Hey lovely People! Thanks for hoppin’ over to the website and hangin out here in Haight Street Voice-land!
The grand opening of Sound Minds on Haight in September was a huge success, packed with like-minded friends and neighbors who are over the moon about having music back in the neighborhood again. Owner Nicholas DeAnda was kind enough to take me on a walkthrough of the joint — and man, it’s beautiful! His wife Crystal put her mad interior design skills to work! I can’t wait to play some blues on that old upright piano in the groovy back room upstairs!
Nicholas: Hello everybody! I live down the street and I’ve been teaching in the neighborhood for a while out of my apartment. I’m so excited, honored, and privileged to have this space to share with you guys and continue teaching music in the neighborhood. All ages, all instrument types, all levels. I’m stoked to see everybody, and hear what everybody sounds like! There’s a lot of music in this neighborhood, in the City, that I get to hear firsthand. I’m so excited!
I’m one of 7 siblings. I was born in Seattle. and 10 months later my family moved to Madrid, Spain randomly. I lived there for about 8 years in the ‘90s and that’s when I started playing music. I took piano lessons at 3 years old. My siblings all took lessons, but I was the only one that would play and make noise and just make things up and just figure it out. I’m mostly self taught, honestly.
I went to college at SF State — I’m a Gator!
HSV: Woot, Gators! Shoutout to Ben Fong-Torres!
N: There’s a really cool program called “World Music: Modern Musicianship” and it wasn’t jazz or classical, it was all of those types of musicians that fall in between. So it was really cool because I got to rub shoulders with musicians from around the world. I got to study and listen to music from around the world. I play over 20 instruments, and anything I don’t know how to play I can learn quickly, and teach it too.
At school, I originally went went for Urban Studies and City Planning. I really like architecture. But halfway through I had a change of heart. I switched to music because I knew that it really made me happy. No matter what, music makes me happy. I didn’t know what would happen for me musically but I knew if I committed to it 100 percent and took it super seriously, something would happen for me. I just had full faith and hope in music alone. And god just kind of put things in front of my path that showed me I was really good at teaching music. And then I noticed how good it made me feel. And then I saw how well I was treated, not just monetarily but by people. People take me seriously as a musician, and that’s something that’s been really hard for me in my life. But it’s been really cool, it’s been super rewarding. I never thought just committing myself to music would lead (gesturing to the whole room) to this!
Hey People! Diggin’ this digital experience of Haight Street Voice? Hop on the Haight Street Voice bus TODAY!
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
“Season of the Witch is a celebration of the mysterious and powerful sacred feminine. Often miss-understood, even worse feared, persecuted and scapegoated. No matter what season the wise witch knows the secrets that all things have their seasons and cycles of birth and death . The Fall celebrated the death of the sun, coming out of Virgo (SF is a Virginian city) which the wise witch does not control but notices, honors, works with, and celebrates. We could all learn from the true meaning of the season off the witch!” — Nicholas DeAnda
HSV: Alright you guys! Haight Street Voice and I’m here at Sound Minds, the new music studio on Haight at Clayton on Wednesday September 18 and we’re gonna go in and check this place out and talk to the owner, Nicholas. Here we go.
(Walk in where Nicholas is playing acoustic guitar)
Nicholas: Hi!
HSV: Hello Nicholas! So this is Nicholas. I feel like we’re doing a Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
(Breaks into “Won’t you be my neighbor …”)
HSV: We are neighbors, and this is the thing! And that’s kind of what the Haight Ashbury is about!
Nicholas DeAnda: It is! We’re bringing music back to it in every way!
HSV: We are so excited! So Nicholas, introduce yourself …
ND: Hello everybody! My name is Nicholas DeAnda. I live down the street here, and I’ve been teaching in the neighborhood for awhile out of my apartment. And I’m so excited, honored, and privileged to have this space to share with you guys and continue teaching music in the neighborhood.
HSV: So important! And we’re so excited. There’s no age boundary, it’s not just kids or …
ND: All ages, all instrument types, all levels.
HSV: Even horns?
ND: Yep, even horns. Trumpet, saxophone, violin, viola — you name it. Even obscure instruments from around the world. Anything we don’t have yet we can get for you and figure out how to get you playing it in the neighborhood, no problem.
