In a city with a lot of heart, a city that has given more
than its fair share of talent to the world music industry, the Kmak brothers
have been a huge part of the heartbeat of San Diego's music scene. For nearly
40 years, Jef and Joel Kmak have not only played in some of San Diego's best
known rock, punk, country, roots, and Americana bands, they have also fostered
the personal relationships that have helped an actual scene and sound congeal.
They've
been called the rhythm section from hell, one playing bass, one playing drums.
But those who have watched this city's music develop from the 1970s into the
new millennium might think they are heaven sent.
Often
overshadowed by the frontline musicians they've played for, the Kmak brothers
have always been local heroes in the west El Cajon neighborhood they grew up
in. Their father, the late John Kmak, was a beloved teacher at Emerald Junior
High, just two blocks from the Kmak home on Chase Avenue. And, that home
itself, with its constant pulse of band rehearsals emanating from the garage,
has gained its own mystique as generations of school kids, including this
writer, have stopped to read the inscriptions "sympathy for the devil" and
"mutt" inscribed in the sidewalk out front.
Jef, the
older of the two, began playing guitar and bass in 1966 as did many young kids
caught in the tide of the British Invasion. Joel picked up the drums in 1970.
"As soon as I started playing drums, we were already forming bands and looking
for gigs."
Their first
experience on stage came performing as part of the band at Christ the King
Church, a famously liberal congregation in Southeast San Diego, which the Kmak
family was part of. Around this time, Christ the King made national news when
several sailors protesting the Vietnam War went AWOL and sought sanctuary
inside the church. As a standoff ensued, the church was surrounded by FBI and
SWAT officers.
Once in
high school, the brothers, always with an eye on booking shows, began playing
Grossmont and El Cajon High School dances. It was at this time that they met a
fellow Grossmont student named Dan McLain, who was fronting a band called the
Screaming Chickens, which, as later years might justify, dressed like farmers
on stage.
By 1972
their musicianship was attracting attention from well established local
musicians. Jef was asked to play bass in the glitter, prog-rock band Mutt.
"That was a band that almost made it," Jef says. Mutt rose to the top of the
San Diego scene, selling out local venues including SDSU's Montezuma Hall.
Finally, they headed to L.A. where they were wooed by Polydor, Atlantic, and
Electra. But, sadly the band was never signed and all but broke up by 1976.
Meanwhile,
Joel and Dan McLain, after the latter's Screaming Chickens foray, stuck to a
more retro formula and formed Queenie, a band dedicated to Stones, Beatles, and
Kinks B-sides. With Joel on drums and McLain on upright piano, Queenie
continued circuiting high school dances. At this time, McLain also rose up as
the impresario of the local garage rock and burgeoning punk scenes. Musicians
such as Ron Silva, Scott Harrington, Steve Kelly, and Chris Sullivan came into
the fold forming the nucleus of such future bands as the Penetrators, the
Crawdaddys, and the Hitmakers. As the 1970s crept forward, the Lion's Club in
North Park became the home turf where these bands held court.
Once
Queenie had run its course, Dan McLain, switching from piano to drums, went on
to form the Crawdaddys and the Penetrators. McLain also opened a record store –
Monty Rockers – in the San Diego State area. Joel, meanwhile, joined the
Hitmakers, asking Jef, who had just left Mutt, to join too. This was 1977 and
the Ramones had just turned the local music scene on its head. Glitter was out.
Punk was in. The Hitmakers were soon reigning kings of local punk along with
the select stable of bands that played the Lion's Club. In 1978, the Hitmakers
toured the East Coast including New York's Max's Kansas City and Boston's Rat
Cellar. Soon, they headed to London in search of a contract. In England they
ran into problems with British immigration over their visa status and, unable
to work, were forced to return home. Unfortunately, the band didn't survive the
turmoil.
Returning
from England, the brothers went their separate ways musically. Joel joined the
Crawdaddys in 1979. Newly married, Joel also chose to come home to San Diego to
raise his family. Around 1980 Jef formed Johnny Danger and the Little
Strangers, the first of many projects over the years in which Jeff would step
into the front line as vocalist and principal songwriter.
In these
years the mold was cast: both brothers dedicated themselves to the harder edge
of what was now being called New Wave. This harder edge stuck to more '60s
sound preferring, for instance, the Vox Continental organ to the cheap
synthesizers that would come to define New Wave in the '80s. They also stayed
true to earlier influences like electric blues. For some time, McLain had been
harboring a Johnny Cash collection, an anomaly in punk circles. The country
baritone of Cash, along with other country and country-tinged singers, from
Hank Williams Sr. to Gram Parsons, soon began festering in the post-punk
circles that would define the San Diego Sound.
Joel
continued playing in the tightly knit scene, rotating between the Penetrators,
Joyce Rooks, and Blond Bruce. The Sidewinders, Farage Brothers, and DFX2 were
also part of this inner circle. Many of these bands were held in orbit by
McLain's poker games and Sunday softball games at Grossmont High. Led by the
Sidewinders, the scene found a home at Mandolin Wind (later Hamburger Mary's)
in Hillcrest where a "Cavalcade of Stars" would function as part open mic and
part jam session, a place for those drawn to the rootsier, bluesier, rockabilly
edges of post-punk. Out of this scene, McLain morphed into Country Dick Montana
and soon the Beat Farmers were born.
