Besides being a great honor, we are excited to use the funds from this grant to do additional research on archival footage, recorded tape, and other vintage images and paperwork related to Ahbez. This will be conducted in Southern California when the current lock-down has been lifted for libraries and research facilities, particularly the University of California-Santa Barbara Special Performing Arts Collection, which houses the archive of record producer Bob Bertram, with whom Ahbez recorded over thirty songs from 1950-1964. (A handful were released on this Ahbez compilation in 2016).
Stay tuned here for more on our findings during this exciting research venture as well as updates on the documentary itself and other grants received.
“Dharmaland,” the collection of music written by Eden Ahbez in 1961-63 (in the immediate aftermath of “Eden’s Island”), but left in sheet music form by the composer during his lifetime, has been recorded by Swedish exotica quintet Ìxtahuele.
The sessions for the LP began in July 2019 and ran through early 2020 and included guest appearances by nine of Ahbez’s friends and former collaborators. (Ahbez’s own handmade bamboo flute and handmade drums were also used on the double-album.)
The LP was slated to be released in June 2020, but due to the pandemic (and because of ongoing perfectionism), recording and mixing have continued past the original date of release. The project is currently being finalized, however, and will go press later this year.
“Dharmaland” will be released in the first quarter of 2021 by Subliminal Sounds Records. Stay tuned here for more information on this incredible Ahbez-related project.
Academy Award nominated director Nicolas Winding Refn has a website—byNWR.com—and it currently hosts a feature article about Eden Ahbez written by yours truly (Brian Chidester), as well a preview of “As the Wind,” the documentary film I am currently co-directing about Ahbez with John Winer. The link to the article is here:
These are transfers from 45rpm records in my own collection and are only available to stream here. This is also the only place to see the extended preview from the documentary right now. More details on the latter in the coming months. Thanks for looking.
Eden Ahbez (1908-1995) during a press interview in New York City, USA, 1948. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The November 3rd episode of the Qwasa Qwasa radio show (out of London) is being dedicated to Eden Ahbez. It will be hosted by DJ Levi Adriaenssens and will air from 12 to 2 CET on Threads Radio: https://threadsradio.com/
The show will be uploaded on Mixcloud afterwards. Below is the press release description:
Together we will travel to Eden’s Island to reconnect with nature and emerge ourselves into a new and unique musical universe. Our journey will be soundtracked by Eden Ahbez, Pink Floyd, Nat King Cole, Sun Ra Arkestra, and many other travellers of the astral universe.
Roy Behrens—a retired professor of Graphic Design at the University of Northern Iowa and published author on the topic of Dazzle Ships (among other things)—has recently published an article about his pen-pal relationship with Eden Ahbez in the early 1960s in the most recent issue of the Iowa Source magazine. (Read it here.)
Roy also painted a portrait of Ahbez in the early sixties, when he was a pre-teen, which the composer kept amongst his few belongings until the end of his life. A cropped part of the painting is shown above and will be explored further in the documentary. (Behrens also discusses it in the article above.)
Thanks to him for sending us this great article, and as Mildred Bailey once sang, “Thanks for the memories!”
David Peterkofsky, host and producer of the podcast “For Keeps,” has just released a new episode and it features Brian Chidester, chronicler of Eden Ahbez and co-director of the documentary “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez.” To download or stream the episode… follow the link here:
Among other things, the two discuss Chidester’s 25+ year journey in recovering Ahbez’s lost music and story, as well as ongoing issues with the Ahbez catalog and future releases.
J. William Lloyd was a late 19th/early 20th century radical American author. His subjects included theosophy, anti-statism, anarchy, holistic diets, and a back-to-nature lifestyle. Among other published tomes, he wrote “The Scripture of the Serene Life” (1921) and “The Natural Man: A Romance of the Golden Age” (1902), which together influenced Eden Ahbez’s final project, “The Scripture of the Golden Age” (1990s).