HSV: I guess maybe why don’t you show us around and maybe we’ll end up in the piano room in the back. Let’s just check out the room, y’all!
ND: Okay, so before we see everything — everything that you see, my wife Crystal designed for us in this neighborhood. So if you want to see more of this type of stuff in the neighborhood, in San Francisco, in Haight Ashbury, just hit my wife up at crystaaaallion. Hit her up for some drafting work and she’ll — if you like what you saw at the grand opening, she can do that for you as well!
HSV: This little ripple detail here …
ND: Oh yeah, all of this, literally everything. This art installation (framed foliage and instruments) she dreamed it up for a couple months and I just let her go for it. It looks cool in video and pictures but you really have to come in and see it in person.
HSV: You do!
ND: I love that she picked up this Aztec brick color, and it kind of looks like the Golden Gate Bridge.
HSV: Yeah man!
ND: Know what I’m sayin’?
HSV; I’m feeling it. And I love this (decor on lamp).
ND: She picked the lights too — everything.
Alright! So right here we’re going to have baby classes in the morning, so if you have any toddlers, like 3 and under, we’re going to do just like nursery and folk type songs and just have them shaking maracas and tambourines, and we’ll have stuffed animals for “Old MacDonald had a farm” and all of that.
Musical immersion. We’re calling it “Cherub Rock” after a Smashing Pumpkins song. And that’s just musical immersion for the toddlers in the neighborhood. Cuz I know — I skate every morning at Waller — the past 4 or 5 years I’ve noticed there are a lot of toddlers in the neighborhood. So bring them here! Let’s play some music every day for half-hour lessons. You don’t have to sign up, just come through. It’s $20 for a half hour. Bring the stroller, you can chain it to the fence.
Let’s keep checking things out …
So eventually we’ll have somebody here to greet all the time. We have some retail merchandise stuff, we have harmonicas that say Haight Ashbury on them. We’ve got egg shakers, guitar picks. And then as our client bass grows we’re gonna have more inventory of guitar strings, drumsticks, eventually we will have guitars in here but right now we have ukuleles and that’s about it.
Let’s get into the studios. So these are soundproof. They were made to be super super sound resistant. These are pretty much set up, we have a couple more things to set up, but this is for a one-on-one private lesson for guitar, ukulele, we can even plug in keyboards and get some rudimentary piano lessons started in a place like this, voice lessons too — just anything that needs a smaller space.
We’ll have more retail here, for now it’s just mostly decorations, but if you want to start supporting, we have stickers and pins. Every dollar really helps us keep the lights on. My buddy is a metal fabricator and he designed this (railing) for me. It’s really cool. We had Babylon Burning downtown print these out for us which is pretty cool, my buddy Zach who works there.
HSV: How much are the shirts?
ND: I have a price point, but I wanna say they’re like $20 for the shirt $40 for the hoodies.
HSV: And then this beautiful train — I am in love with this train image. Where did that come from?
ND: We looked up a bunch of 60s posters cuz we wanted to catch the vibe. I grew up listening to the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, so it’s not surprise that I’m doing this here. And we really wanted to have imagery that kind of honored and matched the neighborhood but that was still family friendly, like you could still read it still. You know some of them are super heady and really you can’t read anything. So we tried to do a little bit of both. Yeah they came out really good. We have the posters of these as well for sale if you missed the event if you want to look at it and be inspired, come on down and get one!
And this is really fun (opening door to bigger practice space). I just had a drum student today, first drum student. This is a drum set I bought in high school. I was sick of people having the excuse of, “I don’t want to bring my drums over, man” so I just bought one. And now there’s no excuse. You know the Ace Ventura trick, the “Ahhhhhhh!”? (Opening and closing door) Try that out real quick with the drums and see how quiet this is (closes door and plays drums) So as you can tell, it’s not 100 percent noise proof, but it’s to code, and we’re not gonna bother any of the neighbors that live above us or any of the retailers that are next to us.
HSV: That must’ve been a big deal.
