Editor’s note: This is part two of this story. Part one ran last week.

TC: It was time for another stage. That is this place, AudioWild?

BP: That is kind of this. I’m the last original member of Throw the Goat, since the end of 2018. There really wasn’t a whole lot of explanation over that last line-up change; there’s some animosity still between me and one of the former members.

TC: You’re close and you fall out and it hurts.

BP: Very much so.

This brings us up to the events of the last three years. Parnell picked up the story in 2020.

BP: Right as thing started to get shut down with the pandemic, and things were really fresh and new in those days … and right then I started feeling pretty sick myself. The hospitals were so inundated and there were no tests. It was hard to get tested. I went on social media and said, “I have some symptoms of this thing we’re hearing about on the news, but I’m young. I’m not high risk at all. I just want people to know I’m going to self-quarantine for a few weeks.” And the town went nuts. There was an article about me in the Town Crier that didn’t refer to me by name, that referred to me as “the individual.” It felt like patient zero. I never tested positive. I was one of the first 500 people in the county to be tested. It was the most surreal experience being able to, (with the help of) a friend in the medical industry. I had to go to a very far away hospital. It was like that scene in the third act of “E.T.” where everything is plasticized off and everyone is in full biohazard gear. And we’re all just packed together in the little waiting room, people coughing on top of each other, no masks.

TC: All that for a negative test?

BP: Ten days, 15 days later, so past the quarantine time. They could never tell me what it was. If it is not COVID, what is it? I ended up on an inhaler, I was on steroids, I had a humidifier. It felt like somebody was sitting on my chest. But never tested positive for COVID. Maybe a false negative. But basically, our plans for sleep overs and all that were completely shot. We can’t write songs over Zoom, the only choice we really had. I took the initiative and I dug into this old treasure chest of riffs and song ideas and started demo-ing things out. I’d been recording albums out of my little one-bedroom apartment, calling it Emesis Studios.

TC: Emesis?

BP: A clinical term for vomiting. I already had the ability to demo these songs and sent them to the guys. They happened to like all of them. So, I started: I put a click track down, I put a scratch guitar down, I would sneak down the hill to our drummer’s house, we would socially distance, him in one room, me in another, we would record the drums to all the songs. And then I drove out to Yucca Valley and in our bassist’s garage we recorded all the bass tracks. Then as things started to lighten up, we got together to do overdubs and finish off the rest, do vocals. We did that last album ourselves.

TC: What a weird process!

BP: Yeah, we called it “Capitol Hell.” The plan was to release it right before the 2020 election. And on the cover, it’s Uncle Sam as a goat and the devil, each sitting on thrones made of dead politicians, they’re watching the world fall apart on TV and cheering each other, with money stuffed in their pockets, pretty interesting visual. There is a song on there called, “I Want to be Seditious.” Kind of like some prophetic things going on there. It came out in October of 2020, four months before the insurrection of the capitol. We couldn’t tour to promote it. That election was so crazy we kind of shot ourselves in the foot by having a political themed album. The algorithms for social media … the only way to promote it is online, and they stopped.

TC: Suddenly this is flagged as you promoting something violent?

BP: Political content. We lost a lot of momentum in promoting the album because it was deemed political content even though we were trying to promote a punk/metal band. But we accomplished a lot with that, and it actually was more successful than our previous two or three albums combined. It struck a nerve with a lot of people. We ended up where we couldn’t reach a lot of folk in America; it ended up reaching a lot of people in other parts of the globe that we didn’t anticipate. In a lot of places where they don’t particularly like Americans or American music, maybe it was our imagery or our sound, in certain countries it was like, “Hey check out this band, they are amazing!” Our numbers shot up … it’s like OK, fine with us.

TC: You’ll take the win.

BP: We don’t have to be that popular in the United States, it’s the modern era.

TC: Your fans are where they find you.

BP: Yeah.

TC: So, then we come to opening up AudioWild.

BP: The idea to be entrepreneurs as well as musicians came long ago in the Throw the Goat days. We would bat around different ideas. Why don’t we open up our own recording studio, why don’t we have a venue of our own, a bar or something, a place where we can play any time we want and we can sustain ourselves. Any musicians, once they figure out how the music industry works, they realize it’s pretty much impossible to make money off nothing but playing music. You need to supplement that income some other way. As long as it’s in the musical sphere, it doesn’t feel like “selling out.” We thought about maybe a clothing company, our own T-shirt business, because we’ve sold more T-shirts than we have albums probably. We used to joke that Throw the Goat was basically a clothing company that occasionally puts out music. It’s something that I would like to get into because in 2012, when we put out the first album, I started my own record label, Regurgitation Records, of course, and my publishing company is Vomitrocious Music. I definitely took what was supposed to be a dig and turned it into a brand. The idea to be entrepreneurial with it has been there from the beginning. With a studio or a clothing company we cannot only do it for ourselves but do it for other people. We love collaborating with other bands, that’s one of the best things about booking tours. Discovering other bands across the country that you want to play with.

