The Story 

Some collaborations begin with a product. This one began with a conversation.
Red Bay Coffee and artist Chaz Bear came together through a shared appreciation for creativity, craftsmanship, and the moments that bring people together. At the center of this collaboration is a limited edition can featuring Chaz's original artwork and our beloved Coltrane coffee. Beyond the coffee, this page is where the collaboration continues to unfold.

Throughout the coming weeks, we'll be sharing conversations between Red Bay founder Keba Konte and Chaz Wick, exploring the ideas, inspiration, and creative process behind this project. You'll also find new stories, artwork features, and exclusive content added here as the collaboration evolves.

We invite you to check back often and experience each new chapter as it's released.

The Conversation

KEBA:
All right, so I haven't really heard your take on this yet, what we’re looking at here. What's this all about?

CHAZ:
You know, I wanted to sort of just capture what I like to see when I first wake up and make my coffee. It's kind of like this moment of Zen. You just got your coffee, you’re about to read whatever it is, your printed matter. You know, the checkered floor is kind of a reference to my style and the kitchen setting, and then this frame here that looks kind of like an artwork, but it's also a window to the outside. 

This is like a little moment -  I almost wanted the consumer, whoever's making coffee, to have this meta moment, where this is portrayed in real life after they make their coffee.

Connections between coffee and creativity.

CHAZ
I think the biggest connection for me between coffee and creativity is probably the cafe itself - the space of being around like-minded creatives and artists and forward-thinking people. I love being in cafes for that reason. You wake up, you start drawing, the caffeine gets those creative juices flowing. But what about you?

KEBA
Caffeine definitely gets my creative juices flowing. For me there are so many levels of opportunity for creativity -  from the farm level, what I witness in how the new generations are trying to innovate and infuse coffee with different flavors, to fun ways to brew it, even signature drinks, mixing in charcoal or bee pollen, cold foams, all the flavor combinations, that's a fun opportunity. But I think for me, when you get that rush of coffee and it gives you that energy and creative juice, but in a positive way,  not a wired kind of way.

CHAZ
My first experience with coffee was in high school, next to the music venue we'd always go to on Friday nights. There was a cafe that sold crepes. Not a third-wave kind of cafe or anything like that. But in between sets, while the rest of the venue got drinks or alcohol, all the underage kids would go next door and get some coffee. So my connection was coffee and music -  they always kind of go hand in hand.

KEBA
In San Francisco, in the early '90s, there was a venue called the Upper Room — made for young people, or people who were underage, but also people who didn't drink. It was a music-venue nightclub that just served coffee and soft drinks.

CHAZ 
That's really cool. Would you happen to know how people discovered caffeine in coffee, or using it as a drink — was it a mistake?

KEBA 
So the legend goes that in Ethiopia there was a goat herder, walking and feeding his goats, and they came upon these coffee cherries — the red, ripe fruit, with the coffee bean as the seed inside. The goats started eating the cherries, and he saw them start jumping around, kind of dancing. He went back to the village and brought somebody back, and told them that the goats were dancing. As the legend goes, they said, "Ah, this is nothing," and threw the cherries into the fire — and then they started to smell it as it roasted, and put two and two together. 

Music to drink coffee too. 

KEBA
I was thinking about that. There are a million songs, but "Family Affair" by Sly and the Family Stone got stuck on my rotation this year, and I memorized all the lyrics. It's such a simple song, maybe two or three little scenarios he sings about, but the vocals are just so classic.

CHAZ
I feel like jazz goes really well with coffee. I also do a lot of ambient music with coffee. But yesterday I did Bob Dylan, which was a good fit. I watched the Bob Dylan Chalamet movie on the plane the other day, and just watching them make coffee and have cigarettes in the morning, it's such a ritual.

KEBA
That mood, that environment.

CHAZ
And I recently found a really good Ethio jazz record. It’s in the "Éthiopiques" series, the first one, I think - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Gebru. Really beautiful, solo piano.

The Soundtrack

Coffee, art, and music have always had a way of bringing people together.
As part of the Chaz Bear x Red Bay Coffee collaboration, Chaz created an exclusive DJ mix inspired by the same creative spirit that shaped the artwork on this limited edition release.

 

 

The Artwork

 

Learning by Doing and Happy Accidents

KEBA
So, how do you make coffee these days?

CHAZ 
I'm a moka pot guy. I do the stove top espresso. I tried the machines, but they're too finicky. Now I'm at that place where it's like, do I get another machine, or just stick with the tried and true?

I remember teaching myself all the different techniques for coffee -  researching grind sizes and grinders, trying to find what flavors I liked most. I think, when it comes to being self-taught overall, there's something rewarding about making mistakes and figuring it out. It’s the same with music - realizing your input's too high, or something simple. I think it's important to learn those mistakes on your own, with no pressure of presenting it to someone else. I mentioned when we were in the roastery, but I just imagine all the things that you must be learning daily or weekly from those machines.

KEBA 
Well, I think most of my lessons actually came from sitting right here with a little propane stove and a Whirley-Pop popcorn maker, roasting coffee in one of those things. Because, in the beginning, as a founder, you're doing everything: roasting, pitching, grinding, delivering, selling, all of it. When you're getting into something you really love, it's a lot, but I loved it. Then as the business grows, you need to specialize, and you find people who focus on roasting all the time and learn those nuances. But my early discovery was here. And yes, you can read a book, or have someone come do it for you, but by making those mistakes yourself, it's not just rewarding, you learn it in a more visceral, real, experiential way.

