life was going to be about, but had switched gears and just finished up his degree in Political Science. He had decided to dedicate his life to working in Economic Development and had accepted a job with USAID that would take him to Ghana, where he could also study drumming for fun.

When we both left the Bay Area, there was an assumption that we would stay in touch, but the status of the relationship was unclear. But no matter what label we didn’t want to give it, we were clearly in something. We wrote each other long e-mails every day and talked on the phone whenever we could. I started scheming about how to save up money to visit him in Ghana, which I did.

Eventually we admitted that not only were we in a long distance relationship, we now wanted very much for that relationship to NOT be long distance. He also wasn’t happy in his job, so he started making plans to move to Massachusetts to be with me. It seems a little crazy in retrospect, but after 9 months in a purely long distance relationship, he moved in with me and my parents in Massachusetts.

Eventually we got an apartment and created a cute little existence together. We’d play music at night for fun, and sometimes have Spanish-only nights where Tomás would graciously and patiently help me through an entire evening where I worked on my Spanish. He was a native speaker who had also taught himself French, and knew how important practice was for learning a new language.

As I write this portion I’m feeling a lot of anxiety and indecision about how much I feel like sharing here. I don’t know how other divorced people feel, but I’m afflicted with a pervasive, low-intensity shame that may never leave around my decision to get married young and my subsequent decision to divorce very soon after. Maybe I’ll write more about those feelings some day. But today I’ll just give you the broad strokes of how this relationship, and specifically our decision to get married, was responsible for Tomás and me finding our way back to music.

Antioquia

Tomás knew this band.

They were his friends and they were his favorite. He loved their music and romanticized their lifestyle, and his enthusiasm was contagious. We went to Burning Man with them in 2010, our first burn, and it really did seem like they had cracked the code for how to do the independent musician life right. These guys were nothing like the salty, sad musicians I’d met in Columbus. They were disciplined, healthy, happy (it seemed) and really going somewhere (it seemed.) Their style was singular. I’d never heard anything like it. It was funky, playful, weird and surprising. There was some Zappa in there. But also Tool? A little Blind Melon. But also Fela Kuti? Asymmetric time signatures and polyrhythms were common. And they had a habit of not only writing long-ass intros, but also taking two completely different song ideas and just pasting them together to create these 8 minute sagas that were like mini psychedelic journeys. And then there was the drumming.

They would be in the middle of a fully electrified prog rock song and then the drummer, Craig, would hold down this beat while everyone else would drop their amplified instruments and grab traditional drums and go into the audience and start doing these choreographed drumming patterns that I would later find out were traditional rhythms from Colombia and West Africa. They’d go right into the center of the crowd and get everyone losing their minds and dancing their faces off. And of course there was their unbelievable lead singer, Maddy. Her voice was powerful and silky at the same time, and her confidence blew me away and inspired me to care less and do more. She was the first woman I saw onstage with unshaved armpits, and after that I never shaved mine again. She walked around topless, cracking jokes and making a spectacle of herself, while also dropping in with stunning presence and pathos at a moment’s notice. She was my hero.

So, when Tomás and I decided to get married, it was obvious that we’d book Antioquia to play the wedding. We called them up and told them the news, and they decided to book their first national tour, with our wedding as the anchor gig on the east coast that they’d book around. 8 weeks of shows were set up, getting them out from California and back again by bus.

But a couple of months before the wedding, we got a call from the guitar player, Adley, with some hard news. Maddy had quit the band. They weren’t sure what to do. They had all these shows booked, including our wedding, and now they thought they might need to cancel them. Their final hail mary was to see if they could find a replacement lead singer on short notice.

Tomás stared at me. I knew what he was thinking and it pissed me off. He was suggesting that I offer myself up for the position. His rationale wasn’t crazy. I had the unique qualifications for the job. I knew every word of their music. I’d been learning African drumming with Tomás. I now spoke Spanish, in which many of their songs were sung.

But I was pissed because it felt cruel for him to present this to me, knowing full well I couldn’t do it. I’d given up on music. We both had. And now I was on a totally different path; about to finish up my degree with a semester abroad in Chile… with him… (which was the entire reason we’d decided to get married.) He was a Chilean citizen and I’d be able to get citizenship and all kinds of government benefits if we were married, so we’d decided to tie the knot prior to moving there.

It would be insane and irresponsible to give up this plan, leave school, and join a hippie prog rock band and tour the country. Insane. And now that the option was there, I’d have to turn it down and spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I’d done that tour with my favorite band… an obsessive recurring regret that I knew would torture me.

But then I thought about it more. Ok, I couldn’t give up on the degree thing. I was too close. But the moving to Chile thing… that could wait. I could try out joining this band and if it didn’t work out I’d have a fun story to tell and just move to Chile later. So I started talking to my professors and to UMASS. Was there any way I could miss a bunch of class to go do this crazy adventure, and make up the work somehow remotely, and still graduate?