ND: No, because I know what the decibels are and I did my due diligence in research. We got this QuietRock sheetrock and then we got this denim quiet insulation, basically. So we’re good to go there.
HSV: That is exciting.
ND: (as camera pans from ceiling) Yeah, I love the light fixtures. They’re so cool.
HSV: They’re gorgeous, man.
ND: We have a bathroom for our patrons, not to the public, but we all know in this neighborhood …
Eventually, we’re not 100 percent done, we’re like 98 percent done, we’ll have a couch here, and more retail here and more retail behind you. We’ll have a counter here for a guitar tech, so if you need your guitar set up or restrung you can bring ‘em here and we’ll have that service in a couple weeks! Give me a couple weeks to get inventory going! We just had that party, so …
HSV: Yes! Dude it was poppin’!
ND: I appreciate it, everyone that came!
(About Bowie image on wall) My wife — these were in our house forever. I just pulled these off the light poles over the years (about Haight Bingo framed, etc). They just get thrown away anyway. My wife, she’s also a master framer so if you need any artwork framed, she does that as well.
And the couch here will be for parents or siblings or anybody that’s waiting for somebody while they’re in a lesson and you don’t really want to be facing the public you can kind of get back here and read a book or do homework or whatever you need to do.
And this I’m super stoked for: this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a really long time. One of the things that makes me — one of the things I know makes me a good teacher is I listen for what a student is lacking and guidance. I don’t really listen for where you’re at, I listen to where you’re coming from and where you’re going, where you’re headed. But I know being able to offer groups lessons. I didn’t have the guts in the old school to do band. I always wish I had an opportunity to play with other people because you get better quicker and you just learn a lot more about yourself and music and the world around you when you play with other people.
That’s what I’m trying to do here. With all the lessons I took growing up, that should’ve been available and it really never was. So if you’re into rock and roll and pop music and anything that’s not jazz or classical. We’re going to do that here as well, obviously, all music literally from around the world, which I guess kind of brings us to me.
HSV: Yes, thank you! Thank you for having us here today!
ND: You’re so welcome!
HSV: Haight Street Voice loves you, we’re stoked!
Hey People! Diggin’ this digital experience of Haight Street Voice? Hop on the Haight Street Voice bus TODAY!
ND: I’m stoked to see everybody, and hear what everybody sounds like, too, honestly. There’s a lot of music in this neighborhood, in the City, that I get to hear firsthand. I’m so excited!
I was born in Seattle and shortly after that, like 10 months later my family moved to Madrid, Spain randomly. I lived there for about 8 years in the ‘90s and that’s when I started playing music. I was 3 years old and I took piano lessons at 3 years old!
HSV: (pivot to upright piano)
ND: This is a family heirloom. We’re gonna be upgrading our piano but for the time being this would be pretty cool. This is over a hundred years old. It’s been to Alaska, it’s been to Seattle, now it’s in San Francisco.
HSV: (play a little ditty)
ND: See, it’s not too bad.
So yeah, I started piano at 3 years old. I’m on of 7 siblings. I’m the middle child. There’s 5 girls and 2 boys. I started piano at 3 and I continued lessons until I was about 10 or 11. I stopped taking piano lessons for a little bit and then I saved up for a drum set and my mom got me drum lessons for a couple of years. And then at a certain point when I was about 13 I stole my sister Carly’s guitar from the closet cuz she never played it and me and my brother would teach ourselves like the James Bond theme, and, you know, just riffs and little ditties. Then after a couple years of that I realized I could actually make controlled noises on the instruments. So I just started practicing a lot and taught myself guitar. And then my buddy dropped a bass off at my house and I learned that. My mom bought a ukulele from Costco randomly and I learned that in a couple months …
HSV: Did your whole family play music?
ND: No. My siblings all took lessons for sure, my mom took a little bit of piano, and we all kind of grew up going to church and singing in choir a little bit when we were really little. Everyone liked music and some of them like to play but a lot of them it was like classical “do what your told, read the notes on the staff” type stuff. And I kind of just the only one that would play and make noise and just make things up and just figure it out. So yeah, I’m mostly self taught, honestly.
HSV: Let me ask you a hippie question: What sign are you?
