Ashkon’s New Album is a Celebration of Creativity and Dedication
You probably remember Ashkon’s viral version of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ from when the Giants won the World Series in 2010.
By Sayre Piotrkowski
Last Sunday afternoon, Ashkon Davaran, one of my closest and oldest friends, released 80 West, his first album of original music in almost two decades. The project’s completion was celebrated with an all ages, sun-soaked, release party at Degrees Plato in Oakland.
The record is good, and I encourage you to listen to it. Not just because it is good, but because I want the fearlessness my friend seems to have found in his mid-40s to spread. You should listen to this album my friend made. Then you should encourage your talented friends to do creative things, especially if you have a friend who is not merely talented, but also dedicated.
There are a couple of ways to become something. You can get paid. One who gets paid to teach becomes a teacher, or one who gets paid to cook becomes a cook. Here our language has a way of shaping our reality. And then, there is the other way, wherein we do something with such discipline, dedication, and consistency that it becomes at least in part, who we are. Here, our actions create reality, we become what we practice.
Ashkon at his record release party on Sunday. Photo by the author.
My 78-year-old father is a lawyer by trade, he has been for half a century. But what he has been even longer is a baseball player. He was a ball player in Little League as a fresh-off-the-boat refugee still mastering English. He played on his high school team, and again in college. Now 60 years later, he still practices several times a week and travels as far as Arizona to compete in tournaments. He never crossed a threshold that bestowed upon him the title of “ball player.” No one has ever paid him to play. But you can’t tell me my father is not a ball player. It is, what he does.
My Aunt is a jazz singer, to my ear, one of the best in the world. At times she has been successful. At other times she has been forced to rely on family, waitressing, or both to make ends meet. Nevertheless, to hear her sing just one song is to know how absurd it would have been for her to spend her life doing anything else.
Ashkon’s talent places him much closer to my Aunt than my father. There was a time in the music industry when a person with his skillset would likely have a cushy job at a label, writing and producing songs for well-manicured, meticulously packaged, would-be pop stars. But I am told that is not how it works anymore.
Today Ashkon is a husband and father. You could also call him an educator, a coach, a counselor, or a stage actor. Twenty years ago, he and I were rappers, together in a group. I get the sense that well before even those days, Ashkon realized that composing and performing music was his calling, his thing to be.
There have been moments when the dream of getting paid to do his thing seemed close. In our rapping days, I recall a brief tour with Mistah FAB and Zion I and a surreal time in a Berkeley recording studio with Boots Riley.
This surreality grew in a pair of viral moments. First, when his parody song “Hot Tubbin’ On The Late Night” landed on the YouTube homepage in 2006, and started a whirlwind that months later landed Ashkon in an LA recording studio with Irv Gotti, pitching songs for a Vanessa Carlton project. Then in 2010, when his version of “Don’t Stop Believing” soundtracked the Giants to their first World Series victory in San Francisco. That time he was in a parade, all over television and radio, and he even got threatened with a cease-and-desist by Steve Perry’s lawyers.
Listening to “80 West,” I hear all of this. I hear influences that stretch from Green Day to The Cars to Prince to contemporary musical theater. I can also hear the pervasive influences of bands I like much less. But mostly I hear my friend reaching for a way to bring the essential passions and gifts of our youth with him as becomes what life now needs him to be; a husband, a father, a breadwinner, a positive influence, a caretaker.
There is much less bravado in Ashkon’s music today than there used to be. The allusions to reckless behavior and sexual prowess that were once common have given way to the wisdom, weariness, and nostalgia of middle age. In the video for album’s lead single, “Roses,” Ashkon is joined by his wife Nika, and their son, Akash, on a stroll through Oakland’s Morcom Rose Garden. We become, in a sense, what we practice.
I hear Ashkon’s dedication in the vocal performance of “Robin.” Here, sounding more confident than ever in his own voice, Ashkon delivers a touching tribute to a friend who recently passed unexpectedly. Then there is “Another Kind Of World” where Ashkon melds the vibe and breezy-bop of an early Weezer hit with lyrics like “…and love is not for sale, its what we give to set us free” that call to mind Plastic Ono Band.
The poster from Sunday’s record release party. Photo by the author
The album’s best moments include the new wave-inflicted, power-pop, thump of “Lose You,” and the mid-tempo vibe, “Stardust.” On the latter, it becomes clear that Ashkon shares a specific East Bay lineage with Francis and The Lights.
Most of all what I hear in the best choices and performances on 80 West is the absence of fear. The courage it takes to go and do the thing and keep practicing at it until it becomes who you are. And, how that practice has eroded the self-consciousness that comes with knowing one’s work will be judged, or worse, ignored. May we all find such inspiration in our midlives. May we all be so free.
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