Jef left
for the Bay Area in 1982 where he formed Hank's Army, which, like Mutt a decade
before, was right on the heels of a major recording contract. After Hank's
Army's two-year flirtation with fame, Jef returned to San Diego – the Kmak's
garage in El Cajon to be specific – and dedicated himself to producing. With
only an 8-track in the now insulated garage, Jef went on to produce a number of
local artists including Guy Goode and the Decent Tones, the Seventh, guitar wiz
Joseph D'Angelo, the Penetrators, and Joyce Rooks who had been weaving through
their circle of musician friends for years.
In 1989,
Jef married and returned to the Bay Area where he played with a number of
people including Village on Fire, Judy Baker, and the San Francisco Blues Band
featuring two older blues musicians: Willie Pitts and Memphis Dave. In this
period, Jef got a taste of the "real thing" as he followed Pitts and Memphis
Dave into the all-black blues clubs and house parties in Oakland and the East
Bay.
Meanwhile,
the San Diego scene that first began at McLain's record store, poker parties,
and softball games was attracting national attention. Mojo Nixon had penetrated
MTV airwaves and the Beat Farmers were gaining a national cult following;
critical praise from the likes of Dwight Yoakam and Kevin Costner; and a degree
of mainstream recognition.
For five
years, from 1986 through 1991, Joel held down the drum throne for Paul Kamanski
in Comanche Moon. Kamanski, best known as the songwriter of Beat Farmer
classics "Bigger Stones" and "Hollywood Hills," utilized Comanche Moon to
showcase his skills as a front man and his ongoing talents as a songwriter.
Comanche Moon soon gained its own local following, opening for Chris Isaak, the
Georgia Satellites, Molly Hatchet, and the Beat Farmers while sharing the bill
on occasion with Mojo Nixon. At this time, Joel fell heavily into country music
and even played for a short while with the Michelle Rose Band.
In 1992 Jef
returned to San Diego, and the brothers played for a time with Saint James and
the Voodoo Rockers, an outfit led by James Wood, brother of Warren Zevon's
former guitarist John Wood.
Then in 1995
the larger-than-life Country Dick Montana died. Joel had already been filling
McLain's shoes as far back as the Penetrators. He had also sat in for him on a
number of Beat Farmers' shows. So, when Jerry Raney picked up the pieces of the
now-dissolved Beat Farmers, it was only natural that he would call Joel to play
drums. With original Beat Farmer Buddy Blue back in the fold, the new band
Raney-Blue started gigging in 1996 with Jef on bass and Joe Longa on keyboards.
In 1997 the
second post-Beat Farmer band Powerthud was formed with a near-identical lineup
as Raney-Blue. In this new band, however, Beat Farmer Joey Harris joined and
Buddy Blue stepped away. It was with these two bands that the Beat Farmer
legacy continued and grew in new directions. Raney-Blue showcased its two
namesakes. And Powerthud featured Joey Harris. All the while, Jef and Joel
provided the rhythm section for both bands.
The two
bands even united on occasion to play Beat Farmer reunions in 2000 and 2001.
With the
departure of Jerry Raney in 2002, Powerthud evolved into the Joey Show in which
Harris played ringmaster to a number of guest artists including Gregory Page,
José Sinatra, Sara Petite, the Truckee Brothers, Robin Henkel, the Coyote
Problem, and the late John Stewart. When not backing up guest artists, the Joey
Show became Joey Harris and the Mentals, which to this day includes Jef, Joel,
and Mighty Joe Longa.
In 2003,
Jerry and Buddy reformed Raney-Blue into the Flying Putos with Rolle Love on
bass and Joel still holding down the drums. The Flying Putos finally settled on
the simple yet nostalgic name, the Farmers. The Farmers remain together despite
the death of Buddy Blue in 2006.
From 1970
to 2008, the Kmak brothers have seen a lot. And what's more, they've seen most
of it together. Yet, despite this symbiotic relationship, the brothers are
distinct individuals with very different visions. On one hand, Jef is the more
introspective. A guitarist and singer in addition to his skills on bass, Jef
has written many songs and fronted bands as noted earlier. Jef's tastes,
although grounded in rootsy rock, also span everything from Big Band and jazz
to acoustic and folk. The Big City Hicks, which includes his wife, is proof of
Jef's diversity.
Joel, on
the other hand, is forever the hard-hitting rock drummer. Known affectionately
as "Bongo" to all, Joel has honed the singular craft of banging out good time
rock ‘n' roll. Of course, "rock ‘n' roll" is a big term, incorporating the
American panorama and Joel's own 38 years behind the drum kit. But, when it
comes to beating those drums with singular abandon, nobody in town carries the
pedigree that Joel does.
Yet, there
are distinct threads that continually bring them together. They are both are
strong family men. They run a frame company together. And, they still migrate
back to the garage on Chase Avenue in El Cajon for weekly band practices.
At the time
of this writing, a small French film crew was in town doing a documentary on
not just the Beat Farmers but also the entire San Diego Sound that Jef and Joel
helped develop. And, for several days, that film crew also migrated back to
that house in El Cajon for a place to stay between filming expeditions. In
fact, that house has become more than the Kmak family home, it's become a home-away-from-home
for the heart and soul of the San Diego Sound.