Rafael, Joel. Interview September 23rd, 2025.

00:00:00JENNIFER FABBI: Hello, it's Jen Fabbi, and today I'm interviewing Joel Rafael for the California State University San Marcos University Library Oral History Program. Today is September 23rd, 2025, and it is 11:20 a.m. This interview is taking place at the California State University San Marcos Library, Kellogg Library. Joel, thank you for interviewing with me today.

00:00:31JOEL RAFAEL: Of course.

00:00:32FABBI: This is our second session of the interview, and we wanted to start off with--we were talking about some of the jobs that you held during the time that you were developing your music, and you had just gotten a job at the San Diego, what was called then the Wild Animal Park.

00:00:52RAFAEL: Right.

00:00:53FABBI: So let's start there. Tell us about that job.

00:00:56RAFAEL: Okay. Well, I went in to the Wild Animal Park and applied for a job because I was pretty desperate for regular income. And they had some openings. It was the summer, I believe it was summer of 1985--one year either way. I could probably find that out. But in any case, I was able to get a job there, a part-time job, for the summer. They had a summer concert series in an area of the park they called the Mahala Amphitheater. It was sort of a big grassy area, and they would do--they had been doing for a few years--a summer series of concerts there. Mostly, I guess what you'd call, oldies, you know, sort of established groups from like the sixties and seventies mainly. Jan and Dean, America--I'm trying to think of some of the groups that were there. The combination of folks that were in, say, like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at that point. Those were the kind of bands that they were booking. And I got a job as a concert assistant, which basically, I was on a crew with about four other people. And we would come in on like Thursday and start preparing the concert area, the stage, cleaning it up. And then on Friday we would literally set up all the microphones and get the equipment out and get it all ready for the show. And then the sound people would come in and get everything going. And then they would send us up to various jobs around there, cleaning the stage, the backstage area, the dressing room trailers, going up and getting the food for catering for the artists, that kind of thing. And then during the show, crowd control and running a spotlight, those were kind of the job responsibilities, and that was a part-time job. And I worked at that that summer. And it was a lot of fun, you know, to be there. But they would only let you in a part-time job, I think they wanted to try to keep you to like 20 hours a week. Sometimes you'd go a little over that. But they wanted to keep you at 20 so they wouldn't have to give you insurance and that kind of thing. And the thing that was good about having a job with the Zoological Society was that once you had a job there--whether it was part-time, if it was part-time or full-time--when new jobs were available, they would put them up on a board that was only accessible by the employees. Those are the only people that would see the board. I guess there were some administrative jobs that they would send out to publications, to certain publications, to try to draw in people appropriate for those jobs and educationally and so forth. And so a job came up on the board for the title of Public Relations Assistant. And there were two people working in what was then the Public Relations and Marketing Department at the Wild Animal Park. There was the marketing manager, a lady named Martha Baker, and the public relations coordinator. And that was a guy named Tom Hanscom. Both of them were younger than me, but basically they were running that department. And Public Relations and Marketing was one department. I was just so fortunate to get that job because they had, I think it was like 300 applicants and I was--for what the job actually was, which was mostly clerical, somebody to file, fill out purchase requisitions and do filing and answer the phones. It was kind of a secretarial, clerical position. And that's not my forte (laughter). Clerical work is not my forte. But I could--I might have even said this last time--I could type just fast enough, like, whatever it was, 30 words a minute or something (laughter), I could type just fast enough to be considered. And because I had actually--I'm gonna' back up just a little bit. When the summer concert series ended, I desperately wanted to keep working at the park. But you have to wait for a job to come up that you can apply for. I did actually get a second part-time job going into the fall after the summer. And there wasn't really a name for that job because the situation was that the park had been established in 1972, and this was like now 13-14 years later. And all of these beautiful signs on all of the shops and all the exhibits that had originally been put up in the park were--I guess you'd say they were sandblasted signs, sandblasted and painted signs, very, very crafty-looking wooden signs. And they were all wearing out. The paint was chipping off. And every department--merchandising, food services, signage for exhibits--they all needed, all the signs were just in ill-repair. So they hired me basically as a sign painter. I wasn't in any department, which is very unusual in a huge bureaucracy like that. But I kind of worked under the construction and maintenance guy and kind of under the buildings and grounds guy. So I had two different supervisors from two different departments that were kind of my bosses. And then I was on call for any department that had signs that needed to be refurbished. And so I'd get a call from merchandising, or I'd get a call from gardening, or whatever department that had signs that they needed fixed. And they gave me a golf cart that was mine to use when I was there. So I'd golf cart over to where the sign was, check it out, get a ladder, take it down, figure out what I needed to do to make it new. And then I could go up and requisition paint and brushes and whatever I needed from the supply area. And then I would--there was a little shed right back by the monorail tracks. It was just like a little wood, plywood, wood shed. And that became my office. And I would repair my signs inside that shed and just outside of the shed. It was just my work area. And that might have been my favorite job at the Wild Animal Park. But another job came up, and it was full-time, which meant I could get insurance and a regular 40 (hours per) week salary. And I applied for that public relations job. And because I had gone around to all these different departments and worked with so many people from so many departments at the park, everybody knew me. And I'd made friends with a lot of people. I'm kind of a people person. And so I made the cut. I got hired, even though there were 300 applicants, because I knew both the marketing manager and the public relations coordinator. I'd worked with them on a couple of events that they'd done for the park. And so I got that job, and it was mostly clerical. And I'm gonna' say it's probably about no more than three months-four months into that job, the Zoological Society decided that they were going to separate marketing and public relations and make them two different departments. And by doing that, what they were gonna' do is that Martha, who was the marketing manager, she was now gonna' be at the zoo as the marketing manager for the zoo. There'd be no marketing department at the park, only public relations. And then Tom, who was the public relations coordinator, would now be the public relations manager, and he would handle all news and that kind of thing. So that left me. I was either gonna' be going to the zoo with Martha as a marketing assistant, or I was gonna' be staying at the park with Tom as a public relations assistant. So I pretty much, behind the scenes, went to Tom and begged him to keep me at the park. You know, it was closer to my house. I had a really good working relationship with Tom. We got along really well. And I just didn't want to go down to the zoo. And out of the two, public relations and marketing, I preferred public relations because in a lot of corporations they are combined, but they're really different from each other. Marketing is really different from public relations. And the way that Tom explained that to me was that marketing was like advertising. You know, you pay for visibility. Public relations was about getting visibility for free (laughter). For a story, or something that was going on that was of enough importance to be reported in the newspaper. And so, turned out I got my wish, and I stayed at the park with Tom, and we kind of formed a, we formed a real team, the two of us. Because now it was just the two of us in that department. And we became really good friends. I think maybe a year or two, maybe two years after I was there, I had started coordinating locations. So basically there was a lot of kind of media-oriented things that were going on with public relations. Like there would be news stories. We'd have a new animal born, endangered species, you know, that was being born in captivity. And all of those stories, including the condors, which had at that point, had all been brought in from the wild because they weren't gonna' survive. There were only maybe, I don't know, three or four mating pairs still in the wild. And so Fish and Wildlife and a couple of different zoological societies kind of got together and formed a committee, I guess you'd say, to protect the condors. And the first decision they made was that they needed to be brought in from the wild--because we were gonna' lose 'em all--to see if we could breed condors in captivity. And so that was already in progress when I came into the department. And Tom was very much involved in the news dissemination of that story and was working very closely with the bird curator, who was one of the head condor people nationally. He was the curator of birds at the park, but he was also one of the main people working on the Condor Project (California Condor Recovery Program). And so Tom and I and Bill Toone, the bird curator, and then other bird people were kind of involved in anything that happened with condors. And at that point we had the first captive, hatched condor--happened while I was there. So we disseminated the news on that, Molloko (first condor born in captivity). I don't know if you remember when that all happened, but that was a pretty big deal. And then they--the breeding program was successful enough that a certain point later we started to reintroduce birds into the wild. And now there's a lot of condors in the wild. It's been very successful. So I was involved with all of that, but as an assistant. But I was also coordinating media and video and projects of that kind for things that were not news, but, you know, like we would have--Joan Embery would come up and do a story on a new animal. We had this guy, Dave Scott, who was the weatherman at KUSI, who had a, I guess you'd call it a sidebar program that he presented from time to time on his weather show about different things going on in San Diego. And one of the things he would do would come up to the park, and if there's a new animal that had been born or some story at the park, he would come up and do a little feature on it. And so, whenever that would happen, I would be the person that would accompany those people around to the different areas at the park. And then that kind of morphed into location scouting 'cause there were commercials that wanted to come in and shoot, like MasterCard and MotorTrend. And we did the MotorTrend car of the year layout for their magazine one year there in the East Africa exhibit with rhinos and giraffes and stuff around. And that involved hiring keepers, animal keepers, overtime to work with the film crews and stuff. And I was kind of the coordinator for all that. And so at a certain point, they let me write my own title. And so I created my own job there, which was a Public Relations Production Coordinator. And so anything that was production oriented fell into my area. Also, the other thing I did there was VIP (very important person) tours. So if they had somebody that would come to the zoo, for instance, like a celebrity, a VIP, a lot of times it was celebrities, sometimes politicians, but just somebody they might want to give a special tour to, then they would call me up, and I would meet that person and take the Land Rover and drive them out into the exhibits so they could see the animals up close, answer any questions they had. Photographers that would come in that wanted to photograph a specific animal or had a project they were working on that they needed to access certain areas, I would get them into those areas and make sure that it was safe and that we had keepers out there that knew what to do to make things safe.