Lloyd historian and collector Barefoot Ted MacDonald recounts Lloyd’s life and artistic output, as well as his connection to key Ahbez friends in the 1930s and ’40s, in an exclusive interview with Ahbez historian Brian Chidester. This is episode 2 of the new online interview series “Finders/Keepers” and can be seen here:
“Manna” is the first single from the forthcoming album, “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” due July 11, 2021. The link is here:
“Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ìxtahuele, is the first-ever recording of this long-lost masterwork by the original hippie composer of “Nature Boy” and “Eden’s Island.” Resurrected from Ahbez’s unrecorded sheet music, c. 1961-63, Ìxtahuele has woven an enchanted tapestry of mystic exotica and experimental pop that re-establishes the songwriter as a forefather of psychedelic music and brings his work into the present. They are joined by a host of guest artists, including nine of Ahbez’s friends and former collaborators, as well as contemporary performers Kadhja Bonet, Xenia Kriisin, and King Kukulele. The composer’s own handmade drums and bamboo flutes also appear throughout the recordings.
Bonet performs lead vocals on the “Manna” single above. The music video is directed by Brian Chidester and Alex Tyson, with cinematography also by Tyson, as well as Robert Ek. Denny “King Kukulele” Moynahan plays the role of Eden Ahbez and Contessa Beth Hinterliter plays the Magic Woman. Video executive produced by Stefan Kéry of Subliminal Sounds and John Winer of Full Moon Films.
Visit Ìxtahuele’s LinkTree here for all listening options and to pre-order the vinyl or CD edition which will be released on June 11th.
“Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ixtahuele, is just six days from being officially released (June 11, 2021), but already it has been chosen as the contemporary album of the month by the UK “Guardian” newspaper. See the full review here:
There is also a second lead single from the album out now, titled “The Lion,” featuring guest vocals by Swedish experimental pop singer Xenia Kriisin and guest keyboards by classical pianist and Ahbez relative Anne Rainwater. Listen to “The Lion” here.
For those fans who are unaware, long-time Ahbez historian Brian Chidester teamed up with filmmaker John Winer in 2017, and the pair have been working on a feature-length documentary about the “Nature Boy” composer since then. Here’s a quick behind the scenes clip about their process:
From 2017-2020, principle photography was completed, with nearly all archival research being wrapped in that time as well. The filmmakers are now in the phase of production that requires additional funding for motion graphics and animation to bring to life Ahbez’s many imaginary utopias, including “Eden’s Island,” and now “Dharmaland.”
Here is the official trailer for the documentary (including some preliminary animation in the middle):
And here is a message from the directors themselves:
The campaign includes many wonderful perks for donators, including an original film poster by designer Matthew Durkin, as well as packages for “Dharmaland” and a deluxe 2LP edition of “Eden’s Island.” There is also the 1960 lost Ahbez mini-suite “Eden’s Themes” which was recorded especially for this crowdsourcing campaign by Ixtahuele. Follow the link above and secure your perks today. It goes towards a good cause.
“Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ixtahuele, is available through Subliminal Sounds Records in all media platforms, from vinyl double-LP to CD to digital download to streaming. Click here to get your copy.
For those unaware, Ahbez wrote the music on “Dharmaland” in the immediate aftermath of his lone solo album, “Eden’s Island” (1960), but because that album sold less than a hundred copies, and because his wife Anna contracted terminal bone cancer, the “Dharmaland” suite never got past the sheet music stage.
Fast-forward sixty years and Ahbez biographer Brian Chidester pulled the lead-sheets out of the Library of Congress and began working on the recording venture in late 2018 with Ixtahuele. Sessions and mixing took place between Summer 2019 and Fall 2020 and included nine of Ahbez’s friends and former collaborators as well as his own handmade drums and hand-carved flute.
As Ahbe himself wrote on “Dharmaland Pt. 1”: “Come and live the enchanted life/Where time becomes eternity/And you will become a dreamer/And dream untellable dreams.” Or as Woody Guthrie said: “This land was made for you and me.” Enjoy.
In February 2020 the Kenneth Karmiole Annual Endowed Research Fellowship was awarded to the filmmakers of “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez.” Before the filmmakers could embark upon their research venture to complete this grant, however, the pandemic happened. The University of California-Santa Barbara Library Special Research Collections, to which the Karmiole Fellowship is related, remained closed, in fact, from March 2020 until July ’21.
At the first opportunity, the filmmakers—Brian Chidester and John Winer—made their way to UCSB, searching for Ahbez-related materials in the Bob Bertram Archive, and concluding on July 28, 2021.
