INTERVIEW: Merrell Fankhauser jumps from TV to CD for ‘Tiki Lounge Live’
Surf rock legend Merrell Fankhauser recently brought his successful Tiki Lounge TV show to CD with the new album Tiki Lounge Live. Featuring 12 songs from the archives of the California TV show, the recording stands as the latest bullet point on the guitarist’s impressive and decades-long résumé.
The live recording comes courtesy of Goldenlane Records and features performances of Fankhauser with the likes of Ed Cassidy of Spirit, The Brymers and Lindsey Ikeno.
Fankhauser knows a thing or two about surf rock. In the 1960s, with the band the Impacts, he recorded the Wipe Out album, which still stands one of the most important surf rock albums of all time. His other bands included Merrell & The Exiles and H.M.S. Bounty.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Fankhauser about his new album. Here’s what he had to say:
On the new album …
“I’ve been doing this show for over 16 years here on the Central Coast. It’s on Charter cable in San Luis Obsipo County, and then it’s on Comcast cable in Santa Barbara County. And it’s on about five times a week, and it’s also on in Hawaii. I’ve been doing the show, like I said, 16 years now, and I’ve had so many different people on.
“Sometimes we end up doing a live jam, and sometimes we ad lib songs. And there’s an ad-lib song on this Tiki Lounge Live album called ‘California Cosmic Jam,’ and so I looked in the archives. And I had so much great stuff with all kinds of groups and people performing, so I thought, hmm, maybe a live album … would be a good idea. So I took, oh, maybe five years of recordings and went through them and found 12 good songs, and one of the songs that’s very dear to my heart is ‘Out of the Town,’ and that’s the last song I did with Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy. He kept playing until he was 89, and he passed away in 2012. And this turns out to be the last song that he recorded.”
On the many musicians he has collaborated with …
“I’ve had everybody from Willie Nelson to recently Peter Lewis of Moby Grape on the show; [Adolfo] ‘Fito’ de la Parra, the drummer from Canned Heat; Nicky Hopkins, the great piano player that played with the Beatles and the Stones and recorded with me. There’s just been so many people on the show that I could probably put out four volumes of this with all the different people that have been on the show.”
On his international fans …
“I’ve put 10 shows on YouTube. They’ve been up there for a couple of years now, and people in Europe and Japan — because I’m on labels in Japan and record labels in Europe — they all go, oh gee, I wish the show was on regularly over here so we can see it. So I think they’re going to be interested in this CD, and one of the labels I’m on in England, Gonzo Multimedia, a few years back put out two volumes of the Tiki Lounge TV show on DVD over there. And it sold quite well, so I know there’s someone over there now that’s trying to get it on television in London.”
On collaborating with his son …
“My son’s song, called ‘Witch Doctor,’ Tim Fankhauser’s song is getting a lot of digital download requests from different companies. … So I think we’re going to promote that as a single along with the song from Ed Cassidy ‘Out of the Town’ and also the theme song to the TV show, Tiki Lounge.”
On first moving to the Central Coast of California …
“I moved with my family in 1958, went to high school here, became a surfer. I was playing guitar. I played in a little theater here. Just in between the matinees I would get up solo and do three or four songs, and some local high school students who were forming a band heard me. And we formed the band the Impacts, and the sax player’s dad owned the big ballroom that was in Pismo Beach, the Rose Garden Ballroom. And at that time it was the biggest auditorium in between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and a lot of bands played here — the Coasters, oh gosh, we backed up Little Anthony and the Imperials.
“And being a surfer, I started writing these instrumentals because I was a fan of the Champs and the Ventures, and I started putting surfing titles to them like ‘Wipe Out’ and ‘Tandem,’ and we started playing these in our set. We were the house band at the Rose Garden Ballroom every Friday and Saturday night and sometimes Sunday matinees, and Del-Fi Records heard us. [They] put out Ritchie Valens, and they took us down into the studio in L.A. And I think I was just 17, not quite 18, and we set up in this studio. And, oh, I think maybe in four hours we recorded over an album’s worth of material, and they put it out very fast.
“It seems like it was in every store by Christmas of 1962, and then it really started going in ‘63, the early part of ‘63. So they called us down, and we recorded another five or six songs that came out on their various compilations that they did, like KFWB’s Battle of the Surfing Bands and Big Surf and several others. And then years later, in 1994, when Pulp Fiction the movie came out, Del-Fi re-released all of our songs because they had a few songs that were in that movie, and that kind of brought back a rebirth of the instrumental surf. We were one of the first groups in 1962 to do instrumental surf.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Merrell Fankhauser’s new album is called Tiki Lounge Live. Click here for more information.
