December 2003 Stories

Dolorean Takes the Slow Road

Alex James [CLA ‘99] is going places. – The trip thus far from highly recruited soccer prospect to singer-songwriter praised in The New York Times has been artistically invigorating, though not particularly swift.

“It's like an ongoing process of finding out who you are,” James says. “You graduate from college with a degree in writing and move to Portland with all these ideas – and a sense of entitlement. That changes after a while."

James, 26, drives a truck for a wine distributor by day ("I get a lot of song ideas while driving around,” he says). He's also the key man in Dolorean, a Portland band that got a recent shot in the arm with a contract from the North Carolina record label Yep Roc and some glowing ink in the Times.

While growing up in Silverton and attending high school there, James was a jock who took a liking to music when groups such as Mudhoney, Nirvana and Soundgarden were getting big back in the early '90s.

“I'd listen to Willie Nelson, Simon and Garfunkel and stuff like that around the house,” James says. “In high school, I started getting into these Seattle bands. Then I kind of moved away from being a jock and started hanging around theater people."

After landing a role in his high school's production of “Godspell,” James began going to “hootenannies” thrown by the folks running the theater department, who were also active in the local Roman Catholic church.

“These guys were really into folk music,” James recalls. “We'd sing Beatles songs, Bob Dylan, Mama and the Papas. ... Some of it was corny, but they had chord books lying around, and that's how I learned to play guitar."

James went to Willamette University on a soccer scholarship, but gradually his desire to write and play music superseded his athletic ambitions.

Finally, with degree in hand, he moved to Portland a few years ago and hooked up with members of the Standard, a local band signed to Chicago's Touch and Go label. With keyboard and arranging help from the Standard's Jay Clarke and some recording with bassist Rob Oberdorfer, James developed his songwriting style and found his voice.

“There are some songs that I recorded early on that make me cringe,” he says. “But there were others that led me to believe I was going in the right direction."

The bulk of “Not Exotic,” Dolorean's debut full-length album, was recorded at Larry Crane's Jackpot Studio under the supervision of local producer and engineer Jeff Saltzman. Through some connections in the Standard, James signed a two-album deal with Yep Roc. But the cherry on the sundae was still to come.

In the Nov. 9 edition, New York Times writer Kelefa Sanneh noted that James and his band are part of “the legacy of the late Elliott Smith: a generation of indie-rock songwriters ... using their own ramshackle voices to sing their own stories of creeping sadness and fleeting joy."

Sanneh further describes “Not Exotic” as “a wild, passionate album."

James admits he didn't see that one coming. “It's really great to get that write-up,” he says with a reasonable measure of pride. “It will probably open doors that weren't even there before."

“Not Exotic” is an austere but evocative record full of music that sits somewhere on a lost highway between Smith's tuneful melancholy and Wilco's weedy experimentalism. The tempos are languid and stately, but the songs differ in mood and subject matter.

“Jenny Place Your Bets” depicts a crumbling relationship likened to a poker game, with the narrator getting cold feet because he's afraid to reveal his hand ("When I start losing is when I start cheating .../When you finally show your cards you'll be the only one who's playing").

“Hannibal, Mo.” is the story of two young lovers who go for a midnight swim with the notion of drowning themselves rather than be torn apart. Unfortunately, only the girl drowns. It's rather like a murder ballad without the murder.

“I didn't really know about the depth of tradition with these kinds of songs,” James confesses. “I was just experimenting with the narrative form in songwriting. I guess it's a suicide ballad."

James is excited about the possibilities offered by his band and about the new songs he's written, which are still mostly on the slower side of things. Despite a love of loud Seattle bands and obscure '60s garage-rockers such as the Misunderstood, he feels no inclination to pump up the speed or volume.

“I wouldn't even know how,” James says. “I just got my first electric guitar the other day."

Alex James graduated from Willamette in 1999 with a degree in English.

This article was written by John Chandler and appeared in The Portland Tribune on December 5, 2003.

© 2003, The Portland Tribune. Reprinted with permission.

Escape from the Streets of L.A.

People die in the mean streets of Los Angeles where Nabor Pina grew up. Now a senior at Willamette University, the Latin American studies major says it was the tough love of his parents that helped him become a university student instead of a street statistic.