The Bertram Archive was added to the UCSB Library in 2015 at the behest of curator David Seubert. Bertram was a songwriter/music impresario who owned a Los Angeles independent label during the 1950s and ’60s called Bertram International Records. Eden Ahbez had two singles released on Bertram International—“Yes Master!” b/w “Jungle Bungalow” (1958) and “John John” b/w “Surfer John” (1964)—and between 1949 and ’64 wrote and recorded nearly forty songs with Bertram (the bulk of them unreleased). This archive therefore proved invaluable to the research of our Ahbez documentary.
Many important artifacts were discovered by the filmmakers in the Bertram Archive. These include: a three-song demo reel of the earliest Ahbez solo recordings (c. 1949); a contract between Ahbez and Bertram to record the full six-part “Nature Boy Suite” in 1951; another four-part suite (c. 1958) of Ahbez’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Spiritual”; and many tape reels and sheet music folios related to his 1960 magnum opus “Eden’s Island.”
Also during the fellowship, the filmmakers were able to broker another Ahbez-related archive to be digitized and stored at UCSB, that of Ahbez’s final collaborator, Joe Romersa, to whom Ahbez left the bulk of his recorded material, as well as copious sheet music and assorted personal papers. Romersa donated his archive, which Ahbez left to Romersa in his last will and testament, to UCSB, which means the Special Collections now houses the largest collection of Ahbez recorded tape and archival materials in the world.
The filmmakers, per the agreement of the grant, were to speak to the fellowship in-person and present a cross-section of their findings. Due to COVID, however, this is not currently possible. In its place the filmmakers have put together this video of their time spent in the archive:
Future presentations, either by Zoom or in-person, are still possible. The filmmakers would like the thank the Karmiole Foundation and David Seubert, as well as his staff at the Library’s Special Digital Collections, for making this possible.
Take a step behind the curtains of “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland” and see how the album was made, track-by-track, with its producer Brian Chidester in the new “Making of Dharmaland” podcast.
Each episode is available for free from the Eden Ahbez homepage here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts here and on Spotify here.
There will also be a special Q&A episode after the song-by-song episodes are complete. If anyone would like to participate in this, i.e. submit a question, please do so by sending it to: info@edenahbez.com. Thanks for tuning in!
The Eden’s Island Blog received a press release today from the law office of Julie Romersa, representing Joe Romersa, the last collaborator of Eden Ahbez. For those not already familiar, Romersa worked with the “Nature Boy” composer from roughly 1987-1955, on a project Ahbez called “The Scripture of the Golden Age.”
Romersa, via his lawyer, is apparently attempting to probate Ahbez’s will and by extension be appointed the new personal representative of the Ahbez Estate. This is big news for anyone who has followed the Ahbez saga these last 25 years as Romersa has essentially been blocked from releasing the “Nature Boy” composer’s final works by those claiming ownership of his copyrights.
The press release begins thusly:
“For Immediate Release. December 1, 2022. The estate of Eden Ahbez, composer of the American standard ‘Nature Boy’ (1948) and pre-psychedelic concept album Eden’s Island (1960), is in probate 27 years after his death.”
It then lays out the terms of the planned hearing of December 1st, saying (as paraphrased above): “Ahbez’s longtime collaborator and sound engineer, Joe Romersa, has asked the court to accept the deceased composer’s last will and testament for probate and to appoint him the personal representative of the estate.”
Romersa was apparently “a named executor in the will,” and “believes that probate will finally enable him to legally release the last known works of Ahbez.” (Yes! Finally is right!!)
“These and many other recordings,” the press release continues, “by the composer have been sequestered by those claiming his estate since his death in 1995. A hearing on both matters is scheduled for December 1st at the Riverside County Superior Court in Palm Springs (Case No. PRIN2200674).” Okay! Here we go!
According to Romersa’s attorney, Julie Romersa, because Ahbez’s will was never probated, the copyrights never legally transferred out of his estate. “In California,” she says, “you cannot avoid probate if the estate contains intangible personal property like copyrights.” Therefore, it seems, “until a personal representative is appointed, no one has the legal authority to enter into any agreements over the assets in the Ahbez catalog.”
