Farmer Dave Scher goes solo with the help of some feminine forces

By Katy Henriksen
Published: August 31st, 2009 | 8:00pm

Farmer Dave Scher isn’t used to commanding center stage, standing in the spotlight while singing lead vocals, but he decided to give it a try with his first solo release, Flash Forward To the Good Times (Kemado).

A music veteran known for his predominantly instrumental work on the lap steel and organ with the likes of Beachwood Sparks, All Night Radio, and Interpol, he has just finished touring with Jenny Lewis and is recuperating on Catalina Island in his native California.

“My sleep schedule has gotten really bizarre,” he admits, the phone call having woken him up from a nap. “I was on a bus for six weeks and my strategy for those things is to stay up ‘til dawn and then sleep ‘til sound check.”

Pushing right in, and before the questions even begin, he explains that he’s done a little research on Venus Zine, has thought about the role women played in making his album, and that he’d like to offer up that material. This becomes a 15-minute espousal of the multitude of amazing women he worked with to create Flash Forward To the Good Times.

“There’s women all permeating through the thing,” Scher states. “I feel like nature itself is a very feminine force. And I’m pretty strict in trying to take clues from what it seems like nature would want to happen in day-to-day life, which is, I think, a sort of feminine principal.”

In addition to instrumentalists he deems “out of control awesome,” including Argentinean sisters Paz and Ana Lenchantin, who play strings, and drummers Tennessee Thomas and Barbara Gruska, he credits the importance of visual artists Alia Penner and Mekenzie Schneider — who painted a cosmos for his Venice Beach studio and created the album art for Flash Forward.

“It’s like seven feet by 10 feet and it’s really pretty,” he says of the studio painting. “I laid it on the ground and put Plexiglass on it so that, while I made the record, I could roll my chair over this kind of space scene.”

Regarding the concept of the album cover, Scher says, “I wanted something on the cover to kind of be like the Statue Of Liberty … a confident woman who’s kind of shooting a beam toward the future.”

When Scher found the ideal model for the image — someone he’d gone skateboarding with in a retirement community of Coachella — Penner and Schneider painted Scher’s vision, which resulted in a dreamy, beachside scene in hues of hazy blue and light violet with a lady in a long, flowing dress leaning against rocks. “I think it was just an aesthetic choice,” he says regarding the decision to depict a woman on the cover. “I don’t know if I made it with women in mind. I think mostly it was just an artistic idea. But there’s something underlying in that … women are rad.”

When pushed on the difference between male and female musicians, he answers diplomatically. “There’s something exciting about it, but they also happened to be the best for the job that I needed for certain songs,” Scher admits. “It’s not because they’re women that I chose them … I didn’t pick them over an equally qualified guy for those things, I just loved the way they play.”

Flash Forward To the Good Times is flush with mellow psychedelia, music befitting summer good times in So-Cal, with Scher’s signature slide stylings throughout — a sound which he describes as oceanic. “I’ve tried to have been informed by the ocean and its texture and its motion,” he says of the lonesome warble and twangy cry that is emblematic of lap steel and slide guitar — which he explains originated in Hawaii, not the honky tonks of Nashville.

Although he appreciates the country affectations of the style, Scher is quick to point out that, for him, the slide is more about going to a dream state and reminds him of the experimental music of Brian Eno, the hippie vibes of Jerry Garcia, and the trippy psychedelic pop of Pink Floyd.

With Flash Forward To the Good Times, he continues to play a number of instruments, including regular old guitar, and also takes the reigns on lead vocals, a transition Scher admits is still weird. “It’s a big seismic shift and it cracks me up to think about it,” he says. “I’ve spent most of my time as a musician sitting down, playing steel guitar or organ, and just singing a couple back up things here and there.”

Scher returns to the ocean motif when explaining the process of creating a solo album. Written and recorded at his Venice Beach studio, he was mostly secluded for that period of time, and took bike rides along the ocean to get in the mood for creating the music.

“Sailing to Hawaii by myself was how the record felt, because at the end of the day, I was alone a lot. It was my material and I was responsible for everything,” Scher declares. “People could help me, but no one could really take the wheel too much, because I seemed to have wanted it that way.”

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