Member Since: 12/9/2007
Band Website: mojonavigators.com/
Band Members: Page Brownton (lead vocals & rhythm guitar)
Al Astrella (lead guitar)
David Paul Campbell (guitar, mandolin, harmonica, etc)
Roscoe VanHorne (bass)
Art Emmanuel (drums)
Page Brownton (lead vocals & rhythm guitar)
The MOJO NAVIGATORS (in its several incarnations) were formed in 1995 by singer/songwriter Page Brownton. The band began as a folk-rock project designed to explore the potential of Page’s extensive repertoire of traditional folk music, and soon expanded to include a sampling of 1960’s psychedelic electric rock classics, with stylistic links to The GRATEFUL DEAD et al.
As a songwriter, Page Brownton invokes the collective archetypes of American folk culture, and his interpretations of traditional material have the ring of authenticity. Thus, the music of The MOJO NAVIGATORS covers the broad range of Americana - rhythm and blues, delta blues, gospel, Appalachian ballads, and the full spectrum of American folk music, the cultural heritage of the people of the British Isles and their descendents in the rural subcultures of the American South.
Page Brownton was born and raised in San Jose, California, at the south end of San Francisco Bay. In the 1940’s San Jose was a relatively small town surrounded by orchards. Natives of Oklahoma, migrant farm workers, had migrated to the area during the Depression, bringing with them their taste for country music and gospel; and likewise black persons staffed the shipyards and industrial sectors of Oakland during WW II; these distinct cultural communities established their musical presence on local radio stations.
When Page graduated from High School in 1958, Rock and Roll as a cultural phenomenon was scarcely more than five years old, and Buddy Holly was still alive. Along with his musical contemporaries in the Bay Area, Page witnessed and participated in the creation of a new phenomenon: the hippy subculture, and its musical expression, electric psychedelic music, which, in 1965, followed close upon the heels of the early 1960’s folk music revival.
Page studied literature and poetry for the better part of 10 years as a student at San Jose State College; he bought his first guitar in 1959 and studied finger-style guitar with folk music pioneer Rolf Cahn in 1960, driving 50 miles every week to Berkeley, where he also sang at the open mike--the "Midnight Special"--hosted by Gert Chiarito every Saturday night on radio station KPFA. In 1963 and 1964 he was president of the San Jose State College Folk Music Club, and produced a series of memorable concerts showcasing American ethnic musicians and blues artists.
Page sang and played guitar in San Jose’s first old-timey band, The FORT MUDGE RAMBLERS (1964/1967), which (in its several incarnations) included Cheri Brownton (vocals and fiddle), Joe Novakovich (vocals and autoharp), Mike Fisher (vocals and guitar), Lars Bourne (5-string banjo), Pete Grant (vocals and 5-string banjo), Susan Ferrel Anderson (vocals), Rory Condon (bass), and Butch Waller (mandolin).
AMERICANA AND BEYOND
In 1960, Page Brownton discovered and mined Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress field recordings, and Harry Smith’s epochal 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, which Greil Marcus cites, in Invisible Republic, as the well-spring of inspiration for a generation of musicians: "It gave us contact with musicians and cultures we wouldn’t have known existed."
The psychedelic movement generated an exploration of archetypal consciousness, and a synthesis of ancient roots and cultural modalities distilled in song and sound, resonant with the strangely familiar voices of forgotten ancestors resurrected from the collective memory; the songs of Bob Dylan and GRATEFUL DEAD lyricist Robert Hunter owe their genius to this influence.
Simultaneously, a generation of musicians, grounded in rock and roll during their teenage years, moved through the folk revival, and emerged wearing long hair and Beatle boots. The musicians of the psychedelic movement, which began to take shape in 1964 and 1965 in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district and college communities around the Bay Area, drew inspiration from their common ground in traditional music.
Thus it was that Page Brownton shared, with his contemporaries, a repertoire of traditional musical styles, and a fascination and reverence for the songs of, in the words of Greil Marcus, "the old weird America." Prior to, and during, the San Francisco psychedelic rock revolution, Page shared the stage with such eminent folkies as Jerry Garcia, Pig Pen, Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Kantner, Country Joe McDonald, David Freiberg, Peter Albin, David Nelson, and Janis Joplin.
In 1967, Page sang with San Jose’s premier psychedelic garage band, The WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW, which (in its several incarnations) included Paul Sussman (vocals and guitar), Bob Inwood (vocals and bass), Greg Simmons (vocals and keyboards), Chris Simmons (guitar), Rick Tedeschi (guitar), and Jim Bush (drums). In the intervening decades, Page continued to perform in small clubs, write songs, and teach the guitar, autoharp, and 5-string banjo; and from The FORT MUDGE RAMBLERS to The MOJO NAVIGATORS, he has continued to incorporate into the repertoire his signature selection of traditional songs.