This is a big deal as we at the Eden’s Island Blog get asked all the time how to contact the existing Ahbez Estate, also known as Golden World Publishing, by film and TV productions wanting to license songs from the Ahbez catalog (mostly “Nature Boy”). Here’s where it gets interesting:
“David Janowiak,” the press release states, “a Palm Springs area businessman and Ahbez’s bookkeeper, claimed ownership of the estate until his own death in 2012.” Now, the text goes on to say, his stepdaughter, Debra Guess, “is asserting ownership and claiming the royalties through the Eden Ahbez Trust.” Yet Ms. Romersa laughs at this, saying, “That was never actually funded,” and “an unfunded irrevocable trust is unenforceable.”
What’s more, she says, “Janowiak knew the trust was not in effect.” Seems important… right?
“When he was sued in 1996 for back payment of royalties for ‘Nature Boy,'” says Ms. Romersa, “his position then was that he inherited the copyrights through the will, and that the trust was never funded.”
Okay, so, he admitted the trust was not funded, and now his stepdaughter is asserting she inherited the Ahbez copyrights through a trust Janowiak himself more or less said outright did not exist. That’s news to us at this blog.
The press release then continues: “Ahbez’s will is quite straightforward: everything would go to Janowiak, unless Janowiak died before Ahbez; in which case, everything goes to Romersa.” This, according to Ms. Romersa, “makes Janowiak’s other capricious decision—to mail the estate documents following Ahbez’s death to the U.S. Copyright Office instead of going through probate—all the more perplexing.”
So why is this a big deal? Other than the fact that probate is required for the transfer of copyrights? Ms. Romersa theorizes that “Janowiak was afraid to go through probate because estates left to non-family members are often subject to challenge and suspected of being acquired through undue influence or fraud.”
Here is some additional legal clarification from Ms. Romersa: “One of the requirements of probate is providing notice to heirs and beneficiaries,” and “once noticed, interested parties have the right to contest the will submitted for probate.” Thus, as a beneficiary of the will, Joe Romersa “has always been the greatest threat to Janowiak’s claims of ownership” (says Ms. Romersa).
This next paragraph is perhaps the most damning in the entire press release:
“Unfettered by legalities, and unquestioned by either ASCAP or Harry Fox, Janowiak lined his pockets with [Ahbez’s] royalties for years.” To further obscure the truth from prying eyes, he [Janowiak] “would publicly claim his rights to ownership through the [unfunded/unenforceable] trust, a fiction that is difficult to disprove because trusts are private, with little court oversight.” Ms. Guess, therefore, says the press release, “has proposed to the court that the status quo remain; that probate is just an unnecessary formality.”
Joe Romersa obviously disagrees; hence this upcoming hearing. “At heart,” he says in the press release, “the shirking of responsibility on the part of Janowiak undermines both the legacy and the final wishes of Ahbez.” Hear! Hear!
In fact, according to Romersa (in the press release), for years before Ahbez’s death, the composer told friends and collaborators that he wanted to create a space where education in the arts and sciences would be provided at little or no cost to any young person who came through its doors. “He believed the music we were working on would be very successful,” says Romersa, “and that, combined with the ‘Nature Boy’ royalties he was already getting, would generate the money needed to fund his other charitable interests.” Ahbez, concludes Romersa, expected Janowiak and himself to carry out these plans after he died.
“But instead of working with Romersa to fulfill Ahbez’s final wishes,” the press release says, “Janowiak opted to enrich himself and ignore any of the composer’s artistic or charitable intentions.”
“This stands in stark contrast to Romersa who has steadfastly tried to honor the legacy of his late friend and to release Ahbez’s final works, with their emphasis on universal love, without expectation of compensation or personal gain. Which is why he hopes that, with the court’s blessing, the day of their release may soon be here.”
An incredible turn of events, to say the least, and one we hope will have a positive outcome for both Romersa and the Ahbez catalog/charitable foundation. It’s so overdue!!
The press states that “inquiries are welcome and should be addressed to: Romersa Law, c/o Julie M. Romersa, 213-703-9844,” or advocate (at) romersalaw (dot) com.
Joe Romersa (left) and Eden Ahbez (right), c. 1990, in Los Angeles, CA, where the two worked together for the last eight years of Ahbez’s life.
