erial acrobat Timmy Curran goes off the WCT tour and on tour with the Foo Fighters - and that's not the only trick up his sleeve...
Even through the bathroom door it's clear how far he's come. The voice reverberating inside the tiled, echo-chamber is more confident, more robust and more adventurous. The once gentle, plucky guitar is now upbeat, technical and crisp. The dressing room we're eaves-dropping from is revealing too.
A fully stocked fridge. Wine and snack trays. Suede couches and mirrored walls. We're a long way from cafe jams and charity functions. This is backstage at the Santa Barbara Bowl, a Ben Harper or Bob Dylan-sized outdoor amphitheatre nestled in wooded foothills overlooking the Fbcific Ocean. From the bathroom, Timmy Curran wails, "Let me ruuuuuun like the horses on the range," a line he wrote cooped up in a Brazilian hotel room during his time in WCT purgatory. "And I promise you I'll never, ever complain."The song stops mid-note. The door opens and Timmy steps into the dressing room with a slightlynervous grin. "OK," he says. "I'm ready to come out of the bathroom." Outside, the 9,000-seat amphitheatre is filling up.
here's a lot going on in Timmy's life these days, so we arrive early at his neatly kept house near the Ventura coast; north of LA, but south of anywhere else. Tim grew up in nearby Oxnard, started surfing and eventually bought his first beach house along Silver Strand, This place is new though, a fixer-upper they bought last year and completely refurbished. His wife Shanoah gets us high on Java and shows us around. The house is new and tidy, antiques and open spaces, wedding photos and rustic oil-painting. No signs of pro-surf superstardom. The only chink in Timmy's immaculate humility is a framed silk-screen poster by the fireplace. A Foo Fighter's Acoustic Tour poster from their Seattle show, "with special guest, Timmy Curran."
"They only printed a hundred of those," says Timmy. "And I bought 50 of them." Really?
Timmy smiles. No.
It's a bit surprising to find the Currans located so far back from the beachfront, but then a trip the second floor explains. From a telescope in the living room, he can check several key spots at once, especially the Ventura Rivermouth, one of Timmy's favorite playgrounds. And this way, Shanoah gently points out, "we don't end up as everyone's beach-house crash pad." Today it's ankle-high and going off. We pile longboards into his Toyota Sequoia and in moments we're paddle-battling into party waves with Foo Fighter guitarist Chris Schifflet, who first introduced Timmy to the band and is stoked to have a surf-partner on the road. It's all just laughter and talk story, but even in these no-surf conditions Timmy's liquid grace is evident. Tim cross-steps to the nose and storks a one-foot hang-five into the shorepound. "Thank god for longboards," he says. "Otherwise summer around here might be unbearable." Later he mentions maybe wanting to purchase a foam longboard for this one little peeler that runs along a back wall. It's the type of thing you can say only after you've left the WCT behind. After so many years of seemingly mediocre results amongst the world's best competitive surfers - and you don't get to the WCT without being a seriously competitive mofo - one of the world's best freesurf-ers is finally, well, free. "I'm doing exactly what I want," says Timmy. "And I feel like I'm actually more productive off the tour than I was the last four years on it."
ack at the house, pre-show nerves are tangled up in pre-show technicalities. A photo shoot. A video interview for Flow director Josh London, whose use of Timmy's song Horses on the Range in his Al Merrick documentary somehow triggered this surprising chain of events. Then there's the last minute bro tickets. Family tickets. Photo passes. Tim juggles it all with characteristic calm and grace. You'd barely guess how huge this day is for him. How terrifying. Shanoah, who is also Timmy's tour manager, makes everyone lunch while fielding phone calls and running through her pre-show checklist.
"Did you ever imagine it coming to this?" I ask.
"Never," she laughs. "It's crazy. But we're rolling with it."
"it's not like a surf contest where you just rock up and collect your jersey," adds Timmy. "There's a lot more to deal with here. How were we supposed to know to tip the sound check guy? This is all new to us."
And thus, another pro surfer wanders quietly into the world of big-time rock 'n' roll. Guitar in hand. Barefoot and sensitive. See Jack Johnson and Donavon Frankenrieter for previous examples. See Tom Curren, Kelly Slater and Rob Machado. See Ben Harper and Eddie Vedder for the other side of the coin. The synergy has proven itself not just real, but incredibly marketable. See Jan and Dean, Dick Dale and the Beach Boys. See The Beautiful Girls, Xavier Rudd and Peter Garrett. It's gone so far that famed rock photographer Danny Clinch has started filming a documentary on the subject. "Is that what that is?" says Timmy. "He mentioned something to me about that the other night, but I didn't really know what he was getting at."