If you are a music fan and a musician, it’s a no-brainer. I remember years ago when this space at the Courtyard was opening up, day-dreamed about it, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a performance space there?” The idea of having a studio wasn’t present at the time in my mind until moving from the Goat House into my apartment, and then turning my apartment into a recording studio from day one. I had recording gear in there before I had furniture. I saw this space was available; it seemed like they were starting to get desperate to get it rented.

At this point in time, I was having some health issues that I haven’t gone public with. I’d been having seizures that I couldn’t explain. I brushed it off as some random thing, “Its nothing.” Then it started to affect me at work. I had friends noticing things. I thought, “I’ve got to go and get this checked out.” I drove myself down to Eisenhower and told them I’d been having seizures apparently. They immediately said, “OK, drug addict.” They gave me every test and when they came back clean, they were like, “Oh, let’s figure this out.” Then MRIs and CAT scans and EKGs and all that fun stuff, multiple vials of blood. They let me go and I was able to drive myself out of there. But then my license got suspended. I didn’t find out about my suspended license until my car had gotten stolen and returned with no keys. Apparently, getting a new key for a BMW is very expensive. So, I had a busted up car with no key that I couldn’t drive because my license was suspended, and (was) having these health problems that the stress was only making worse. I’m like ,“You know what, I need a change or I might not survive.” I started looking around online. Is there an industrial space in his tiny town that might be available, some commercial anything, a garage? … and then saw that this was available.

TC: Pretty glamorous garage!

BP: Right? With a kitchen and a bathroom, interesting. And in the middle of town. Normally, any other recording studio that I’ve been in it’s out in the middle of nowhere, and everybody’s really bored when it’s not their turn to record. I thought, “I’ll reach out to whoever the landlord is and they’ll say no and I can put it out of my mind.” Instead, they wrote back and they were interested. I was like, “You read the part about recording studio, right?”

TC: This place works for sound, being in a courtyard and being substantial enough that you don’t hear it around town.

BP: Most all venues up here there’s going to be some spill over into the street, somebody is going to complain if you’re playing after 10 o’clock. So, the landlord was into it. To be perfectly honest I was not then, and am not now, the kind of person with the financial background to open any kind of business. Whether it’s a hot dog stand … I’m lower middle class at best. I get a refund from the government every single year, or at least I did until this. So, I was anticipating rejection like you wouldn’t believe. Even when I got a yes, when it came to, “OK I need first, last and security, I need a financial statement, and you need to get a $1 million insurance policy.” I was like, “OK, it’s been fun, thanks for the ‘yes,’ I’ll figure out something else.” Then I got another reply email, “Are you doing this or not?” And I was like, “I’d love to but … I’m in a weird spot right now.” “What if we make a deal?” they said. So, we made a deal. And lo and behold people were really into it. I wasn’t really sure. I spent the first few months in silence doing a lot of remodeling myself; painting, sound proofing the windows, the curtains, the whole nine. All the sweat equity I needed to do to get up and running. We had our first show here I think it was July 9, 2021, it was a Rage Against the Machine tribute band.

TC: What a terrific time to open a live venue, 2021.

BP: I didn’t want to be too public either. There were a lot of people in town that were very against gatherings of any kind. Truth be told, bands asked me what the mask policy was, and I was like, “It’s up to you. If the band only feels comfortable performing with everybody wearing a mask that’s how it’s going to be. If the band doesn’t care, then I’ll let people do what people want to do.” Because there was no … the sheriff … made it very clear that he was not going to press any charges or do anything to anybody holding events not requiring masks.

TC: No enforcement.

BP: I was like OK, I can’t afford anything that is going to cut my audience in half. I’m just not going to say anything and let people do what people are going to do. Nobody ever got sick. We played everything super safe. We never had more than 20 people in here for the first few events. I kept it ,“Show’s sold out, sorry folk.” Whereas now we’re sold out for April 1. It’s an all-female Black Sabbath tribute band called Black Sabbitch — bass player I’ve known for 20-plus years, since my old guitar tech days, they are basically doing it as favor for me. The show sold out in 10 days. There is going to be over 70 people stuffed in here.

TC: A post-COVID crowd.

Parnell’s health dealt him another setback in 2021.

BP: I just got a pacemaker a year ago …

TC: For your heart?

