AJ AYEZ INTERVIEW

I sat down to talk with my good friend Pretty Tony. We talked SF music scene, Sonoma County, fatherhood, and much more! Hope you enjoy!!

What’s up player?! I was just thinking, you were the first person I met at Oliver’s Market that I didn’t already know. That was back in 2010. We have been rockin for a minute now!

Damn my dude. Wild to think that was 14 years ago. Olivers was the spot back in the day (and still is to this day honestly). I go there just about every day (I’m a terrible weekly grocery planner). There was a vibe about 2010 Olivers that was unlike any place around during then. An energy. I learned so much there and met so many dope ass people that inspired me in so many different ways. It honestly brings me a lot of joy walking in there every other day buying groceries. Them walls can tell some stories lol.

Yeah, no doubt! You were very kind to me and taught me a lot of stuff about the grocery and liquor business. Also one of the first people to believe in my art. I just wanted to give you some love before we got to the nitty gritty.

It’s easy to be cool with people who are genuine and who are real about who they are. It was obvious from the jump that you were honest with yourself about who you were and what you wanted to do creatively. Oh bro. Your art was on another level back then and even more now. Stoked to have had the pleasure of having you at some of the creative functions we did back in the day. Remember the Milk bar!!? I’ve officially lived in Sonoma County longer than I have lived in my home town. Shits crazy.

Definitely crazy, and thank you for the kinds words. Before we touch on some of that tell the people who you are, where you are from, and what you do?

My bad. Gettin excited. It’s been a minute!

Not at all man! So happy to catch up!

I was born Anthony (but the homies and most importantly my mom call me AJ) in Merced, CA in the Central Valley. Shout out to the 209! Grew up skating. I was a pretty good student. Always wanted to be creative. I grew up being told “If you get into college, everything will work out.” So my life's mission when I was in high school was to go to college. No game plan beyond that lol. I landed on Sonoma State. Didn't even visit the school before choosing. Just packed up my shit. Lived with my brother from another mother Moose and his amazing family for a summer to save money, and then drove up to Sonoma! Been here since 2006. What do I do?? So much shit man lol. Probably too much. I play in the band Down Dirty Shake. Full-time dad and husband. Run a photography and video marketing biz called XôL. Make wine with my family. Oh and I have a full time job as a marketing dude for a spirits company. Proudly livin’ in Penngrove!

Damn you are full throttle right now! I wanna start with the music if we could. How did you get into it? Who were the first artists you remember hearing, and what are some of your biggest influences?

Great question. I honestly didn’t come from a very musical family but I always knew I wanted to be creative. Now looking back, I can see people in my life that were super musical but maybe never had anyone tell them they could be a musician. For example, my grandfather, one of the hardest working dudes I’ve ever met in my life. I remember him working on his rental properties back In the day, I used to work with him and my little brother over the summers to make spending money, I remember him being able to whistle in key to any song really well. Dude loves music. My Mom would always jam out to the sickest old school freestyle jams, Motown low rider oldies, Wu - Tang, Ice Cube, hip hop and all that kinda stuff. She probably inherited that taste for the Motown stuff from my great aunts. She was practically raised by them. My dad was super into classic rock like The Doors and Led Zeppelin. Naturally when I was little, I always thought my dad was the coolest dude ever so I wanted to listen to the same kind of stuff he did. I was SUPER into The Doors and classic rock. Kind of an obsession. I still have my Doors lunchbox lol. When I was a sophomore or maybe a junior in high school, me and my boy Leif Johnson were always into hip hop and MF Doom, Stones Throw records and all that. Then I met the dude named Chad Waldron, while working at a grocery store called Save Mart (store number Dirty 30!!!)  Chad opened up my whole world to underground hip hop, DJing, B-boy culture, etc. I think that swirl of music over my life really inspires the kind of music I want to create. Sorry if that was a ramble!

That’s so damn cool. Not a ramble at all my guy. So with all of those different influences you became a well rounded musician. How did Down Dirty Shake start? Did you go to school for music?

I guess so. Maybe a well rounded appreciator of music. I have always felt that if a song can really make you feel something then it’s good music regardless of the genre or style. You know what I mean? I think all of those influences made me realize that at a young age. To be honest, I started my musical education wayyyy late in life. Later than I would have liked. When I got into SSU I had no idea what I wanted to do. My goal in life was to get to college lol. So when I got there, I kinda explored. I was a psych major, mostly because it sounded cool to me I guess! I took one music class as an elective and the teacher pulled me aside one day and said “Hey, You should be in the music department! We have a full blown recording studio and we can teach you all the things you need to know to be a musician.” I was like, yeah that sounds pretty cool to me. I didn’t grow up with a ton of money so having someone say that I had access to an entire recording studio sounded pretty dope. I signed up for the department that same day. It was tough catching up to the other students but I focused on myself and what I wanted to get out of the experience. That access convinced the band that I joined in high school to move up to the Bay Area to basically jump in on this musical education. Cowboy Kyle aka Valentino (what everyone calls him now) and my boy Aaron aka Sharon aka Moose, moved up to the bay!   Moosey moved up to Sonoma and actually moved in with me and my boy Finn. Cowboy moved to the East Bay. I think Orinda. We started jamming in the studio every weekend. Recorded so much garbage lol. Also recorded some pretty cool stuff too! We think of those years as our music education.