See. It's happening here, too. Deja vu all over again. Rock and surf. Chickens and eggs. Golden eggs, quite often. But Timmy's just dipping in his big toe. This wasn't something he planned. His music was always something more private and personal. Something he did in one-man stage of his bathroom to gently cure the blues. The idea of playing these giant amphitheatres, it's twisting him up. "I've been asked to speak at schools before," he says. "And I'm like, 'No, thank you.' I can answer questions fine, but public speaking, I'm just not comfortable with it."
Still, his prevailing wall of calm makes you wonder if he's not just being his humble self, cautiously sidestepping unnecessary attention.
"Sometimes 1 think I get more nervous than him before these shows," Shanoah says.
Timmy bites his tongue. His nerves are too frayed to even argue this point. Shanoah answers a phone call and Timmy disappears into the room (a last vestige of bachelorhood tucked off the side of the garage) to gather his equipment.
In the meantime, I settle down in front of a wedding album to kill some time. But since we all know that wedding photos, like new baby photos, are pretty much all the same, there's a few other images I'd like the show you.
icture Timmy Curran, 12 years old, crouched like a cat at the end of a long plank. The plank is propped at the mid-point over'a stack of 2x4s. Picture Timmy's chunky little friend standing atop a jungle gym, ready to jump down onto the raised end of the plank. "Ready?" he says. Timmy, concentrating, says nothing. So chunky jumps. And Timmy goes flying. Now picture skateboard launch ramps. Dirtbike jumps. Picture rooftops, diving boards and rock jumps. Picture Timmy surfing, this hooked grommet whose family recently relocated to the beach. "I remember my first air," he says. "I was probably 13 or something. I went for an off-the-lip, the backwash hit me and I went flying. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is all I want to do, ever.'"
Picture Timmy a dozen years later. Three-foot wind slop at some Cali beachbreak. Cat-like crouch again. Some aspiring cameraman tracing his path down the wave. The launch-section reveals itself and Timmy punts. Soaring. Spinning. And splashing tangled and disoriented into the foam. Picture Timmy's splash-down aerial wipeouts. Pages and pages of them. "I must have tried that first alley-oop a thousand times," he recalls of his first breakthrough manoeuvre "Every single wave, over and over and over." Fellow Central Coast surfer Dan Malloy witnessed the first one, and helped convince rising filrnmaker Taylor Steele to spend some time filming with Curran. They posted up in Steele's parents' house for a month, filming on the beach out front every day. "It wasn't until the very last day that I finally pulled it," says Timmy. "And Taylor goes, 'Dude, you just got yourself a section." This is 1994. Picture Pearl Jam and Nirvana dominating the radio. Picture O.J Simpson getting arrested. The internet is barely an itch in the global community's pants. And Timmy Curran's blasting oil the screen of Taylor Steele's Focus with the most! radical aerial anyone's ever seen. "One wave in Taylor Steele's movie could do so much for your career," Timmy says of that moment. "My life before that was really mellow, not a lot going on. After being in his movies, I was flown around the world to surf the best waves." Of course, it wasn't that simple, but after tip-toeing his way to a top 10 slot on the tooth and nail NSSA amateur circuit, after hustling his way from a free burrito sponsorship to the rising Billabong team, the exposure made all the difference. Picture Timmy flying to a little-known island in Fiji called Tavarua with Gerr, Dorian, Tudor and Pat O'Connell. Picture Timmy wiggling free of his Billabong contract to join Quiksilver with his heroes Kelly Slater and Tom Carroll. Picture more trips. More airs. More shots. Al Merrick. A three-year tour on the WQS to crack the WCT. His second year out he wins two events and finishes a career-best sixth. But ultimately, the contest world never quite suited his approach to waves. He doesn't train. Doesn't stretch. Doesn't study heat strategy or play head games with his opponents. "I've never been one to focus on going out and doing ten turns to the beach," he says. "I've always just done airs and tried to have fun. Maybe that's why I haven't done so well." On the other hand, he's won an improbable number of those mid-comp expression sessions, including the last three years in a row at Trestles. "Yeah, the Expression Session tour has been good to me," laughs Timmy. Picture Timmy falling off the tour, willing his way back on despite an increasingly absurd WOS talent-pool, and then, after only two more years, just throwing in the towel. "I just got to the point where I figured, I'm not having fun, I'm pulling up the rear competitively, and if I wanna have a chance to make it as just a free surfer, I better do it now." That was just last year. Picture Gulf War II and Google.com going public for 10-billion dollars. Timmy's back in that cat-like crouch, charging down the line at Ehukai shortly after his last-ever WCT heat at Pipe; a quarterfinal finish he'll remember as one of his biggest accomplishments. The launch section presents itself and Timmy goes soaring into his latest dream.
And no, I'm not speaking metaphorically here. The air is his dream. A complete backflip. A never-before-seen manoeuvre like the alley-oop that launched his dreams a dozen years ago. He lands in the whitewash and - so excited after a thousand attempts to finally end up on his feet - falls off in the foam, throwing the existing documentation into controversy. Did it count?
