Photo by Mabel Suen
18andCounting at The Ready Room.
Won’t pretend to be objective about this one, no I won’t. On the night that we meet, Stan Chisholm’s taken the night off of work and… your writer was the person who filled the shift. For the last month, the DJ and visual artist (who works with and solo of the Screwed Arts Collective) has been preparing his band, TheOnlyEnsemble, for a daytime set at LouFest next Sunday, which has cut back on the money gigs that he uses to fill time between artistic endeavors.
Nor will I pretend to be able to fully attack what Chisholm’s up-to in TheOnlyEnsemble, save to say that the group’s blend of personalities and instrumentation is one-of-a-kind in St. Louis. Just wrapping hands around the lead vocalist’s talents is tricky enough. Christian Schaeffer of the RFT, earlier this summer, came as close as you can come to nailing it:
Pigeonhole Stan Chisholm at your peril. You may have heard him spin at spaces ranging from the Royale to word-of-mouth warehouse parties, or you might have seen his expansive murals at the City Museum. But as a multidisciplinary artist who performs under the aegis 18andCounting, Chisholm spent much of 2016 working on TheBirdsAtThisHour, the contents of which he doled out over a series of shows last fall. The document itself shows his versatility as a performer, and here he leads TheOnlyEnsemble—a hodge-podge of percussion, violin and didgeridoo — and manipulates beats and synths while laying a sometimes spare, sometimes opulent backdrop for his meditative verses. Chisholm is a hip-hop lyricist at heart, but his collaborative, curatorial spirit elevates 18andCounting into something unique and of a piece.
Lastly, I won’t pretend that the conversation that took place a couple nights back is fully, 100% word-accurate. It was conducted in a dark bar, after close, and, as importantly, after a band rehearsal, meaning the players were working out whatever endorphins were still running through their veins. There was a question asked, maybe two, and then words tumbled out as the band members present interviewed one another and freestyled answers to questions implied, but unasked. (There: Chisholm, vocals and sonic manipulations; Ian Quattrocchi, percussion; and Brennan England, didgeridoo; not present: violinist Sarah Vie and drummer Patrick Boland). This little oral history takes us through their original sessions for the LoFi St. Louis project in 2015 to their playing LouFest this weekend, a little over two years later.
Chisholm: When we started off, it was just for LoFi. We got together, linked together for that. Brennan was one of the first people I’d thought of. He used to see me DJing all the time and said, “if you ever need a didgeridoo in the studio, let me know." "When the hell am I going to need that? What’s my studio? Do I have a studio?" It was a strange thing, where a lot of people have asked me about collaborating, but he was very specific about it. Most people have had the assumption of "if you have some beats…" "Well, no, I need some beats myself." This offer was unique and open-ended. I didn’t know him as well as I know him now, but it was sweet and honest.
So I hit up Brennan and then hit up Louis Wall; he’d invited me to collaborate on a couple of projects. We kept missing each other on those, but eventually, we wanted to have a response to a song, adding to the studio version with live instrumentation. Louis is not a part of this now but was with us for the first few gigs; like the first four shows with us. We were searching for drummers, so I hit up Ian and a few other dudes. I knew he had the brain for it. Sarah, I didn’t know if she’d want to do it, either, and we needed someone who plays melodies at speed. I didn’t want guitars; very specifically didn’t want guitars. Wanted keys, or violin or something else. By then, James Coleman told me to hit up Bobo, who I’d never met before. A wide group of us had kinda known each other, but we were all very scattered. It was impressive how quickly that came together for LoFi.
Quattrocchi: I think I knew most of the people through Blank Space, really. Through music and art. That was the hub. That’s how I met Stan, for sure. Sarah, too. And seeing each other at shows, seeing each other play, seeing Stan DJ and connecting with him.
England: For me, I met Stan through the art community. I knew Stan as a mixed media artist and knew that he was doing visual work. At that point, I have to say that I even hired him for a gig. I was really aware of him. He approached me about the LoFi project and knew that I played the didgeridoo. He was wanting to capture something unique live and wanted it strange and droney. And at first, I was playing different didge’s, seeing what might match to the track he was trying to create. And as soon as we started digging into it, I knew what I had was too monotonal. Even simple basslines. I needed to accomplish more than one note. Initially, I started building a slide didge, one that would give more than one note. I’d seen concepts by falling through YouTube wormholes. I hadn’t seen one built like this, out of PVC, with two slides.
Quattrocchi: This was all for one show, a one-off!
Chisholm: The next invitation we got was for the Riverboat Gamblers Ball. We were buzzing off of our performance and I didn’t wanna DJ for it. We knew it’d mean a whole lot of work for me and for us. But everyone was totally down. ‘Let’s do this thing, let’s turn it out.’ All of a sudden, we were playing on a riverboat, sailing underneath the highway. We saw the chance to do so much more. It was epic to be on a riverboat playing, for our first time playing a set, like a 30-minute set.
Quattrocchi: It was almost like it never happened. We were just like, "if it goes good, it’s gone good."
Chisholm: We were mixing our sound live onstage. It sounded so stripped down, compared to what we have now. The same spirit is there, though. We have more gear now and understand our sound better. We’re starting to feel good again, with the same spirit as that first show. It was a weird unusual spot, but it worked. All that work we did ahead of time when the boat was parked. We didn’t consider the sound of the engines...
England: The didge drew all the vibrations out of the floor. At one point, I just started playing with it.
Quattrocchi: People were getting away from Brennan, who has this giant, long didgeridoo. "Whoa, what is that. Hold my vodka tonic, this guy’s coming right at me." Very odd for a first show.