What a dope opportunity. Cowboy and Moose are fuckin awesome. Those fools both also showed me big love. I def remember Finn too lol. So fast forward a few years later and you guys have some traction underneath you. How did you guys start playing The City?

Ah man. They are my brothers. Godfathers to my daughter in fact (along with the bass player in DDS because if I bite the dust, it’s gonna take all of them to handle Zeya lol). They love you bro. Finn and I go WAY BACK. Our dads used to take us kids to church and events all dressed up so they could try and pick up ladies lol. We jammed out at SSU, played a bunch of house parties, definitely got dirty on the Cotati Crawl a bunch, and then got a gig invite in The City at some random ass club called The Retox Lounge. It was in the basement of the bar. We got paid in PBRs, it was honestly sick as fuck. Our bassist, the one and only Joe Milligan couldn’t make it, so we had a badass jazz bassist fill in with us. Paul Coker. What a shredder. Cowboy Kyle moved to SF so he quickly got plugged into the scene then, and there was absolutely a scene at that time that was dope! We were randomly invited to play a residency for this band called Down and Outlaws at this club on Haight Street called the Milk Bar. We went to one of the shows before ours to check it out and were floored by the sound quality, the vibes, the quality of music. It was nuts! We had never played anything like that before. A real show with monitors, a sound guy, payment! We played our show with them and I think that’s when we started to get some traction in SF. Thats when we started playing better gigs. It was crazy.

I gotta say the vibe at the Milk Bar was unparalleled. You guys were so kind enough to bring me along and let me get full access and hang my art and also commissioned me to do quite a few T-shirts. I remember you and me banging those out in my mom’s garage the night before a show. That was also when I realized sometimes a rich old white lady is totally down to buy a Bart Simpson painting. When you started feeling that vibe change and getting recognition in the psychedelic, soul scene (for lack of a better term) what was that like? San Francisco has such a rich culture in that music and you guys reincarnated it. I’m not speaking in hyperbole, some of those sets were the best I’ve ever seen.

It was a no brainer to have you there man! You are a great artist doing unsafe and edgy work. Exactly the kind of stuff we wanted to be showcased at the residencies. Damn! My phone casually popped up that memory the other day! Bumpin’ Father John Misty and banging out dozens of those shirts in the garage! Good times. Haha they are down dude. Some of our best merch sales are to rich white ladies! We definitely started picking up some steam after our first Milk Bar residency. We started making friends with some of the local bands we looked up to. The Love Dimension, Spiral Electric, Down and Outlaws, and so many more. They became family. It was cool! We started playing psych tests like Starry Nights down in Santa Barbara and Desert Stars (shout out to Tommy D!). We always stuck out like a sore thumb tho! We loved psych but always wanted to have that kiss of soul. I like to think we brought a different flavor to the scene. I like to think people were into it haha!

Damn dude, thank you for the kind words. Means a lot. More than you know. One thing that impressed me was how loyal your fans were. All ages and walks of life too. What would you say was the craziest show you guys played in the city?

For sure man. All the homies came thru time and time again. So much love and support. We went to everyone’s shows too! There were some amazing musicians out there. They still doing it too! Damn that’s a great question. I’d say the coolest show we played in the city was the Haight Street Fair. We got to play for a sea of people. Easily 10K people or more. We were locked in musically too. At that time we had a six or seven piece band made up off some of our favorite players from other bands. Mostly the Love Dimension! Celeste, Jimmy, Sonny. It was great. My mom and aunts even came out to the party from the valley. They still talk about it to this day haha, they joke about how they got high off of all the second hand weed smoke! That one felt good. As far as crazy shows…this one was not in SF but in Oakland rather. We were invited by the super family, Sam Vega, to play a NYE party at this house in Oakland. I think it was Jack Londons old house or something. There was definitely a legend about it that was cool. We had no idea what to expect. The Sam Vega crew, Pat, Mel, Mers, and all of them are the most talented sweetest humans we’ve ever met and they invited us to play. The house was a complete maze. There were hundreds of people dressed up doing god knows what kind of substances, there were dungeons, and at one point there was a full size Chinese dragon puppet that people brought out and marched with. It was nuckin futz dude! One of the coolest wildest parties we ever played. Since then we played a bunch of shows with the Sam Vega crew at various spots and every single one of them is insane. Those people are the real deal. Love them!

