We Are Juan
Road To Reach You
© 2007 Charles Weber (675604997522)
CD IN STOCK. ORDER NOW. Will ship immediately.
It's alternative rock with world influences, remix and a little hip-hop vibe. Influnces are world but very organic and natural british rock.
tracks
- 1 Rosarita
- 2 Out on a Limb
- 3 Road to Reach You
- 4 Salaam
- 5 Kinder Days
- 6 Caught Up in Atoms
- 7 İnnocence
- 8 Flow
- 9 Grooverider
- 10 Atomic Rhythm Baby
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From AMG Reviews
It is quite tempting to compare We Are Juan's Road to Reach You to albums by the Gin Blossoms and the Goo Goo Dolls. Like those artists, Los Angeles and Istanbul based singer/songwriter Charley Weber the brains behind We Are Juan provides alternative pop/rock that is melodic, tuneful, hooky, and very easy to absorb. But while the Gin Blossoms and the Goo Goo Dolls are good, valid comparisons, they aren't perfect comparisons. Road to Reach You has a decidedly funkier edge, and Weber incorporates a lot of nonrock influences; his funkiness comes from an obvious appreciation of hiphop and electronica (especially jungle/drum'n'bass) as well as world music. One hears a definite Latin influence on the moody opener, "Rosarita," and a very Middle Eastern vibe on "Atomic Rhythm Babies" and the infectious "Salaam," which also has a major hiphop influence. And much to Weber's credit, all of his musical inspirations come together in a totally organic fashion; Road to Reach You doesn't sound forced, unnatural, pretentious or contrived. Weber comes across as an alternative pop/rock artist who just happens to love a lot of other music as well; Road to Reach You has an experimental edge, but with much of the poppy accessibility that the Goo Goo Dolls and the Gin Blossoms are known for. This 47minute CD isn't quite as consistent as it could have been, but more often than not, Weber's ideas pay off creatively and We Are Juan shows considerable promise on Road to Reach You.
- Alex Henderson, All Music Guide
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ASCAP music producer, Charley Weber returns to Istanbul from the states, after completing projects for Bravo, NBC, Discovery and independent feature films ‘Hooligans’ ‘Swing’,'Devils Rejects' and ‘Upide of Anger’Kevin Kostner, in Los Angeles. Weber has edited and produced a number of commercials in Turkey since 2000, including, Pepsi, Pantene, Sutash, Turk Petrol and Akbank for Filmacass, I.F.R. and Compugraph.
Interview Transcripts available to Music, Film, Entertainment, Cultural News Editors, Radio, TV, magazine, Web-blogs and Film & Post production companies.
Q: What did you make of the L.A. experience?
A:I think it's a dream of every one in arts or entertainment to get to go there, all fantasies lead to or from Hollywood and I certainly love the experience. I was editing a movie up in the canyons above the valley in the day and being put up at Studio City Hotel by night.
Q: Is there a dark side to Hollywood
A: Definitely. Step outside the air-conditioned bubble of your project, car or hotel and the sense of dislocation depicted in movies like 'Crash' is real and it's the backdrop against which all these incredible fantasies are created, it can be a little weird at times. Also, it doesn't seem to have the emotional center of some big cities, like Istanbul or say, Montreal do. But it's a fantastic place to go work.
Q: What was the most 'out there' experience, from California
A: Miss America, 1986 coming on to me at a San Diego health retreat where you fast, juice and stick wheat grass juice up every orifice of your body. She was 'producing' the end of week performance and scheduled me in a prime spot without making me take an audition. I get up and read a 2000 year old text of the Lords Prayer translated directly from Aramaic and that was it, all the girls went wild.
Q: What was your favorite time in L.A.
A: In the middle of editing a movie - Swing - and I couldn't find the right piece of music for a key scene - these ghosts that haunt a music club are supposed to disappear and clear the space - I think I pulled an old Beatles CD but the case was empty, so I plugged a guitar directly into the Avid and the production company liked what I did so much they gave me a real budget to record a real record in L.A., which ended up as the We Are Juan project, ‘Road to Reach You’.
Q: Tell me a little about We Are Juan.