00:16:26RAFAEL: And so that was my job for probably six or seven, maybe eight years at the park. I'd say like eight years of the twelve that I worked there, maybe even ten years of the twelve I worked there. And towards the end of that run, which is right around let's say 1992 or '93--I left the park in '96-- but about 1990-- I'm gonna' say about 1990. Maybe even '89. Let's say '89. I picked up another side job, and I had the full-time job at the park. But I was building up now vacation time, so at a certain point, I'd have like two or three weeks of vacation time built up and that would--it was kind of up to me to schedule that, to use those hours. And I went, when I had that job in public relations, I went from being a regular employee, a Teamster, to being an administrative person. So, I had to retire from the Teamsters Union, which I always took a lot of pride in being a union member with the Teamsters (laughter). But I had to leave the Teamsters, and then I became like an administrative person. So let's see, where was I? About 1989, I picked up this other job with a guy named Steve Powers, and he had a company called the Steve Powers Craft Festival. (This was in 1987.) And he would produce and coordinate craft festivals in like four or five cities during the holidays, like just before Christmas. And then sometimes just before Easter. I think we did a Thanksgiving, a Christmas, an Easter, and a summer--just a summer run of shows. And they would be--we would go to convention centers and set up these big craft festival shows, like in Reno and in Las Vegas, in Phoenix, in Tucson, San Jose--just in all these places where they had convention centers mostly in the southwest. We didn't really go east, but we did Arizona, we did Nevada, we did California. I guess that's pretty much it. And my job was the production coordinator for the Craft Festival. And I managed two stages. I would travel with Steve to the convention centers and help set up the whole convention center with the--it would be him and myself. We would drive out to the convention center, pulling a trailer with all the stuff in it. And then about four or five other people would meet us there that had booths at the craft festival. And he would trade their booth fees for them to come in a day early and help with setup. So we had--that was our setup crew. And we'd kind of all meet at that first festival and set it up, and then when that festival closed down, we'd all travel together to the next festival and reset it up and so on. And I coordinated two stages--a variety stage and a music stage. And one of the acts on the music stage was a couple that did Irish music, Jim and Teresa Hinton. They were a married couple. And we got to be friends 'cause I was always doing their sound. And I had my studio. I built my studio at that point, and they wanted to record. So they lived in San Diego. So they started coming up to my house to record, recorded a couple albums at my studio. And Jim inspired me at a certain point in there, he said, You know, you're recording all these people all the time, and you need to record your own album. And I was recording my own stuff, but I'd never get it done 'cause I had a studio--it's easy to just not get anything done, you know? Whereas if you are booking a studio from someone else, and you're paying an hourly rate, you have to get something done. And that had always been what I'd done in the past. But now I had my own studio, and I just literally wasn't ever finishing anything. I'd go in, and I'd start a song and get it to a certain point, and then I'd be recording somebody else, and I'd go in and record a different song. And, you know, forget about the first one I recorded, and I just never was getting anything done. So Jim said to me, You need to record your own album. And kind of implored me to do that. And so I recorded the Healing Heart album, which is the cassette tape that's in the collection I gave you today. And that was probably in '89. So they recorded a couple albums there. And then, turns out Steve had been hiring them to play on these craft festivals. And I was actually playing one set also. I was doing all the coordination and managing the two stages. But there was Jim and Teresa, and then there was kind of a bluegrass band. And then there was kind of a modern kind of Eagles rock kind of a band. And then there was kind of a fifties rock band. So there were like four acts that would rotate through the day on the music stage. And then they had a magician and a comedian and a juggler on a variety stage, and we all got to be great friends, just traveling to these different shows. But what I did is I started to bring Jim and Teresa in on some of the stuff I was recording--some of my songs--to do harmonies 'cause they were really good singers. And that kind of evolved into us working together more, and we kind of formed a group that started performing at the craft festivals called Reluctant Angel, which was the name of one of my songs and became the name of my publishing company, Reluctant Angel Music, which that's still the name of my publishing company. And we started to record some demos. You know, we call 'em demos, like just demonstrations of the songs. And we recorded about, I think probably four songs, five songs, a couple of Jim's songs, a couple of my songs. And they really were sounding really good.

