By coincidence or some kind of cosmic magnetism, Collie Ryan and Mia Doi Todd both play the same guitar. Ryan’s is a 1967 Martin and Todd’s is a 1969 and some specialized model I can’t remember—but after the show, the two ladies held up their guitars for comparison and chorused at each other with cheerleader glee, or like two computer geeks comparing code: “It’s the Martin D2P4-11-Q!” Todd’s is in pretty good shape except for a large burn on the guitar’s bum. Ryan’s has been in the desert for more than a quarter century and it’s faded and cracked. “You’ve got some high action—you do!” Todd exclaimed, inspecting Collie’s axe. Meanwhile, Michel Gondry taped the scene on his point-and-shoot photo cam. “Michel, did you get our picture?” Todd asked. Then a tall wide man with white hair and a neat beard approached to give Collie advice on fixing her guitar. She asked him to play something and he finger-picked a romantic flamenco melody about the sky. He mentioned afterward that it was a song he hadn’t sung in decades. “And you’re a poet, too,” Collie said because she’s a sweet lady. I happened to be pretending invisible, and they ignored me so I could absorb the conversation.

The couple handfuls of people gathered at the Philosophical Research Society auditorium were shuffling out. Not sure what they study or ascribe to at this place, but it definitely has something to do with ideas and mindful things—that’s why Collie’s show had been booked there. Opener was Erica Hyska—her with guitar and her bandmate Casey on single drum and they made quite the couple. She was young—pretty, messy hair; shy but tough chick-looking—and somehow she’d crossed paths with this Mr. Rogers. At one point she prefaced an anecdote by saying “because Casey would want me to do this…” And he nodded yes and pushed up his glasses. He also played a song he wrote for when she disappears without a trace. She sang along. Their voices mingled comically—he was reprimanding her with Pooh Bear softness and her weird sound was like the image in the back of his mind. When she sings, her shy talk transforms to contorted soul—helium and nitrous each pulling her voice in the opposite direction.

Mia Doi Todd—next—is pretty much a super lady. A babe—a pagan worthy perhaps, wisely connecting lines between humanness and nature—lovey dovey, but existential. Todd dropped tiny ideas into gentle phrases about being and lovers’ poems. In her context, something like “soup is on” or “yes yes yes” reverberates meaningfully. And Mia Doi Todd and me were excited for Collie Ryan. Collie had a backup guitarist keeping rhythm with her. He desert tan, too—I imagined he also lived in a  bus, like Collie, chiseling animals and plants into rocks while Collie paints her hubcap mandalas. Then I found out—it was a long eavesdropping session after the show—that the three high school-aged kids with matching ‘80s sunglasses on their heads and hipster duds sitting front row belonged to him. I tried to hold on to the fantasy.

Collie Ryan blows the mind—in the ‘70s, she made it to Big Bend from San Francisco. She sought the middle of nowhere and found it—one of the hottest spots in the U.S. Here, she pursued trippy philosophies: “Does it really take time to be free of your mind?” She stopped time to figure it out, zooming in on a cityless reality where she grew wise, painting and talking to indians… Now she reemerges silver-haired with a busted guitar to rattle the cage. She told us about Hopi traditions between songs she’d written for the desert, about the Rio Grande, about ventures into Mexico and the circle from which everything spirals out. Her voice may not reach the high notes it used to, but her wisdom has aged beautifully. How the guy from Yoga Records found the few recordings she made in the ‘70s in order to release them, I don’t know—glad he did.