There was.

And so I felt I had nothing to lose. I sent Antioquia some of the rough recordings I’d made at open mics in San Francisco and they accepted my proposal to be their new lead singer. Tomás was also brought on as a second guitar player, and we picked up and moved to California two months before our wedding to rehearse with our favorite band, tour the country, play our own wedding and then live in a bus.

There is so much more to say about this period, but I’ll just end with this. Tomás and I toured with Antioquia for the next two years, and I am so, so, so glad we did. We circled the country three times, played festivals, dives and huge stages, saw every variety of nature this country has to offer, and had an unreasonable amount of fun. And I learned everything I needed to be an independent musician. How to book a tour, how to behave at a music venue, how to work a mailing list, how to troubleshoot your gear, how to promote, how to tour cheaply, how to stay healthy, how to jump in mountain rivers to remind yourself that you’re alive, how to sleep under the stars to remind yourself that you’re small, how to build a whole community in one night with one show, how to rehearse, how to eat for free, how to write collaboratively, how to drive a bus, and more.

Eventually, the band fell apart, as did my relationship with Tomás, for reasons that, again, I don’t feel like getting into here. But the happy ending of Antioquia is that every single person who has been in Antioquia still creates music. Maddy’s solo project, Madeline Tasquin, is stunning. Craig plays with an amazing cumbia group called La Misa Negra, Adley started a project that’s been going for 10 years now called Bicicletas Por La Paz, Paul plays bass for several projects, including with his partner, Heather Normandale, and with me as part of The Damaged Goods, and Tomás even went on to win a fucking grammy playing guitar for Fantastic Negrito.

So even though I feel some shame and regret related to my brief marriage, it’s almost certain that I would not be making music today if it weren’t for the decision to get married. I hate the saying “Everything happens for a reason” but in this instance, it rings true. I think another way of thinking about it is just to acknowledge that we just don’t know where our decisions are going to lead us. It’s only later that we’re able to look back at these decisive moments and understand what they meant.

In Chapter 4, I get a day job teaching music to babies, start writing songs for Bawdy Storytelling and become “Rachel Lark”

What you can expect from The Larkstack

1. Every Monday, I’ll be sharing a weekly essay/newsletter that will be free to everyone!

2. These posts will also include ✨Bonus Content✨ at the end that’s only available to paid subscribers. It might be 📝 more writing, ✅ content recommendations, 🎙️a voice memo, or 🖼️ a piece of art I haven’t released anywhere else yet.

3. I’ll also share announcements about my artist life, like shows & new music releases.

4. All of my writings will also be recorded on voice memo, so you can listen to me read what I’ve written if that’s how you’d prefer to digest my thoughts and opinions.

I invite you to tell me what content you’d be excited about! I genuinely need your help figuring out the overlap of what kind of content I like making and what kind of content people like consuming.

Announcements!

Before I get into fun stuff, I want to acknowledge the horrific genocide in Gaza that is currently underway and offer two small but tangible ways you can help.

1. My dear friend and amazing comedian, Kate Willett, is participating in a fundraiser called Pass The Hat! which pairs comedians with a big following with individual families who are trying to get out of Gaza. She has personally spoken to the mother of 6 who she is sponsoring and is currently trying to raise the money needed to get to Egypt. You can donate here.

2. Jewish Voice For Peace has a very straightforward call script to use when calling your reps and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel, which is truly the only thing that will end this violence.

Ok, onto shows and such.

I’m excited to plug this big 10 year anniversary show for Bicicletas Por La Paz! This is the band that Adley, the guitar player for Antioquia, started and they’re amazing!

Bicicletas Por La Paz 10th Anniversary Show at The Independent in San Francisco

Play: The Bonobo Network Retreat (May 24th-27th in Lake County, CA)

I’ll be performing there and if you’re interested in finding non-monogamous community, The Bonobo Network is really an amazing group to be a part of. If you’re interested, check it out and fill out the form. There’s an extensive vetting process.

And now, I leave you with this ✨bonus content✨ which is a little mixtape tour of Antioquia! I start with a track that I sang on from our final album, Viajero, and move backwards through time. After years of distance and now revisiting this music, I can say with confidence that the albums before I joined were much better. But I’m still proud to share at least a couple these songs. (Some, I’m not gonna lie, make me cringe a bit now, but the kernels of magic are definitely still there.)

Thank you all for being here!

In debaucherous camaraderie,
🪶Rachel Lark

For more…
🎶 Spotify | 🖼️ Instagram | 💝 Patreon | 📹 Tik Tok

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✨Bonus Content✨

This week’s bonus content includes three songs from Antioquia.

Get this bonus content and even more perks by signing up on Patreon🔥