00:23:30RAFAEL: And so I decided that I would call up this guy, a producer that I had met, and I think I mentioned it in my earlier interview. He--Paul Rothchild. He produced Bonnie Rait. And earlier in his career, he produced Judy Collins' folk music, Tom Paxton, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was the first electric band on Elektra Records. So he was already like a super producer. And I had met him in 1976 because he held a song for Bonnie Rait, and Bonnie Rait and he held a song that she was gonna' possibly record on her album. This is before she was really famous. She didn't record the song, but we remained friends all those years. So I decided I would send these demos to Paul Rothchild with a note that said, Hey, do you know a music attorney or someone in the music business that might be interested in what we're doing? I didn't really ask him personally because kind of my experience with him was we'd become friends and we'd stayed in touch more or less, but they hadn't done my song when they held it. So I didn't really have a particular in with him other than knowing that he was connected to the music business and maybe he might listen to this stuff and know somebody that might be interested. And I didn't hear anything for a while, and then it got to be the holidays. This was before cell phones. And so we were on vacation. I'm gonna' say it was a few weeks before Christmas and sort of the typical thing is in the music world, probably in business everywhere, is that nothing much happens during the holidays. Once it gets to be November, don't expect much to happen until after the first of the year. And I think it's especially true in music if you're trying to get some attention, it's better to wait 'til the springtime. But I sent him these tapes, and it was holiday times, so I didn't really expect anything right off the bat. But it was about two weeks later, we were up in Santa Cruz on vacation, and I just decided to call my phone and check my answer machine--'cause we didn't have cell phones then, but we had answer machine--and just see if we had any messages. Not from him particularly, but just anything. And there was one message that was from Paul Rothchild. And he said, Hey, this is Paul Rothchild. I'm calling you about your music. He says, Why don't you give me a call at home? Here's my number. Let's talk about your music. And it just blew my mind (laughter). I was like, Whoa. And so I called it back, and he said he was really interested in the stuff we'd sent and that he'd played it for a guy that he'd worked for for years--that had hired him many years ago in the music business, but he couldn't tell me who he was right now. But that he was a very connected in the music business and at this point, owned a small record company and a publishing company. And that he felt that if I could send him some more demos of the quality that I'd sent him that this person would be inclined to offer me a recording and a publishing contract. And so, of course, we were just over the moon. And so we just started recording more demos--me and Jim and Teresa. And we brought in a friend, an old friend of mine named David O'Brien, who was a drummer, to play drums on some of the stuff. And then one of the guys who had the fifties retro band with the craft festival was a guy who'd been in the music business for years but had had marginal success but was well known as a guitar player. His name was Davey Allen. And he had a group called Davey Allen and the Arrows. And they had recorded basically surf music, instrumental surf music. But he had also recorded music for a couple of the motorcycle movies of the--I guess they were in the sixties, some of these motorcycle movies that came out there, kinda' like B movies. And they would have this electric music. A lot of that was recorded by Davey Allen and the Arrows. And so he had a group called Joe Cool and the Rumblers, and they were the fifties group, right? That played at the craft festival. So we got to know Davey. And so we brought him in to do some lead guitar, electric lead guitar on some of the stuff. So we'd kind of formed this foursome--it was basically the three of us, well, it was a five-piece, actually. It was the three of us, plus the drummer and the guitar player. And we kept sending these demos to Paul and then at a certain point, he said, You know, really liking this stuff you're sending. And I can tell you now, the guy that I've been playing this stuff for is Jack Holzman. And Jack Holzman is the guy who started Elektra Records in the late fifties and hired me--Paul Rothchild--to record these, the great folk groups of the late fifties--Tom Paxton, Judy Collins. I forget all the different names--John Sebastian, The Lovin' Spoonful. These were great groups. And then, later, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was the first electric band. And then after that, Love, and just so many groups. I mean, Elektra, it was like one of the three big labels. And Holzman was like a music mogul. I mean, when he told me that, all I could think of was The Doors movie where Paul Rothchild and Jack Holzman are portrayed in the movie and the scene where they walk out and offer Jim Morrison a recording deal. That was kind of running through our heads. We watched the movie, and we're going like, I can't believe these are the guys that are listening to our stuff, you know?

