There was very good news from the city of Martinez the other day. Against every possible odd they are continuing their fine tradition of donating to our next beaver festival next year. Thank you very much for helping to keep beavers on everyone’s mind.
I can’t help it. I’m in love with this:
Beavers, cardinals and cicadas are the session players on this Nashville album recorded in Shelby Bottoms
The most serene place in Nashville just might be a park bench at dusk in Shelby Bottoms. And now, you can be there whenever you want thanks to Camille Faulkner.
The local musician, who has toured with indie supergroup Boygenius, just released a new album: 18 tracks of field recordings from Shelby Bottoms.
The Shelby Project started with Faulkner pulling out her iPhone and recording the sounds of frogs in Shelby while the sun was setting one night. She started recording more sounds of Shelby and then got serious.
Great bird song in Nashville.. This could be one of those machines that help you fall asleep.
“I asked the internet if anyone had a Zoom recorder,” she says. After she had a collection of recordings, such as the sound of a beaver having a snack, a deer crossing a pond and the sound of the park during a thunderstorm, she did what a musician tends to do: she made an album.
“The Shelby Project was made as an act of love” she wrote on the description on Bandcamp.
It can feel like she captured something prehistoric — Nashville’s “land before time.” But by track three, titled “Brood XIX,” the album captures how nature changes just like we do. Those cicadas are gone now. It can feel both timeless and like a very specific snapshot of the natural world in May and June of 2024 here in Nashville.
“Slowing down and paying attention to and learning about nature has been a big thing for me,” Faulkner says.
The album is available on all streaming platforms under Faulkner’s name. And while supplies last, it’s free on CD at the nature center at Shelby — so you can feel like in you’re in the Bottoms wherever you are.
Wait for it. THe beaver chewing comes in towards the end. You have to wait but you will be so relaxed by then you won’t mind a whit.
Happy Birthday to the hard working English chap that won the beaver lottery!
Pixar Reveals ‘Hoppers,’ a Beaver Body-Swap Movie Starring Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, Piper Curda
If you heard loud hooting and hollering from the vicinity of Martinez yesterday it was because of the awesome announcement that Pixar is now revealing a new movie “Hoppers” written and directed by Daniel Chong. It feature a young girl who ,manages to put her brain inside a robotic beaver to stop the evil mayor’s development project.
And, before you ask, no I’m not kidding.
According to Pixar, Hoppers tells the story of a girl who transfers her brain into a robot beaver in order to live among real beavers. Avatar but with beavers? The film stars Bobby Moynihan, Piper Curda, and Jon Hamm, who plays a mayor trying to destroy the beavers. Delightful.
Here’s a story board for the evil mayor Jon Hamm
A smarmy mayor who looks like a shiny hero for the cameras and makes devil deals behind off camera? Be still my heart.
The girl winds up befriending a regal beaver, King George, and uniting the animals to fight off the plans of a real estate developer. The movie is targeted for release in spring 2026.
Okay her name is Mabel and not Heidi but do you HONESTLY think that a man working 25 miles away in Emeryville until 2012 never ever heard anything or saw a news clip about the famous Martinez Beavers? Honestly?
Chong, who posted with giddy excitement in the hours before the panel to say he’s “been holding this secret for 4 years,” is no stranger to feature animation. His previous credits include storyboard work on Disney’s Bolt, Pixar’s Cars 2 and Inside Out, and Illumination’s The Lorax. Chong left Pixar to pursue his own projects, creating We Bare Bears and its movie-sized finale for Cartoon Network. Shortly after, the animator moved on from the series to begin work on Hoppers.
Hey you know what is right across the street from Pixar? ,Folkmanis puppet company who has been donating to our beaver festival since 2008. And you know where Daniel Chong went to college? That would be Cal Arts the same school where our buddy Ian Timothy Boone of the famed “Beaver Creek” claymation series went.
So Yeah. It could be a coincidence, And he might not have read Ben’s book either. But I prefer to think otherwise.
Welcome to the beaver believers club, Daniel!
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