—Daiana Feuer

Download: Collie Ryan “Star Bright (Song of Silence)”

(from The Hour Is Now out now on Yoga)

Back in 1973, Collie Ryan recorded three albumfuls of folk songs at once before retreating deep into the Texas desert. She’s squatted in an old bus along the Rio Grande ever since, spending her days painting mandalas on hubcaps. While she has no plans of dropping back into civilization, she will share her mystical observations about circles and sing us a song or two. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Why did you have to move your bus?
I had to move off the river in the last three months. We had an enormous flood. It took out what was left of the golf course. Since I had been living 22 years down there at the permission of the owners, it was my agreement with them that if they needed the land that I would leave. They needed the land to lift the golf course up higher so it wouldn’t flood. I am in the process of finding another place to put my trailer and we’ll see what turns out.
What do you like about the Texas desert?
The Chihuahua desert is really a beautiful desert. Each desert has its own character. It’s just absolutely beautiful and big and empty around here. There’s a lot of ocotillo way down in the Big Bend where I’m at. We kind of drop down below the plains of Texas and there are all kinds of mountains and valleys and fantastic rock formations. There’s a feeling in this desert, as most deserts have. There’s a feeling that people come down here—it happened to me, it happens to most people—they either get real antsy and don’t want to stay here at all or you come down here and it just feels so good. It feels like coming home. There are a lot of people moving in down here because of the chaos that looks like it’s going to happen in cities and the expenses and trouble going on in the world. Once it catches a hold of you—it might take 20 years, but you end up down here. It’s a famous place in Texas. It’s 200 square miles of nature’s more fantastic artwork. As Big Sur is to San Francisco, the Big Bend is to Austin and Dallas. It’s a getaway place, an inspiration place. You come here to paint, write, build original housing. Joshua Tree is that for L.A., though it’s gotten real crowded there. Joshua Tree has a really fine feeling to it, too. I imagine it has something to do with the minerals under the ground and the magnetics of the earth. Certain places produce a wonderful feeling that is very healthy to your spirit.
What is most inspiring for your art about the landscape?
The colors down here are fantastic. I’m originally from California, around the Bay Area where there was a lot of green. I moved to the desert and I began to enjoy the light. I’d always read about the light in Greece. Maybe I’ll get to go there someday and see for myself. And then down here in the Big Bend there’s a curious factor that there’s all kinds of colors in the earth. I use brown in every work. There are probably 50 shades of brown from the purple end to the gold end. It’s really an inspiring place to play, to paint, because number one, if you can live simply, you end up with more time. If you are living in the city you have X amount of money to earn to pay for your rent, etc, which keeps you moving X amount of hours to keep the electricity, gas and a very high rent going. Down in the desert, people find lower rent or live in trailers. They make-do houses and you end up with more time. It’s a different frame of mind.
In pop culture the desert is associated with apocalypse—the city has died and we have no choice but to live in desert. But, in fact, it seems to be the opposite. It’s not the end of the world, it’s more alive…
It’s incredibly alive. The first time I ever saw the desert outside Palm Springs, it was a little shocking to me coming from a verdant place with grass and trees. It’s a lot of rocks and the plant life is different. Gardening is an art; it’s not easy here. It’s quite an ordeal to put together a desert garden. It’s not like the end of the world. It’s a refuge, actually. People have always gone to the desert for their health, for peace, for time and quiet to write—to the sheer fact that there isn’t an urban atmosphere, there’s much less electricity. Moving to the desert now is an ideal situation. You get your peace and quiet and can earn your living too. You can work on a laptop. But there aren’t many radio waves, not much telephone, microwaves or electricity and since it’s quieter you have access to your own mind. This is traditional. The saints and Indians went to the desert to have visions. Also Big Bend was historically an area of refuge for outlaws and heavily pursued Indians. Actually even the conquistadors came through here. A friend of mine showed me a pictograph on a rock she found—said 1689, which is one of the earliest signs they found out here.
Do you feel the presence of spirits that have passed through?