00:30:04RAFAEL: So eventually they set up an audition at a club in Santa Monica called At My Place. And it was right on Santa Monica Boulevard. And Paul Rothchild knew the owner of the club. So what he did is he was able to secure the club. It was on a Wednesday night or something, from eight o'clock until, or from seven o'clock until nine o'clock or something like that. And so we came in early and set up and did a sound check. He came in and mixed our sound for us. And then it was an invite only. So we invited some friends, and then Jack Holzman and his wife and his brother and some other people from the, where there were business associates of his came in and filled the place up. And we did this concert audition. And when we finished, you walked off the stage into a little, not really a dressing room area, but a little off-stage area at this club. And Jack Holzman, just like in that Doors movie, Jack Holzman and Paul Rothchild came back and told us how much they enjoyed it. And Jack Holzman was saying, You guys have a really great group, and I think Paul Rothchild is the perfect guy to produce you guys, and we really like what you're doing. And they offered us a development deal for a recording contract. They just, it just languished, (Phone rings) Sorry about that. And nothing happened. We kept sending him demos and just nothing happened. At a certain point, Paul Rothchild asked me if I knew a manager or anybody in the music business that, if we did get an actual deal on the table--which he was trying to make happen for us 'cause he really liked what we were doing--that we would need to have some kind of representation. And I didn't really have any representation at that point, but what happened was I told a few people at the Wild Animal Park that this was all going on. And one of those people was a girl who had worked at the park for years. She was a mammal keeper. And she was specifically a gorilla keeper. She'd worked with the gorilla troop there for years and was a real expert on primates. And we'd become friends over the years that I'd worked there. And we were having lunch together one day at our lunch break, and I was telling her all about this record deal--lingering, hanging record deal. And she said, Do you have a manager or anybody in the music business to guide you through this? And I said, No, not really. I said, I mean, I know about copyrights and the things I've learned on my own over the years through being in music all these years. But I don't have any real professional management or anything. And she said, Well, I'm going to introduce you to my brother. He's Jackson Browne's road manager. So she introduced me to him, and we had a phone conversation. His name is Mike Sexton and goes by Coach 'cause he was originally a coach when he got hired into the music business to be a road manager. And he called me up, and we had a conversation and he said, well, he could hook me up with one of three different managers, personal managers that he worked with. He could introduce me to one of three of them that could probably guide me through this process. One of them was Elliot Roberts, who was Neil Young's manager. And also kind of Steve Stills' manager off and on. And then there was another guy named Bill Siddens, who had been the Doors' road manager but was now a personal manager. I think he managed David Crosby, I think at that point. And then Graham Nash, I forget what his manager's name was, but maybe--I can't remember. There were three managers, Siddens and Elliot Roberts. And then the third manager was Jackson Browne's manager, Donald Miller. And I said I would like to meet Donald Miller, Jackson Browne's manager, because Jackson Browne was like on the top of my list. He was the best writer that I knew of. Really, I, as far as I was concerned, he was just one of the best songwriters that I'd ever heard. And his level of support for environmental issues, there was just a lot of integrity attached to him and his music. And so, I liked the other guys' music quite a lot, everybody that he mentioned, but something about Jackson Browne, that was kind of the area I just felt that was gonna' work best for me. So he introduced me to Donald Miller, who goes by Buddha. That's his nickname. So he told me, Well my name's Don Miller, but my friends call me Buddha. So he had me come up to his house up in Studio City and meet him personally. He was also managing Jennifer Warnes at the time. So he said like, Hey, if you've got any songs that might be good for Jennifer Warnes, bring those along. So I took some of those songs up. We had an initial meeting. I left the tapes with him, and he just said he would be there when they made a decision. When they finally made us an offer, he would be glad to guide us through it and hook us up with a good attorney that he knew that could walk us through, so we would get a fair deal. And so then it was just a waiting game. And I would check in with him, and he used some vernacular that I won't repeat, but basically the gist of it was they either need to get their act together or forget about it. I'd say, well, he'd say, well what's going on? If they said anything? Is anything new going on? I go, no. They're just telling us to keep sending more demos. And he says, Well, I would tell them to (laughter)--and I won't say what he said, but it was basically do this or get out of town (laughter). And so I, to tell you the truth, I was just intimidated to the point where I wasn't gonna' say that to them. I wasn't gonna' say, Well, hey, you need to tell us what's going on now. I wasn't gonna' make a demand on Jack Holzman and Paul Rothchild, who I also highly respected. I hadn't really met Jack yet, but I knew who he was. And so finally they set up an audition, and it was at the At My Place club. We went there, we did that, they offered us the deal. I guess I covered that. And so we are in this waiting period now, and it went on for months. Like it went on for nine months. And so, finally Paul kind of indicated to me that they were kind of getting cold feet, that attitudes were kind of changing with the people he'd been talking to. Now I didn't know who all of those were. I knew he was talking to Jack. He basically said you have two fans at the company, Jack Holzman and myself. He says, But there's some other people that are at the company that have influence that aren't so sure they wanna' do it. And I said, Well, you know, where does that leave us? And kind of in conversation, we came around to that we could do another audition and try to increase