Hot Scene: The Return to Laurel Canyon : Rolling Stone

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With indispensable encouragement from Robinson, Wilson began recruiting characters like Scher, whose old band Beachwood Sparks introduced a lot of young indie rockers to the Canyon "It started for me when I was a senior in high school in 2001. And I had the Beachwood Sparks album Once We Were Trees," says Rice, 25, who was born in Glasgow, came of age in Virginia and now lives with Lewis at the Xanax house — a quaint cottage with a gazebo out back where he can work on music between tokes on the vaporizer. "There was no other band I knew of that was so obviously influenced by the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers, and it made me think about Los Angeles and what could possibly take place there."

Scher and Wilson met over mushroom tea in New York and connected because of their mutual love of the Grateful Dead — one of this group's biggest non-Canyon influences. "The Dead had really incredible moments," says Scher. "You can't get those without completely going into abandon. You have to trust that you've got a good crew and then jump in." That's a strategy that Lewis employed for her new CD, Acid Tongue, on which her crew includes Wilson, Rice and Scher. "There was a lack of community in L.A. until this thing started happening," she says. "When you were 13, you jammed because it's fuckin' fun," says Wilson. "If you play music for a living, you think if you don't have a soundcheck, you can't play. And that's just bullshit."

Whether you credit the mythos of the place, or California's relatively lax marijuana laws or the coincidental arrivals of a bunch of like-minded musicians, this group has tapped into some rare combination of mastery and open-mindedness. Says Lewis, "When you listen to J.J. Cale, which is another person I recently discovered, it's not just vibe-y, it's also really well-executed. There's a maturity in being able to openly play music with your friends in that way." And as Rice notes, there's another benefit to breaking out of the indie-rock scene: "It makes growing old sound so sweet."

Additional reporting by Shirley Halperin

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