Words by Nathan Quevedo

The frontman for the Central Valley’s most prolific and influential space/rock band had a rough winter.

After leaving the Valley nearly four years ago for the less-populated and mountainous Midwestern state of Montana, Jason Lytle was happy to be back on the West Coast.

“This was a particularly brutal winter in Montana. I’m glad to be soaking up some California sunshine,” Lytle said in a recent phone interview driving across town in Southern California.

Lytle, who formed Modesto-based Grandaddy in 1992, was a songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist for the band. As the group disbanded in early 2006, he became much more than a frontman — he was the sole songwriter, played nearly every instrument for the last few albums and recorded and engineered most of it in his home studio.

He’s very candid about his role toward the end of the band.

“I have to admit, (a full-on) collaboration wasn’t the case with Grandaddy,” said Lytle.

About the same time Grandaddy broke up and Lytle was putting the final touches on the sendoff album “Just Like the Fambly Cat,” he was collaborating with another Valley native. (So much of a Valley native he named his band after a small town between Fresno and Bakersfield.)
Aaron Espinoza, of Earlimart, worked with Lytle on a project that would eventually become Admiral Radley.

“We were both between albums, and I was struggling trying to work on ‘Just Like the Fambly Cat.’ We intended on releasing some little neat thing, but nothing ever happened with it,” said Lytle.

What was originally supposed to be a four-song E.P., was tucked away while both musicians worked on their own projects.
“The second wave of songs happened within the last year,” Lytle said.

Admiral Radley’s first album, released July 13, is bizarrely titled “I Heart California.”

Maybe bizarre is the wrong word, but I interviewed Lytle during Grandaddy’s breakup, and at the time it seemed he couldn’t have been happier to leave the Central Valley and California.

However, his take on the Golden State has changed during the past half-decade.

“The scales began to tip a little bit too much,” Lytle said with a hint of sarcasm. “My fondest memories of California … I was a kid and spending a lot of time in the country. But what was country then is probably ridiculous subdivisions now.”

And that was one of Grandaddy’s reoccurring themes: Technology and human creations encroach on a natural world that can’t sustain all of its impact.

“Fast food bags wrapped ’round shins” and “Carnies are NASA University grads” were the bleak lyrics that he foreshadowed for our future.

I know, things aren’t really that bad, but he has a point about the urban sprawl that has transformed the Valley as I knew it growing up.
But that’s not to say he would have moved if things had been different.

“I would’ve loved to have stayed in California … but for a place that would be comfortable for me I would have to be rich,” he said. “Me moving was attempting to preserve the best parts of California in my mind.”

The title track on the album is catchy — with lyrics like “I am California, ice tea in my hair. Drugs fall out of diaper bags, as Midwesterners stare.”
Though tongue-in-cheek, it’s catchy.

Lytle said the track was written during the most recent batch of Admiral Radley recordings — about a year ago.

“It was the first wave of recording and three songs were done. I basically said ‘hold on a second’ and I went out to my van and wrote all of the words to that song. It’s definitely a fond approach, but also kind of a hilarious rhymey take on it,” he said.

The album definitely gives Espinoza of Earlimart and Lytle equal time songwise.

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