A: There are alot of good players from L.A. on the project. Chris Clark did some Raps - Jimmy Messer did dome guitar, from the Enrico İglesias. Percussionist Jimmy Paxton from the Rod Stewart project. Morgan DelaCroix guest vocals - she's got a great project she fronts. Martic Guigui's played key's for the Stones and Muddy Waters. The idea was for a post-millenial political roots movement, started by a collective of musicians, artists and film-makers from Southern California with a decidedly Latin twist. A sort of anti-establishment Utopian society mixing the politics of Zapatistas with the flair and innocence of British rock and roll scene. We all had our 'Juan' and only nickname. It just ended up as my publishing company.
Q: How was the CD received.
A: Look out for a mention in Rolling Stone, over the coming months. It's gotten some great reviews and I quote 'while the Gin Blossoms and the Goo Goo Dolls are good, valid comparisons, they aren't perfect comparisons. Road to Reach You has a decidedly funkier edge, and Weber incorporates a lot of nonrock influences; his funkiness comes from an obvious appreciation of hiphop and electronica (especially jungle/drum'n'bass) as well as world music. One hears a definite Latin influence on the moody opener, "Rosarita," and a very Middle Eastern vibe on "Atomic Rhythm Babies" and the infectious "Salaam," which also has a major hiphop influence. And much to Weber's credit, all of his musical inspirations come together in a totally organic fashion; Road to Reach You doesn't sound forced, unnatural, pretentious or contrived. Weber comes across as an alternative pop/rock artist who just happens to love a lot of other music as well'. Pro Review's, All Music Group.
Q: Tell me about the 'Juan' names
A: We were working on this movie and the director was Martin, so he became 'Don Juan Martin'. The writer of the movie was Mary. Her moniker was 'Mary Juana'. The co-producer was Dalia so she was 'Dalia' Juana. And Constance Brenneman, the actress, the Consant Juan and so on.
Q: And you grew up around music.
A: I did. My mum had the first health food restaurant on the Kings road called 'The Dragon' in the late sixties and they would all come around, for alfalfa and little spliff, George Harisson, John & Yoko. My dad made a concert film of Traffic, The Animals, the Beatles 'Day in the Life' and Hendrix. I met Hendrix back stage at the Albert Hall before the show and he lifted me up and put me on his shoulders. It's quite a childhood of memories.
Q: And there was a stones connection
A: My mum met and became close to Anita, the mother of Keith Richards son Marlon, in a rehab clinic in Oxford in 1970. The summer of 71 my brother and I were out in the south of France, with the Stones when they were recording Exile on Main Street and we were paige boys at Mick's Wedding to Bianca. We had to hand her a big flower and kiss her. I think Keith's son' Marlon' refused, so I had to do it twice. Tough job but somebody's got to do it.
Q: I know your mother overdosed in that summer of 1971. Can you talk about it?
A: There is a writer from Rolling Stone magazine who wrote a couple of books on the Stones record 'Exile on Main Street' as well as the Tim Leary Biography and the famous San Francisco Promoter - and he's got a publishing deal to write a novel about an archetypal couple caught up in the the whole cultural revolution. A kind of Bloomsbury set or F.Scott. Fitzgerald set of the 60's. An article, by Greenfield extracting material for the book will be out in R.S. magazine Summer/Fall from interviews we did over the summer in Palm springs.
Q: How did you start out in film?
A:'I was a very young father and was forced to work by the circumstance, unlike most of my friends who were on the 'Dole' drawing social security in London. I'm still happy I did though, in a year or so I was making music videos for 'The Wonderstuff', 'Emerson, Lake & Palmer' Queens 'Roger Tayler' and 'David Cassidy' in the early and then blossoming London scene. Everyone wanted a video and they looked exactly the opening scene from 'Words and Music' with Hugh Grant.
A: I produced a comedy-music-show in London, called 'The Cha Cha Club which was about all the nonsense people talk about in night clubs interspersed with some music performances. We had a party to promote and try to sell it at Stringfellows Club in New York and invited all these media types but I don't think we could afford the whole club so there were people like the son of the doctor of the last Sultan of Turkey mixing with Brooklyn mobsters with bulges in their jackets.