That sounds wild lol. Right up your guys alley. Controlled whacky chaos. What does Down Dirty Shake look like now can we expect anything soon?

Down Dirty is still shaking baby! We went down to LA last summer, where Cowboy Kyle aka Valentino lives, and recorded a record with Mr. Mark Rains at the Station House studio in Echo Park. We are super stoked for this body of work. It’s got a couple old songs we never recorded, some new more R’n’B influenced songs, some soul shit, Latin stuff, we actually recorded 2 covers for the record too! We recorded Fallen by the incredible Alicia Keys and No Ordinary Love by the one and only Sade. We did them in our style the only way we know how to of course. Hoping to have a couple singles off that coming in Feb or March and then full record comes out right around summer. As for live shows, we have slowed down a tiny bit but are excited to pick up momentum again especially with the new record. We play the Independent in SF next Saturday December 21st with Mariachi El Bronx! Should be an awesome show. The Independent is without a doubt one of our favorite places to play. I’ve seen so many great shows there and I am always honored and humbled to be asked to play there.

I have to say whenever you guys played “Fallin’” live, people crumbled. Such a fucking good choice for a cover. Also I have had the pleasure of hearing “No Ordinary Love” and it’s like a part 2 in a sense. Two perfectly fitted DDS songs.  So you mentioned you started a marketing company called XôL. How did that come about and how did you get into marketing?

Ah man. Thank you. For real that means a lot. That song Fallin’ just has so much soul and pain. You can feel it. We wanted to bring that out even more. Obviously you can’t touch the Alicia Keys version. We tried to put our own soul into it and hoped for the best. I am stoked about how it came out. Same with No Ordinary Love. We just wanted to pay homage to our favorite artists. Yeah! I started it in April of this year. Its been awesome to start this business. While I was in college studying music, I also got a degree in communications with a focus in digital film and marketing. I thought somehow it would make sense for me to learn as much technique as I could musically but also try and learn how to market a business. There was no music business classes so I thought this could be the next best thing (in hind sight I probably should have just taken business classes lol). The comms degree gave me full access to cameras, video editing, and taught me a lot about visual storytelling. Professor Michael Litle was the guy there. He was kinda kooky but pushed students to be creative. Loved that experience. While working at Olivers after college I eventually got a job at a brewery doing sales and then marketing. While there, I learned how to market a business, do social media, and more importantly fell in love with product photography/videography! In school I was more into short films and that kind of thing but it was there that I was the in house photographer and brand manager for Golden State Cider and Seismic Brewing. Along with my good buddy Xandman who is also an incredibly talented photographer/videographer.  I was there for 7 years. When I left that job in the Spring, I took a job as an Associate Brand Manager for a spirits company. I knew my new job was not going to be as hands on creative so I decided to start my own business where I could still do all those things and help people make their businesses and products look their best. The digital landscape is wild now and showing up your best digitally is crucial to the success of a business that sells products. Photographing beer and cider was super fun. I am kind of obsessed with product photography dude. Light wizardry really. Company is called XôL (pronounced Soul). I’m so stoked about this adventure. My family is super supportive. I never really needed much sleep anyway! I am actually building out a set as we speak for a self portrait!

That is awesome man. Ya’ know, everyone I know who got a communications degree has found a creative way to apply it and most of those people came out of SSU. Something in the water I guess. So I wanna ask about fatherhood. You said your family has been very supportive but what is it like juggling all of this? How do you manage your time? And talk to me a bit about the impact becoming a father has had on you.

Yeah man! There were some students that went on to do some dope shit! Old buddy Jeremy Day went on to work for Go Pro, other folks went on to do film making full time. Super cool department. I wouldn’t trade my time there for anything. Fatherhood is crazy amazing. Being a husband is awesome. I was so stoked when I found my partner in crime. My wife, Kenya, is a badass kindergarten teacher, who is actually getting her masters in Early Childhood Education in May! So thank all the gods that she is Zeya, my daughters, momma because she has all the intel on how to raise a good human. She has the credentials to prove it! My daughter Zeya is a little badass. She’s super smart, very kind, hella funny, and hella clever. I am lucky. My in laws are so supportive. You always hear that when you have a kid it takes a village… bro it takes a country! We “Cohabitate” which is a fancy way of saying, we live on my in laws property. Part of living on the property is there is a barn that is the hub of all things creative. Music studio, photo studio, art studio (my mother in law is a badass abstract artist), father in law has his work shop, jewelry making, we even make wine in that barn! Its the best! My mom has always stepped up to help when we need it and is super supportive. Always has been. She always says “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.” That always made me feel good about whatever I did. Thankful for that. Becoming a dad has changed my perspective on a lot of things for sure. I care less about the little things now. I focus my energy on things that either help my family, help me creatively grow, or bring my family joy. I don’t have a lot of time so it’s helped me zero in on what’s important. I wish I had more time in the day to do all of the things I like to do (disc golf, hang out with more friends I love, home brew beer!) but its tough! Oddly as a dad I feel more emotional haha. I’ve seen the movie Coco like 10 times and never teared up then last night at the end of the movie was was totally in tears lol. Super weird for that to just kind of turn on once you have a kid. I feel stronger emotions now I think. The key to juggling it all is scheduling and building routine. I run Monday through Friday at 5:30am get the kiddo ready, feed the dog, drop the kid off at school, go to work, get off work, make dinner, hang with the kid, get her to bed, then work on my business until 11pm or 12am. Then do it all over. Spend a lot of time on the weekends doing XôL and Down Dirty stuff. Its not always perfect and sometimes you make sacrifices, but it’s working…for now! I’ve got another kiddo on the way!