Love for Eden Ahbez’s imaginary landscape Eden’s Island continues with the incredible installation and tribute album described in the press release below. Here is also the link to purchase the LP:
Christian Friedländer is the exhibition designer of Coastal Imaginaries at the Danish pavilion at this year’s Biennale Architettura di Venezia. He is also presenting his own theatrical installation work Mermaid Bay as part of the exhibition.
Mermaid Bay is a 55-minute-long staged scenario in five movements, utilizing a diorama as its central visual element. It is a unique performance in that it does not feature any human performers in flesh and blood. Instead, the experience is facilitated by an evocative soundtrack and a radiant light design, which works together to create a mesmerizing and immersive experience for the audience.
Through the installation, Friedländer addresses the vulnerability of today’s coastal landscapes and the stark reality of climate change. The sense of surrendering to nature, and incorporating it into human life rather than working against it, has been a significant inspiration for the artist. This concept strongly aligns with the nature-based solutions that the research and landscape- architectural elements of Coastal Imaginaries present, in relation to living with and mitigating climate change today and in the future.
The Mermaid Bay scenography depicts a topographical triptych of Copenhagen’s coastline, stretching from the Avedøre Power Plant in the south, to the City Hall of Copenhagen, and finally to the Svanemølle Power Plant in the north. These three significant architectural landmarks, which are also the tallest buildings in Copenhagen, are dramatically accentuated as emblematic man-made structures by appearing as the only 2D elements in the 3D diorama. They are cut out of plywood and hand-painted with perspective.
In Friedländer’s near-future science fiction narrative the lowland island of Amager, geographically preceding Copenhagen, has completely vanished by the rising sea level due to climate change.
‘The little mermaid has left the rock’
The audience experiences the Copenhagen coastline from the perspective of being out on the water, just like the mermaid who has left her habitat rock to reunite with her natural element – the ocean. On the shore, we can see remnants of her human life – an empty rock, a beach towel, a radio, a travel guide to Scandinavia, a mirror, and a hairbrush.
Mermaids have throughout history been associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks, and drownings as well being linked to questions of fertility, lust and wealth. By all means mermaids have a loaded and iconic status in Denmark as well as in many other international contexts, and the actual water preceding historic Copenhagen was for centuries named ‘The Mermaid Ground’ due to the abundance of shipwrecks.
In his research for Mermaid Bay, Friedländer has also been inspired by the 1940s nature view by musician Eden Ahbez and the counterculture movement of “Nature Boys” a loose translation of ‘naturmenschen’, American youths whose lives were influenced by the German Lebensreform (life-
reform) with roots back to Goethe. Modern primitives, wandervogel, bohemians, reformers, wayfarers, and vagabonds. The Nature Boys were proponents of a vegetarian lifestyle, living primarily on fruits and vegetables, and often lived the lives of hermits, wandering the hills and taking up dwelling in trees and caves.
Danish recognized music artist Peter Peter Schneidermann has created a 23 minutes long composition in the true spirit of Eden Ahbez, specially written for Mermaid Bay. The composition will be released on a limited vinyl of 300 by renowned danish label Escho Records and pressed by Nordsø Records in Copenhagen.
The power of theater
For Friedländer, theater is a unique form of communication that offers a respite from the constant bombardment of attention-grabbing content in today’s digital world. It allows for a collective and generous experience that evokes emotion, without resorting to explicit solutions or didactic messages. Instead, theater engages the audience in a way that encourages them to form their own interpretations and responses, creating a deeper and more meaningful connection with the performance and ultimately also the world.
Scenography, being an analog and historic art form, is able to add a certain sensorial dimension and unique attentiveness to our understanding of complex topics such as the consequences of climate change. Friedländer combines historical theater and analogue formats found in classical scenography in a contemporary reality and landscape, including animal remains, eelgrass, seashells and actual litter found on the coastline of Copenhagen.
Working with water in his art and craft presents a significant scenographic challenge for the artist, especially when attempting to simulate a flooding of an entire capital within a biennale pavilion using large waves. Drawing upon centuries of theater traditions that have depicted water as a threat, the artist has utilized historical techniques such as rolling waves made of textile and machinery, which were first pioneered by Da Vinci and are still capable of creating a mesmerizing and convincing theatrical experience today.