England: The cool thing about a first show is that it’s the first for everyone. The first experience. There’s something about experiencing something for the first time. When you have a lack of ego, there’s an openness to witnessing something new. We really lucked out in that way. We were already open to experiencing some new stuff.
Chisholm: And everyone had bought a $40 ticket and you’re on a boat with everybody until the boat gets back. You don’t have a chance to get a drink across the street.
Quattrocchi: You go out on the deck after playing a set and you’re miles away from where you were; that’s a neat feeling. How often do you feel that when you play music? It’s like you’re getting beamed up to somewhere. We were south of the Arch when we started and when we walked out, we were under the Stan Musial Bridge. That was weird, trippy.
The conversation moves to LouFest...
Chisholm: It’ll be about a 40-minute set, 45-minutes with talk breaks in between. It’s a daytime set, so we won’t have all of our night energy.
Quattrocchi: Bobo only likes a 20- or 25-minute set. He’s a short set fanatic.
Chisholm: We’re not adapting anything, but are adding a song to the set. Should I give it up? It’s “Hunter” by Bjork. That’s a concept I’ve been sitting on a bit. Covering a non-rap song and making it a rap song.
… and then it’s onto the KCOU session.
Chisholm: We went down for the True/False Film Fest.
England: We did three songs, which you can find on YouTube. We had a short rehearsal time. (Disagreement ensues.) No. We had no rehearsal time. And just one take.
Chisholm: It was stressful, it was a maze just getting into that thing. I didn’t know if it’d be an interview, one song, more songs. I didn’t know anything. It was a whole new setup; we hadn’t recorded before. It was our first time in a studio with someone behind glass. It was a clean environment. We’d been in rooms, big or small, with speakers stacked up around us. This was next level. And then they have this new situation with Brennan...
Quattrocchi: When people run sound, they see Brennan’s rig and think "what’s this thing? What is it?" They can get nervous. But with kids at a university, they’ll try anything, so that was a nice experience.
England: I play with a Meatbox SubSynth pedal. One was released in the early-to-mid ‘90s when punk and rock musicians were trying to write hip-hop bass parts. This pedal has what’s the original chip and I’ve got one of 900-something of the remakes of this pedal. It gives you a really shaking bass sound. Bassheads in the rock community really get off on it and wonder how you’re getting all of this bass. The Meatbox was made for bands like Rage and the Chili Peppers, who really wanted to get the most of our their bass. One of the things I offer as a signature to our sound is that when I kick in the pedals, everyone is feeling it. We take it from hip-hop instrumentation, strip it down and really find ways to make it tangible.
Quattrocchi: I’ll say this for playing percussion: my father’s a lifelong percussionist, who plays fusion jazz and progressive rock. I come from a jazz background. Pat and I meshed really well. I wondered if Pat was going to want to punch me, with me playing percussion over his percussion. He’s a particular guy because he plays so precisely. But we’ve become percussion homies.
Chisholm: The drums are cracking. It’s just a party time the whole time. "Yeah, man, drums, man." These drums are a full-time party and I gotta keep up with that. Vocally, I don’t get with the "heys and hos" I’m just trying to keep up with all these drums. It’s super-fluid and I don’t think it’s ever disconnected at all. All the DJing helped me slip in-and-out with y’all. How y’all put things together in ways they’re not meant to be together. I slip in-and-out and it makes you wonder who’s in charge, who’s getting the most attention. Most of the time, I’m off on the side of the stage. I’ll be in the middle at LouFest, physically it’ll make the most sense. But, usually, I don’t have to be that. You know, I don’t like engaging the crowd, I’m just a part of the mix, the vocals are really low in the mix.
Quattrocchi: I feel the way we end a song by body language, by looking at Bobo’s.
Chisholm: I can feel the way we end. If everybody else stops and there are some nasty sounds at the end, I’ll just rub that in grime. I wanna cut your damn ears off. I try to be there, but if I didn’t get there, I’ll warp it on purpose.
England: We find the balance of order and chaos. On one end, there’s a degree of control, precision. Eventually, we let go and see where the wagon goes for a minute, then grab the reins back.
Quattrocchi: We don’t let them get too close to the cliff, though. It’s not like I’ve been too much into noise music, ever. The first thought on what we do is industrial hip-hop if that’s still a genre of music.
Chisholm: It is, but I’m not sure anyone’s created it after 1997. We don’t organize or cut things in a pleasing way.
England: What I like is that we’re not strung too tight. We’re not strung too loose. We’re strung just right. We communicate with the audience in a way that’s familiar enough for them to relate, but abstract enough to intrigue. As I’ve witnessed on stage and gotten feedback when I’ve gotten offstage, we’re offering something that other people aren’t offering right now. It’s a thing that’s about a state of mind, how we talk to people and give space and encourage them with sound in a different way.
Quattrocchi: This particular group of people evolved together pretty quickly and had a nice comfort level. The main reason is that there are a bunch of creative people here and a lot of us are stubborn people. But there are no egos. It’s beautiful. It’s like an experiment that we’re all in together. No one’s ahead of anyone else. There’s equilibrium. We’re on the same page. How many of your bands that you’ve played in can you say that about…?
Chisholm: It’s been my only band, so I can’t. Well, I’ve done some experimental, short, live scenarios. Then, it was more about needing knobs and shit. Recently, this year, I have a palette. I know how to hold a note. Now, when I have control, it feels right.
Quattrocchi: And Sarah is so professional. She’s not even been mentioned! She’s on-point and a total pro. She’s got a lot of beefy sound to cut through. And a corny way to say it is that her violin’s cutting through everything like a sword.
18andCounting & TheOnlyEnsemble play LouFest's BMI-Tunespeak Stage on Sunday at 12:45 pm.
