Gris Gris.

I FIRST MET the 25-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist Greg Ashley of the Oakland group Gris Gris last fall in Seattle while they were on tour with the Warlocks. We sat back stage in one of the club's bland dressing rooms, while a reserved yet polite Ashley described his formative years in the suburbs of Houston, finding redemption in the Oakland music scene, and his unbothered approach to songwriting and recording. As I listened to Ashley's answers, I couldn't help wonder how someone so unassuming could be responsible for some of the most exciting music made in psychedelia today.

THE MAN

Ashley grew up listening to a some medley of rock, psych and punk. At 19 and just out of high school he formed the Mirrors, a group that loosely followed in the Texas garage psych tradition of troubadours Roky Erickson and Mayo Thompson. In 2001, the Mirrors released a vinyl-only debut. Frustrated with the "non-existent" music scene, the Mirrors couldn't find bands to play with, let alone people to play for--so they packed up and went on tour. It was on the West Coast and specifically the Bay Area that Ashley found an audience who both dug and understood the music he was trying to make.

"No one really came to our shows in Houston. There were only two other bands in town that were into what we were doing. We (the Mirrors) played a co-op in Berkeley on that first tour and there was a shit load of kids getting drunk and watching us. I was surprised by how there was an audience for what we were doing," says Ashley. He then laughs in remembrance, "Fuck, I should have gone to college!"

That night at the infamous UC Berkeley Cloyne Court Co-Op, Ashley met bassist Oscar Michel and drummer Joe Haener, who were playing in the co-op's house band Rock n' Roll Adventure Kids. The three kept in touch after Ashley returned to Houston. When the Mirrors disbanded and posthumously released the acid-drenched experiment of 13 Patient Flowers (Fleece Records), Ashley moved to Oakland and started jamming with Michel and Haener.

He named the new group Gris Gris, after Dr John's 1968 debut album that blended New Orleans rhythm and blues with Middle Eastern chanting in a veil of voodoo mysticism. He also thought the words sounded cool.

Things started happening when Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records caught the band open up for Modey Lemon at the Stork Club in Oakland. Katznelson, best known for signing the Flaming Lips and Shane McGowan to Warner Brothers, was impressed with the young songwriter and eager to add the group to his growing roster. While Birdman waited for Gris Gris to finish their 2004 self-titled debut, Ashley had already compiled enough material for a solo folk record. Medicine Fuck Dream laid bare to Ashley's impeccable melodies and harmonies, a la his songwriting champion Leonard Cohen. Both releases were well received, and almost acted as a two-disc introduction to Ashley's strange brew of psychedelia, folk, swamp blues and free jazz ... But the best was yet to come.

THE MYTH

Ashley returned to his roots to record Gris Gris's 2005 album For the Season in a cabin on his family's property in Kosse, TX. The band, along with new keyboardist Lars Kullberg, spent close to three months sitting on the porch overlooking 80 acres of trees, ponds, and horses, drinking beer and jamming. Ashley came to the ranch with a handful of ideas for songs that he'd been toying with for a while. A few of the songs had even been recorded on the group's first album, but Ashley wouldn't let them go and felt that there was still more to fine tune and explore.

On For the Season, Ashley hit what he calls the "gold mine of the never ending song for every psych band." Using Pink Floyd and the Beatles' more experimental albums as guides, he seamlessly blended this handful of songs together to make an arousing 48-minute experience that transports listeners through gentle tempo changes where eerie melodies and a mysterious drone of vocals and organ effortlessly bleed into lively grooves with warm distortion.

In the two to three weeks before they had to leave, Gris Gris tracked almost everything to a vintage eight-track in their living room while Ashley recorded his vocals often in one take, singing through his amp, creating an album that casts a web just too intricate to understand. When I ask Ashley if he comprehends what a lush and beautiful record he's made, he blushes then laughs, "I'm afraid of making a bad record."

THE LEGEND

The last time I saw Ashley, the rock 'n' roll merriment of this year's weeklong South by Southwest music festival in Austin was slowly drawing to an end. A crowd of five hundred or so had gathered at a quiet corner of the bustling capital for Arthur Magazine's annual day party, and over the course of eight mostly rain-soaked hours, 11 incredibly diverse and talented acts performed. By the time Gris Gris took the stage, day slipped into night.

The lights from the massive outdoor tent illuminated the stormy Austin sky and cast the foreground's canopy of mesquite, live oak and redbud trees into the shadows. The quartet fervently launched into their kaleidoscopic set, but right before they could finish their second song, the generator to the PA died. The audience, assuming the show was over, began to leave. Undeterred, Ashley stepped out from his favored side stage seat to ascend the PA speakers with guitar in hand. Perched above the audience, with the rest of the band providing a rhythm section of various shakers below, Ashley led onlookers to their feet and in a spontaneous sing-a-long that would rival any Appalachian Revival or beat freak-out in history. Ashley gave it his all, singing 'til he was hoarse. The crowd, overcome by either the massive amounts of cheap beer consumed or the romantic notion of mind expanding music, wouldn't let the singer come down. In that moment something radical happened and I realized what was so special about Gris Gris. They were able to do something many bands attempt but few succeed at; they took an otherwise show and made it a one of a kind experience that forever lingers in the minds of listeners.