Singing about sex and Henry Miller on Highway 1.

We don’t typically write about Santa Cruz bands but we have a dual pretext to do so in the case of Smoke Chaser, a newly formed collaboration of singer-songwriter Ryan Masters (vocals, rhythm guitar), guitarist Jon Spivak and the drummer Eric Satzman that also happens to include a Pacific Grove local, their female singer Malinda DeRouen, who is the grandniece of Charlie Gabriel from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

The second pretext is the fact Smoke Chaser devoted its first single to “Highway One,” most precisely – the Big Sur area and its Henry Miller’s sex vibes that do belong to Monterey County.

The band hopes “Highway One” will become the anthem of this summer, sweet and nostalgic with a chorus invoking Miller’s wish to live again – if only to have more sex. [Miller lived in Big Sur between 1944 and 1963. It was a heartbreak, and then more heartbreak that turned him into a writer, and eventually a sex-connoisseur, of sorts. He was married five times.] 

“Highway 1 is the most important road in my life,” Masters says. “I surf off Highway 1 every morning and I spent a lot of time traveling between Big Sur and San Francisco. And Big Sur is always associated in my mind with Henry Miller. He became a different person after he moved and lived there.”

Recorded at Electric Sparkyland Studios in Oakland and at California Street Studios in Santa Cruz, “Highway One” is available to listen, for sale and as a download on all streaming platforms and it has an official video. 

“It's a celebration of Henry Miller and sex,” Masters says. “I’m a writer; I write for a living and I really like the energy of Henry Miller’s writing. It’s electric; it jumps off the page.”

In Big Sur, your cell phone doesn’t work, a sort of freedom—and the same sense of artistic, philosophical and sexual freedom that was available to Miller, is still available to us, Masters says.

He describes the sound of Smoke Chaser as the exact opposite of The Suborbitals, his former project. “Where the Subos basically operated like a jazz band, with minimal production and effects, Smoke Chaser plays much bigger,” he says.

The group already has 30 songs at various stages of completion and hope to launch a West Coast tour in the late fall/winter of 2022. “Smoke Chaser has been hard at work recording and will begin releasing a steady stream of music throughout the next year-plus,” Masters says. “All of which we're really excited about.” 

In addition to music, Master has a published book of fiction: Above an Abyss: Two Novellas was published in 2018. Visit: ryanmasters831.com; the band's website is coming soon.