This is #13 of Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, a column in which he invites musicians he likes to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City. Peruse the rest of them here. — The SOC gaffer
Peter Case plays the Living Room, Saturday, May 17, 154 Ludlow Street, New York.
Pretend you don't see the Grammy-nominated busker.
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 13, Part One
Peter Case
Text and photos by Rob Trucks
Just barely into a late autumn, early Sunday, New York City afternoon, 53-year-old Peter Case has pretty much come full circle.
By age 14, Case had already plotted his life’s songwriting path. But Buffalo is no place for buskers (too damn cold ALL THE TIME), so Case quit high school, went west and performed on the streets of San Francisco. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas weren’t there, but Allen Ginsberg was.
“Him and Orlovsky,” Case says, “They would come out. I used to play right across from City Lights every night. I used to sleep in City Lights. They let me sleep upstairs. I’d read books and I’d sleep and like I’d wake up and go out and play when it got dark out.”
These early street singing exploits are faithfully rendered in Case’s recently published book, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport. But eventually the self-sufficient troubadour traded San Francisco for Los Angeles, acoustic for electric. He played in the Nerves (their single “Hanging on the Telephone” was later covered by Blondie) and the Plimsouls (best known for “A Million Miles Away,” three and a half minutes of power pop bliss found on the Valley Girl soundtrack), but Case has been on his own— again—for over twenty years now.
Today, after a short set for Dave Marsh’s live morning radio show for Sirius, Case is still in midtown. And obviously tired, if not exhausted. You can tell by his shuffle. And so we put the kibosh on our planned expedition out to Williamsburg in favor of a quick slice at Famous Ray’s or Original Ray’s or Original Famous Ray’s and a busking session in front of a Starbuck’s at 47th and Broadway.
This is also where one of the doubledecker bus lines stops to pick up its troupe of treadmill tourists. A captive audience, it would appear. ut they, as well as more excitable excursionists travelling to and from their nearby expensive hotel rooms, ignore the blues-belting Case.
It is a calculated move. AVOID the bone-weary busker. DO NOT make eye contact. As in, these tourists are going OUT OF THEIR WAY not to notice the Grammy-nominated (his latest, Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John, was up for Best Traditional Folk album, but lost to Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer) singer-songwriter.
Peter’s older now and, at least for today, noticeably more fatigued. It’s warmer of course, and more crowded, but on this corner is a man and his guitar and some songs that no one, in this setting, on this day, cares to stop and hear.
In that sense it’s a lot like Buffalo, almost forty years before.
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 13, Part 2
Say Hi
by Rob Trucks
Who:
Peter Case
We’re all in the Americana family now:
Case was once nuptially entwined with singer-songwriter Victoria Williams who later married former Jayhawk Mark Olson
One thing Peter Case has never done:
“I never played professional football.”
Something he’s done once and one time only:
“I wrote a song once with Willie Dixon, and we didn’t finish it and I never got a chance to come back and finish it. I went to his house and hung out. It was a bright moment.”
The name of a book he’s read at least twice:
“Oh God, I have to read books twice or I don’t remember them. Dante. The Inferno. I’ve read that three times.”
Do you own a rake?
“Yeah.”
So, you busked just last Christmas . . .
“The last time I went and played on the street was, over Christmas I went out and played, with my friend Buddy Zapata. He’s like a blues player out there (California), and we went over to Pasadena, just out on like the big main drag out there. It was like a million people out and we played for hours. We had little amplifiers. I was playing like a Harmony guitar through this little amp that Buddy had, and we were just playing all blues material. We hung around and played for a while and people were throwing money at us.”
What was the impetus?
“I hate to tell you what the impetus was [Laughs]. But it just seemed like a good idea.”
At the time.
“Yeah. I mean, I used to play on the street for a living, you know. And being an independent artist in the current atmosphere, you know, it’s never that far away. It’s good to have a line of work to fall back on.”
Did you busk in Buffalo before you left? Because you left at a pretty young age.
“No, there’s no busking in Buffalo. I played on the street, but I mean I just played on the street because I didn’t have a place to stay. But we never thought we were busking. I didn’t busk until I got to San Francisco.”
Did you start busking right away?