Friedländer understands our sense of perception as being so powerful that we often accept and adhere to the rules of the visual world presented to us, even though we know it’s constructed from materials like textile, cardboard, foam, plywood, and paint, and is ultimately just an illusion. Compared to the often overwhelming complexity of modern digitalization, the recognition provided by our deeper senses is readily accessible and can be quickly understood in a more immediate and intuitive way in a theatrical staging with scenography, light and sounds.
For anyone that has spent significant time on this blog, or who has followed its many postings over the years, the subject of Eden Ahbez‘s “Scripture of the Golden Age” project remains both perennial and somewhat mysterious.
Yours truly (Brian Chidester) has had several articles about it published in newspapers and magazines, including one about Ahbez’s attempted 1970s version of the “Scripture” (see here), and another about his final iteration in the 1990s (see here). The latter featured a key interview with recording engineer and Ahbez friend Joe Romersa.
There was also apparently an attempt made by Ahbez on the “Scripture” project in the 1980s; one that hovered mostly in the demo-tape territory. Among the main people involved with Ahbez then was a guy named Rob Mackenzie.
Rob Mackenzie, seen here c. 1978, was a professional musician and a friend/collaborator of Eden Ahbez in the 1980s.
Mackenzie, like Romersa, is a musician, songwriter, and engineer who at the time maintained a small recording studio in his home in the Los Angeles area. Also like Romersa, Mackenzie played the local clubs around L.A., including a placed called “The Central” in West Hollywood (later the Viper Room).
Mackenzie and Romersa, in fact, met at the Central one night during a Tuesday night jam in the early ’80s, with Romersa playing drums and Mackenzie on guitar. Nothing came of it then; but the two would bond a decade or so later over their shared experience of having known and worked with Ahbez.
To the wide world these days, Eden Ahbez is best remembered as the original hippie; the guy who wrote the American standard “Nature Boy”; and the bearded, toga-wearing eccentric who lived under the first “L” of the Hollywood sign. To Romersa and Mackenzie, however, Ahbez was a friend, a mentor, and in the case of Romersa, one of his many musical clients.
They first met at Fidelity Studios sometime between 1987 and ’89. Ahbez, then in his late seventies, sauntered in without an appointment, while Romersa (29 or 30) just happened to be the available engineer on the schedule that day. Ahbez told Romersa he needed an edit on his two-track tape; a request the young engineer fulfilled without difficulty. The two would develop a working relationship from there; one which spanned the last seven-plus years of Ahbez’s life.
Romersa remembers that Ahbez split his time mostly between L.A. and the California desert area around Palm Springs. There were also semi-annual pilgrimages by the elderly nature boy to southeast Florida (which he mentioned to Romersa from time-to-time).
Eden Ahbez and Joe Romersa at the Largo Club in Los Angeles around 1990-91.
Whatever the case, when Ahbez came to L.A., it was primarily to record his own material. He’d often stay in a motel room; but would sometimes stay with friends. Mackenzie was one of those friends. For years Ahbez had a room of his own at Mackenzie’s place, and according to the latter, stayed in it for weeks at a time, sometimes up to a month.
Mackenzie also recalls making one of those infamous trips with Ahbez to Miami Beach (c. 1983). The two thought at one point that Ahbez’s white Econoline van, which the composer slept in as well, had been stolen.
As recorded for posterity by the Miami Herald, Ahbez’s van was taken “between 3:20p.m. and 5p.m… hours after the men had arrived.” Police did not expect to recover the vehicle unless they could “get a snitch on the street to talk to [them], or get lucky.”
Ironically, as Mackenzie would share with Romersa decades later, the van wasn’t stolen after all. They’d arrived in Miami, exhausted and hungry after endless hours of driving, parked the van, then walked to get a bite to eat. When they finished, however, the van was nowhere to be found. The next day, after already reporting the incident to Miami PD, they walked back to where they remembered parking the night before, and as luck would have it, found the van… just where they’d left it.
Back in L.A. during the early-to-mid-’80s, Ahbez, besides crashing occasionally at Mackenzie’s, also used his home studio to record some demo tapes. These, as it turns out, were recordings of some of the same “Scripture of the Golden Age”-related songs he (Ahbez) had laid down in the ’70s with producer John Greek. The same he would try again with Romersa in the ’90s. Same titles; often quite different arrangements.
