When I called Paul Wedlake for our scheduled interview, it was less of a formal interview than two guys that know each other too well having a laugh about what a mess we are. As managing editor of Yellow Scene Magazine, for just over three years now, I have worked with Paul damn near every month, except one or two, including one he missed while on a rafting trip in Arizona. He would later protest that this was the only scheduled shoot he’s ever missed, in his entire career.

And he’s had a long career. In the course of our hour or so conversation, he reminisces on how he was introduced to photography by his father, who was a photographer, and developed a stronger appreciation in high school, when he joined the yearbook committee. He realized that having a camera around your neck and confidence in your gait means you’re allowed to go pretty much anywhere you want, even if just to the lunch room to hang out with a girlfriend. That was his HS girlfriend.

He met his last girlfriend in college, where he studied photojournalism and other professional interests, not quite sure he wanted to follow in the old man’s footsteps. After, he and his future wife were living in Detroit, where they were both working in a very competitive environment as photography assistants.

Paul Wedlake and YS Managing Editor DeLa Vaca at Boulder Bandshell

Having fallen in love, both with each other and with photography, they moved to Colorado where they lived in a tent by Clear Creek for a month until they got a place in Golden, where Paul was able to work on his career while managing a building, the Armory. This is a place that is notorious for ghost stories and danger so, nearly a decade later, when they decided to raise a family, they moved to Old Town Arvada, where they reside to this day, working from home as photographers and raising two children.

Which brings us to the current collaboration.

Paul’s first full year of covers for Yellow Scene was 2015, with the wildly popular and heavily collected album cover series, where we took locals in our community and styled them like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He had, he recalls, already done a few covers for us before that. Paul Wedlake Photography and Yellow Scene have been making magic ever since.

Now, I’ll be honest and say that Yellow Scene doesn’t pay the bills for Paul. He’s actually a successful corporate photographer who makes his bread-and-butter shooting for corporations throughout the region, and he’s very good at it. If you need high-level photography, of any caliber, he’s definitely a go-to guy. But like he says every time we do something weird, like when we had French Davis ride his motorcycle up the sidewalk in front of Boulder’s Fox Theater, or when we accidentally had the cops show up to kick out 30 restaurant owners we staged in front of the Longmont Sugar Mill, when we did a gorilla style photoshoot in the middle of the street without permission, “we always do fun shoots for Yellow Scene. That’s why I like it.”

And we do. We always manage to come up with shoots that are ridiculous, strange, and fun. We did the freestyle fun of October 2017 with Jamie Temple, Case Logic founder, and former CEO, up at Chautauqua throwing tapes in the air. We did 2018’s Legends of BOCO series, which saw the police contact I mentioned earlier. We went through 2019’s DiverCity series, which featured a variety of diverse faces from BOCO, including our governor.  We’re currently finishing the 2020 OurTicles series, shooting our fave past and current employees in their favorite places, like French on a motorcycle. I know, we’re absolutely out of control, but Paul loves it. And he’s so good and getting the shot.

As YS continues to grow and age, Paul’s kids are doing the same. He says he’s got one driving, and one about to be, so it’s time for another car. Maybe it’s time for another camera. His father was a photog, as he is, and his brother is a videographer. His mother was a nurse, as his sister is. Both he and his wife are photographers. Both his kids are showing interest in the family business. The apples, in this family, clearly don’t fall too far from the family tree. That is a beautiful thing, both for family legacy and for our communities. The world will never have too many creatives, too many artists, too many souls seeking to capture the world around them for posterity, for all of us.

That’s a legacy we can get behind. And with Paul behind the camera, that’s a past, present, and future we’re excited about. I’ve already asked him what he wants to do for next year’s cover series. We have some ideas in the works. One thing I know for sure, Paul shooting our covers means they’re going to continue to be excellent.

Click, click, shutterbugs. Head over to Paul Wedlake Photography to check out his portfolio, including work he’s done for us. Or just peruse this page. We’ve included as many as we could.

The post Paul Wedlake Kills One Shoot at a Time appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

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All images by Paul Wedlake for Yellow Scene Magazine

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Lana Del Rey brought leg three of her Norman Rockwell Tour, supporting her album of the same name, to a sold out Bellco Theater on November 4th. She had support from Ben Gibbard and Julia Jacklin. Del Rey performed to a sold out crowd of what appeared to be a very age diverse audience who were clearly, utterly devoted Lana Del Rey fans. 