Oh, at times, at times. The desert sort of swallows human marks after a while. If you take one of those little four-wheel drive tricycles in the desert, that will mark it, but your vibrations or being gets swallowed up and blown away in the wind. Where I lived for 22 years on the Rio Grande river had been a Humana camp that would go back 5,000 years. There were cave paintings in the hills. A little over a hundred years ago it was a Comanche camp. The Comanche camped there and raided into Mexico. When Pancho Villa was running, their people camped on the American side to get away from the pillaging of Pancho Villa. It was a Candelaria camp, it was a cavalry camp, and all those marks didn’t leave too much. It was always a happy place.
You speak of being blown away by the wind as a positive—is that what you hope your lasting presence would be? Just blown off with the dust?
Well, who knows? It’s been bulldozed over and built into a golf course! Of course there are marks any place that last in the ether—in the astral. Like I have camped in places in the hills of New Mexico where they had the massacres of the last Indian chiefs and those marks do stay because a massacre is not an everyday event. It’s a pretty tragic event. If a person can see or is psychic, he can read what’s there. It’s also been noted that many cities, like Mexico City, are built on top of ancient cities. People are drawn over and over to an area where people have built for obvious reasons—it’s a good building site, but also because marks are left in the astral. Most of us can’t see in those worlds. We just feel in this world. And in this world—in the desert—it kind of swallows it up. Everything disappears but the four-wheel drive marks.
Have you caught a glimpse into the astral plane?
In my life, I have seen that. Have you ever?
If I did, how would I recognize that it was not just a figment of my imagination?
Well, when people see ghosts, it’s kind of a leaking through from this other plane of life to this one when the conditions are right. Some dreams are like that. All planes are interwoven together and very sensitive people pick up things—some of it is emotional vibration, since everything is vibration. Some people actually leave their bodies and go traveling in the astral plane, which I can’t say I do. When an Indian goes on a hill and has a vision, sometimes things come through like that. It’s a culture that our culture has ignored, but it’s a reality of life that’s been part of cultures historically forever! It’s part of us all. It’s the electric part of us. The inner idea part. Everyone has an astral body. It’s made of energy and electricity and that’s what the physical body forms on. That’s how the baby knows how to unfold and be a human being. The electrical astral body is already formed. Every single thing in existence has an inner energy body.
What about something man-made?
Everything. You won’t have a car without somebody at least thinking of that car first and drawing it out on plans to build it. Everything has an idea body upon which the atoms collect. Whether it’s a car or piece of celery or rock or dog or human. Everyone has an energy body within your physical body. And when science recognizes that we’ll start solving all the mysteries right, left and center.
Those ideas that come to create a song to match a melody with certain words—do those things exist on an astral body?
Every song has energy. It makes an energy or mark on the inner plane. Whether it’s a harmonic one or disharmonic one or a mediocre one. It makes some kind of a mark. For instance, what inspires me is spiritual ideas. In thinking about spiritual ideas, they have beautiful forms and come into your mind and inspire you and out comes some sort of music—for me.
Do the words and music arrive together?
Yes. Sometimes the whole inspiration starts with one note and one word. Then it unfolds. I’ve talked to a lot of songwriters who say the same thing. Your song cooks in your head for a long time. It’s a feeling. It’s the flower of experience. You go through emotions or whatever happens and it cooks in your mind for a while and suddenly, the song is ready like bread rising. You sit down with a word or note and out it comes.
Have you continued writing music this whole time in the desert?
I haven’t written any new songs for a few years because most of my energy has gone into painting mandalas on hubcaps. I earn my living painting. I’ve got them all over Texas—spotted over the USA, England, Australia. I even have some in Jamaica!
Where do you get hubcaps?
Sometimes I’m out traveling, I find them. I have a friend who brings some. I trade him a hubcap for the hubcaps he finds traveling. Many people know I paint them. I have a bit of fame in this small section of the world. They’ll bring them to Big Bend and leave them at certain places for me.
How did hubcaps become your chosen medium?
I had been working with little mandalas and sketching them a lot. Then I started looking for something round to paint on. This was many years ago. I found pizza plates. I wasn’t in the Big Bend then. You could find pizza plates and tacky trays at a second-hand store. Then one day I was down in the Big Bend and wanted to paint some and didn’t have any pizza plates, so I looked around and found a hubcap and that’s how it started.