So awesome man and congratulations!! It’s inspiring and respectable to hear you talk about this with so much passion. Family is everything and sometimes it’s a bitch but to grow up in a healthy environment speaks volumes. That barn sounds insane!! How dope your kid gets to grow up in a creative environment like that. Also shout out Kenya!! So you mentioned craft beer. We grew up kinda working in craft beer when it was booming in Sonoma County. Any good memories about early craft beer? Maybe some Lagunitas industry night stories?

Thank you Brodie. I want to do everything I can to be a good papa and help my kiddo become a good kind person. Takes a lot and it ain't easy! She is so lucky. She has no idea! The barn is paradise. Oh dude, Craft beer. Arguably my 2nd love! I remember throwing hundreds of cases up on the shelf with you at Olivers. Best times. I remember when Lagunitas dropped a whole pallet of their Born Yesterday fresh hop beer. It was the first time they had ever done that and we were the first account to get it. It was nuts! Craft beer culture here in Sonoma County is rad. Great people and great beers! We lived for industry nights at Lagunitas back in the day!! Free beers hanging with the crew. I only really have great memories in craft beer. I lived and breathed it for 7 years working for a brewery and for 7 years before that working for Olivers. Craft beer took me across the country! I’ll never forget my first Great American Beer Festival in Colorado back in 2018. It was like Disneyland for beer nerds. It was sick!

It’s a sick as it gets. So I have to ask. A few times when we were unloading freight in the back I asked you to sing opera and you were always reluctant. But you can fucking belt. Is that trained or just natural gift and how often do you use that voice?

Bro, that is completely trained. Sonoma States music department voice class has only really had training for opera and classical styles so I had to learn that. It was rigorous! Without a doubt the toughest musical training I’ve ever had. But I learned a lot about the human voice and how to control it so thankful for that ha ha funny you remember that. I actually found an old recording of a solo I had in a performance. Kind of surprised myself. It blew me away the first time I heard it lol.

What are some differences in Sonoma county from when you arrived and where it’s at now, and where do you see Sonoma county in 20 years?

Haha the place is definitely grown on me. When I was in college, I used to feel like I couldn’t wait to move to the city. But I just couldn’t leave. There is something so incredibly special about this place. I’ve seen some great businesses start popping up. Penngrove is growing. The food scene is so strong here now. I’m big food guy. I’ve also seen the community take a hit since the pandemic but it seems like people are coming back. Businesses are getting stronger. I’m super proud to be a part of this community. People complain about the college and it affecting small town Cotati but I’ve met some great folks from SSU and they have all been big contributors to our culture.

Yeah man the food scene is definitely growing in Sonoma County. Explain what it’s like playing the Cotati Crawl and how did the boys feel about it? Also did you ever cut any records at Paul’s down the street?

I like to feel like I’ve been a positive force in the community. At least I try to be. Man back in the day the Cotati crawl was amazing. So fun to play. I loved playing shows where there were a good mix of college kids and locals. I always felt stoked when I could bring the whole community together and get rowdy. You know we recorded a bunch of stuff with Paul, he’s an amazing engineer and a hell of a bass player. We released a couple singles, but I don’t think we were ready musically to be honest. Paul was way more advanced than we were at the time, the stuff we put out then musically wasn’t ready.

Well shit man. You got a pass for life in Sonoma County. You have put in more than enough work and I can see you being a moving force in the future and someone this community would love to have around for a long time. Thanks a lot for doing this man. It was really great catching up. I’m excited for everything you got going on and appreciate you always. Any last words or anything you wanna plug? Fire away.

I appreciate that man. Big time. I miss ya! Let’s catch up for a beer soon! Kiddo just woke up from her nap! Love you man. Next time I interview you on your shit!!

Absolutely. I’ll hold you to it, and I love you too. Thanks a bunch. 🔒

You can follow AJ @pwettytony @downdirtyshake and @xol_creative