CHAZ 
Yeah, you have to jump in. It's not just about the research, it's about finding out why and how the process works. I make mistakes to this day with music in the recording studio. Sometimes those turn out to be happy mistakes. I'm sure you've found a couple of happy mistakes too.

KEBA 
Yeah, I think my most memorable happy mistakes happened in artwork, actually. Things do turn up in coffee, but in my own art practice, when I'm making something and it's just not working out, or it didn't adhere, or something didn't land right, the process of getting back on track or correcting it ends up giving the piece more layers, which I always appreciate. The one piece I'm thinking of is a portrait of a young woman's face, half-lit, silhouetted on one side, lit on the other, with a small Bantu-knot hairstyle, looking directly into the camera. It was a large piece, probably six feet, a portrait blow-up. And a portion of the base didn't adhere, and it came off during the process. I had to rebuild that portion with a different piece of wood and different layers. At first I was like, "Oh no, I put so much time and labor into this piece," but once I brought it back with those layers and the different wood, it had a presence and a quality that I really appreciated, and it influenced how I did later pieces. I liked the layers so much that I started intentionally adding them in.

CHAZ 
Nice. I first started in photography myself, actually. That was my first creative passion. My high school had a darkroom, and I figured out all the rights and wrongs in there. But when I think about visual art, I think I've learned a lot through painting. My happy mistake was actually realizing how much more pre-production my process needed. At first I thought I could just throw paint on the canvas, but with a background in photography and design, eventually I realized I wanted artwork that was more graphic. I wanted some elements to have a non-handmade feel. It took a good five years to figure out how to tape things up. 

KEBA 
When you started talking about the darkroom, it reminded me of another happy mistake of my own. Have you ever exposed the paper, put it in the developer, and accidentally turned on the light? [Chaz: Ha, I don't think so.] Well, you know that's not supposed to happen, or you'll expose the paper. My mom was actually a photographer. She built a darkroom in our basement, then went back to school and started working, and I kind of inherited the darkroom. Even in college I had my own darkroom, which was an absolute luxury to have at all hours. But one time I had a print in the developer, things were moving around, and I accidentally pulled the drawstring and turned the light on and right back off, so it was just a flash. I thought, "Well, I ruined that print," but I went through the process anyway, and what I saw were these ripples from the liquid impressed on the print. I thought, "Wow, that's actually kind of cool," so the next print I agitated the water and pulled the light on and off on purpose. I got a kind of solarized effect with the ripples, and came up with some really cool prints that way. In photography there's still so much room for experimentation, especially when it's analog and chemistry-based.

CHAZ 
Yeah, I feel like there's lots of room for error in the analog world. Same thing with music, performing something in one take, as opposed to chopping something up and making loops out of it. There's something beautiful and natural about human imperfection. I think capturing that is the magic part.

KEBA
When you hear these old jazz records from the '60s, everybody is mic'd up, maybe in different spaces, but they're all just playing it live, one take or a few takes. How do you think about that compared to modern practices?

CHAZ 
It’s maybe kind of cheesy, but I love to think about how each of those musicians has their own morning routine and day-to-day life, and they're all going into that room for those six minutes, however long the song is, and it comes out as this beautiful thing. Like some recording from Blue Note or something, I think about how coincidental all of that is, and how rare those interactions really are. Because out of an eight or ten hour workday, it's those three minutes of performance that are the magic. I think about that when I listen to music. This person is in front of this microphone, this air is being captured, and that’s it, that's the performance, that's all you get. Even when I sing vocals myself, I prioritize my voice going straight into the microphone more than anything else. Capturing the air is the most important thing. I can play something through a digital keyboard or a sampler, but it's not the same as getting that life force.

KEBA
Yeah, life force, air. I hadn't really thought of it as "air," I like that framing. Of course it's vibration, but it's the vibration moving through the air. The air is the medium.

But yeah I do think about that too. How each of those musicians, participants, producers, everybody, took a different path to get to that same spot, and joined to create a confluence of air, creating a moment that will never happen again.

CHAZ 
That cannot be recreated.

KEBA 
Right. And when you look back at some of those sessions where the greats were all on the set together, it’s even more miraculous.

CHAZ 
As a photographer, I can relate to that idea of a moment. Especially doing street photography, you see that moment, and you've got to get that shot. I'm like, I'm not going to walk down this path again, the light's not going to do that again, that person's not going to be there again. This is the time to take the shot.

KEBA
To relate this back to coffee, sometimes folks will ask me what the best cup of coffee I've ever had is. And I think the best cup of coffee is always about the coffee experience - what you're experiencing in that morning, with that cup. It's not always the precious, high-scoring coffee that tastes like X, Y, and Z. It's when all the elements are right: the time, the temperature, the company, the music, the whole environment, the mindset. And the coffee is like, "Wow, this tastes fantastic," and it could just be a simple cup of coffee. So much of my best cups of coffee are about the experience, and authentically enjoying that cup. Have you had that, where in your heart you know it's just a regular cup of coffee, but everything else is making it magic?

CHAZ
Yeah, the best cups of coffee for me are the ones I can take outside, whether at home in my backyard, or on a terrace somewhere exotic. Just having that with fresh air is part of the experience, the environment informs the cup of coffee, the way you enjoy it. I can even have a really poorly made cup of coffee from a diner, but as long as that diner experience is pure - the music's right, the company's right - it's fulfilling in every way, it just hits.

KEBA 
The same cup of coffee, brewed the same way, just hits different sometimes. That tells me it's not just what's in the cup and how it's brewed, but what you're bringing to it.