A Unified Front

The building itself is pretty unassuming - a small, brownish, boxy little house with no windows and barely legible address numbers, nestled on the corner of Nord and West Sacramento. In fact, the exterior is so modest I walk past it several times before I realize it is the right location. However, what's going on inside the building is anything but ordinary. Manifest Destiny, a Chico-based anarchist collective banded together under an idea called "mutual aid," a term that Shawn Pawn, one of the collective's founders, defines as helping other like-minded individuals of your own volition, without expecting anything in return, has found a home at 932 Nord Avenue. The collective has recently acquired this recording studio to produce and distribute their own material. When I arrive, I am taken on a brief tour of the ample space, and though the rooms are still pretty much bare, the excitement contained within is almost palpable.
Manifest Destiny is guided by three veterans of the local punk scene: Shawn and Shelby Pawn and Mike Petersen. These longtime friends met at a Chico bar not too long after Shawn and Shelby moved to town to escape the rising rents of Santa Cruz, California. Finding common ground when it came to ideology and a passion for the punk movement, together, they were the driving force behind the now-defunct D.I.Y.R.G. (Do It Yourself Rock Garage). Oddly enough, it was the search for a new location for the D.I.Y.R.G. that lead to the acquisition of Manifest Destiny's Nord Avenue recording studio. "We figured out along the way that if there's gonna be a scene, we have to create it. You can't be apathetic about it," says Mike Petersen, a San Diego native who moved up to Chico around 1989 to attend school and decided to stay. "I was sorta behind the scenes until Shawn and Shelby came up, because I was down on the scene being so fragmented," he remarks about his involvement in local music prior to meeting his partners in Manifest Destiny. "It was nice to find guys like Shawn and Shelby who look at it as 'this is what we do' and not 'this is what we do on the weekend.'"
Manifest Destiny was formed to create more of a unified front as opposed to the scattered, almost tribal nature of the local punk scene at the time. According to Petersen, the collective "just sort of started as a big group of friends inside the punk community that decided to start doing things for each other. And here we are, two years later with what I'd guess you'd call a record label at this point," he continues with a good deal of satisfaction. "We like to call it a press because we're all afraid of calling it a record label, because that sounds really corporate. But seriously, there's nothing corporate or standard about what we do. Everyday is a new adventure."
As Mike, Shawn and Shelby would admit, the past two years with Manifest Destiny have definitely been a learning process. During the recording of their first compilation CD, The Suburban American Tract Home Project, the collective succeeded in creating a family-like atmosphere in the studio. All the bands on the album, many of whom were brought together for the first time, recorded their tracks in the same studio in Richmond, CA, and in so doing, their bond carried outside the studio as well. "Everybody on the comp was going to everybody's shows," Shawn says of the eight bands on Suburban American I. "You don't have to like each other to combine efforts."
However, for Suburban American II, Manifest Destiny tried a different approach. With 18 different bands on the second CD, the collective figured it would be easier to gather pre-recorded tracks instead of trying to conquer the logistical challenges of getting everyone together in the studio. While Petersen still believes the CD to be solid, he does admit that it lacks the energy that the first one had.
"Anybody can take submissions and put them together onto a CD," Petersen remarks, "but it just sounds flat, and it doesn't do anything. It doesn't get anybody working. The way we did the second one…it just didn't feel very good."
This is not a mistake that Manifest Destiny plans to repeat. The third installment of Suburban American is slated to be the first album produced at the new studio, where all of the 25 tracks will be recorded. Petersen believes that the process will go much smoother now that they will not have to make a three-hour drive to lay down tracks and that the atmosphere should be a lot more laid-back. According to him, this type of environment could lead to some interesting experimentation.
"Now, having the studio, I think we'll have even more creative endeavors," he says. "We'll hang some ambient mics while people are rehearsing. Weird things happen when people are hanging out in a recording studio. Different people get together who may not be in a band, but they might just be playing together that day and who knows what you'll end up with. It's kinda like the old jazz days with a bunch of free-form stuff - it's pretty exciting."
In addition to being able to create a more unified, creatively conducive atmosphere, having the studio also provides Manifest Destiny with greater control over all aspects of their production. "It's nice to be able to control everything all the way down the line," Petersen explains. "That's the one thing we've learned with the compilations: Having to have stuff sent out to have it replicated or printed or whatever it is - when it's 600 miles away, it's pretty easy to hear excuses." Though the Manifest Destiny crew strives to form the punk scene into one cohesive unit, they do expect their bands to take the responsibility upon themselves to promote, sell their CDs and get the word out there. As Petersen puts it, "Shawn, Shelby and I will do a lot of the footwork, but at some point, the bands have to take some responsibility for some shameless self-promotion and touring. We're not gonna provide a tour bus for any of these guys, but we'll do what we can. If you're looking for someone to hold your hand all the way through it, then Manifest Destiny is probably not the place for you." As opposed to scaring would-be bands away from Manifest Destiny, this code of ethics, coupled with the passion of the project's directors, has garnered the collective attention from bands locally and from major players in indie punk scenes of other areas. Gruk, P.A.W.N.S., Nogoodnix and relative newcomers the Ballistics make up the impressive core of Chico punk bands who have found a home at Manifest Destiny, and Shawn, Shelby and Mike promise that there are more on the way. Also S.P.A.M. Records, the Bay Area label that released the latest P.A.W.N.S. album, Rabble On the Move, has also expressed interest in working with the upstart collective. This connection with the Bay Area scene and working with its wealth of talent is something the Manifest Destiny crew is definitely looking forward to.
"S.P.A.M. Records in the Bay Area has given us their blessing," Petersen says. "So they'll send people our way - guys like Bart Thurber - those guys are the scene down there. It's sort of like instant credibility - we can't get open fast enough. We've already got a line of people waiting to use the space, and we're not even ready to go yet. It's encouraging, especially since over the last five years, the scene has become really unified again."
Manifest Destiny also hopes to open its studio doors to other styles of music and not just punk. Petersen points out that there is a level of separation between the press and the studio. "Our bands are definitely on the punk side of things, but the studio stands alone. We're gonna be clients of the studio just like anyone else would be. It just so happens that we own both."
Shelby goes on to elaborate. "We won't be exclusively recording punk bands," she says. "We're stoked that we'll be able to use this as a place to record a lot of the punk bands that are on Manifest Destiny, but basically we're looking for like-minded people and that can be from any style of music."
As for how they would view the local scene, Petersen admits that there are both positive and negative aspects of life in Chico. He says that there is a good deal of apathy when it comes to people going out and attending shows, but he hopes, now that Manifest Destiny has a fixed studio location in town, the collective can hype up the local scene by attracting more good punk bands to come to town.
Though the Chico scene might be small, it is tight-knit. The people who are involved aren't afraid to help each other out without the expectation of anything in return, no strings attached, and that is the ideal Manifest Destiny was founded on. "Chico's great because it's a college town, it's open to the alternative side of things," Petersen says. "Especially in and around the downtown area, it seems like you could live your whole life and never leave a two or three block area. You could pretty much barter for anything you need down there. I think that's why a lot of people are attracted to Chico - musicians in particular. That's what makes Chico nice. It's more about doing the right thing as opposed to what's monetarily possible."

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