Goat Rockefellers

MUSIC CORNER Goat Rockefellers By Robert Feuer IT’S A SWEET DRIVE to Jenner on a sunny spring morning. Sheep and pink blossoms dot the roadside. Cows ponder the Russian River from an overlooking meadow. Old barns and houses are like history books waiting to be explored. The town of Jenner, - with a population hover-ing below 200, has a massive retaining wall that keeps most of the town from sliding into the ocean. Thomas Yeates lives there with his partner, Lori, and their 11 -year- old daughter, in a simple home from which they can view both the river and sea. Yeates was one of the original members of a band caked the Goat Rockefellers, who for three years, 1995 to 1997, were part of Jenner ’s Whale of a Gala Art and Music Festival, a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department. It was held annually on Labor Day in a meadow behind the Jenner Inn. He said the radio was a big influence on him, while growing up in Sacramento. He had three sisters who listened a lot and he quickly picked up on the 1960s sounds of the British invasion and the early San Francisco bands. “I always loved to sing,” said Yeates. This inspired him to join a band in junior high school which played at friends’ parties. Even though Yeates said, “My voice never worked right. I had no clue to singing in key,” he got nominated to be the singer because no one else could remember the lyrics. In 1980 he decided to take music more seriously and began guitar lessons while focusing on improving his singing. This enabled him to connect with better musicians, and in 1990 David Caplan invited him to join the Goat Rockefellers in the back of Caplan’s store in Guemeville, Seconds First/Out of the Past. “The Goat Rockefellers were all amateurs and played a lot of rockabilly,” Yeates said. Their first drum set consisted of two tambourines clamped onto plastic milk crates. Only one of the., tambourines had bells, to create variety in the sound. “It was the first time I felt like I had musical potential,” he said. The Goat Rockefellers began to play parties and benefits in the west county area. A somewhat audio -challenged CD of their performances at the Whale of a Gala events, recorded on a video camera, features Yeates singing a couple of Muddy Waters classics and Caplan handling the vocals on a song he wrote, “Bohemian Highway.” One about the Russian River was adapted from the Standells hit, “Dirty Water.” After 1997, Yeates set the guitar aside to devote his time to fatherhood. He stayed involved with music, co-producing and emceeing a concert series at the Jenner Playhouse, a building that is hidden from casual view behind the town’s gas station. These performances, which attracted well- known acts like Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Dan Hicks, and Steve Kimock, were held to raise money for Jenner’s tenuous water issues. “I would love to do more music now but I don’t have the time,” Yeates said, gazing from the deck of his house down to the small creek that borders his property. The Goat Rockefellers have continued making music, recently playing a couple of New Year’s Eve benefits at the Jenner Playhouse and a show at the Cazadero Fire Dept. They are currently trying to line up an appearance at the Pink Elephant in Monte Rio. But, like a river, creativity makes its own path and since 1978 Yeates has carved himself a professional career as an illustrator of such comic books as Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian and Robin Hood. He began drawing pictures of his comic book heroes at age five and said the more he read the more he felt that “this was something I could do.” Later he studied art and illustration at schools in Utah and New Jersey. “The art style I developed is based on old pen and ink illustrations adapted to comic book form. I use lots of black which makes scenes more dramatic. Also old noir and adventure movies were an influence, with their shadowy imagery,” Yeates said. “Nothing can tell a story the way a comic book can, not that it’s better, there is just a unique perspective.” The reader is drawn into a mystical, natural world where semi-naked people have violent adventures. “Mystical nature is a version of spirituality. It’s art work with heart. It’s more fun to draw people without clothes and easier too,” Yeates said. * His interest in music led him to create comic book adaptations of his favorite Jimi Hendrix songs, and even a story about the guitar hero. In two 1980 issues of Timespirits, soon to be re-issued in graphic novel form, Hendrix, after being saved from a holographic existence by time travelers who bring him back to life, travels with them on a mission to the Bohemian Grove to battle corporate entities bent on controlling the music industry. Unfortunately, they miss the mark slightly and land in the bathroom of the Pink Elephant. Undeterred by this alteration in course, they rocket their way to the Grove where Hendrix blasts the corporate cruds with his powerful guitar. So overwhelmed are they by his music that they forever dedicate their corporation to more compassionate ventures. “Right now I have an ideal job drawing old myths and legends in graphic novels for kids. I like this better,” Yeates said. He is also available, at tyeates@arrowflight.com, to do commissioned work. Meanwhile kids, if your mom tells you to turn down the radio or stop reading comic books, you can tell her about Thomas Yeates, who fortunately didn’t listen to his mother. ■