“I worked a couple odd jobs. I was the office boy at a sex magazine for a while, and then I got a job remodeling a guy’s apartment, like a rich business man. And then I was starting to meet people out on the street and he came back to the apartment I was remodeling. It was a second apartment. It had like Warhols and stuff in it. I had a bunch of people in there like drinking wine and playing guitar and he threw us all out. And that day I went out and played on the street for real for the first time.”
Were you pretty much done with busking by the time you moved to Los Angeles?
“Oh yeah. The last time I really busked for real was July 4th, 1976.”
And “busking for real” means busking because you need the money?
“Because you’re dead broke and it’s a great way to make money. I mean I did it steadily ’73, ’74, ’75, right up in there. But at that point in ’76, my band The Nerves was starting to take off. I think we were waiting to get the singles back of ‘Hanging on the Telephone,’ and when we got that back we just moved to L.A. and I didn’t busk again.
“I mean, I might’ve busked. We were pretty desperate at different times. Like I know we were stranded on the Nerves tour. We went out as the opening act for the Ramones in ’77, but we couldn’t make it back. We didn’t have enough money to get back, and I think I might’ve played on some street corners. I know I did other things for bread because those were crazy times.
“When my first solo record came out I played on the street in Denver at one point. You know, one thing playing on the street gave me was like a sense of comfort in public. You know, a certain sense. I mean, it’s not like it’s the easiest thing in the world, but it just gave me some sort of feeling. I guess I always felt sort of like at home on the street. It was always something about the way I felt about life. It was like the street was a place. It was like my living room, you know. And it really became that, as I sang on the street a lot, every night, on and on and on and on, that I just felt really comfortable to go out and just start singing, make a fool of myself on the street corner.”
When you’re writing an album, are you looking for a tone in the way that, say, Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town maintains a tone? Or is it more, These are the last twelve songs that I wrote?
“Neither really. Like for this album I wrote lots of songs. I wrote a lot of songs in different periods, so there was a lot of different kinds of material. And then we could’ve gone different ways with what the tone of the record would’ve been, but I decided that I wanted to record solo and do it like that, and then, you know, select the songs out of the whole group.
“I don’t really tend to write albums that much. I’ve done it a couple of times. I worked with Steve Earle a little bit in the ‘80s, just trying to write stuff and hang out and talking a lot, and his thing was, ‘Peter, I just write albums, man. I just don’t fool around writing songs.’ He’s very focused and professional. But a lot of times I get the songs I write, like they just come into me, and sometimes they don’t have anything to do with something I’m really going to perform right away. It’s just somehow the pressure changes in the room, in my head as I feel this thing. It’s a feeling and then you write the song and it comes out, and it might not be very useful to you, but you’ve written it. You’re trying to keep your flow going, you know. So I write a lot of things that I don’t even record, you know, just goofy songs and all sorts of stuff. But once or twice I did write a whole album, and I didn’t do it with a tone in mind, but like the tone kind of just comes out of your body, you know, and how you feel.
“You’re touching the guitar in a certain way and you’re trying to approach it a certain kind of way and you’re feeling things a certain kind of way and then, you know, you start to get something back from doing it. And then you do start editing it so that you’re going in the direction you want to go, that you feel like is the right idea. But, you know, a lot of it is intuitional. It’s very variable, you know, from moment to moment.
Give me an example of a record that you wrote as an album.
“Full Service No Waiting. On Full Service, you know, I was married and there were little kids around, my kids and everything, and I couldn’t write so I rented a room from this guy Dark Bob, my friend, like he had a room in this building. I just went to this room and I wrote. I’d get there, and I was so busy all the time that I just was happy to be able to get to it and I would just walk in and the second I got in there I’d just start writing. And I’d write right off the top of my head onto the typewriter. I could hear the music in my head and I would just write and write and write. And I had a script of what I wanted to accomplish there, like what kind of songs I was going to write. And I just did it. I knocked out that whole album like that. And then I came back, trying to do it again, and I got about halfway into it and all of a sudden I felt self-conscious. You know, it was a diminishing return, and then I just gave up on that completely.