"It's like anything," says Timmy. "It takes repetition. The alley-oop took me a solid month of trying it on every wave. I must have done a thousand of 'em. But once I pulled one, it only took me a hundred to pull it again. And the interval kept getting shorter." Sure enough, Tim pulled another flip earlier this summer at a local beach break. Full documentation: video and photo. "This one confirms it," he says. "It's been pulled."
Daylight's coming and I can't wait." Timmy's opening lyric, sung a capella, jars the Santa Barbara Bowl to awake. He took the stage virtually unnoticed, joined by Ryan Gleeson on drums and Andy Smith on guitar and keys, accomplished musicians from The Red West who helped Timmy record the sparse and stirring EP included with this magazine. From this first note it's clear how far his music has come since those early recordings. The accompaniment is certainly a part of that, but it's more than that. After a decade of plucking away at his own private melodies, he's finally come out of the closet - out of the bathroom - and into the music that's been rooted deep in his life since childhood.
"Music was always around the Curran family get togethers," recalls Timmy. "My dad plays guitar, my grandma plays piano and sings, my uncle Anthony has a CD out... I just grew up with guitars around the house." But despite these influences, there's been little "education" in Timmy's musical education. "I don't know any of the chords in my songs," he confesses. "If someone says, play an E, I'm like, 'Sorry, I have no idea.' I just learned myself. Just fiddling around. I have a beater guitar in every room of my house and when I'm home I'm just holding it, finding new chords, or half-chords, and I don't even know what their names are."
Hearing this, one might be a little suspect of Timmy's sound, of his ability to open for a huge act like the Foo Fighters. Hearing him on stage tonight, there's no question. Well, except maybe from Timmy himself. "I don't know if wanna play any more shows after this tour," he says. "It's so intense. I'm a pretty quiet guy. The whole playing in front of people thing is still really weird and scary for me."
While there's no leg kicks or pyrotechnics, they appear confident and energetic on-stage. The songs are tight and dynamic. One music reviewer described it as, "like waking from a sad dream into an elusive reality," but maybe that sentiment is already antiquated. There's energy here, pushing into the outskirts of rocking even, a reality less and less elusive every show. They blaze through a groovy half-hour set of acoustic confessionals while a surf posse including Timrny's brothers Nathan, Taylor and Josh, Malibu artist Pascal Stanfield, and ladykillers Danny Fuller and Kalani Robb cheer from the front rows. And even to 9,000 strangers, Timmy is courteous and kind. "I never dreamed I'd be up on stage here," Tirn tells the audience. "Thank you all for making this possible."
ackstage everyone's toasting Timmy's success. "I'm just so glad it's over," he says. "Was that crazy?" asks Timmy's brother, Josh. "Seeing T up there on stage at the SB Bowl?" "I don't know," says Pascal, who's seen Timmy through his first acoustic cafe sets and was the one who accidentally jumbled "acoustic" in "citsuca" (the title of the EP). "It seemed totally normal to me."
But then Foo Fighter Dave Grohl bursts through the backstage barricade on his Harley and everyone's bustling back up to see the headliner show. The night is unraveling and ramping up all at once. In the coming months, Timmy will tour Australia with the Foos and Hurley's "Rip My Shred Stick" campaign, then off to Fiji, then off to Hawaii and, by the New Year, back into the studio to record a full length CD. He'll probably pull another flip or two, as well.
And so we're left with that awkward moment near the end of any profile story. Done flipping through the photos. Done recounting the show. It's about to end, but then what? Life goes on. Back to the busy life of photo pro and brooding musician. Back to brotherhood, husbandness and friendi-tude. Back to photos, interviews and practice sessions. Back to boat trips, summertime groveling and poster signings. Life goes on.
One moment Timmy's nodding his head along with the Foo Fighter set.
The next, he's gone.
Citsuca
The Timmy Curran EP
A note from Timmy on how "Citsuca" came to be:
"It started with Rob Machado telling me I should send a few bathroom recordings to Japan for a compilation CD called Tropicalized. Rob and Jon Swift did a song for it. Jack and The White Buffalo were doing songs, so 1 sent my little bano recordings to Randy who was putting it all together and they told me I could have a song on it. I was so pumped. So I went to my friend lan Nickus's house, who recorded The Red West album and recorded a song called If I Only Had A Way which ended up making it onto the compilation. About a week later when Josh Landen, who made the Al Merrick documentary Flow, asked if he could use my song "Horses On The Range " for the movie. So 1 recorded the song and ended up recording a few more songs while I was there, which turned into the Citsuca Ep. Before that, I never would of dreamed of having my music in any compilation, or in a movie. It's all so strange to me, but 1 am very excited it all worked out. Thank you for listening." - TC
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Reply #1 on : Thu August 30, 2007, 00:23:15