ND: What sign am I! Actually my birthday is on Saturday! I’m a cusper. I’m a Virgo-Libra.
HSV: Alright! Happy Birthday, man!
ND: I really appreciate it! Virgo season!
But yeah, so my mom got a banjo when I was 18, so I figured that out too. Mandolin, I can play a little bit of violin. And then I went to college at SFSU. I’m a Gator!
HSV: Woo, Gators! Ben Fong-Torres, shoutout!
ND: There’s a really cool program called “World Music: Modern Musicianship” and it wasn’t jazz or classical, it was all of those types of musicians that fall in between. So it was really cool because I got to rub shoulders with musicians from around the world. I got to study and listen to music from around the world. And then at one point, one of my friends left a saxophone in my garage and I did myself the service of taking all the theory I was learning musically and figuring out how to play that theoretically on a saxophone. I had never had a lesson on saxophone but by the end of doing that, I actually taught myself how to play saxophone pretty decently! I’m no John Coltrane or anyone like that. But I can play saxophone, I can teach how to play saxophone or any other wind instrument: trumpet, trombone, flute — all those. I play over 20 instruments, and anything I don’t know how to play I can learn quickly, and teach it too.
HSV: So let me ask you this — and thank you for all of this …
ND: It’s a lot, I know!
HSV: No! It’s frickin’ awesome! You’e making my job beautifully, wonderfully smooth! Thanks for letting me be here and doing this because I’m so excited about this.
I imagine you’ve been in a lot of bands over the years, so is your thing that you’re more focused on, or feel more of a yearning to teach rather than being a rock star? To put it simply, you know what I mean?
ND: One hundred percent. That’s actually funny because a lot of the teaching that I had — not abusive or anything like that, but it was just bad … I could tell they were teaching me enough to get another check from my parents. I could tell that as a child, and that just put a bad taste in my mouth. That example — I never saw how you could have a life doing that with integrity, it never equated from my experience, right?
So when I went to school for music, cuz I went for Urban Studies and City Planning, I really like architecture …
HSV: My dad and my brother are both architects in the Bay Area!
ND: Yes, I love that. But halfway through I had a change of heart. I switched to music because I knew that it really made me happy. No matter what, music makes me happy.
HSV: Music is like mobile architecture, the movement, the moves.
ND: Yes! You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, yeah! It’s weird. So I switched to musics surrounding to god almost. I didn’t know what would happen for me musically but I knew if I committed to it 100 percent and took it super seriously, something would happen for me. if I didn’t know what but I just had full faith and hope in music alone. And god just kind of put a lot of things in front of my path that showed me I was really good at teaching music. And then I noticed how good it made me feel. And then I saw how well I was treated, not just monetarily but by people.
People take me seriously as a musician, and that’s something that’s been really hard for me in my life but it’s been really cool, it’s been super rewarding. I never thought just committing myself to music would lead (gesturing to the room) to this!
HSV: Can you tell me just a little bit about the actual process, you know, this is an amazing spot for an amazing mission. But making this happen? I mean have you been at this since pre-covid? Had you been thinking of this area?
ND: Yeah, so I had this in my head for years, probably about 8 years total. That logo that you see out front? The first iterations of that were 6 or 7 years ago at this point, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I worked at AirBnB in their lounge teaching private lessons. I was just doing a bunch of weird freelance stuff, and I didn’t know what the heck I wanted to do. But the group lesson thing was something that I really wanted to do — and I’m really excited to do that here! I can’t wait!
HSV: (panning room) This is the room, ladies and gentlemen!
ND: We’re gonna have jam nights too.
HSV: Ooooh!
ND: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like Grateful Dead night, blues night, jazz night — pay like $50, something like that for 2 hours, meet some neighbors, pick some tunes, and jam!
HSV: What’a the capacity in this room? How many can do the jam?
ND: Probably I would five to six people maximum, but that’s enough! You know, we don’t really need too many more people than that. It gets real noisy beyond that, and you really gotta know your assignment if you’re gonna play with people.
HSV: While we’re on that subject, let me just ask you this, because all my friends and neighbors that are musicians — a lot of musicians in the ‘hood clearly — are you gonna have some sort of monthly music get together where people can come and listen to a band, a speakeasy type thing?