“And now, on this latest record (Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John), I wrote in the middle of the night. I would fall asleep and then wake up at like three in the morning and the songs would come to me and I was in that little kind of feeling you get when you’ve been asleep and kind of like your defenses are down and then all of a sudden like weird things are occurring to you and stuff. So I wrote the book and the album in that kind of state, but lately I haven’t been waking up in the middle of the night. Something else will probably happen.”
You’re waking up at three o’clock in the morning as if your body’s telling you, “This is what you need to do.”
“Yeah, I would just wake up some nights and have a song to write. A lot of nights. I wrote a lot of songs like that. It was a really disturbing period, you know. It was when the war was breaking out in Iraq and Darfur and all that stuff was going on. All sorts of stuff. I feel like it’s in the ether, you know? It wakes you up sometimes in the middle of the night. Like sometimes you wonder why you woke up. It’s probably because some horrendous shit’s going down somewhere.”
I know that you usually write very quickly, but is there a particular song you’ve recorded that took a long time to get right?
“There’s some songs I’ve labored over, but I can’t remember ever really getting hung up on one that turned into a good song.”
Good enough to record?
“Good enough to want to sing. To keep singing. Like you get to a point like you play it once and you get burnt out on it. The whole trick is to find a song you want to sing, you know.”
That’s the higher standard.
“If you don’t have a song that you feel good about sitting in front of people, looking them in the eye and singing, you just have to keep going. But there’s been songs that I’ve labored over.
“Like there’s a song called “Spell of Wheels” on Full Service. I wrote that with my son Joshua. And that song was about a trip that he’d taken, and so I was writing about something that he’d done, sort of showing him how like you could write a song based on real life, you know.
“It took a long time. We had like an endless song. Here’s the weirdest part. I started that song when I was 19 in ’73, when I was on a car trip of my own. And then I finished it 19 years later when he was 19. And it was about his car trip. So I wrote the chorus and then the verse and the story of the song came from his story. But the theme of the song was from my thing, and it came together. So that’s probably the longest thing I ever worked was 19 years [laughs].”
Do songwriters have a greater capacity for feeling than non-writers?
“No, I don’t think so. Everybody in the world’s got an incredible story. And like, everybody in the world is an authentic something. And everybody in the world’s got an incredible story. They live on this planet that flies, you know, millions of miles above . . . . There’s nothing . . . Everybody’s in the danger zone and, you know, everybody’s born, everybody dies. It’s an incredible situation and so everybody feels it, but the songwriter is the person who finds the story. And I know how to tell the story and I know how to use words. And that’s just what I do. I have a drive to do that. It’s like my inborn drive.”
Well, it’s not just a drive. It’s a gift as well.
“And I have a gift to do it too. And like I don’t know where exactly that comes from. It is a gift. I have certain gifts, like everybody else does, and I have gifts in songwriting. Other songwriters have different gifts. But like my gifts are my gifts. I come from a family that tells stories and I come from people that love words. I myself have like a real love of speech and the sounds of speech and things like that. I’ve always been into it. It’s just always attracted me. I also have the drive to play music and perform. But I don’t think I feel life more seriously than like that football player on TV right over there.”
One way to look at it as a gift is that you’re good at what you want to do.
“It could be a gift or a curse. It depends on how your life turns out. It just is who you are. Like everybody’s got different gifts, and different things happen in life. You know, you end up doing things you never thought you’d do and stuff.”
But you had choices. You could’ve been something besides a songwriter.
“I guess, but you know, starting from the time I was 14 I was really seriously comitted as a songwriter. I dropped out of school at 15, a year before it was legal, left home, moved in with a bunch of musicians, hitchhiked all around, and ended up on the West Coast. And, you know, I could’ve done something else, but it never occurred to me to really want to do anything else. It’s not like I was going to be a lawyer or try Iraq for a few years and if it didn’t work out . . .
“You know, when I started out I didn’t even really think I was going to have a big career. I just wanted to play. I told that to American Songwriter magazine, and the guy, you know, his own comment in there was something like MTV dreams are the same in Hollywood as they are in Buffalo as they are in Nashvegas, you know. And for starts, there wasn’t MTV when I started out. That was not my dream, you know. My dream is a different dream.