Songs such as “As the Wind,” “The Clam Man,” “Nature Girl,” “A Neat Song,” and “The Path” were in fact ones Ahbez recorded across three decades. Some of them even originated as melodies with different titles as early as 1961-62; and it was these earliest iterations that were recorded from Ahbez’s original lead-sheets for the Dharmaland album by Ixtahuele in 2021. That makes four decades in which the music related to the “Scripture” project gestated for its composer.
What is fascinating about all of this is how Ahbez’s work and friendship with Mackenzie and Romersa crossed paths. Sort of.
While Mackenzie worked with Ahbez on some home recordings at that time, several young musicians collaborated with the elderly composer too, including Dale Ockerman, who cut a new version of “Nature Boy” in 1980 with Ahbez’s preferred lyric change (see here for that story). There was also the power-pop musician Kyle Vincent who recorded a version of “Nature Girl” with Ahbez, c. 1984, and there was a guy named Scott Seely, a producer/arranger from the desert area with a rather provincial track record, who in 1985 cut a ten-minute new-age version of “As the Wind” which was later included on the posthumous Ahbez disc Echoes from Nature Boy. Most of these tapes Ahbez would either leave at Mackenzie’s house or carry around with him in the back of his van.
In fact, by the time Romersa and Ahbez started working together in the late ’80s, the latter’s van had actually been broken into on multiple occasions. It was also, according to Romersa, often messy and chaotic inside. Romersa therefore offered to store the tapes and other fragiles at his residence and Ahbez took him up on it.
Also, at the time, the technology used in recording studios was transitioning away from analog tape to digital recordings, and Romersa offered to transfer Ahbez’s previous recordings to the newer DAT format at no charge. Ahbez said yes to this offer as well and informed Romersa he had even more recordings at a “friend’s” house. The two then scheduled a time to pick up these recordings and drove to the home of, you guessed it, Rob Mackenzie.
By this point, Mackenzie was playing guitar with the doo-wop revival group Sha Na Na, while Romersa, besides engineering at various L.A. studios—including sessions with Howie Epstein, NWA, and John Prine—was leading the popular local band Soy Cowboy. He and Mackenzie would continue to run into each other at Fidelity Studio: Mackenzie when he stopped by to record; Romersa as an in-house engineer. It wasn’t until about 1991 that the two, who had brushed shoulders for nearly a decade at that point, became conscious of their mutual friendship with Ahbez.
From approximately 1988 to December ’94, Romersa recorded ceaslessly with Ahbez, including fully-arranged productions, half-finished ones, demos galore, and conversations/dramatic readings of Ahbez’s many poems and aphorisms. The aim for Ahbez was to finally finish the elusive “Scriptures” album (which he wanted to release in tandem with a book by the same title).
Then in February 1995 Romersa received the call that Ahbez had been injured in a car accident, was in the hospital in the Palm Springs area, and was unconscious. He drove from L.A. to the desert to be with his friend.
Romersa spoke to Ahbez as he lay there in a coma, remembering out loud their times together in the studio, a few personal memories, and how much he (Ahbez) meant to him. Romersa also promised Ahbez that his last works would eventually be released.
On March 4, 1995, Romersa received the phone call that Ahbez had died. Soon after he went about trying to honor his promise to his late friend.
Unlike today, in the mid-1990s, it was still difficult and vague for artists to self-release music. This was four years before the advent of Napster, eight years before iTunes, and about ten years before releases of lost or unfinished works by legacy artists starting becoming commonplace. Finding distribution and PR outside the record industry was especially difficult for indie projects then. Regardless, Romersa set himself the task of compiling and conceptualizing a package of Ahbez’s final work, and getting it in front of people who might be sympathetic to its message of universal love.
One such industry heavyweight was former Beatle George Harrison (with whom Ahbez shared an affinity for Eastern philosophy in his lyrics). Romersa thought that if Harrison took an interest, he or someone with some clout might be willing to produce the album, or at least “lend” their industry connections to getting a CD of it released and distributed. Through friends, Romersa even got so far as setting an appointment with Harrison, with the intent of playing some of the recordings he (Romersa) and Ahbez had made together in the ’90s.
