Time moves along and—bam!—all of a sudden, you’ve not done something for a nice, little period of time. Pretty soon it becomes a pattern. Even a habit. And then? You adjust, find comfort in inaction or die. Whichever comes first.
Last weekend, business took me to Cherokee Street and, with a couple hours to kill, I started ticking off a few items from a life’s list, including a first-time visit to C.A.M.P. (not sure how that never happened before) and then a couple trips to visit shooting locations for Lo-Fi Cherokee. For a few years now, Bill Streeter’s been rolling a large crew through a variety of Cherokee Street businesses for a run-and-gun, one-day shooting experience of a single: band, venue, and song. Then, the whole operation packs up and moves down the street, in a west-to-east motion.
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Caught two bands on Saturday, in very different locations.
The first was Auset Music Project, which performed at Kismet Creative Center, a combination art studio, record shop, performance space, and community room, just a few yards removed from Cherokee on Iowa Street. For this show, the core group was joined by a handful of additional, talented musicians, all of them standing in a circle near the small venue’s front door. Within a minute or two of my arrival, the group played through a rehearsal take of the song, “I Am Here,” then settled into a moment of inter-band conversation, tuning and the like. And then the storm hit.
Around a dozen members of the Lo-Fi team poured into the room, joining sound engineer Tazu Marshall. With them, came another couple dozen fans, clamoring for good views of the action. If you’ve watched even a single Lo-Fi video, you realize that the tech crew’s not “going for invisible,” so folks with cameras, lighting elements, you-name-it, fanned within and around the group. The room was already in a quiet place, let’s call it, so there wasn’t much need to calm things; even without instruction, lots of folks reached into pocket and turned off phones. As Streeter called out directorial instructions, the place was calm, respectful. Co-curator Sonia Dae Slankard, just before the shoot, grabbed an empty cassette case, and placed her phone inside of it, catching the song for Facebook Live.
Auset Sarno and crew played through “I Am Here” again, and it sounded wonderful. One take’s all that was needed, and as quickly as the crew arrived, they were gone. Half the audience lingered for a moment, either browsing or talking to the band, with the other half pouring onto Iowa Street. That group then split, with half grabbing a smoke, the others joining the video crew on the way to the next location.
It was quite the first-person introduction to the project.
Hours on, the project arrived at the new Earthbound Beer facility, just across Kismet on Cherokee at Iowa. For the last year, folks (like me) have been passing by the building’s exterior, wondering what was happening inside, as the brewery’s trio of owners have attacked one of the most ambitious renovations seen in St. Louis City over the last decade. This afternoon allowed gawkers a chance to see the place in action; though Earthbound’s products weren’t pouring, there was a bucket of ice filled with Stags. But beer might’ve been the backdrop on this day, anyway, slotted behind the music of the Gaslight Squares (look for a feature on them in St. Louis Magazine in May) and the simple desire to experience the new space. Those elements didn’t disappoint.
The audience may have, though.
The band was playing a small mezzanine, which was off-limits to all but band and crew. To listen, you just had to have the power or hearing; but seeing required folks to stand in a wide semi-circle. It was a cool view. Up above, frontman TJ Muller joked about a fear of heights, then introduced his band and off they went. When the take was finished, instead of packing up the circus for the next stop, Streeter shouted down to the audience; it was a short, salty message to keep quiet and was very much earned by the crowd.
Earthbound’s a big room, full of unfinished, hard surfaces and the audience’s constant chit-chat wasn’t exactly heard on the first floor, but was surely there in the headphones of the crew. For the second take, most observed the vow of silence. (We’ll pass on naming one prominent person in the room who chatted the entire song. No hints. Don’t ask.) A few folks, obviously now getting their day-drink on, were either dancing wildly, entering/exiting the building quickly, generally making themselves known. It was obvious that the vibe had changed in a couple hours; it was more loose, a little more fueled by alcohol, as well as art. With any project of this kind, that’s gonna happen.
Though tempted to check out a third gig, we parted the scene and headed off of Cherokee; at least for a few hours, by which point the after-party had kicked off at nearby Off Broadway. The Lo-Fi experience was quality people-watching, for sure, and now that the seal’s broken, there’s a good chance of a return next year; the earlier in the day, the better.
Lo-Fi Cherokee will debut all of this year’s videos at RKDE, the venue about 2720 Cherokee, on May 20.
Sights and Sounds: Quite a bit of great reading on local music in the past week, or two, including on this blog last week. Joseph Hess penned a great piece on Vernacular Trio, which has just released an album, “Parlance.” Wrote Hess: “While the pieces are not restrained to a beat, the band coalesces and exudes a grinding style of rhythmic sense. The three tend to balance tone around a warbling epicenter and to them, the songs are more about density and flow than notes and bars. Even the members can’t pick themselves out from the recording.” Looking forward to picking up on this album.
A spate of new releases included the long (as in loooooooong-awaited) follow-up album from Finn’s Motel, headed up by songwriter Joe Thebeau and mixed/mastered by longtime collaborator Matt Meyer. Using social media to bleed out a track or two over the past few months, Thebeau’s upped the ante just a bit, offering up a half-dozen songs on the group’s Bandcamp page. There, you can sample those six, as well as pre-order the full album, in either CD or digital-only form. We’ll see if we can get some words in with the enigmatic songwriter soon. (That’s a joke, Joe. But, really, let’s chat.)
Art Dwyer’s been a presence on our St. Louis community radio station since the first week KDHX went live on-air, making him one of a handful of folks who can make that claim. With an event coming up to celebrate the station’s early years, “Stories from the Tower,” the station’s website is going to run interviews with some of the original heads, and no better place to start than with Dwyer. Interviewing him in a fun read is programmer Sean Smothers, who gets plenty of gems out of the “Blues in the Night” host, a la: “I mean I don’t want to start a fight with any other radio station because it’s just not necessary. We’ve got something thing going on here no one else does and sometimes I have to listen to other radio stations and see what’s going on and when I do, I know I’m in the right place. Right now the music scene is better than it’s ever been and why shouldn’t KDHX be part of that because KDHX helped open the doors to that and allowed it to grow and expand and be heard. You know there’s young cats who were thirteen years old, twelve years old coming down to the Oyster Bar to play, who are now 30, 35, 40 and they went on the journey and now they’re back in town and they’re back for a reason. The music is really something here.” Seriously, you should be reading that piece, not this teaser.
In the interests of disclosure, Ethan Leinwand co-curates a Music Monday series at the Tick Tock Tavern, where I have an ownership interest. However, I’ve been a fan of his since meeting him a few years back, and this story in St. Louis Magazine is proof. Recently, Leinwand took his act to several European countries and a bit of that trip’s passed along here, with Leinwand’s performance at the Pianola Museum in Amsterdam:
