“I can personally say it’s really difficult to convince people to listen to marginalized music,” Rip Florence says before taking a sip of water. “But there is an opportunity in Santa Cruz for people to embrace more idiosyncratic and niche music.”
He takes another sip before handing me a record. It’s a copy of the new compilation The Friction Hug Is a Bridge, which comes out Sept. 21 on his label, Shallow Dive Records. The eight-track album is a celebration of outsider music by local artists who frequent the coffee shops, open mics and dark corners of the heart.
A limited release of only 300 copies pressed, it will be available via the label, Redwood Records and Streetlight Records. Shallow Dive will have a booth with the compilation available at the Cedar Street Fair on Sept. 22. All proceeds from the album will go to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
“The whole concept of this album is to support niche, outsider singer-songwriters,” Florence explains. “Folks who have a really compelling thing that’s totally unique and hard to commodify.”
Featured on the album are groups such as HalfCalf and Duo of Two, and Scotts Valley born and raised artist Vee Ivy.
“Because it’s all local artists, I feel like the songs go together,” Ivy says. “Even though we didn’t directly communicate, there’s a cohesiveness about it.”
Ivy and Florence first met at an open mic at Soquel’s Ugly Mug in April 2022.
“They are one of my favorite local artists,” Florence says, turning to Ivy. “Your style of guitar playing is so intense and so recognizably ‘you.’ It’s a very punk and angular way of doing standard open chords.”
Florence started Shallow Dive Records in 2018 in true DIY-style when he first heard Sam Empasis at an open mic.
“There was something about him that was really compelling and I knew I just really wanted to listen to his music,” he says. “But there wouldn’t be an opportunity unless someone recorded him, so I decided to do that.”
Florence decided to call his label Shallow Dive Records, taking the name from his job at the time as a lifeguard. Since then he says the meaning has changed for him and his ethos.
“I want to encourage people to be passionate learners and embrace their developmental phases,” he states. “To take the risk to start [a project] and embrace the experience.”
Or in other words, “Have the courage to take a shallow dive.”
For The Friction Hug Is a Bridge, Florence focused on one very specific, universal concept.
“We all went through the pandemic and experienced difficulties being social and finding genuine friendship, love and community,” he says. “So the realization for this album was there is beauty on the other side and that friction and difficulty can be a bridge.”
The album flows through a river of emotions with themes of isolation, love, community and cultivating real experiences in a time when the human experience is becoming more digital every passing second. It opens with “Birdbath,” a love song wrapped in a boozy, lo-fi sound by Livia Charman, who also did the art for The Friction.
Ivy’s “Carousel” takes the listener on a ride through the repetition of life by delivering energetic melodies before a chorus of angelic voices springs forth, only held back from the ether by Ivy’s baritone singing.
“I explored themes of anxiety,” they say. “I started playing music seriously during Covid so my song is about how every year since that has felt like we’re on a time loop.”
Anyone can throw random songs on a playlist and call it a comp. But like John Cusack’s character, Rob, from the movie High Fidelity says, “the making of a good compilation tape is a subtle art.” Thankfully, Florence understood the assignment and not only places the songs in an order that makes sense but also ties them together with ambient interludes (or as the album credits it, “Connective Debris”) by Ben Kraser, who creates music as Leshy.
It’s community music made for and funded by the community through a grant from the Joshua, Marcia and Theodore Alper Scholarship Fund through UC Santa Cruz.
Established in 2015, the fund was originally named after Josh Alper, a UCSC alumnus, local musician, artist and beloved community member. In 2013 Alper was struck by a car and killed while riding his bicycle along Highway 1. After the death of his parents, Marcia and Theodore—who founded the scholarship—the family changed the name to reflect all of them. Since its founding the fund has been awarded to more than 40 individuals.
“When I think of Josh, what comes to mind is his kind and gentle way of being in the world. It just felt good to be around him,” texts Dan Beckman-Moon from Village of Spaces, who closes out The Friction with their track, “Portent.”
Florence hopes to keep the spirit of Alper alive through this compilation and his continued work highlighting local music.
“Hearing sentiments like that and engaging in this work, he definitely is someone I want to aspire to be like,” he says. “I hope to continually try to cultivate that ethos.”