How many have you done?
Well over a thousand. I’ve been painting them for more than twenty years. For the center picture I use scenes like border pictures or cowboy pictures or scenery of the river or many people send me orders—like they want a picture of their dog or various symbols or ideas, or this bird—and then I use simple geometrics in the circles around it.
The circle is such an ultimate concept. No matter where you begin in a circle, it eventually leads to the center.
A circle encompasses everything in existence. You take a dot, that implies a circle. A circle can have a given radius or it can spin into infinity. The circle also implicates—you put the cross in the middle and you have the four seasons. Everything fits in the mandala. I think every culture that ever existed used that symbol as a representation of eternity or existence or God. It can be divided in fives or eights or fours or threes or sixes. Basically, it’s divided in four. Your clock is a mandala. The seasons are a mandala. If you cut an orange, you’re looking at a mandala. If you look at that picture Leonardo DaVinci did with his arms and legs extended, you’re looking at a mandala. The center of it is in his belly button. In a drawing of the brain, there is a mandala. Life unfolds from the center-outwards. It’s a magical design. I’ve learned a great deal painting them.
Do you look at your future as something planned or find it a voyage of discovery or neither?
It will be what it will be. The future will grow out of what I do today. What you do today and how you take care of it completely with good attention right in the present, that’s your foundation of the future. There are some people, though, who do predict a future over time and come to accomplish it. That’s another way of doing things. The way I do it, I do each day completely, one day at a time.
People struggle with what defines living a good life or doing what they should do. What advice do you have on that?
Gosh. I always went and did what my heart told me to do. I never got off too far. One does during a long lifetime. You find out what your heart really wants to do. You find your true predilection and go from there. A lot of us are involved with earning a living and raising kids but still in that time you start to find your predilection and as the years go by, and even though you’re really busy, you gradually pull your life in line to what your true duty is—what you were born to do. Each person should do that. Otherwise, if you’re living someone else’s life, yours is wasted. Then you get older and life’s not much fun at all if you haven’t been living your own real life. Unless you set out on that discovery and figure out what you really want to do—then life is exciting and rewarding amid all the troubles that come naturally.
Did you choose the songs put on the new compilation of your recorded music?
I helped choose them. Most of the songs that were chosen for this album were ones that I have chosen myself to keep alive over the years.
There’s something rather peaceful about them.
They come from a peaceful, very natural place. It’s a different kind of music. It’s the kind of music to listen to and go within. There’s music to serve every purpose. There’s marching music, there’s dancing music. A lot of music is to take you out. This music is to take you within. Over-passing the nightmares and personal nonsense into your true center. I am glad if they can help. The more you listen to them, the more secrets—the more depths—you’re going to hear in them. They have been teaching me for many years. They come from perhaps my wiser nature. They will teach you how to think in the circle. How to think from the center of you—how to feel from the center of you—which we all need help to do.
The vibrations in your voice are really prominent.
Back when I recorded those I had a three-octave voice. I think I’m down to being a moderate second soprano now. I don’t have the voice I used to have. But I still sing and I keep all those songs going. It’s very exciting that people are finally getting to enjoy them because I certainly have for many years.
Is music a language?
Everything is vibration. Everything boils down to vibration: good, bad, high, low, everything translates into vibration. Everything is a song. Everything has its song. So music is a language. It’s a language that we understand and need very much now because if you think about it, because of the technology we have, there are many more than thousands—millions—of people pouring their material out in some form for the world to hear. And each piece reaches its own little audience. Music is talking now. Music, whichever kind you like to hear, raises your spirits. You can call music a lot of things but it certainly is a language. Music that doesn’t have words speaks to your soul. I started learning Spanish because years ago I met a woman from Argentina, Amanda Miguel, and she sang so incredibly beautifully. It moved me to tears and put me through all kinds of changes and I didn’t understand a word. Just the pure vibration she was causing.