ND: So my wife is a fine artist and I’m a musician, and there are a lot of musicians in the area and we’re always stoked to meet more. We’re talking about doing certain types of community events and shows. We’re not really sure what that looks like. We might do a sip and paint night here. We’re not sure. We have a lot of things that we want to do for the community.
But at the very base value, part of our curriculum will be quarterly recitals. So we will have a Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall solstice-equinox recital to honor the seasons. All of our students are expected to play those. I’m really hoping to have original music in these, on top of covers and what our students have been working on. But we want songwriting to be a focal point of music because, again, one thing that makes me good at teaching is I know what I missed out on. And one of the things that I missed out on was how to write music and how to record music, and that’s something that we want to make a standard of our curriculum. We’ll teach you how to read the music for your instrument, we’ll teach you how to play your instrument too, but we’ll also teach you how to write the music that you want to hear and the music that you want to play and we’ll help you record that so you can share it with the world. This is the 21st century, so electronics and stuff like that are part of the musical idiom, that’s part of the language. DJ lessons — all that, all music, I’m very dead serious about that. And if you think your instrument is too weird, try me! I’ll try to figure out how to get that happening.
HSV: The spoons?
ND: Yeah, whatever! (Laughter)
HSV: Do you have recording capacity in here?
ND: We’re doing the laptop Ableton stuff right now, so just super living room studio.
HSV: Yeah! Look what I’m doing (phone as video camera) for a magazine …
ND: Exactly. But as time goes on and the client base goes up, we’ll definitely have enough capacity to be able to get you guys all kinds of cool equipment, like, for real!
HSV: Now what about Mr. Natural over there? When you were first constructing this joint and I walked by and I was like, “What’s going on in there?” And you told me about it and you said that it was a healthy competition.
ND: It’s a healthy competitive relationship I’m trying to have. I want our students to play with all of the other businesses who do the same. I’m to trying to take business from anyone. I think this is an underserved community. By all means, if you like Mr. Natural’s style go for it! I love Mr. Natural! I met him a several times.
HSV: This is an underserved community and there are a lot of people that want to learn!
ND: Yes! And I know he is right there, for sure. I’ve talked to him before and he’s a super-cool dude. Like I say, go for him if you want to. But this is a different thing that we have going on here I think. If this isn’t your flavor, by all means go to him!
HSV: And Amoeba Records, have you tapped in with them.
ND: Oddly enough, I was talking to them about 2019. Do you remember the old medical doctors’ licensing up above?
HSV: Yes!
ND: That was vacated after the 2017 legislation.
HSV: The medical marijuana thing, yeah.
ND: Yeah, exactly.
HSV: Yeah, I actually got my card up there. I didn’t know how to do it! How does this work?!?
ND: We all went up there!
It was the 2017 legislation that that office was null and void kind of. They lost a lot of clientele, so that had been vacant for a couple of years so I was talking to Joe at Amoeba —
HSV: Joe Goldmark — love ya, Joe!
ND: Yeah, I was talking go him out renting that space up above cuz I thought that would’ve been like a perfect integration of space where it’s a record store and then there’s a music store, it would’ve been perfect. Anyway, we all know what happened in 2020, so that all died.
And I was thinking Cole Valley mostly just because it’s family friendly, children type stuff — this is like 4 or 5 years ago. And also the price point. The Haight Ashbury is super super coveted. We all know what happened to RVCA, right? This is a big deal, this is an international place.
HSV: And the music store on Haight is gone. And Club Deluxe.
ND: It’s sad, but it’s a privilege to have a business on this street.
HSV: That’s kind of my initial reaction to you being here. I was like, bless you for landing this, man!
ND: So that’s why I was thinking Cole Valley and surrounding-ish areas just mainly for logistical reasons it would probably be easier. And then, I don’t know, god just literally put this in front of me. The prices were good, the time was right, people were tired of the vacancies — so yeah!
I was hoping to grow into the Haight Ashbury eventually. I had NO idea I was gonna start on Haight.