BP: So, the seizures I was having all of 2021, I was bouncing around from doctors and trying different medications and having crazy side effects, all this stuff to figure out what it was. The neurologist couldn’t find anything even after all their tests, months and months of all that. I was like, “So unsuspend my license maybe?” They’re like, “No, we’re going to kick it down to cardiology, that’s the next step.” They had me wear a heart monitor for two weeks. I was working at the Brew Pub as a chef. I have a quarter century of “culinary experience” also. When you’re on tour, bouncing back and forth, you need a job you can do anywhere in the world. Working, super sweaty conditions. I had to wear plastic wrap to keep the monitor from falling off. They told me, “Your heart keeps stopping.” I was like, “No, the monitor keeps falling off.” They installed a loop recorder, about as big as my pinky. There was a little wireless thing I have to put over my chest at night to download the information and then put it on the receiver and would send it to the cardiologist to analyze all of it. And they were like, “You’re going to have this in you for three months and then we’ll compare all the data and figure it out.” After the first month I got a call from my cardiologist’s office and they were like, “You’re literally dying … You flatlined in your sleep the day after Christmas for like four to five seconds. And you flatlined here a couple of weeks before, and it was this long” … longer and longer times.

TC: You needed a pacemaker?

BP: Apparently, I have Bradycardia, which is the heart rate is too slow and the heart just likes to stop on its own. When that happens it sends a signal to the brain, the brain is like, “Oh are we dead? Cool, I’ll start shutting down.” And that’s where the seizures were coming from. They figured that out and gave me all this news over the phone. I’m like, “OK, so can I get a second opinion or something?” And he’s like, “Sure, if you think you have that long.” … Within a couple of weeks, I was suited and booted and sliced open. Woke up during the surgery, that wasn’t fun. It’s been a big life improvement. I quit smoking a couple of weeks after that. I’s been almost a year, no tobacco. I just quit drinking three weeks ago today. Making little improvements. My cardiologist is very happy with me — my parents, a lot of other people… My old drinking buddies, not so much.

TC: Are there some favorite experiences here you want to share?

BP: At the end of 2021, if nobody’s heard of this guy, they need to check him out. His name is Alain Johannes. He’s just a straight up legend. I believe he was born in Chile. He grew up in LA, he went to Fairfax High, he was in a band with the Red Hot Chili Peppers before the Red Hot Chili Peppers were a band. He produced Chris Cornell’s album when he left Sound Garden. He’s been behind the scenes on so many of my favorite albums that I had no clue he was involved in, and he’s been inspirational to so many musicians that are inspirational to me. I only found out about him after becoming a fan of a band called Them Crooked Vultures that features Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters on drums, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age on guitar and vocals. Alain Johannes is also a singer and guitarist in that band, and the bass player is John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. What’s not to like?

TC: Johannes came up here?

BP: I reached out to his manager to see if he would be interested. I was surprised to get a response … within half an hour got a yes back. That was before this place was established. We’d done four or five shows. He said yes. I was able to get him a room from the Wild Idy folks that he was over the moon about. He gave one of the most transcendent performances I have ever seen. It wasn’t very well attended, but there were people that drove all the way out from Arizona to come to this show… Fans of his were like, “I can see him for only 30 bucks?” Where all the locals were like, “Who the hell is this? I’m not paying that much! A cover charge in Idyllwild? No way!”

TC: People will have to watch your schedule and do the research.

BP: Then there are the Thursday night jams … Basically, just local musicians who show up, guitar and amp, or clarinet, there’s an upright bass player. Many people have performed for the first time here, or people that have quit music for the longest time and then decided to get back into it.

TC: It’s a social scene, playing for friends?

BP: Absolutely. Even Chris the sound guy, Chris Mitchell. He came out here from Nashville. He basically quit the music industry and was here just to retire.

TC: And you snagged him?

BP: Yes! He has thanked me many times for making music fun for him again and having a place where he can geek out and do his mad scientist sound engineer thing.

TC: So, you do all kinds of recording projects?

BP: We can record live shows. I’ve done remote recordings, too, where I go to somebody’s house. I did that a couple of times during the pandemic, all of us in masks and social distanced. I’m in somebody’s dining room, recording their album. … between Chris and I, we have so much professional audio equipment that if there is an event and somebody needed gear — we want to get into doing equipment rentals. There’s not really anybody that does that. This place is available for rehearsals. There’s not a whole lot of rehearsal space in town, people are making a lot of noise in their cabins. Voice overs, podcasts. We did sound for an independent film recently. Video stuff, too. Throw the Goat spent a lot of time researching how to do our own music video, because we figured that would help set us apart from other bands. If people want to come and shoot a music video or a wedding video, even if it’s something we can’t do ourselves, there’s a lot of really talented people up here. And we know all the little secret spots, whether it’s a little “enchanted fairy thing” or you’re looking to do a “black metal satan forest,” there’s somewhere up here for everybody.

Readers may find out about upcoming events at AudioWild by visiting the website https://audiowild.studio.