“El Cerrito Place”
Charlie Robison
Written by Keith Gattis
2004
The lure and the danger of Hollywood have long been a source of inspiration across popular culture. From classic films like Sunset Boulevard and L.A. Confidential to the occasional country single like “I Sang Dixie,” “Act Naturally,” and “If Hollywood Don’t Need You (I Still Do),” the tension between the glamorous A-list and the very real struggle to make it the entertainment business is ripe for compelling works of art.
Back in 2001, director David Lynch released what is, in the estimation of many critics, the definitive film about getting lost in the pursuit of Hollywood stardom, Mulholland Drive. In that landmark film, a bright-eyed young actress is wholly consumed by the machinations of a surreal, nightmarish version of Los Angeles. By the film’s end, it’s an open question as to who the young woman truly was and whether the actress from the first act had ever really been there at all.
Keith Gattis never said in an interview that he was inspired by Mulholland Drive or if he’d even seen the film, but its sense of mystery and displacement is all over his song “El Cerrito Place.” In 2002, Gattis was working as Dwight Yoakam’s bandleader; his own solo career had been a non-starter, with just a couple of singles from his self-titled debut record scraping the bottom of the airplay chart back in 1996. Because Yoakam was based in California, Gattis was living in the Hollywood Hills. He wrote “El Cerrito Place” in 2002 and named the song after the apartment complex where he had been living.
A demo of the song had made its way to Charlie Robison, an artist who, like Gattis, originated on the Texas country circuit in the mid-90s. Robison was royalty within that scene, where he and his brother, Bruce, and sister-in-law, Kelly Willis, were big names with the “alternative country” base. Robison was coming off a surprise hit at the time. “I Want You Bad,” the lead single from his 2001 album Step Right Up, had actually made the top 40 at country radio, and his new label, DualTone Records, was looking to build on that momentum.
Robison knew he had a winner in “El Cerrito Place,” and he delivered what was the most sophisticated and most soulful vocal performance of his career when he recorded his rendition of the song. He co-produced the track with the legendary Lloyd Maines, and the shifting dynamics between the spare, minimalist verses and more powerful chorus heighten the sense of disorientation as the narrator continues his search for a lover who has vanished in L.A. The specter of that lover is given voice by none other than Natalie Maines– Lloyd’s daughter and bandmate of Robison’s wife at the time, Emily Erwin of The Chicks– who provides harmony vocals on the song’s chorus.
What’s so immediately striking about Robison’s performance is his attempt at code-switching. He downplays his accent in the opening verse and delivers his lines in the smooth croon of a lounge singer, only to drop the pretense by the first pre-chorus. There’s a lifetime’s worth of resentment in the way he sneers, “And all them pretty people / Up on El Cerrito Place / They all got something in their pockets / All got something on their face,” and that’s the point at which the single becomes not just Robison’s finest but a true all-timer of a country record. And credit to Gattis for holding to the underclass vernacular: “All them pretty people” says everything about this narrator and exactly how out-of-place he is.
It’s no wonder, then, why the locals view Robison with such skepticism. He’s quickly revealed himself to be a Texas roughneck, and what could he possibly be doing out in the Hollywood Hills? “These Pioneertown people / Ain’t got nothing to say / And if they might’ve seen you / They ain’t giving you away,” he sighs with a resignation that he’s fully on his own. And when he asks, “Were you even here at all?” the song becomes a question less of who and more of what he’s been searching for. There’s no resolution to “El Cerrito Place,” and certainly no indication that the love his narrator has lost has any intent of being found.
Given the complexity and ambiguity of the narrative and its five-plus minute running time, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the single failed to chart.
Robison simply didn’t have the star power to get something of this caliber onto radio playlists by default. Kenny Chesney, however, did have sufficient clout, and he was able to push a solid cover of “El Cerrito Place”– it’s one of his best singles, incidentally, with Grace Potter standing in for Natalie Maines on harmony– all the way to a #10 peak in 2012.
By then, Robison had pivoted back to his independent roots, continuing to release high-caliber records that drew from both Texas country and heartland rock influences. As with the object of his search in “El Cerrito Place,” superstardom remained elusive, though Robison’s reputation as a central figure in the evolution of the alt-country / Red Dirt / Americana scene only deepened over time.
It’s odd, perhaps, for a songwriter of Robison’s caliber to have a cover as his own bid for immortality, but that speaks to the perfection of this record. “El Cerrito Place” hinges on the peculiarities of its Los Angeles setting, but it’s also a single about how we reconcile losses we cannot possibly recover.
Thinking specifically of the key players and relationships tied to Robison and this song, the past twenty years have been brutal. The Chicks were driven largely into exile. Adrian Pasdar, who directed the music video, truly FAFO’ed and had his failures documented on one of pop’s most scathing divorce records, The Chicks’ Gaslighter. Robison’s marriage to Emily Erwin ended in 2008. Hell, even the Bruce Robison – Kelly Willis marriage dissolved. Gattis was killed in a farming accident in the Spring of 2023, at just 52 years old. And Robison, having retired from touring from 2018 through 2022 due to chronic health issues, died just a few months after Gattis did, in September 2023. He was only 59.
Now, more than twenty years out from its initial release, Charlie Robison’s “El Cerrito Place” bears the weight of even greater losses and more acute grief. And the world still turns for them pretty people, dancing over the stars, oblivious to whether the rest of us were ever here at all.
Additional Listening:
Alternate Recordings
Keith Gattis, 2005
Kenny Chesney, 2012
Spiritual Sister Recordings
Rebekah Del Rio’s “Llorando” (cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”) from Mulholland Drive, 2001
Another Classic From Charlie Robison:
“My Hometown,” 1998
Country Universe: A 20th Anniversary Retrospective
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