Lewis Pesacov: Don't Hate Him Because His Life Is Amazing
See also: The Alchemy of Fool's Gold: The self-titled debut album by a polyglot L.A. 10-piece: Hebrew vocals and West African rhythms?
Courtesy of Artist
Lewis Pesacov is living the dream. Not only has he learned to make a career out of being a musician, but he's learned to separate his personal projects from his work, and therefore never lose his passion.
A member of music collective Black Iris and its label division White Iris -- as well as a co-founder of bands Fool's Gold and El Sportivo and the Blooz -- you can find hints of Pesacov's work all over the Los Angeles music scene.
Over oysters at the Ace Hotel in New York City, where he was preparing to kick off the first night of Fool's Gold's tour with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Pesacov and Black Iris co-founder Daron Hollowell explain what frankly sounds like a magical formula for creating a sustainable musical community.
Of the early days of Black Iris, Hollowell notes, "We had a bunch of people working separately in their own spaces. We had Asa [Taccone] and Cornbread [aka Matt Compton], who are in Electric Guest, working on stuff; Lewis was working on his own, but once we got a studio it really solidified a community."
The studio he refers to is housed within Echo Park's Bedrock Studios. An enormous warehouse filled with practice spaces and recording studios and tucked against a rocky hill just off Alvarado St., Bedrock is the kind of place, these days, where you can walk in at any given moment and see members of three or four LA bands smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, giving interviews, or conspiring on musical matters.
Moving into the space pushed Pesacov to the next level. When the collective was just getting started, he says, "there was a novelty to recording." A self-taught producer, he didn't go to recording school. As he has produced more and more of both his own projects and other people's records -- including quintessential L.A. babe Bethany Cosentino's debut album as Best Coast -- he has grown more comfortable behind a board.
"There's something really unknowable about a studio, with all the knobs and faders," he says, "but I'm comfortable enough that the older I get the more I can control the craft." This skill and control is essential to both Pesacov's growth as a producer and as a musician.
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