the excitement of the other people that weren't really behind us right then. So we set up another audition, a second audition, and I guess if I'd have been able to read the writing on the wall better, I would've been able to tell that the odds weren't nearly as good as they had been the first time. The excitement level wasn't the same. The economy was not great, hadn't--nine months had gone by, the economy kind of sucked. And found out later it was Keith Holzman, Jack's brother, who was basically the lifelong accountant for Jack's record companies, that was feeling like we weren't gonna' be a good investment. But they decided that they'd let me, in Paul's words, pursue my star, and they would set up another audition. But it was completely on us. We weren't gonna' do it at the At My Place club, which actually, it wasn't the At My Place club anymore, it had changed hands and was some other club. So if we were gonna' do it, we would have to figure out where we were gonna' do it and make it convenient enough for those people that were important to be there. So we decided we would rent a rehearsal studio in Burbank 'cause we had to go to where they were. They weren't gonna' come down to San Diego. And so we tried to be creative, like, how are we gonna' do this, to really capture the attention of these guys and get them excited about this again? And so we decided we would like I have--all my furniture at my house is my parents' and my grandparents' furniture. We've never bought any furniture. One thing my mom left us was all the furniture. And it's like really some nice old chairs. I mean, really comfortable furniture. They don't make furniture like that anymore. And so I've got four or five nice upholstered chairs, and I've got a rocking chair. I've got some little side tables and some nice lamps. And so we say we'll just take everything outta' my living room. We'll just literally strip my house of all the furniture and lamps and accessories that make my living room cozy. And we'll rent a truck, and we'll truck that all up to Burbank to this large rehearsal studio that basically was just a big room with a sound system in it. And we would rent a bunch of chairs, and we would set up some folding seats. But then we'd also put all of the comfortable chairs and stuff in and with the side tables and the lamps and make it feel like a big living room. We would create this atmosphere. And a couple people, one guy from the park that worked at the park that I'd become friends with--he was a security guard there. He volunteered to go with us. And then another really close friend of mine that had a house up in Temecula came down, and he drove the truck up for me. And then they helped us set it all up. We got up there like at ten in the morning, we rented this place for the whole day, set up the the place. We had a sound guy come in from Sound Image that I knew that volunteered to help out. He came in to mix us. And we set up another audition. We got mason jars, small mason jars, like a couple cases of mason jars. And then we got a water cooler that you could draw water out of. And we had all these mason jars set up so that people could get fresh water. 'Cause we didn't really serve any refreshments, we didn't have enough money to do all that. And then we invited everybody we could that would actually make the trip up to Burbank to come see us, telling them that this is really important, we gotta' really make an impression, and it's better if there's an audience. And so we put on this whole big thing. When we left to go up there, it started raining. Just after we got stuff loaded in the truck, it started raining. So we unloaded everything in the rain, got it all in there. It rained the whole night. Everybody showed up, and Jack and his brother, Keith, came. They came in, we played a show. Seemed like it went good. They were very accepting and very cordial and friendly, and it all felt really good. And then they all left, and it was pouring rain, just a downpour. So we had to load all that stuff back up in the truck. This is my side story to the whole experience (laughter). Loaded stuff all up in the truck. Drove back down here. Got back down to my house at about probably about three in the morning. But we had to return the truck. So my friend Stuart drove the truck, and I drove my car down to Escondido, to the U-Haul place where we had rented the truck, or Ryder or whatever it was. I can't remember. And there was a place to park the truck and then a key drop, so we dropped the truck and dropped the key. I turned my car around to pull out. And the driveway's kinda' one of those driveways that kinda' goes down in the middle. There's sort of a drainage right in the middle. And so it's a little higher on the sides, you know? And so as I turned around, I realized I had a flat tire. And so it's now, it's four or four-thirty in the morning, been up all night, still in my clothes that I wore to perform in. And now I've gotta' lay down in the puddle in the driveway and change my tire (laughter). So the omens weren't good (laughter). Still raining, pouring rain. We drive back up to my house, and Stuart gets his car and goes home. And I guess I went to bed about, I dunno', five-thirty in the morning. Slept 'til about noon or one. Got up waiting to hear something. And about two or three o'clock, I got a call from Paul Rothchild, and he said, Yeah, we basically decided not to do it. And we were devastated. Because it'd been almost a year of this. And so a couple of weeks before the audition, that last audition, I was also told by Paul Rothchild that the company was only interested in my songs, that they thought Jim's songs were good, but they were really only interested in my songs. And so at the new audition, they wouldn't hear any of the songs we'd sent that were Jim's. They just wanted me to play my songs. So I had to deliver that message to Jim and Teresa about two weeks before this last audition. Of course, they were devastated with that news, but they hung in there 'cause basically what I was saying was, Look, that's not how I feel. Once we get the deal, we'll do what we want to do, but we've gotta' hang in there to get the deal. So that was kind of where I was coming from. I just, I wanted this thing to happen. I was 43 or 44 years old, so it was like 30 years ago, 35 years ago. And so they agreed to do the audition, all that stuff. We went and did it. And then, of course, we got that news. And that was sort of the end of Reluctant Angel. 'Cause they just like, Well, see you later, Joel (laughter).