HSV: This just feels so frickin’ right! (Panning down hall and steps to front window on Haight). You’re looking at Haight. It reminds me of that story of Jerry Garcia playing in the back of a music shop down in Palo Alto on New Year’s Eve I think it was, banging on the banjo and Bobby heard him and walked all the way to the back and there’s Jerry! It’s the same kind of like — people are doing stuff, the Haight is out there … it’s just such a perfect spot.
ND: It is!
HSV: The only thing we need to do is get rid of that bus stop. Tell me about that.
ND: The bus stop — I don’t really want to talk …
HSV: Okay, stop! I don’t do politics so you’re right!
ND: Me, I do music, baby!
HSV: We possibly look forward to that not being where it is right now.
ND: I love the bus stop, but the shelter seems to be a shelter for crime and not for citizens. I’m not hear to tolerate bad behavior and that’s what seems to happen.
HSV: Anyways!
ND: Yeah, anyway!
HSV: Let’s end on a good note! Let’s walk back to the front. I can’t wait to come play the blues!
ND: Yeah, anytime! Especially while we’re growing our client base. Come hang out, come play!
HSV: Careful what you wish for!
ND: Because at some point I’m gonna get way too busy to just hang out.
HSV: I know you are! You’re gonna be, you are! I know you are, dude!
ND: I mean, today was a really cool day. We had our first drum lesson! I woke up this morning to a beautiful [inaudible].
HSV: So how many lessons have you had since you opened?
ND: I think 4 or 5. Normally I teach about 70 to 80 students a week.
HSV: When you say normally, was that at the AirBnB and out of your house?
ND: Yeah, 70 to 80 students, and that’s not crazy for me. I’m here for it. There’s nothing I’d rather do than play music with you all day! If I could get even more students than that, even better.
HSV: So let’s say — I’m trying to do a day in the life of this place. So you’re back there, you’re teaching a student, I come in and I’m like, “Hey! I want to take a lesson!” And there will be someone sitting here (pan to front desk)
ND: And there’ll be somebody sitting there.
HSV: And they’ll say he’s booked to 5 today or he has nothing until tomorrow … and then book a session and come back? Is that the idea?
ND: Exactly. And like I said, I went to SFSU, I’ve been playing music my whole life, and I’ve been living here half my life, so at this point I do know a lot of professional musicians around the Bay Area. And as the need grows, we will be hiring more teachers as well. So I’m not gonna be the only one teaching here, we’ll have a whole community of mentors for people to come and learn music.
HSV: Yay! That’s beautiful.
And to wrap it up — I won’t take any more of your time. (Panning to front area) God, it’s so pretty.
ND: Thank you.
HSV: And what’s your wife’s name again?
ND: Crystal Britt. Here handle is Crystaaalion. I think it has like 5 “Ls” And you’ll see her come up.
HSV: I’ll put that in the notes.
Fantastic. I look forward to hanging out with you guys. I didn’t get to have a glass of champagne at your opening, we’ll do that some other time.
ND: Neither did I! (Laughter)
HSV: You had a huge spread, and of course Dean Preston was in here.
ND: Thank you everybody that came out! I had so much fun. And seeing every age and demographic of people. I kind of saw that in my mind’s eye. I had waking dreams about it, and to see it in real life? Thank you for making my dreams come true, everybody that came! Really appreciate it.
HSV: Thank you for making our dreams come true! I’ve been like, “Where’s the music?!”
Last question: This is the Haight Street Voice. It’s hyper local with a global perspective. What would you like to say to the Haight community and communities everywhere?
ND: Hyper local: I’m half Mexican, I’m latino, half of my family is from here and I live a block away. And then global perspective is, I’ve lived and traveled many places in the world, and I’ve also not just dedicated myself to music but to ALL music no matter where it comes from in the world. So I think I match the vibe of the Haight Street Voice — at least I hope I do!
HSV: Yay! Thank you so much!
ND: You’re most welcome!
HSV: Come on down here and, like you said, play a tambourine, maracas …
ND: Let’s jam!
HSV: Thank you so much!
ND: You’re welcome! (waving) Bye everybody! See ya soon!
Hey People! Diggin’ this digital experience of Haight Street Voice? Hop on the Haight Street Voice bus TODAY!