“I’m just a writer, you know, a songwriter trying to do my thing, you know, trying to express things real vividly, so I could create some things, like these moments, you know. Like I’m obsessed by time and by the passage of time, and in a sense you almost capture a moment in a song. And if you really capture it right, it continues to live in that moment. It’s like a little movie or a hologram or a memory, you know, that’s right there. Every time you return to it you’re back there. You’re with those people, for example, or you’re saying that thing or you’re seeing this thing. And that’s what I see when I play my gigs, when I play songs. I’m in those different places.
“Right now my powers are different than they were a few years ago. I have this song called ‘Entella Hotel’ on the Blue Guitar record. I was exhausted, kind of the way I am right now, and I went back to this pad I was living at and there was nobody there, and I drank a cup of coffee about midnight and I started writing this song, and I got the first line. The first line was ‘There was no way of telling on the first day in town how far it was from the Greyhound Station to midnight and always.’ And I don’t know why that was the line but that was the line. And then I’m thinking like, ‘What am I going to do with that?’ And all of a sudden I’m like writing this song that has like this insane weird rhyming thing happening, and like it was just this very vivid picture of this place. So I wrote the first verse about that, and I wrote the second verse about the cop that was a real cop, and I just captured the whole thing, you know. Everything in the song was real. I was done with the song and I was like, ‘Wow, that was intense.’ I wrote this song. I went up and I laid in bed. It took me a couple of hours to write that, and then all of a sudden I can’t go to sleep. I’ve got to write the end of the song. I haven’t written the third verse. I don’t even know what it’s going to be. So I go down then the third verse just all comes. And then it was like a very satisfying song because it really captured something I knew in a pretty vivid way. It’s not perfect, but it captured something pretty vividly, you know.”
And you feel really good about it.
“My brother-in-law, who never thought I was much of anything, like he said when heard that he all of a sudden realized I was good, you know.”
You said that decided to become a songwriter at the age of 14. Did something happen that helped you with that decision? Was there a moment?
“I started writing songs when I was 14. And I was writing all sorts of weird 14-year-old poetry. You know, I had a girlfriend with long straight hair. She thought I was great. I’d read her my poetry. It was like ridiculous, you know, and I don’t know what I would get out of that and think that I could it, but a little while later I wrote that song that’s on the new album. When I was 15 I was already writing songs that older people were playing in Buffalo, you know. Like I wrote a song that was a break song for like blues bands in Buffalo and I wrote another song that like older people wanted to hear and that was sort of the first sign. “But earlier than that I decided I was going to do it. I don’t know, you know. I just thought that’s what I wanted to do. I mean, I don’t know if I was just, you know, goofing around. It’s just one thing led to another. I was just really into it. I was serious about it. I don’t know what the moment was, though.
“I do know that like my parents, my mom and dad would say, ‘You can be anything you want to be in life,’ when I was little. So the one thing I wanted to be, they hated. It’s like, ‘You can be anything you want to be except the thing you want to be (laughs). But I just loved it, you know.
“I grew up in a family with music. Like my big sister was a real good piano player, jazz stuff, Fats Waller. She played like stride piano, boogie woogie. So I grew up in a house with like kind of like crazy stuff going on and I’ve got it in my body, because you get it in your body from being around people. I think a lot of my blues feeling came from that because ever since I was a cell, you know, there was like blues going on in the house: Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, all that crap. And it just was always on in the house, you know.
Your sister played music but your parents didn’t?
“No, my parents didn’t play it. My sisters played it. My mother liked it. My father didn’t go for that stuff. He liked Dixieland. His big line, like if he dug something, was, ‘That’s hot’ [laughs].”
I’m sure your parents didn’t want you to drop out of school, and they probably didn’t want you to do the songwriter thing because it’s not the most stable of professions. Did they ever come to terms with it? That this was what you were meant to do?
“Yeah, eventually they did. My dad told me before he died, he said he was wrong because he didn’t realize that like all the guys that were on the straight track taking management positions and all this stuff, you know, that they were all getting laid off. I guess this was in the late ‘80s or ‘90s. And all these guys he knew, they had come up and played by all the rules, and they were all getting screwed. And now, of course, we all take it for granted that you don’t work for the same company, but back then it was a shocker. It was a shocker that people would give up that much of their young life and then be looking for a job at 45. And so he said to me, ‘You know, you were right. You did something you love and you can make it work. I take back. You’re right.’ But you know, whatever.