“The area I live in is rough,” says Pina knowingly. “It’s heavily populated by gangsters, like the famous 18th Street gang, who are known all over the U.S., Mexico and South America. In the streets, the smell of marijuana is everywhere. My friends were always drugged out, laughing or passed out”

In an effort to keep his sons safe, Nabor Sr., an immigrant from Mexico, worked long hours in construction for the money to send his sons to Catholic grade school. “We went to grades one through eight in a Catholic school,” Pina recalls. “While bad influences were everywhere, at Catholic school they were more controlled. Going there helped keep us away from some of it.”

Pina’s father also warned him and his brother to stay away from alcohol and drugs. “My dad would tell me, if you want it, try it with me so I can show you how it is.” When Pina was eight, his father made him try alcohol. “It was so nasty it was easy for me to stay away from it after that.”

Pina said it was harder to stay away from drugs like marijuana because so many of his friends were using. “My dad told us not to try marijuana because he’d had a bad experience and almost died. That really scared us.”

Pina’s mother, Fanny, also helped the boys resist the streets by staying home with them while they were young. “My dad was always working, so my mom raised us when we were little. She taught us a lot and she raised us well.”

But when Pina was in sixth grade, his mother got a job working in a factory. “My brother and I started hanging out in the street and doing bad things,” he says.

Pina’s parents refused to surrender their sons to the streets. They clamped down, fighting to keep their sons safe. “My parents would ground us, lock us in the house and not let us go out into the streets,” Pina recalls. “We’d get mad at my dad and argue with him. He’d get mad at us and hit us with his belt.”

Not everyone supports corporal punishment, but Pina says it saved him. “People think hitting kids is bad. Very few people in my neighborhood do it. That’s why you see so much stuff in the streets. It really helped me.”

Despite having little education themselves, Pina’s parents believed education was critical for their sons. “My dad kept telling me to get an education. “He’d say, ‘Don’t end up like me working 50 hours a week and not getting paid enough.’”

His parents scraped together $150 for tuition every month to send Pina to Cathedral High School, one of the few private college-prep schools in the area. “The two high schools in our area, Belmont and L.A. High, are bad. They’ve got metal detectors and security guards. Friends who went to those schools would tell me stories about guys who would hit the teachers and stuff. You might flunk, but they’d pass you anyway. The kids don’t learn anything. But Cathedral High is one of the best schools they have in Los Angeles.”

About the time Pina was accepted into Cathedral High, his father got sick. “From sixth to eighth grade, I really wasn’t paying attention in school so my grades weren’t that good,” he says. “When my dad got sick, that’s when I snapped out of it.”

At Cathedral, the standards were high. “They were always talking about college. They gave us a lot of homework and we had to study a lot.”

Pina began to apply himself. By the time he was a sophomore, he was getting nearly all A’s. “I was shocked. It was then that I realized my potential.”

In his junior year, his brother, who is a year older, was accepted into a California university. Pina began to realize that college was an attainable goal for him too. He applied to several colleges in California. When Willamette University offered to fly him up to Salem to take a look at the campus, he jumped at the chance. “When I saw the Willamette, I really wanted to come here,” he says. “But my parents’ income is low and I was worried about the money. Where was the tuition going to come from?”

Willamette’s recruiters saw potential in Pina so the financial aid office went to work. They came up with a financial aid package to cover Pina’s costs that included multicultural grants from Willamette, Pell and SEOG Grants, Perkins Loans and a Work Study Grant.

Pina’s current life at Willamette is full – and a world away from the dangerous streets of L.A. When he’s not studying, he works in the admissions office, plays intramural sports, tutors other students in Spanish, or gives campus tours as an outreach ambassador.

When he goes back to his old neighborhood, he’s reminded about how close he came to choosing the streets. “A lot of my friends have moved away,” he says. “Some of them have gone to prison. Two have died.”

To the younger kids in his neighborhood, Pina has become a celebrity. He and his brother are the only ones on 11th Street to have gone to college. His neighbors point to Pina as a role model, encouraging their children to follow in his footsteps. Pina smiles shyly and says, “We get a lot of respect because we’re in a university.”

When he graduates, Pina says he wants to work with children, perhaps as a social worker or a school counselor. “I’m the perfect example for students who are involved in gangs and all that stuff. Learning is the only way to go. You’ve got to go to school. When Latino kids say to me, ‘I’m Latino, how could I get into a school like Willamette?’ I tell them, look at me, I’m Latino and I go to Willamette. You can too.”

