Voice Farm Continued
Voice Farm is a San Francisco based techno-folk duo consisting of vocalist / composer Charly Brown and sound designer Myke Reilly. Voice Farm began its musical journey around 1980. Founding members Charly Brown and Gary Miles performed in San Francisco at The Mabuhay Gardens and The Deaf Club. Patrick Miller of Minimal Man was a brief member of Voice Farm at this time. After performing twice with Patrick at The Fab Mab Gary & Charly realized it was not to be. Patrick did not believe in rehearsing or learning a "song" per se. At any rate it was way more fun to see him live than to perform with him.
Around this time Gary Miles saw another band at The Mab called The Situations, and said that Charly must come to their next gig (maybe it was also their last gig). It was at this show where Charly first met a very young Myke Reilly, who played bass and performed a killer song called Mr. Toaster. The Situations were spectacular with all the female band members dressed in a severe 1960s Donna Reed style, rockin' away in high heels.
Gary got to know Myke. Myke joined Voice Farm.
VF did a song called Double Garage (mostly Myke & Charly) which Gary thought was "disco crap," and Gary didn't want his name on it. So it was at that time that Voice Farm became Charly Brown and Myke Reilly.
During the recording of The World We Live in (1982) they worked with a charming girl drummer, Debby La Rue Cooper. But after that they purchased a Linn drum machine and started doing soundtracks for a Performance/Dance group called Oblong Rhonda. Oblong Rhonda choreographer Barbie White was a close friend of Charly's, and she and Myke became a couple, living together in a crazy house with their crazy friend David (Dog) Swan. Eventually they thought, why not merge Oblong Rhonda & Voice Farm together and create a performance super-group? So thats what they did, moving into a shared rehearsal space in a warehouse next door to Barbie's company Japanese Weekend. Voice Farm resided there through the late 90's sharing the space with harpsichord maker Gary Blaise. Gary making early keyboard instruments in the front of the warehouse, with VF making "late" music in the back.
Myke and Charly met Ken Weller their guitarist at Japanese Weekend where he worked.
It was a lovely little scene where Voice Farm shared the backyard with Japanese Weekend. Gary Blaise lived upstairs with Bubala our mascot, and Ken could pop over during a lunch break and rough out a guitar part. Sometimes VF would ask various employees of JW (some of who were also Oblong Rhonda dancers) to come over and sing backing vocals, or say something weird into the mic so they could sample it. They had rehearsals there on a large dance-floor where they'd also work with their lighting designer Steve Manshardt and their live sound engineer Leroy Clark. Bubala loved the rehearsals and had the run of the warehouse, backyard, JW and an adjoining neighbors balcony.
After F (1987) came out VF started incorporating more of Ken's guitar into the mix, while at the same time steering the VF sound in a "dance-orientated" direction.
Which brings us to 1991s Bigger Cooler Weirder on the Morgan Creek label - It was just before its release that VF opened for Depech Mode on a 14 city coliseum tour. In Arizona the audience thought that VF was Depech mode.
Tom Bonauro directed the video for Free love that still seems pretty cool. Its featured in his new book, Tom Bonauro, published by Ammo Books.
Voice Farm performed a lot in the early 90's with everyone involved making a bit of money.
Morgan Creek is a film production company that also (at the time) wanted to produce pop/rock music. Unfortunately for VF the musical branch of Morgan Creek never came up to full speed. Meanwhile they were locked into an airtight contract that bound them to Morgan Creek for several years.
So Myke & Charly started creating music for TV & Radio commercials. It was kind of ridiculous. Neither of them really had the "business gene" necessary for that kind of work. But somehow they blagged they're way through till the late 90's, making wads of cash doing jingles, still working on VF songs here and there. They'd recount their surrealistic Lynchian meetings with agency types to their friends for a good belly laugh. It was probably 1999 when Myke & Charly buried VF (all of their tapes and contracts and pictures and videos) in a storage locker. They sold the studio to a friend and changed direction.
Myke started traveling all over the world and became a successful web designer. Charly became an Artsy Art Director for clothing companies. Both continued to dabble in art and music. In 2008 Myke and Charly had a simultaneous vision of exhuming VF from the storage locker, which they did, finding some hidden treasures. Deciding to get back into it, construction began on the Official VF website. They assembled and created Super Nova Experts (2009). They produced the new videos to promote the new website. And production now begins on two music videos to accompany Super Nova Experts.
There you have it.