fall arts preview - Devendra Banhart lets his freak flag fly - The onetime experimental folkie gives free rein to his far-reaching musical influences. Let those vibes reverberate through the canyon.

In Los Angeles you can take your pick of popular-music's sacred sites, from Central Avenue near downtown to Laurel Canyon, Whittier Boulevard on the Eastside to the Sunset Strip. But from the wooden deck of his Topanga Canyon house, Devendra Banhart can drink in his own special dose of rock history.
"You see that red house there, it's got the triangle beams, right there," he says, pointing toward a distant ridge. "That's where Neil [Young] recorded 'After the Gold Rush' and 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.'
"And as you know, 10 minutes up the road is the remains of the Roadhouse, where the Doors wrote 'Roadhouse Blues' and where Crazy Horse was the house band. Woody Guthrie was one of the first artists that lived in Topanga."
All those artists figure strongly in Banhart's music, and maybe someday the red, wood-frame house that he rents with his guitarist, Noah Georgeson, will be referenced by future students of local music lore.
Unkempt and minimally landscaped, this ramshackle Xanadu is the nerve center of the international, experimental folk-music community that's congealed around the charismatic singer-songwriter over the last five years. Banhart squirms when it's framed that way, but he can't easily deny that his music and his moves attract attention from like-minded musicians and a growing network of fans.