Q: What made you start editing
A: Originally I would hire editors to cut music videos, inLondon, as a producer, but they would call me in when they got stuck. So, I became the 'editor' guy. And later on, when I got to the States, it was a way to earn a living in New York and also to get away from the limited and sometimes basic form of music video, to understand better how to tell a story. But, I think producing is my natural element, or producer editing as well, in film.
Q: How did you find New York
A: A great place and a wonderful time. I ended up marrying a Turkish girl there who was also in production. She was famous in the Turkish community for 'reading' a baby from the coffee grounds of a wealthy couple visiting the restaurant she was working at when she first arrived in New York - Denize, I think it was called - which turned out to be true, the woman was pregnant. After dating for about a year, my girlfriend turns to me and announces we are going to apply for the green card lottery. I think I went on a driving holiday around that time, through the Northwest and Montana with my son, Beau, a drum 'n' Bass producer (Prolific)and by the time we got back there was a letter saying we had won the greencard lottery - very funny story! But, it also meant we had to get married to claim it. No such thing as a free lunch.
Q: What made you move to Istanbul?
I think I'd been working in the states about for six years without a break. By the time I got the greencard, I missed European and Asian culture so much, I persuaded my then new wife to move back to Istanbul for a while, I think I was experiencing a writers block at the time and pretty much as soon as I landed, I was fortunate to walk right into a job with Ates Tezer and his Sister at HIP Productions on the Istanbul 'J&B Dance & Techno Festival', the first full scale commercially sponsored rave in a near-eastern but still, muslim country.
Q: And what was your role?
A: My focus was artist contracting and general English language producer. I wrote the on-air and radio commercials in English and then translated and produced them in Turkish. I've never had so much fun with a job in all my life - scheduling the on-air talent interviews. Trying to keep the artists on board because the sponsors United distillers were late in releasing funds and then the Sponsors got cold feet and wanted to pull out - worried that it could turn into a PR disaster. There was so much buzz and excitement around the project that many of us and Istanbul itself was over-stimulated. Flying in 11 live acts and 15 or so dj's from around the world for the first ever multi-stage 24 hour rave to the country that produced Polygram and Ahmet Ertegun. It was a miracle that there wasn't a single arrest or injury. The day after we got congratulated by the national media and music companies. As if to say 'Oh. Yeah, you were right it did work out'.
Q: What's next?
A: Hopefully a double CD and documentary project for the end of the year collaborating with Turkish and Gypsy musicians. More focused on native artists and the collaborative process than the first cd. We'll take out 60% completed tracks and film them it as we collaborate to finish the album material and film as the project is completed across Turkey and Eastern Anatolia.
Charley, who won a Telly award for his edit of the A&E Biography portrait of James Earl Jones, has been producing/editing a music documentary about the life and times of a family growing up at the center of the tempestuous 1960’s musical scene.
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CHARLEY WEBER
Charley Weber has been audibly and visually pleasing many among you for a while. That's his job. He organizes parties like the Istanbul Techno Festival, and he edits and directs video clips, serials, music videos, advertisements, documentaries and a whole lot more.
He has been "making the scene" since he was a kid. His father was in the music business, and he remembers his childhood as a big hangout with the Rolling Stones and the likes thereof...
He has an impressive resume under his arm. He has edited full-length films such as The Wedding Band, King of New York and documentaries on topics such as the Internet, civil rights, Cyberpunk and James Earl Jones, which won him a Telly Award. He has edited previews of Halloween III and Resurrection and commercials for Dune by Christian Dior and "Welcome" for Club Med, as well as video clips for Emerson Lake and Palmer and David Cassidy. The list goes on forever.
He met Ates Tezer of Hip Productions in the States, and he came to Turkey for the opening of Lush-Life, a magma-like progressive dance club in Bodrum, when he found himself in the middle of preparations for the First Istanbul Techno Festival. He's been contacting acts full-time for a month now while promoting the event.
He looks to the future with the gusto of a man who has a lot of worthwhile projects lined up. He's going to help organize the first Istanbul Jungle Festival, and he's going to shoot some cutting-edge video clips for some cutting-edge names which are best kept a surprise. Say "welcome" to the alien in Istanbul who's gonna make our lives more fun.
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- author: dave delacroix
message part 2: Charley, keep on keepin' on. -from Dave delacroix/BABIHED/Billthe Rake!-if you're ever in Denver, Colo, contact. Best wshes.