Santa Barbara band Gardens & Villa crept onto my radar as I heard that Pickwick and Damien Jurado’s producer Richard Swift was crafting their newest record. More than that though, their luscious, dreamily catchy single “Black Hills” immediately won me over upon hearing it. Appealing to my former-farmer and PacNW roots, the band is full of avid gardeners (where’d you think the name came from?) and had themselves fallen for the Northwest. Gardens & Villa member Dusty Ineman spoke to me about transitioning from punk roots, working with Swift and the Great Outdoors.

Apes on Tape: I heard you guys were in a noisier, punk band before Gardens & Villa. That seems like a pretty big transition, how did that come about? Were you trying to change things up or start with a clean slate?

Dusty Ineman: Well, Shane (the bass player) and I were not a part of the band, it was a post-punk band. Or post-rock. Shane and I were added after. This was like when Chris, Levi and Adam were in college together. They were part of this post-rock band that just played all over Santa Barbara all the time. They just took a break and then the band broke up. Then they decided to write more songs instead of just… long, stoner jams.

(Laughs). Yeah, I know how that works. And where does that play in with the West Coast Hitchhiking trio? I’m actually in the middle of a five month, cross-continental RV journey right now, so we could probably swap stories….

(Laughs) That was all Chris that did that actually. None of the rest of us in the group had any part in it. When the post-rock group stopped, Chris just packed up his guitar and just made his way all the way up to Vancouver and wrote songs along the way. He just lived in the woods the whole way up. That was his trip.

And is that when he wrote the songs you would eventually be playing now?

They were the start of the first…well so there was the post-rock band, then it turned into this folk outfit just with Adam, Chris and Levi. And Chris wrote songs for that on his hitchhiking trip. And then that three piece added Shane and I. Some songs made it onto our record. I think “Chemtrails” was a song that came about from the old Gardens & Villa and was maybe written on the trip. I can’t say for certain, but it sounds like it.

Nice. I know you were working with Richard Swift on the record. We’ve talked to a few other artists who worked with him recently, Pickwick and Damien Jurado. I keep hearing he’s an interesting guy, heard a lot of positive things. But how did that go for you?

It went great. It’s hard to explain. You just go in, incense are burning. His studio just has an incredible, incredible vibe to it. He puts a lot of energy in getting the vibe right for the recordings.

Pretty comfortable setup?

Yeah, he knows what he wants to hear and he’ll tell you if it’s not vibin’ right. What he does is in between sessions, or when we’re on a break or after we’re all done for a day, he’ll hop behind his turntables and start DJ’ing for you. He’ll play all these songs to kind of prime the next sessions. He’ll play some Tom-Toms sessions or some obscure Bowie song you’ve never heard of or a Paul McCartney song. So it’s really fun to hear all these obscure songs. That’s what happened on the first record. He was like, “Oh! I’ve got this Captain Beefheart song! I think it would be a cool reference”. But he doesn’t say that, he just puts it on.

And it sounds like during the recording process you were posted in the Oregon forests, obviously there’s a lot of natural beauty in the summer there. My family vacationed there for like, 15 summers and it’s unreal. It seems like it was kind of a Garden of Eden setup, you were camping in Swift’s backyard right?

Yeah.

Did those experiences play into the recordings?

Oh yeah, of course. It was natural for us to be out there and experience the smells and sights and the whole energy of the Northwest Forest. You know we’re all, back in Santa Barbara, we’re all constantly outside. For some reason, especially with Chris, we feel really connected to that region of the country. Something about the trees, I don’t know what it is… but yeah, it’s very soothing. We feel very at home when we’re up there. This past time up in Portland, when we were living up there, we did some hiking and such. It just centers us.

I was just going to ask you about that. You did a residency in Portland, right?

It wasn’t a residency, like at a venue. We just lived there and wrote and had one new show.

And you were recording a new EP, no? How did it go?

It went well. We did it pretty quickly. We only had a week to do it, because Swift is super busy.

(Laughs) Yeah I just posted the Shins’ “Simple Song” video he’s in.

So we got the EP. We’ve got a little more work to do back home. But it went well.

Awesome. And the name, correct me if I’m wrong, came from when you were back home in Santa Barbara. And it sounds like you’re pretty avid gardeners. You still gardening a lot?

Yeah, Chris was actually just helping his girlfriend start a garden on Villa Street the other day. The whole story behind it is Chris, Levi and Adam were living on Villa Avenue and started a garden in their backyard. And all the neighbors were like, “oh, what’s going on?” and they told them they had started a garden. And the neighbors started doing it. It turned into this little community where people were trading their vegetables, whatever they had grown in their backyard. It was just cool how we inspired other people to start. The garden kept going all the way up until we started. If we were to have residences and we weren’t touring all the time, for sure, we’d have gardens.