COLLIE RYAN WITH MIA DOI TODD AND ERICA HYSKA ON SUN., JULY 12, AT THE PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY, 3910 LOS FELIZ BLVD., LOS FELIZ. 8 PM / ADMISSION $10 / ALL AGES. PRS.ORG. COLLIE RYAN’S THE HOUR IS NOW IS OUT NOW ON YOGA RECORDS. VISIT COLLIE RYAN AT YOGARECORDS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/COLLIERYAN.

Download: Ya Ho Wha 13 “Treat You So Right”

(from Magnificence in the Memory out June 23 on Drag City)

Ya Ho Wha 13 were the band formed out of the pre-dawn practice sessions that served also as morning meditation for the Source Family, the L.A.-area religious sect that ran their own health food restaurant during the ‘70s. They released nine albums but recorded hours of material. Drag City has collected nine unreleased songs for this month’s Magnificence in the Memory. This interview by Dan Collins.

How did you get your name, Isis?
Isis Aquarian (Source Family historian): It was the family name given to me. Father said that the names we were given were for several reasons—either because that’s the name that we needed to learn from, or that’s the name of who we were, or that’s the name we needed to get qualities from. In other words, whatever name we had, nobody could go on an ego trip about because you never knew why you had that name.
You never had an ego trip about being named after an Egyptian goddess?
No, not really! I always related to her, though. Manly P. Hall from the Philosophical Research Society—who did Secret Teachings of All Ages—was a mentor to Father when he was Jim Baker, before he became Father and started the Source. And we had gone over to see Manly P. Hall in the early days, and he handed Father a list of names, and he said ‘These names are the names to give the people in the Family.’ And we went back and people either picked what name they liked, or Father gave them a name. And somebody gave me the name Isis, and I didn’t relate to it. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that name!’ And Father was standing there and he said, ‘No, that’s your name.’
What was your original role in the Family and in the Source?
I had known Father as Jim Baker, when he had his other restaurant called the Old World. He had three restaurants—the Aware Inn, the Old World, and he opened up the Source. And they were all within, I would say, four or five blocks of each other on Sunset Boulevard. And they were all very famous. And he had his first two as Jim Baker. I met him, he had the Old World, and he was living with his wife of the time, Dora, a French girl. And I became friends with Dora, and I hung out at the Old World. And I knew Jim, but we never seemed to really connect, which was very strange, because he was very good looking, and he was the kind that would flirt with everybody. But there just seemed to be a hold on us at the time. But then I went my way, and he went his way, and I ended up living with Ron Raffaelli. He was a famous rock photographer—he was known as Jimi Hendrix’s photographer. That’s how I met him. I was asked to go on a shoot with Jimi Hendrix, and we became engaged. And I had my life at the studio with him for a couple years. And I had heard that Jim had opened up the Source, and was being known as Father, and was starting a spiritual family. We were looking for a group of people with long hair that looked like Jesus, because we were doing a poster for Jesus Christ Superstar. And I said to Ron, ‘I know where there’s a bunch of people running around looking like Jesus. They’re at this place called the Source! I’m going to go down there—I’ll get us some models.’ So I drove down to the Source, and oh my god, the place was incredible. As soon as you stepped near it, you knew something was happening. And I stepped onto the patio, and I asked for Jim Baker and somebody said ‘Oh, you mean Father.’ And he came walking out, and he was like 6’3’, and he looked like Moses. He had long hair and a beard, and he was no longer the Jim Baker I knew. And I was immediately smitten, as they say, and he just embraced me and said ‘I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come home—to come back.’ And I basically forgot what I was even doing there. And he invited me to come to morning meditation the next day, and then I basically never left. So I just walked out of my home life and became a full time part of the Source family.
How old were you?
I was in my late twenties. A lot of the kids were sixteen, seventeen, and in their early twenties. I’m not saying I was the oldest one there, but I had also known Jim Baker so I wasn’t intimidated by him. Most people were finding their guru and their masters, and I found him as my earthly spiritual father, for sure. But I knew that I had a destiny with him. I basically became his right hand—that’s what he called me. The Family had other names for me. ‘Bulldog’—you know there’s a bulldog in every family. And ‘hatchet lady,’ ‘dragon lady’…
Did you like those nicknames?
