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The Kondors: Buddy Stubbs, Jon Faurot, Willie Rubio, Jubal Steadman. Photo by Calvin Turnbull.
Will Stenberg was 24 when he came home.
He’d been away for five years—and like most Mendo kids with musical ambitions, he’d left as soon he was able: first to Vermont, where he was briefly enrolled at Bennington, the liberal arts college, then to New York City, where he was a door-to-door shill for the Working Families Party. A trip to Memphis followed, as did two years in Chicago, where he commuted long hours on the El, worked a dreary retail job at O’Hare Airport and crashed often on a spare mattress owned by yours truly.
He never did achieve those ambitions while away—but, like a good apprentice, he studied, practiced and earned his musical chops.
By the time he returned to Fort Bragg in 2004, not only could he play a guitar and sing Hank Williams—he could write a damn fine song of his own. Which is exactly what he did with The Kerosene Kondors, a jug band that played fast and played acoustic. Stenberg became “Willie Rubio,” and the Kondors became something of an institution on the coast, playing rowdy, packed shows and releasing two records (they’re working on a third). Along with a handful of other local musicians, Stenberg also began the complicated task of cultivating a music scene in an area where the young, ambitious and musically inclined do exactly what he did: They leave.
In this Q&A, Will Stenberg talks about the Kondors, music on the Mendocino Coast and the building of a small, rural music scene.
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