Rock Star Frogger

Like a frog scrambling across a busy freeway, the lifespan of the average Chico band is tumultuous and short. Many of them break up after a few months of drunken partying, drunken band antics which lead to drunken arguments and, finally, the mutual flippings off and the parting of ways. Like the frog, some of them don’t stand a chance. Then again, some of them might be Hit By a Semi. We’ll get back to that later.
For those bands that can brave the college lifestyle and plan on coming out fighting, Chico has an answer - a vehicle, you could say, to carry the frog across the freeway. Enter Sacred Art Records. In terms of the Chico scene, it is the champion dirt bike. It is the home-built musical machine assembled in a tattoo parlor, fueled on the grease of gutterpunks and the sweat of metalheads, painted up like a Harley chopper, flying the Jolly Roger like a totem, spitting fire and ready to leave strips of rubber thicker than your sister’s padded bras.
Actually, it’s more friendly than that.
“It’s really like a family-type thing,” said operations coordinator Jim Berry, completely ruining the analogy. “No one gets paid, you know what I mean? It’s all just pretty much me donating my time to help David [Singletary, owner], and in return I get the experience of trying to run a record label.”
The purpose behind the label is vague, since it is only in its fifth year of existence, but the general idea is to help bands get off the ground in the hopes of eventually being recognized and being successful. The way Sacred Art has done this in the past has been pretty basic, Berry said. Owner and longtime Chico scenester David Singletary built the idea out of his own business, Sacred Art Tattoos. At the time, Berry said, it basically boiled down to Singletary fronting a band enough money to record a professional-quality album and hoping they didn’t just blow it on 40s and tattoos.
“More or less it was just friends who had bands that didn’t have money to put out a CD,” Berry said. “There was no real contract or anything like that, it was all just done on a handshake.”
It is mostly the same idea right now, but to make sure the band is a good investment, and to avoid unintentionally funding any irresponsible drinking binges, the label employs standards to decide which bands are going to return the effort put into them. The idea, Berry said, is to extend the helping hand only to the bands that need it.
“What we’ve done is focused on bands that we thought actually had a chance to do something other than just play in Chico,” he said. “I know a lot of bands in Chico want to get out of Chico, but only some are willing to do so much.”
Interested bands undergo an application process, starting with sending the label a press packet that includes a bio, demo CD and contact information. Promising bands get a call from Berry, who has a sit-down with them to discuss their intentions and their future as a band. If he likes what he sees, he introduces the band to Singletary, and the negotiations get underway.
“The ones that like to go further than the rest, those are the ones we kind of look for,” Berry said.
And if history serves, those that have already made it into the passenger seat do indeed tend to hang on for the ride. The Inverted Nines, a one-time local punk act whose debut album, We Are The Ones, was funded by Sacred Art, were a local scene legend before they left town. Local metal juggernauts Red With Envy’s debut album also sports the Sacred Art logo, and they are currently in the process of mauling the scene with their own brand of testosterone-fueled sonic rage. Über-headbangers Oddman are considered part of the family, and no one will soon forget the frog that made it across the freeway and into the pages of Chico band history, Hit By a Semi.
The Synthesis caught up with Hit By a Semi bassist Ryan Davidson on an actual freeway in Los Angeles during a mid-afternoon haul back from the photo lab, where he was picking up a set of band publicity photos. Between swearing at other motorists and dodging LA traffic, he had a few minutes to paint a picture of the terrain his band was launched into after its exodus from Chico in 2002.
“The scene is huge,” he declared in awe. “It’s limitless, really. So many more options and places to play.”
The band keeps regular contact with its Chico label as it tries to break its way into the thick of the SoCal music scene - a feat that is much harder than it is in the comparatively backwater confines of Northern California.
“It’s very hard to stand out being as there are so many bands,” he said. “But every now and again we’ll meet somebody, and they’ll say they’ve heard of us, and we’ve never even met the person before, which is pretty cool.”
Back in its Chico glory days, Hit By a Semi regularly packed venues like Riff Raff, LaSalle’s and the band’s specialty, backyard parties, including countless nights at the infamous 6th and Walnut house.
“It was the punk house,” Davidson reminisced. “So much fun and so many nights that we don’t remember.”
It was even in Chico that the band’s name was first conceived, in an incident Davidson has doubtless told more times than he can count.
“Do you want the long version or the short version?” he began, then explains his bike-vs.-diesel encounter at age 13, in which he wound up under the trailer - that’s where the wheels are.
“He ran me over twice and I got caught under the tires, and he dragged me for 20 feet and then stopped on top of me,” he concluded.
Now the bassist, who sports a definite pirate limp, curses at the semi that cuts him off in traffic as he talks on the phone. Evidently, everything is fine down there.
But the newest addition to the Sacred Art team has no qualms with freight vehicles, nor is he even much of a punker. Reverend Shelby Cobra is a tattoo artist at the parlor by day and a bar-swagging, tune-slinging guitarist by night. With plans to bring back what he calls “outlaw country,” Cobra was signed in January with ideas for a solo album entitled Wanted Men, which he recorded with the help of Chico band veteran Cliff Greenwood. The label was just the thing he needed, he said.
“They just decided to help me out,” Cobra said. “I like what they’re doing and they like what I’m doing.”
It was the logical step for him as well - he was already pretty deep into the workings of the label, having done T-shirts and album artwork for bands like Hit By a Semi, Oddman and Red With Envy, he said.
And as far as work goes, Jim Berry said, there is a lot of it to be done, since Sacred Art is now making the move towards band promotion and small-scale distribution. Running a record label is indeed like building a chopper; a big, complicated chopper with bands giving it stacks of press kits every day.
“The idea is you gotta build from ground zero, which means Web sites, which means Web addresses, building contacts, business cards, phone lines, all the basic, basic grassroots stuff,” he said. “That’s what we’re into right now.”
Everything record labels do, from distributing CDs across the country to getting bands played on FM radio, takes money and connections, he said. Money and connections come from signing bands. Good bands that people like.
“It only takes one band on the label to get signed to the point where we start getting exposure,” he said. So go, froggy, go.

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