00:46:36RAFAEL: And I just kind of went into a really deep depression. The thing that kept me going was that they had said that when we had the first audition, they had told us that they didn't think that the drummer and the guitar player really, they didn't really care for what they were doing on the demos. They think we needed that, but they wanted me to find another guitar player 'cause they thought that, what they said--it was kind of cruel 'cause what they said about Davey--'cause Davey had had a couple of failed deals over the years. And they just said he's kind of considered to be used goods. This is how they talk about people in the music business that don't become really successful. Then if they've had a couple of record deals and they've never become successful, even if their music's really good, then they're considered used goods. It's sad. It's not very nice. We never told him that, but we did get a different guitar player, who did the second audition with us. And he was a guy that I had met in high school. He was a couple years younger than me, a fabulous guitar player. And when I was in high school, we had these hootenannies, you know, and everything was acoustic folk music. And he was in a different folk group. He was the, actually the younger brother of a classmate that I knew that was a year ahead of me. And he was a couple years behind me. So when I was in high school, he wasn't quite there yet. And then my junior year, he was a freshman. And we never played music together back then, but I recognized him as a really good guitar player. So then, later, after we got outta' school, I did a couple of demos at a couple of different studios. And I brought him to play guitar on some of those. And that was sort of the extent of our relationship. I actually knew his family because his family and my family had been friends, local friends in the town we grew up in, Covina, California. And his dad, they had a Quaker background. And so when I applied for my conscientious objector (CO) status, he was my counselor, and he was kind of the guy, who I worked with to make sure that, to try to make sure that I would have the copacetic answers for the questions that the draft board was gonna' probably ask me. And I think I covered that in my other interview. They turned me down, so I wasn't a CO. So I got Carl Johnson to come play with me, and he did that second audition with us. And then after the whole thing fell apart, turns out Carl had stopped playing music when he'd gone to college, and he'd become like a, what do you call it? Not really a psychologist, but a psychiatric counselor, like a marriage counselor, relationship counselor. And that was what he was doing for a living when I contacted him to bring him in as the new guitar player. He had been kicking himself for about three years because he wanted to get back into music. And every time he'd think about it, he'd sort of make a commitment that he was gonna' do it and then never did it. So when I called him, it pulled him back into music. So he was really excited 'cause it gave him an excuse, and he was able to sort of justify it with his job. And he was still a really great guitar player. So we started playing together as a duo after Reluctant Angel broke up. And I'm still working at the Wild Animal Park during all of this. So we're playing these little coffee house shows here and there. Any place we could play, all the way up to Ventura--from San Diego up to Ventura--any coffee house, Riverside County. We're just driving everywhere and playing for like nickels and dimes. Which I think anybody that's dedicated to the music and their art in that way, I think would do that because it just, it's not about the money, it's really not. It's just about doing something you really feel a calling and a love to do. And so, um, we were playing these little coffee houses and there was a coffee house that popped up in Poway, and you've probably heard of it 'cause it's had a few different incarnations but Java Joe's, And Joe Flammini, had this coffee house that he started. And there were a couple people that were starting out, young people that were playing acoustic music. And I heard about this one guy, John Katchur, who was playing there. He is still--I just played a show with him last weekend. We're still friends. And so we went down to check it out, and they had like open stage nights. And I started, called Carl and had him come with me. And we started playing those, and we met another guy down there who was at the time, a percussionist and was playing with different people. He's now pretty well known in San Diego. He's won a bunch of San Diego Music Awards and stuff. But he started playing with us, playing percussion with us. Jeff Berkley was his name. And then my daughter, who was kind of hitting the wall at NAU (Northern Arizona University) in Flagstaff, 'cause she wanted to be in the music program, and she already had a lot of experience because she'd taken private music lessons, Suzuki violin and piano lessons. But there were a lot of classes she was required to take that she had already just blasted through all that stuff, and they wouldn't let her, what do they call it when you crash the class or whatever?