Let me be clear: devoted. Lana Del Rey. fans. This fact was evidenced, in part, by a delayed start time, Del Rey told the crowd when she came on stage almost a half hour after the planned start time, because they were waiting on everybody to get in the room. Many skipped the opener, lingering in the foyer and bar areas where, even before the show, hundreds of people visited the line for merchandise. This, even though Ben Gibbard, a world famous musician notable for his work with Death Cab for Cutie and Iron & Wine, was the surprise opener, announced by Live Nation via email a few hours before the event start time. 

Ben Gibbard is a man that could sell out arenas on his own, and has, but he didn’t have a serious coterie of devotees in Bellco, though there were dozens throughout the room who were fans, including me. As is Colorado tradition, the music scene crowd was very generous, which makes us proud on the daily. To be fair, I found the final song of this set, and a duet he performed later with Del Rey, his most important and engaging. The majority of his set was exceedingly downtempo, more so than Lana Del Rey, who is also downtempo. His sound also seemed off, with his guitar hitting awkward notes and generating strange feedback at points. 

“I’m from Seattle,” Gibbard said near the end of his set, “but I write a lot of songs about Los Angeles. It’s a beautiful and terrible place”; it’s a sentiment I can agree with, being – at least nominally – from LA and spending many years in California. He also played a song he wrote for the Monkees – yes, those Monkees – who have a recent album, saying, “it was recorded and became one of the most bizarre world moments of my life.” The Monkees song is about a girl named Angelina…which reminds us of his love affair with Los Angeles. Maybe we’re reading too deep into it. 

Gibbard closed his set with a song that’s exceptionally near my own heart, Such Great Heights, a ballad originally by the Postal Service that Iron & Wine covered in 2003. It was a love song my ex-girlfriend and I shared, and I always have it in rotation. Ugh, the heartstrings! That was a lovely, if lowkey painful way to close out his set. 

Then came an interminable break.

Behind me, as I sat drinking a thankfully overpoured whiskey ginger, there were two women in their early 20’s who, it struck me, are exactly the demographic Lana Del Rey speaks to. “I think I’m the classic definition of a girl,” one girl snides to her friend, who echoes her every sentiment in that vaguely oppressive friendship ritual that’s performed among only the most dreary. “I like shopping and Starbucks and…light workouts and…pastel color palettes.” … “Omg,” her friend, for lack of a better term replies, “Me, too, can we take a selfie?” … “Of course,” the ‘classic definition of a girl’ replies, before making a dozen or so suggestions for angles and lighting use. After such Karen-level hits as, “oh my god, I feel like we’re, like, dressed appropriately, like cute, for this event, but some of these girls… *snickering and whispering*, followed by violently narcissistic paroxysms of laughter about their boyfriends’ friends folding their underwear because they left their clothes in the dryer, I wanted to turn around and tell them that Mean Girls wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual. 

But I digress. 

Lana Del Rey’s first song was Norman Fu*king Rockwell, wafting out over the eager crowd with such outstandingly clever lines as, “God damn, man-child, you fu*ked me so good that I almost said, ‘I love you'”, set to video graphics of a typewriter, implying, what?, her methodology, or suggesting something deeper than petulant love/hate song writing for angsty pre-teens with a nominal history of sexual experience, songs written more likely in a presidential suite living room with paid writers packing data on her demographic’s current depression levels.

Someone screamed, “I love you bitch”, a phenomenon that would continue throughout the night. One young girl a few rows in front of me screamed it every 3-5 minutes, depending. Devotees. 

The scent of sage reached my row by the time she feebly delivered Joni Mitchell’s For Free, a song filled with such incredible grace and precision, even when Mitchell sang it playing the piano live on air, in 1970. The sage was being waved by two gorgeous back up dancers, an apparently futile attempt to ward off bad vibes and evil spirits in the audience. I was in row 305. Orchestra. That’s a lot of sage. 

