Remembering a community mentor

Paul Anderson, the guy who ran Andy Noise Records, wasn’t a promoter, but more a mentor. Whether you plugged in and made noise or were a distance runner, Paul always had your back.

I was a nightside newspaper guy when I met Paul, and I’ll always remember him as a one-man chamber of commerce. He taught me how to, artfully, be amused. But he never got me to be a runner.

Before there was a pizza parlor music scene in ‘90s Bakersfield, Andy Noise had in-store shows.

My first Californian byline was in Rick Mitchell’s Bakersfield After Dark column: a bit on a daytime show by The Lonely. The band played for a small crowd at Andy Noise.

Paul ended up recording a bunch of local and visiting acts and hand-made a mixtape: “How Andy Spent a Week One Night in Bakersfield.” His Dad took the cover photo. The tape played in my truck for weeks as homework.

After I crossed to the dayside and a job in features, I became acquainted with plenty of promoters, and I spent a lot of time at Andy Noise.

Writing about music, I got to dabble in all genres, both in town and over the Grapevine. It was Paul, in that storefront chamber of underground commerce, who helped me learn to navigate. He knew everybody but left it to me to fill in the blanks.

I got out to all the venues: the Civic Auditorium, the fairgrounds, Mesa Marin, the nightclubs in bowling alleys, Suds Tavern. But it was Paul’s quiet intel that led me to visit some bands’ practice pads and look in on their shows.

Get out. And go see. That’s what I learned first. I never did an interview in the office, though it would have been a sight, bringing in some of the performers that I profiled.

So, back at the store, if there was newer mainstream music amid the independent-label stuff on the racks at Andy Noise, it was probably because of me.

Those national promoters would bomb the office mailroom with product. And if you visited Andy Noise looking for something mainstream, it would have sounded much like something from a movie about a record store.

That thing about “High Fidelity” (2000) and the gruff, haughty, record-store clerks? Paul was a hybrid of the John Cusack and Jack Black characters.

Paul could run down a shoplifting punk if he had to. But he was more likely to make the kid a customer. And in our younger days, yeah: We talked about girlfriends and heartaches and revenge and amends and such.

But mostly we talked shop. And sweated it out. Paul lived an endurance life even back then.

The store was always swampy. He’d always have a big plastic cup of something cold at hand (Diet Dr Pepper?)

Good people: Paul could talk. Get him going and he could riff, and he’d often laugh himself to tears. And only my need to get back to the cool A/C at the office would cut the conversation short.

When it came to local shows, Paul would come by, but not for the long haul. He wasn’t a drinker, and he’d always beg off early, saying he needed to be up to open the store.

Paul was a unique businessman and a proud citizen of Bakersfield. He supported those who put themselves out there: Bootstrappers and long-runners. Misfits and adrenaline junkies. Ink-stained wretches in training.

I was in Bakersfield years later on a visit and stopped in at Little Andy, Paul’s shoebox store on Eye Street. Smaller than a kitchen, with posters as wallpaper. Still swampy.

Me, opening the door apprehensively: “Mr. Noise?”

Him, droll as ever: “Hey…” from behind his online poker screen.

If I bought anything that day, I don’t recall it. We must’ve just talked, of families and mortgages and other amusements. And laughed.

Where I live now, the high school cross-country crew runs the circuit in my neighborhood. And even before now, I’d think of Paul when I’d see runners.

Me? I still don’t run. But I’ll get out more. Keep moving. Hydrate. And be amused.