Selling the Sounds of a City

Does a city need a soundtrack? Is its identity so inextricably linked to music that it would be natural and reasonable to create an album in its name?

“The Music of Detroit” might work, thanks to Motown. But “The Music of Peoria” seems iffy. “The Austin Sound” and “New Orleans Live” have integrity. “Des Moines Sings” and “Cedar Rapids Rocks” just don’t make it.

What about closer to home? Would you buy an album titled “Industrial Strength Rock: Music of The City of Industry”? What about “Panorama City Lifts Its Voices in Song”? I doubt it.

Around Christmastime, a CD celebrating the sounds of Ojai was released. The album is “Sweet Reality: The Music of Ojai.” Ojai, it seems, is so enthusiastic about the sounds it makes that the Chamber of Commerce sponsored the album and gets an executive producer credit as a result. What were they thinking?

Well, for one, Ojai does emanate auditory effects that are unique, at least in this county. The city has an annual festival, which produces challenging 20th century music or dissonant noise, depending on whom you poll. Then it has myriad and eclectic spiritual sounds--of one hand clapping, of collective voices humming, of solstice and full-moon drumming.

And then there are the more widely accessible sounds produced by all those musicians and songwriters who got famous elsewhere, then headed to Ojai to mellow out. Or from musicians and songwriters who aren’t famous but happen to be living in Ojai, so probably have been mellow all along.

“Sweet Reality” is a compendium of songs--gentle rock, pop, jazz and blues-tinged--written and performed by local artists.

Among the 10 artists on the album, some are famous (Amanda McBroom, who wrote “The Rose,” blues guitarist Robben Ford, Dave Mason of Traffic fame), others are unknown (Jonathan McEuen, the 21-year-old son of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s John McEuen, Rain Perry, a local mother of four kids), but all are from Ojai.

And judging by the fruit of their labors, they collectively have a higher than normal mellowness quotient. Their lyrics also reflect the town’s consciousness--a liberal sprinkling of such Ojai-friendly words as moon, star, universe and, of course, mystic. Inexplicably, there are at least three references to the beach. But, hey, this is Ojai, where everything, including the Pacific, is as much a state of mind as a reality.

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The CD is the brainchild of Denzyl Feigelson, whose stated list of professions and personal interests includes music management, consulting, internet entrepreneurship, Hawaiian flower farming, music therapy, teaching, golfing, tennis and yoga. The perfect Renaissance Man--or, more accurately, New Age Man--for Ojai.

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And, like many New Age visionaries who preceded him, Feigelson didn’t begin life in Ojai. He is from South Africa, where, according to his bio, he got started in music and worked for Paul Simon on the “Graceland” project. He then went to New York to manage the careers of many South African musicians, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela and Johnny Clegg & Savuka. Feigelson moved to Los Angeles in 1989, where he expanded his music management business. In 1992, he became Kenny Loggins’ personal manager.

“I moved here from L.A. the year of the earthquake,” he said during an interview. “My office got trashed and so I said ‘OK, I’m in boxes anyway, I might as well leave.’

“L.A. is an interesting place,” he said. “But the music business is work, work, work. I wanted to see if I could live outside of L.A. and still be in the music business.”

In 1997, when his business relationship with Loggins ended, Feigelson started AWAL Records, with the aim of producing and distributing work by independent artists.

“I had been working on a concept called Artists Without a Label--AWAL--mostly because there are so many fantastic independent artists,” he said. “The record business, though big, is really quite small. It is hard to break in.”

“Sweet Reality,” he said, is an extension of his vision. He hopes it will be the first of many compilation albums devoted to specific cities.

“It features a combination of well-known and unknown artists, and that will be the formula we use everywhere we do it,” he said. “While they were designed to be benefit albums--this one benefits several charities in the Ojai Valley--they must stand up musically. What makes this one unique is that the well-known artists give it the cache and the unknown artists get a chance to get heard.”

So far, he said, the album has been selling well, which pleases his executive producers at the Ojai Chamber of Commerce.

City leaders might also be happy with the locale of the next album in the series.

“Ojai has an abundance of musical talent, so I’m working on a second Ojai album, which will be more instrumental. The first one is the singer-songwriter series.

And once he has plumbed the musical depths of Ojai, where will he go?

“Aspen,” he said. “I have a friend there, and there are people like Glenn Frey of the Eagles and John Hall from Hall and Oates, and I know some up-and-coming artists. Then maybe Santa Barbara.”

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Suddenly, a pattern seemed to be emerging. Albums in Ojai, Aspen and then Santa Barbara. Could Carmel, Jackson Hole, Sedona or Santa Fe be far behind?

I felt a creeping chauvinism growing in me and considered suggesting that he keep his project closer to home.

What about a “Sounds of Thousand Oaks,” which has an alliterative ring? Or maybe a “Piru in Concert”? Maybe a “Simi Swings.”

Maybe not.

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Wendy Miller is a Times staff writer. Her e-mail address is wendy.miller@aol.com.