Hoop Dreams Come True for Willamette Alum

When Rosie Contri graduated from Willamette last May with a degree in sociology, she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do. She knew she didn’t want to give up the love of her life – women’s basketball. Contri has found that dreams can come true. She is currently living and playing with a professional women’s basketball team halfway around the world in Leverkusen, Germany.

“I can’t believe that I’m in Germany,” she says. “Who’d have thought that this summer when I was unsure where my life would lead that I would be in Germany playing ball?”

Contri has always been an athlete. In her hometown of Minden, Nev., a small town just south of Reno, she was a starting player in both softball and golf at Douglas High School. But it’s basketball that really makes her smile. At Willamette, she played played guard for four years, often leading the Bearcat team in scoring.

“I love the intensity, the hard work and the physical and mental aspects of the game,” she says. “When I step onto the court, no matter what’s going on in my life, it all just fades away. For the two or three hours that I play, problems, conflicts and frustrations disappear.”

When commencement came last May, she couldn’t face the thought of giving up the fun and the mental escape of playing basketball.

“I didn’t want my basketball career to be over,” she explains. “So I went out and got myself an agent and I trained hard all summer.”

She says the waiting was “nerve wracking.” At her parents’ home in Nevada, she “did absolutely nothing, but work out.” But the phone didn’t ring and the days passed. She says there were times she was sure her dream was a lost cause. Finally, at the end of the summer, the call came. A team in Germany wanted her to play for them.

The next few weeks were a blur of activity. The day following the offer from the German team, Contri was on a flight to Portland to gather her belongings. Then, she boarded a plane for the 20-hour flight to Duesseldorf. When she finally landed in Germany, she was exhausted and a little more than anxious. Spoke no German. She didn’t know anyone. She had no idea who was scheduled to meet her. And, to top it off, her luggage got lost. What had she gotten herself into, she wondered? She was on the verge of tears when suddenly a tall man emerged from the throng and called her name. “I was so excited to see him, I almost grabbed him for a hug,” she says.

Since her rocky arrival in September, Contri’s life in Germany has settled into a relatively comfortable routine. Like professional women’s basketball in the states, German women’s basketball is struggling and player pay isn’t high. Contri makes ends meet by working 6 to 7 hours a day as an au pair caring for children. In the mornings, she runs and lifts weights. Three days a week, she practices for three hours with the team. Every Saturday, the team travels by bus or by train to communities all across Germany. As a point guard and shooting guard, Contri plays before crowds of several dozen to as many as several hundred.

Professional basketball is a bit a faster paced than Contri’s used to, but “basketball is basketball whether you play it in Germany or the U.S.” Another thing that’s different, she says, is the fans. “The fans are allowed to bring drums and foghorns like you’d find on a boat. Most of them are drunk. Imagine trying to shoot a free throw with 50 drunken Germans making all kinds of noise. It’s really hard.”

At 5’6”, Contri is the shortest player on the team. Many of the women average six feet or taller. “I’m a smurf playing among the jolly green giants,” she jokes. The difference in size forces her to maneuver more to make plays happen. “I’ve learned to shoot the ball quicker and to be more aggressive.”

She’s also had to adjust to cultural differences in Germany. In place of supermarkets or malls, Leverkusen features a sprawling, two-square-mile outdoor market with dozens of tiny vendor stalls. Local social life revolves around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for hours at outdoor café tables. First-run American movies, which are dubbed into German, are months or even years behind those shown in the states.

One of Contri’s biggest hurdles has been the language barrier. “I never studied German, so it was very hard at first.” She says she can now speak basic words and sentences and understand much of the conversation around her. Being exposed to the language with her host family, with teammates, on the street and on television has forced her to learn quickly. “It’s not hard to pick it up when I’m surrounded by it 24-7.”

Contri, who is unsure how long her pro basketball career will last, says that her experiences at Willamette and now in Germany have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for her. “Willamette gave me knowledge about the world,” she says. “All the people I’ve met and the things I’ve done have helped me realize that there are endless possibilities. Opportunities present themselves every day. It’s a matter of choosing which ones to take. For now, I’ve chosen the right one.”