00:52:37FABBI: Audit.

00:52:38RAFAEL: Audit the class, right? They wouldn't let her audit the classes. So she got very discouraged and her--actually, one of her instructors said, Hey, look, you know, you're a really good player. Your dad's got a band, you're flying in into California on weekends to play with him. You don't really need to get a degree in music to be valid. You're already a valid playing instrumental player. And so she kind of went with that, and she came back home and started playing in my band. So it was the four of us.

00:53:19FABBI: And that was the Joel Rafael--

00:53:20RAFAEL: That's the Joel Rafael Band. Yep.

00:53:26FABBI: And what year would you say that it was when that title came to fruition?

00:53:33RAFAEL: Yeah, 1993. And we released our first album in 1994, and it was a self-titled, The Joel Rafael Band. And you've got that in your collection. Right then was when radio was going through a big transition, and there were some new genres that were established. Not Americana yet, but it was AAA and AA. So AA was--AAA was Adult Album Alternative. So it was album tracks. And then the other one was Adult Alternative? I don't know, I can't even remember what they stood for, but it was AA and AAA. And they were allowing a lot of independent music. I mean, it was getting into the mix. It wasn't just big labels. And just happened that in Carlsbad there was a station that was a AAA reporting station. So they report to the periodicals that list the charts for the different genres, or there was a rock or folk--or I don't know if there was a folk one--but there was rock and country, and I dunno' if they called it oldies or pop, whatever. So the AAA was a very open format and KKOS was the station in Carlsbad. And they were a very small station, not a huge transmitter or anything, but they were a reporting station. So they reported their playlist to Billboard and Record World and another periodical that was called the Gavin Report, which is no longer around. And so all of a sudden, we were showing up on playlists in some of these magazines, which caused other stations to pick up our record. And we'd sent our record, my daughter and myself, we formed a record promotion team. So she was still in school in--not Jamaica, but my other daughter, my younger daughter, Corrina. She was in school at Northern Arizona University, also. And was doing--she had a radio show at a radio station there. And we decided to, we got onto the whole idea and concept of how this worked with the record promotion and stuff. And there were certain call days when you could call the stations and talk to the program directors. And they would only take calls on like Tuesday and Wednesday between these hours. So we got our record to all of those stations that were reporting stations for AAA. And I think there were, there were probably about 70 stations, and pretty soon we were getting played on about 30 of them. But mainly due to the fact that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when those call days were supposed to happen, she would call--we would split up the list of the 70 stations, and she would call--over two days--she would call 35 of them, and I would call 35 of them from my office at the Wild Animal Park (laughter). Which was probably not allowed. But there were so many calls being made from the Zoological Society, long distance calls. It was minimal. So I mean, I had a lot of time when I was really busy in the job that I had there, and I had other times I just wasn't so busy. We didn't have any shoots or any people coming in for a story. I was basically just doing stuff in my office. And I'd slip in these calls to promote my record. And not with my name, though. I made up--I don't remember what the name was--but I made up a name. I'm so-and-so record promoter for this small label, Reluctant Angel Records. And the group, Reluctant Angel--no, it wasn't Reluctant--it was Joel Rafael Band at that point. And we managed to get our record on 30 or 35 stations. The irony of the situation was that no one could get our record. We didn't have distribution, so they could hear it on the radio, but they couldn't find it anywhere. It wasn't in any stores or anything, you know? We were developing mailing lists and just trying to figure out different ways to get it out there. And playing every gig we could play, every coffee house, every club gig we could get. Just before the band formed, just backing up a little bit, Carl's wife said, Hey, there's gonna' be a contest. They're having a big festival at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles). This was in '93. So it was just before, the year before our record came out. And I hadn't formed the band yet, but Carl and I were playing as a duo after Reluctant Angel had fallen apart. And so she said, Yeah, they're having a contest at this club called Highland Grounds in Hollywood. Over two days, they're gonna' have people come in and play two songs each after they screen--they're gonna' screen the demos, and then they're gonna' pick--I forget how many people, I think 20 people. And then they're gonna' over two days, they're gonna' have those people each come in and play two songs each. And then a panel of judges--I think there were three or four judges--would determine two winners. And then those winners would be the opening acts on Saturday and Sunday for the Troubadours of Folk Festival at UCLA. I can't think--Drake Stadium is where they had it, which is their big football field. And it was being produced by this guy, who had been a really big concert promoter in the seventies and eighties named Jim Rissmiller. He'd had a group called Wolf and Rissmiller, which is a big concert promoter back in the day. And so I met this guy, Jim Rissmiller, because I won the contest. Carl and I went, and we won the contest. I actually knew I was gonna' win before they announced the winners, because there's a show that was long established in Los Angeles called Folk Scene, and it airs on KPFK, and it started in 1971. So it's still running. It's a syndicated folk interview show, and they interview national touring folk acts--the top people basically--on that show when they have new records coming out and stuff. And I had met them years ago because when I discovered the program in the seventies I went up there. I never got on the show back then because I wasn't good enough (laughter). But I did meet Howard and Roz Larman, who put the show on and got to know them. And they were the kind of people that kept track of who was doing what in music, in folk music. And so they'd kind of followed me over the years. And so when this contest came down, they were two of the judges. And the other two judges were the people I mentioned in my interview last time, Len Chandler and John Braheny, who ran the Alternative Chorus Songwriter Showcase, who 15 years previous had spotlighted my songs, so they knew who I was. So all of a sudden, we show up on this show at Highland Grounds on one of the nights and play two songs. And then somewhere between when they announced the winners, I guess I--I don't remember why I was talking to Roz Larman, but for some reason I was on the phone with Roz Larman, and she said, Well, you know you're gonna' win, don't you? And I said, Well, no, I don't know that. And she said, Well, believe me, take it from me. You're gonna' win. And I said, Well, how can you say that? They haven't announced the winners yet. And she says, Well I'm one of the judges. I said, Yeah. And she says, And I know all of the acts in Los Angeles. She said, And I'm just telling you, you're gonna' win. And, you know, that was pretty cool for her to say that. Those are the kind of people that, people like that, that have come along that that will tell you in honesty. They're not just blowing hot smoke, but they'll tell you in honesty what they think. They'll tell you if they think it's bad, and they'll tell you if they think it's good. And I've had people tell me both. People you can trust to tell you the truth. And that can be really valuable especially if they're telling you, giving you constructive criticism. 'Cause we don't see ourselves the way other people see us. And so there's a bit of calculation that goes into something like that when you're presenting something. You wanna' get it right. And so we did, we won that contest. And so we opened that show at Troubadours of Folk Festival. And, of course, this was after that whole deal had fallen through and everything. And this is kind of a cool thing. So we were on at eleven o'clock in the morning, like the whole thing's gonna' go all way into the night and then into the next day. And we were on first at eleven in the morning, as people are still kind of coming into the stadium. So at ten o'clock in the morning, they had us go up and line check, just make sure everything was--and the lighting grid wasn't even up yet. It was like down here, you know? 'Cause they hadn't even pulled it up yet, and it was raining. And it was a rainy morning. And so I'm up there, and we're just checking out the sound system. I just feel somebody tapping me on the shoulder, and I look, and it's Paul Rothchild. And he had come because he had actually produced some of the acts that were on the show--Peter, Paul and Mary, and Judy Collins. And I mean, that show had everybody on it. You know, John Prine, Tom Petty, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bonnie Rait, Joni Mitchell made her comeback at that show. She hadn't played in like, I don't know, seven years or something like that. And it was crazy just all the stars from the folk world that were there. And that just really warmed my heart. I said, Paul, what are you doing here? He said, I came to see you (laughter). So that was really cool. And then he introduced me to Peter, Paul and Mary that day and to a bunch of people, which was really, really great. And one of the people he introduced me to was Peter Yarrow. And told me about--that he's a really good songwriter and this and that. And Peter says. Well, do you know about the Kerrville Folk Festival? And I go, No. And he goes, Well, the Kerrville Festival, it's in Kerrville, Texas, and that's the real songwriter festival. He says, You've gotta' come to that. Well, I kind of filed it. And then Paul Rothchild took me aside--and I can put this in my biography, I don't care. 'Cause most of these people aren't even alive anymore. But, Paul, I said, Wow, thank you for introducing me to them, to Peter, Paul and Mary. Me and my wife grew up on them. We went to see them when we were in high school on dates. And he says, Yeah, yeah, they're great people. He said, But don't ever give them America Come Home. It's one of my songs. And it was like one of the songs that Paul really liked. And I said, Really? He says, Yeah, if they ever ask you for it, don't ever give it to 'em. And I said, Why? He says, Because they don't sell 12 records (laughter). That's the ways people talk. I go, Oh, well, okay. You know, so I filed that. 'Cause that's all gonna' be relevant later (laughter). So we played that show. Let's see. And then we found our way to Java Joe's, and we formed the Joel Rafael Band. So, I'm already there. We recorded our first record. We got it on the radio. Let's see.