That had to be more meaningful than whatever.
“Yeah, that was a nice thing for him to say.”
I mean, we all want our parents to be proud of us.
“My mother, when she heard my first record, she was not that supportive. Like my first record came out when I was like 22 or something, 23, and her scrapbook on me starts 10 years later when I got a good review from the New York Times. Like Robert Palmer went nuts over my first record. Like went crazy over it. Loved it. That’s page one of the scrapbook. Nothing up to then [laughs].”
But it’s got to feel good to have your dad say, ‘You’re right. You did what you wanted to do.’
“When my dad was dying, he was like on his last days, I spent a lot of time with him. I was with him when he died. At one point, he was going through like heart failure, congestive heart failure. It was like a long run. At one point he said, 'Get your guitar.' He wanted me to play this like 'Coulda Shoulda Woulda' I wrote. And he wanted me to play it over and over again. So I’m playing this song, this like really goofy song . . . I played it over and over for him. I sat there and played it for him. But my mother, like when I play an emotional song, my mother’ll go, ‘Please stop.’”
The final days with your dad have to be full of those bright moments. Can you write about that or is it off-limits because it’s too close? Have you ever tried to write about it?
“Yeah, I’ve written things about it, but not for public consumption. It hasn’t added up. I mean, I’ve definitely written about it, but I mean I was with him when he died and there’s things about dying, you know. I mean, for one thing, he’s like still your dad. Like he’s still doing things first, you know. I got to be with him while he goes off into the unknown. I mean, it looked like he was seeing something, you know. He was like all of a sudden like . . . It felt really heavy, you know. But you know, what I’m going to do with that, I don’t know.”
It’s not for public consumption because it’s not as good as you want it to be, or because it’s too personal?
“Well, yeah. It’d be public once it gets to a point where like it would add up to something for me. And it’s just not there yet, you know. I don’t try to force it. When things add up to a certain point then I do them and when they don’t I don’t. There’s not sort of a medium area where it’s almost kind of okay. It’s like you know it or you don’t. And I’m not even near having something to write about that. I mean, a lot of people go through it, you know. Like everybody in this society right now has gone through this thing with old parents, you know. So I mean, I want to write about it. Dave Alvin wrote a beautiful song called ‘The Man In The Bed.’ Great song about that whole situation, you know. Great song about it, but for me it hasn’t added up to that yet.”
Peter Case plays the Living Room, Saturday, May 17, 154 Ludlow Street.
Posted by Camille Dodero at 2:30 PM, March 21, 2008
This is #12 of Rob Trucks's Possibly 4th Street expositions, a regular column in which he invites musicians he likes to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City. Inevitably with such a series, we end up underground: Kaki King just took us to the F-Train platform by 14th and Sixth Avenue; now, a date with the Shout Out Louds bring us to the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stop, underneath Centre Street.
photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 12, Part One
Shout Out Louds
Text and photos by Rob Trucks
It’s cold and rainy. And in lower Manhattan five Swedes—whose second and latest album, Our Ill Wills, sounds a whole lot like The Cure—tumble out of a white Ford-panel van like luggage from an overhead during a turbulent flight.
We’ve got our own issues. There’s the weather, of course, plus unexpected traffic and dead batteries that appeared full of life just an hour before.
But these Shout Out Louds are patient. They look a little bored (rock-and-roll being a “hurry up and wait” game like you wouldn’t believe), but they’re patient. And nice and polite. Each member walks over to introduce themselves. And not in that you better get my name right for your article kind of way. More like, Hey, we know it’s raining on your head too.
The plan—for the SOLs to perform at the Manhattan foot of the Brooklyn Bridge—is called on account of weather. So we all pile down the stairs next to City Hall and the band sets up shop in the bend of a long underground hallway. Then they play. And it sounds good. And a whole lot like The Cure.
SHOUT OUT LOUDS DO "NORMANDIE"
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 12, Part 2
Shout Out Louds
by Rob Trucks
Who:
Vocalist Adam Olenius—with bassist Ted Malmros, guitarist Carl von Aring, keyboardist Bebban Stenborg and drummer Eric Edman, collectively known as Shout Out Louds.