It didn’t bother me, no. In fact, ‘Dragon Lady’ was kind of endearing! You had your role, and you played it out, and Father always had my back.
When did the band Ya Ho Wa 13 start?
We had musicians in the Family that would always gather and play. We weren’t doing anything ‘musically,’ but we did realize we had some very talented musicians. Music seemed to be playing all around the house. And that was the thing to do back then. Everybody carried a guitar. It was like music was the new language. And one day I think Octavius came in and was talking about being a drummer, and a lot of people had been musicians, and just gave it up when they came in—whatever any of us were, we gave up when we came in. It was of no necessity at that point. And I just remember Father one day saying, ‘Wait a minute. I have a drummer. I have a guitar player. I have a bass player. We have singers. We have a band. Let’s do some music!’ So, bands started being formed to see what we wanted to do with them. And at this point, Father wasn’t really in them—he was just having fun seeing what we could do. And because we were very famous, and everybody came to the Source, all the movie producers, directors, musicians—John Lennon was there all the time—they all came there. So we figured, ‘Well jeez, we can just start letting people hear it and see if we can do something with it.’
I heard you would play every day from 3 to 6 in the morning! When did you sleep?
Right! That was when we gathered for morning meditation. Father would be so full of energy and so excited, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to the band room!’ And the band room was just a converted garage off the meditation room, and speakers had been hooked up, so no matter what was happening, we could all hear it. Because we all couldn’t fit in the band room.
A lot of your movement’s spiritual beginnings and influences have been chronicled. But what seem less well known are the specifics of the musical side of things.
He formed Ya Ho Wa 13 and started playing with it, and that was like his signature when he started playing with the Family. It’s not like he could play or sing. It was another way of morning meditation. It was another way of his talking about the wisdom teachings. He often said, ‘Long after I’m gone, my teachings will continue because of the music we’re doing now. Music has no barriers. Everyone understands music because it’s a soul thing.’
One of the interesting things about your band is that, given your spiritual and cosmological underpinnings and your emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity, I was expecting you to sound like Sun Ra or something jazzy. But you guys are a rock ‘n’ roll combo.
Very much so. When the band first now started getting back together, I was wondering how it was going to work. Because when you have the head guy no longer there, how does that work? And I know the public’s been going on the albums that had Father in it, like Penetration. So when the three Brothers got together and decided to continue playing as Ya Ho Wa 13, it was interesting to see how that was going to play out: Octavius, drummer, Djin, guitar, and Sunflower, bass.
Was there ever fighting about the music?
There were disagreements, but we never got into bickering or arguing. The short time we lived together was so incredible because we lived in a space and time out of this reality. Certain things didn’t exist that exist for us now that we’re back. We lived in a kind of free zone where certain rules and regulations didn’t exist. We related to people’s souls, not their personalities. When the Family dispersed—and now we’re trying to deal with each other again thirty years later—we’re just starting to relearn those techniques. In 2001, we had our first big reunion, and the last ten years we’ve just been dealing on a social level with each other and trying to be nice. A lot of stuff has come up that we never got to work on, because we all just left. It was like The Day the Earth Stood Still. We looked around and nobody was there.
I remember reading that the Beatles were a big influence on the band.
I think definitely because that’s what the band grew up with. The Beatles were very cosmic. They had stepped over into spirituality, and they were given incredible messages.
Were there specific Beatles songs that you wanted to emulate?
No, once the Family was formed we didn’t listen to other people’s music.
You never stepped into a discotheque or club and heard another band?
The only time that happened was in the early days when we did try stuff like that. We got booked at the Whisky a Go Go, and we walked into the Whisky a Go Go in our robes and our long hair—and we did get laughed at! But when they got up on the stage, everybody was quiet because they could sing. They had some good music happening.
But you must have noticed that at the same time you were making this music, bands such as Pink Floyd, they were doing the same…
