Allen Clapp - History

History

Clapp was raised two blocks from the San Francisco bay in a Joseph Eichler-built home in Foster City, CA, where his mother and big sister taught him piano as a young child. He also studied the violin until his teen years, when he hooked up with likeminded musicians Dan Jewett, Larry Winther, Chris Boyke and Maz Kattuah, and formed a garage band alternately known as The Batmen and The Morsels.

The band disintegrated at the end of the 1980s, with Winther and Kattuah going on to form garage-rock band The Mummies, and Jewett leaving to form The Himalayans, a band which included a pre-Counting Crows Adam Duritz.

Clapp and Boyke split off to explore more esoteric, folky material in the duo The Goodfellows, who performed regularly around Berkeley (where Clapp had graduated in 1989 with a major in English Literature), and San Francisco. The two later added a bass player, Neal Trembath (Pullman), a drummer, Tom Freeman (The Muskrats), a harmonica player, Juliet Pries, and a manager, Alison Hefner (Dirty Deeds). They gigged around the Bay Area as, variously, "Huck," "Hunk," and "Hulk" (cf. Spinal Tap). Clapp released one flexi as Huck on Winter's Mist records out of San Jose.

In the midst of playing in those bands, Clapp had begun recording pop songs under his own name using a Radio Shack tie-clip microphone, a Roland RE-201 Space Echo and his Tascam Porta One four-track cassette recorder. The Roland Space Echo would become an important part of Clapp's production of musical soundscapes, helping him achieve a cool, coastal sound.

Even to the casual observer, he was barely equipped to record a decent demo tape. But Clapp's keen ear for melody and economical pop arrangements captured the interest of Kattuah, who started the Four Letter Words record label while he was in the Mummies. Four Letter Words issued Clapp's first-ever release, a song called "Very Peculiar Feeling" on a split flexi-disc with Japanese pop band "Bridge." (1990)

He followed up with his first marquis release, the one-sided 45, A Change in the Weather. The single quickly sold out, and attracted interest from the Iowa City-based Bus Stop Label. In 1992, Clapp released "Mystery Lawn," a 3-song EP on Bus Stop. Based on its success, Bus Stop owner Brian Kirk asked Clapp to release a full-length album—the label's first. In 1994, Clapp released "One Hundred Percent Chance of Rain" under the name "Allen Clapp and his Orchestra" (Bus Stop) on vinyl and CD.

Still recording on his four track with limited equipment, the album was praised as a lo-fi masterpiece. The album's second song, "Something Strange Happens" was considered a standout track, and has since appeared on various compilations and in two independent films.

Soon after, Allen formed a band with his wife, Jill, on bass, and his old former bandmates—now former Mummies—Winther on drums and Kattuah on guitar. Minty Fresh signed the group, and after a lineup change, the band rechristened themselves The Orange Peels, who have continued to change lineups and gone on to record for SpinART and Parasol records.

"One Hundred Percent Chance of Rain" was reissued in 2000 by Bus Stop on CD and LP. Clapp released a second solo album in 2002, a spacey soft-rock exploration for March Records called "Available Light."