As an aside, can I point out that it always amuses me how much people scream when a singer squeezes a city or state name into a song. It’s not that hard. I’m not really into pandering. I wouldn’t scream for it. Anyway…

About the fourth song, Mariner’s Apartment Complex, I realized there was a definite double vocal track for cover. I’m aware that many artists layer vocals for depth but most serious singers – and Del Rey is a lauded crooner – try to let the voice speak for itself without the extra help. I found it odd. Another weird impression I had was that, on the duet with Julia Jcklin – Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You – Del Rey’s vocals sounded fake. Like, not real. There was no clearly discernible voice coming through Del Rey’s microphone for a majority of the song. Was it the acoustics? Was it the sound issues from Gabbard’s set repeating? I’m not sure, and I hate to imply she wasn’t singing. I just couldn’t hear it. 

Honestly, I found the show a bit dull, even if the Del Rey devotees kept screaming “I love you” and “yesss, Bit*hhhh” and the random sections of older men occasionally standing up to stare for a bit before feeling tired and sitting again. If it weren’t for the eternally rhythmic, concentric, concurrent movements and added vocals of the backup dancers/singers, the near lazy, unengaging performance by Lana may have put me to sleep. 

I’ve read a couple of the other local reviews, and I’m not a disagreeable person, but I couldn’t disagree more. Where some at 303 see “a vision of vintage American cinema, a nihilistic noir daydream of grandeur and distress”, I see an artist who has grown into her pop neo-emo persona, adored by a fan base that are attached to her ability to personify the nihilistic millennial generation, infantilized and facing a bleak future, demanding less intelligent music than is available. There’s some good in that. I don’t mind the occasionaly mindlessness or bored revelry.

Where the Westword writes that she “keeps her production simple” neither “undergoing garish outfit changes” nor putting on “ridiculous dance moves”, I see a performer that still hasn’t learned to dance with any acumen. If anything, the backup dancers who dished out some “pop glitz” were consciously there to balance her lack of rhythm and up the engagement with the crowd, an area she’s always lacked in, made up for before – and now – with a stage design including varied height levels, layers of instrument, and a seriously good light and fog show. Smoke and mirrors, as it were. 

In all honesty, I left after Gabbard returned to the stage to duet another of my favorite songs, again courtesy of my ex girlfriend, “I will follow you into the dark,” by Death Cab for Cutie. Del Rey’s vocals shoot too high, trying too hard, and she mucks up the verse. Gabbard’s vocals and guitar playing were on point. Once concluded, following some decidely heroic efforts from Gabbard, I decided to leave. The show wasn’t doing it for me and, as I exited, I realized I wasn’t the only one. Many were in the foyer, many outside waiting on cars. The majority stayed for the show, a testament to the devotion and the current appeal of pop-emo.

Lana Del Rey’s performance in Denver was lackluster, filled with sound errors, low engagement, and struggles to outshine the performers she brought to accompany. For the devotees, this was more than enough. I expected more. 

Images by Paul Wedlake for Yellow Scene Magazine.

The post Lana Del Rey Impresses the Loyal, Others less so | Review appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

All photos by Paul Wedlake

A DiverCity conversation with Sammie Leon Lawrence, the Fourth of his Name, Holder of Custom-made Dragon-topped Walking Aids, Gardener of Souls, and Weilder of Badass Afros. Long may his humanity be known.

It’s easy to think about ourselves and each other in terms of base didactics: failures or accomplishments, wins or losses, wealth or poverty. It’s simple to separate our humanities out from who we are perceived to be. The idea is important to consider in a world that doesn’t see all bodies as able, all flesh as equal. The truth is, strip away everything else – the pretension and ego and image – and all we have left is our humanity, or lack thereof.

At base, we are all humanity. But even then, not all humanity is created equal. Have you met Sammie?

“My name is Sammie Leon Lawrence IV. I’m the fourth Sammie,” he says, “the first Native American and Black Sammie”.

When I asked who he was, he began by telling me that he was “born a blonde haired, blue eyed, white baby. That’s the first one we should start off with.” It’s ironic because today he’s known for his Blackness; a new icon of black strength and black vulnerability here in Boulder, Colorado. The same Boulder that’s been in the news, nearly non-stop of late, for police overreach or violence or aggression against community members.