01:06:34RAFAEL: Okay, so while we were recording the first record, I'm at my office 'cause I'm still working at the Wild Animal Park. And this is 19--1994. Probably April of 1994. And I get a call at my office, and it's John Kachur, this other songwriter guy. Hey, do you know about the Kerrville Folk Festival? Well, this is a year-and-a-half later from when Peter Yarrow told me about that. And I go, Oh yeah, I think I've heard of that (laughter). I didn't remember. It sounds familiar. Yeah. Well, what's that? He goes, It's a festival in Texas. And he says, And they have a contest--they have the New Folk contest there. And every year, they pick six new folk artists out of 32 artists that are screened to perform there. And then they pick six artists that get to come back and perform the following week on the festival, and the deadline for submitting material--because I missed it the year before when I saw, when I met Peter, and that was the summer of '93. Well, now we're in the spring of '94. And he says, And the deadline is tomorrow to submit. And I just happened to have two songs on a cassette tape that we were recording for the album. One of 'em was America Come Home, and the other one was Solo Pasando, I think it was called. And so we--I packed those up with, I typed out the lyric sheets, stuck them in a FedEx envelope and then ran down to FedEx right after work, or I, maybe I left early that day. And FedEx was in, right? San Marcos, their main office. So I drove over there, and I sent that to the Kerrville Folk Festival. Just before the deadline. And I got picked. And so in May of 94, I went to Kerrville to compete with the New Folk performers.

01:08:58FABBI: And was this with the band or just you?

01:09:01RAFAEL: No, what, what I did is--well wait a minute. No, it was with the band. So what I did is, my daughter was coming from Northern Arizona University to play with us on weekends. She was still going to school because this was early in the incarnation of the Joel Rafael Band. And when I got the invite, I decided, yeah, I'm gonna' take my band. So I took Jeff, and I took Carl, put it on a credit card, we booked our flights, flew out there. They gave us camping, but we stayed in a hotel 'cause I wasn't gonna' try to camp and play. I was already in my mid-forties at that point, going on 50. I just didn't want to camp (laughter). And so we got there, we went through the competition, and then on Sunday, just before the main show, they announced the winners. And we were sure we won. We just felt so strong about it, the three of us. And they started calling the names--five, six. Oh, that's it. Oh. Oh, we didn't win (laughter). So we were a New Folk finalist, but we didn't win. So that was disappointing and expensive. So we came back home, and we just kept playing as a band. My daughter--then she came--was home. And so then it was the four of us all the time. And then, the next year came around, and we were recording our second album. It wasn't done yet, but I just decided, well, I'm gonna' go ahead and--if you don't win, you can enter again. So I sent two more songs to Kerrville, and I got picked again (laughter). So '95 we went back. And this time I took my daughter. I left my band. I left the Carl and Jeff, and I took my daughter, Jamaica. And the two of us went and that was '95. And we played. And I just really had my emotions in check. It was like, that was really pretty hard last year to go through all that--come here, do this, so far from home. And then--'cause we hadn't been traveling that much yet. And then to play and feel really good about your performance and then not make the cut. It was, it was disappointing. And so I just, in preparing Jamaica for it, I said, look, you know, there's like 32 people we're competing with here over the weekend. And there's a lot of really good songwriters. It's all about songwriting, and people coming from New England and from the South and from Canada and just all over the place. And we, we're from California. And so we're waiting the night--on Sunday when they're announcing the winners. And they announced the first winner, and, I'm just thinking, I'm just gonna' keep my emotions in check 'cause there's a real good chance we're not gonna' get picked. And they announce the second person, and it's us. So we go up there. We had gone around to, in '94, we had gone around to some of the campfires 'cause after the show, they have the--it's a big ranch. It's like a maybe 30-acre ranch. And so after the show, which is in this one area of the ranch, they have these camping areas, and people form these campfires. And they--it's been going on for so long that they have names. You know, there's Camp Cuisine, and there's Camp Stupid, and there's Camp--they have all these funny names for these camps. And so the first year when we were finals, me and Jeff and Carl went down, and kind of nobody would really let us in the circles. It was very kind of clique-ish. And so, I walk up on the stage--me and Jamaica walk up there--and I'm standing next to this guy, Tim Bayes. He's from Nashville, and he's a songwriter. He was the first guy they called. And I had met him earlier already and real nice guy. And he just looks over at me and he says, Now see if they'll let you in the campfires when you go down there. It was pretty cool. And it was like recognition, you know? And so we went down and got to play in the campfires. And that was a really, a real good kickoff for us. We got a couple more festivals after that in Texas. Rod Kennedy, who was the guy that had established the Kerrville Folk Festival and was still running it then, he's passed away now. And they've had a couple more directors since then. But we became kind of like his pets. He just loved our band. And so we played, I guess it was the 25th anniversary show. And then they have a summer show and then they have one in the fall called Wine and Music, Kerrville Wine and Music, at the same place. Smaller festival. And so he had us on the Wine and Music that year. And then the next year, we were on the main festival again. And then we weren't on Wine and Music, but the next year, we were on Wine and Music. For like about four years, just every year he had us on one or both of the festivals. And so Kerrville kind of became, that became kind of our spot. And you, it's like just being accepted in Texas as a songwriter, it's kind of kind of weird, but it was great. And so that really was a big stepping stone, that Kerrville Folk Festival 'cause it's kind of a nationally known thing. And you can kind of use that to parlay onto other things--winner, New Folk winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival. I mean, it's not such a big deal to me anymore, but it was a really big deal then. And it was--allowed me to get some other engagements, open up some other doors. So we played everywhere. We played Rocky Folks Festival in Colorado, and we played the South Florida Folk Festival, and we played the Kerrville Folk Festivals. And we played shows in Minnesota, and we were just going everywhere. (This interview has been edited at the request of the narrator.)