With excitement, Romersa shared news of this opportunity with David Janowiak, the latter being a friend of Ahbez’s from the desert area who referred to himself, following the composer’s death, as “the successor-trustee of Eden Ahbez.”
Janowiak was, in fact, a real estate agent in Desert Hot Springs whom Ahbez had paid to manage his books and financial affairs during the last couple of years of Ahbez’s life. (Janowiak’s death certificate also claims he was a member of the clergy… something I have yet to verify).
After Ahbez’s death Janowiak told Romersa that he (Janowiak) was now “in charge” of the music. Yet instead of embracing the opportunity presented by Romersa to play the work for George Harrison, Janowiak instead threatened Romersa with a lawsuit if he shared Ahbez’s music with anyone, regardless their stature in the industry. And that was that.
Romersa never met with Harrison; Harrison never heard Ahbez’s final music or its heartfelt narrations; and it didn’t take long before Romersa realized that Janowiak would essentially block any future effort to release these works.
Janowiak subsequently self-released the Echoes from Nature Boy CD in 1997 without any imput from Romersa and with none of the final recordings which Ahbez oversaw and paid for in the studio with Romersa. The disc included three vintage Ahbez recordings from the ’70s (“Nature Girl,” “Anna Was Mine,” “The Path”), two from the ’80s (“Once There Was a Girl,” “As the Wind”), a demo tape whose date is unknown (“No Bums Allowed”), and five new recordings of Ahbez compositions, produced by Scott Seely, performed by Lawrence Welk Orchestra guitarist Buddy Merrill. Besides being culled from recordings that Ahbez himself had previously deemed insufficient for release, the tone was more or less a hodge-podge, the personnel about as relevant in 1997 as a plotline from The Ozzie & Harriet Show.
Janowiak complained in an interview with an Australian radio journalist in 1998 that the CD got no attention and no distribution; that he’d tried placing it at a local K-Mart in the Palm Springs area, as well as a few bookstores, before giving up. The failure of Echoes, in fact, was the reason Janowiak gave to me for not allowing any more of Ahbez’s music, besides “Nature Boy,” to be released in the years after his death—Romersa’s included. This despite the fact that Ahbez’s 1960 album Eden’s Island went through a dozen pressings between 1995 and 2011, the latter being when Janowiak himself passed away, and had songs from it covered by half-a-dozen prominent indie artists (including Victoria Williams and the Wondermints).
As for Romersa, for the past thirty years he has been telling anyone who would listen that he and Ahbez worked on an album’s worth of music and narrations which were specifically overseen by Ahbez himself, and which have never been released. He’s placed this message on his website. He’s been interviewed countless times on TV, radio, and in print regarding his collaboration with Ahbez in the studio.
Romersa also continues to recieve emails from people around the world asking to license Ahbez’s music for their film projects; people wishing to share their own personal memories of Ahbez; people curious about Ahbez’s lifestyle and message; and some who write simply to show their support of his (Romersa’s) unwavering efforts to keep his deathbed promise to Ahbez.
Over the decades, Romersa has become known as “the surviving friend” in Ahbez’s life, the go-to person whenever people want information about what Ahbez was actually like (as opposed to the oft-repeated myths).
These days, Romersa finds himself once again in the media spotlight, albeit this time as someone who is fighting back. He asked the courts in California, in 2023, to have Ahbez’s final will and testament admitted for probate, with the hopes of ultimately getting the final recordings out to the world. He and Rob Mackenzie are amongst the last alive who actually knew Ahbez personally and knew what he was aiming for in his final years with regards to his music and his message.
As for myself, I have been on the Ahbez research trail now for 29 years, having written dozens of published articles and worked on four Ahbez reissue albums. I take no pleasure in getting political on this subject, especially on this blog, which was always meant to be an informational forum, not a place for partisanship or PR.
Next year, however, will be thirty years since Ahbez’s death, and it’s unfathomable to me that all but the works of his that are either presided over by record companies like Capitol and Del-Fi, or songs of his that are in the public domain, remain sequestered by the acting Ahbez estate (read: Janowiak and his heirs). It’s ridiculous that the bulk of his catalog is being purposefully withheld from the public. It’s a crime against art. And for what reason?
Enough already! Give Romersa the permission he deserves to release this music! Free Ahbez!!