He has had PTSD since age 6, recalling watching, “my mom get beaten by my dad. Not only that, I watched him get carried away… After he was arrested they put them in handcuffs and drove him away. I chased after the car and it started to rain. That is literally the memory that follow me for 13 years.” One of his PTSD triggers is violence against women, violence against humanity in general.

He’s a community activist. He says,“I support all people in my community. I am a gardener of the souls of people.” It’s an interesting metaphor, being a gardener, and one he comes back to throughout our conversation.

But the conversation bounces around. He pauses, in between nibbles of tako (octopus) sashimi and refills of black tea at HAPA on Pearl, then asks, “I believe you’re familiar with Spiderman? There’s a line in there called, ‘Sins of our fathers’. I’ve had plenty of times when I’ve been a villain in my own story, feeling lost or worried. I am who I am because I choose constantly not to be the villain. To be the hero of my story.” But heroes also make mistakes.

When asked about his mistakes, he says, “learning about my anger. Learning about my emotions and learning to be in control of my emotions fully. Being a man who didn’t grow up with my father, it’s a different aspect. I had to teach myself how to be a man.”

Being a man is hard when the world seems to keep throwing new issues at you. He tells me, when asked what he’s doing now, “I am healing my brain”. It’s a clear statement that may seem a little odd unless you know his history. Sammie has brain issues. They’re actually rather new. I have to wonder how that affected his work in dealing with his emotions of late.

“I ended up dealing with a brain injury last year that impacted my ability to work and basically function with everyday life. I got a brain injury from a workplace injury, from an unsafe work environment, in Boulder actually. As I was walking,” inside of a marijuana dispensary he was an assistant manager at, he says, “there’s a metal beam that starts falling down. There were multiple other beams behind it.”

He was struck in the head and immediately knew something was wrong; slowness in movement, uncharacteristic for a man with ADHD, issues with walking, problems with thinking. As with all injuries, but especially with head injuries, immediate medical care is critical. Sammie wasn’t able to access health services for a few days, he tells me, while waiting for health care access information from his work. So much for humanity.

A couple of days later, he says, he was fired. He ended up having neck issues, spent time in physical therapy, and the issue with his work place became a worker’s compensation issue come over which he had to file a lawsuit. From the injury he developed non epileptic seizures, a form of brain damage and a condition I’ve personally witnessed manifest. He had a small seizure in the parking garage near the HAPA where we talked; construction crews were working and a machine making piercing beeping sounds triggered it.

“It was very difficult to keep cool and keep calm,” he tells me. “I have a firm… I don’t like being buried. I may be a worker of the gardens of souls, but I don’t like being buried because of the fact that I have to grow out of it is sometimes difficult.”

It reminds me of Mexican students protesting under banners that read, “they tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds”.

“I’m proud that I got to speak up about everything that happened, own my own accountability with the issues with the job, in court. I’m a firm believer in accountability. I couldn’t get off the street without accountability. I couldn’t get stabilized in the apartment where I’m at now without accountability. Let alone, I couldn’t go on being disabled the way I am, getting assistance the way I am, without accountability. Because it would be easy to let it go. It would be way too easy”.

You may know him today for his recent, filmed interaction with the Boulder Police. We won’t spend a lot of time on this because there are plenty of news reports and videos out there for you to form your own opinion. In fact, every citizen has the right to film the police. And Sammie was there filming to keep unhoused people safe. From the perspective of an outside observer, it seems like as a formerly unhoused person himself, he understood the struggle and as an activist he understood solidarity; that’s why he was there. All part of his humanity.

His real passion is youth. “Eventually I’m going to be working back with Attention Homes. They are… a model example of how a shelter should run. They’re not a one-size-fits-all kind of place”, accepting and understanding the different goals and aspirations of people.

Which brings us back to his gardening. He tells us, as others have said before, “one of the reasons why I work with the youth the way I do, you get to see the fruits of your labors.”

On the humanity of Sammie Leon Lawrence IV: Sammie’s a gardener. Boulder is a garden. And we are all seeds.

When we are buried, unwillingly or in the wrong way, or in the wrong places, maybe while on a sidewalk eating a sandwich facing down oppression, may there always be a Sammie there to make sure we’re grounded, planted, and that our humanity is seen..

The post Sammie’s Humanity: A DiverCity Conversation with Sammie Leon Lawrence IV appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.