Oh, yes, absolutely! I do know that we opened the Crater Festival in 1976, sunrise, here in Hawaii for the 200th anniversary of America, and we opened for Sly and the Family Stone. We asked for that slot, and we led the thousands of people in Diamondhead Crater in star exercise, and we got them chanting.
Do you think if any band forms, even if it’s just four or five people, that something spiritual forms?
Music seems to touch the largest amount of people at one time than anything I know about all over the world. It has no barriers, it has no race, it doesn’t distinguish between color, religion, and nationality. You can put a song on and put it out over the airwaves, and thousands of people, their soul can get out of it whatever it gets out of it.
Contemporaries of yours in the avant-garde, such as La Monte Young and Angus Maclise, have kind of said that there is a spiritual plane you can achieve with pure musical tones. Was there a certain way of playing for you that was more in tune with your spiritual quest?
We were into frequencies. Like—the F note is the sound of nature. And the fact that vibration, if you tune into like a F note and another F note comes before, then you vibrate. Like a tuning fork. He tried that with the gong and the kettle drum. We had the gong from Dr. Zhivago—the movie! He bought it and we still have it, and it’s huge! Often in morning meditation, when we weren’t even doing anything with the music, he would have us all go into meditation, and he would do the gong throughout chakras because the gong had the frequencies—all the frequencies of the chakras.
There was kind of a no-drug policy, wasn’t there? Despite your band being considered psychedelic?
I think marijuana, since we don’t consider it a drug—that is probably being used.
But psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD?
No, no, we didn’t do it in the Family, and as far as I know, it’s not being done now. The family dispersed and we all went our ways and created a new life with new members, and so some thirty years later, we all are not on the same page and we are not responsible for what anyone does or does not. As human beings now out here on our own, it has made it somewhat harder to ‘ante up’ as they say.
Sky Saxon, who joined the band later, has been known to have some drug issues. Did he have those when he was in the band?
Sky Saxon was an entity unto himself. He does his thing. I’m talking about Ya Ho Wa 13.
Whoa! Are you saying the album he recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13 was outside the realm of what you consider their music?
Um… well, during the Family days, after Father left and said he was no longer going to be in the band, he invited Sky—‘Arelick’ was his family name—into the band. And they renamed the band Fire Water Air. And it either didn’t do anything, or we moved. We didn’t accomplish or finish a lot of what we did because we would move and go on to something else, and it was disruptive of what we were doing.
Was Sky part of the Source?
He was. He would kind of come and go, though. Father loved him, but he was always just Sky! The way he is now is the way he was back then. And I think Sky does a lot of things that the rest of us don’t do.
Was there a conscious decision about which instruments to use in the band?
No, that’s just the instrumentation that the band played. And I think it’s the basic formation of a band that you have drum, guitar, and bass, right?
Definitely in rock ‘n’ roll. But did you ever introduce any other instruments?
I think they brought in Pythias for a while on guitar, and Lovely with a violin. Lovely was Andre Previn’s daughter. That was one of the forms of Ya Ho Wa 13 that Father was trying to put together. And they brought in a couple other brothers—Home, who sang and played guitar, and Rhythm, who played piano. After we left L.A., we tried different forms of the band, when we moved to San Francisco and moved to Hawaii.
Brian Wilson considered himself a very spiritual songwriter, and made many songs about Hawaii. You still live there now! Is there a spiritual purity there?
There was to us. Hawaii is very clean. The air is clean. We don’t have pollution. We have nice weather all year. It’s called paradise for a reason!
Were you happy with the Obama presidency being that he was a resident of Hawaii?
I don’t really ‘do’ politics, but as far as being a local Hawaii boy, he’s right here where I live—Kahlua. When he stayed here, he was just like three blocks down the street. We saw him on the beach all the time.
Did he go surfing?
He tried to, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him surf anymore!

YA HO WHA 13’S MAGNIFICENCE IN THE MEMORY RELEASES TUE., JUNE 23, ON DRAG CITY. VISIT YA HO WHA 13 AT YAHOWHA13.COM. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY, SEE THE SOURCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FATHER YOD, YA HO WHA 13 AND THE SOURCE FAMILY BY ISIS AND ELECTRICITY AQUARIAN AVAILABLE NOW FROM PROCESS MEDIA. PROCESSMEDIAINC.COM.