Al Astrella (lead guitar)
THE MUSIC & THE MONSTERS
Former teenager Al Astrella (aka White Feather in the annals of the Rainbow Family) was a typical 60’s music casualty. He started listening (just listening, not playing; but one thing leads to another) to bluegrass and blues, Jim Queskin Jug Band and Missippi John Hurt, but soon hit the harder stuff. A Hard Days Night was particularly hard on him. Premonitions of Mojo Navigation began to take hold of his mind.
In 1968, at the age of 15, he received his first lessons in guitar playing from “Uncle Williamâ€, local night beat cop in his home town of Boston. An easy night’s beat from the heat, as it were, and it was.
From there, it was but a short day’s journey into Mojo, but one must not make light of this, and our lad most assuredly did not. Two steps forward, and one step into the Garage. Al was blind to all but the music, which he saw with his inner ear. While this was no guarantee of illumination, he claims to have seen the light at Spidergate Cemetary, in Worcester, Massachusetts, which prepared him for the next stage, that being the stage where he saw his first Grateful Dead show at the age of 16.
In 1970, at the age of 17, Al saved up his lunch money, and ran away from home, hitch hiking to the West Coast to be closer to the San Francisco Sound. He spent the next seven years following the Grateful Dead, and travelling around the South East, learning how to flat pick at various bluegrass festivals. In 1977 he moved permanently to Santa Cruz, where he took his place among the street musicians on Pacific Avenue; he continued to follow the Grateful Dead, and became a familiar figure among the parking lot pickers, strumming himself and the surrounding cosmos into a state of beatific numbness. To this day, the smell of brown rice and incense will send him into samadhi, or stupor, whichever strikes first.
In addition to music, Al also fell prey to the 60’s Monster Craze. A renowned collector of Monster Movie memorabilia, and protege of Forrest J Ackerman, our Monster Master of the San Lorenzo Valley won First Prize for his Bela Lugosi impersonation at the 2000 Hollywood Cult Movies Convention.
Al lives in Ben Lomond with his wife, two daughters, and numerous other monsters.
David Paul Campbell (guitar, mandolin, harmonica, etc.)
David was born Charleston, South Carolina, sometime in the past. Early on his family moved west and he attended Santa Monica High. As it would happen, another guy who was there at the time was Ry Cooder, whom Dave would also encounter many times over the years.
After graduation, he moved to Atlanta for a year and a half of study at the University of Georgia, Marietta, and began playing professionally there.
David played for about a year with BUDDY MOSS, and thereafter returned to California to work in the War on Poverty and play music. He ran into Ry again about that time, and he introduced Dave to TAJ MAHAL, another guy who influenced him in a major way. Also about that time, Dave happened to play one of the local coffeehouses (the name of which is lost to memory) and ended up opening for JOHN FAHEY.
Since then, David have been pursuing a career as a musician, songwriter, and producer. He hasn’t had any hit records, but some things have been on the radio. He’s been mostly a sideman for the last 20 years, simply because it was the path of least resistance.
Here is a partial list of folks I have recorded with: Stephanie Bettman / Loretta McNair (Myo-Uon Music, Deeper Than Indigo) / Will Glover / A Touch of Country (TOC III-full release) / Kelly Bowlin / Kari Gaffney / Ruby Davis (Hee-Haw television show).
David also has various jingles, voice tracks, and jingle/soundtrack sessions, including Silent People in the early days of A&E Television.
The "etc." noted above includes the following instruments: Guitar, Mandolin, Harmonica, Bass, Keyboards (Organ), Cap Steel, Bouzouka (Celtic), Banjo, Dulcimer, Hand Percussion. Also Lead Vocals, Back Up Vocals, Vocal Arranger.
David has played with and opened for uncounted acts which include: (opened for) Chicago / Ten Years After / Gabor Szabo / Sons of Champlin / Poco / John Fahey / Booker T & the MGs / Maria Mauldaur / Billy Boy Arnold / Albert Collins / Soul Asylum / Starship / Len Chandler / Doc Watson / Peter La Farge / Tom Waits / Jack Tempchin / Dave Mason / Mary McCaslin / Mel McDaniel / Diamond Rio / Exile / Dan Seals / The Outlaws / Brother / Joe Ely / Taj Mahal (performed with): DC Blues (San Diego) / Buddy Moss / Sam Chatmon (Mississippi Sheiks) / Loretta McNair / Second Time Around / A Touch of Country / Will Glover / Chris Gaffney and the Cold Hard Facts / The Butts Band / Way Out West / And many, many...
Influences: The Grateful Dead
The Jefferson Airplane
The Byrds
Bob Dylan
Robert Hunter
Garcia and Grisman
Ramblin' Jack Elliot
Dave Van Ronk
Sounds Like: The Mojo Navigators
Record Label: Mudbug Records
Type of Label: Indie