When:
Thursday afternoon, October 25, 2007
Where:
At the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall subway stop, underneath Centre Street, where you can catch the J, M, Z, 4, 5 or 6 trains.
Adam Olenius’ favorite Cure album:
“Disintegration, I think.”
Something Olenius has done once and one time only:
“Rollercoaster.”
Really? Just once?
“Yeah.”
Didn’t you like it?
“I liked it. That was the first time, this summer.”
The original name of the group was Luca Brasi. Who’s the Godfather fan?
“I think it was me and Ted. When we started talking about starting a band we sat on my balcony at my apartment, and I think we had just seen the movie or something. Really, we are big Godfather fans and I like the sound of that name. And he is kind of a sad character. You know, he’s got a really sudden death. He thought he was really cool but he got stabbed in his hand and strangled from the back, and that’s very dramatic.”
Does that show a bleak outlook on life? Many reviewers have mentioned how much more melancholy Ill Wills sounds compared to your first album.
“No, there’s still hope. Luca Brasi has got hope, and he’s brave.”
What should every American know about Stockholm?
“That there are ghosts in Old Town.”
Ghosts in Old Town?
“Yeah, there was a bloodbath like in the 17th century, the 16th century. There was blood shed all over the square, right, because, well, I can’t remember exactly why. Ted is a better historian. Anyway, so at midnight, like once a year, if it rains a lot, there’s blood in the sewers.”
Wow.
“Yeah.”
Now is this like armies fighting each other or is this like Luca Brasi?
“No, it’s more of like the king and the peasants. It was a class thing. We have a lot of stuff like that.”
You’ve got a song on Ill Wills called “Meat Is Murder,” which of course is best known as the Smiths’ second album. Did you think of the title and then write the song, or did you write the song and that’s got to be the title?
“That’s got to be the title. I mean, that was the working title for a very long time. It was in my computer as a sound file I recorded at home right after the first album. That was just the name of the song. And we talked about, Should we change this? But then, that’s the way it should be. We try to take natural steps all the time, and we knew that we would get a lot of questions about that and everything, but that was the album that was in the background when I wrote the song. I don’t know. It was supposed to be like that.”
So what’s your favorite Smiths album?
“That would be The Queen is Dead.”
And what album have you listened to more than any other in your life?
“When I was 15 I listened to Metallica’s black album every day before I went to school, but the answer’s probably Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.”
And nobody ever, ever, ever would guess Metallica from listening to your band.
“No, that why it’s so beautiful.”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 3:14 PM, March 20, 2008
Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run frequently here at Sound of the City. The first half of this week's Kaki King piece also ran in print and was originally published over here.
photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street
Volume II, Issue Eleven (Part One)
a/k/a Subway Series, v1.1
Kaki King
by Rob Trucks
If you know Kaki King, you know her as a guitar player. A special one. A rare breed of genreless six-string (rather than five-button) Guitar Hero: young, female, Southern, and slight of stature. Her facility has been freshly flaunted and recently rewarded by no less than a Golden Globe nomination for her soundtrack work on Sean Penn's Into the Wild; more tangibly, she received a "sweaty, shirtless hug" from Dave Grohl after their duet on the recent Foo Fighters track, "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners."
Yes, King's talent manifests itself both aurally and visually. Particularly on those two-handed "tappy" numbers, wherein, like a discordant disciple of Smokey the Bear, she figuratively sets her guitar alight while physically smothering that same instrument with frequent and furious hand pats, as if trying to put out a fire without the benefit of blanket or extinguisher. And yet despite these fingers of frenzy (honed by her years as a teenage percussionist), on disc, King's compositions soar lightly, like a balloon peering down on some new-age/jazz hybrid.
But even if you've heard (or seen) King's guitar work, you are likely unacquainted with her voice. Only four of the 11 songs on her new Dreaming of Revenge contain vocals, but even that small percentage is a meaningful increase from her 2003 debut, the fully instrumental Everybody Loves You. Like that of, say, Jill Sobule or Juliana Hatfield, King's not-oft-heard voice is near-childlike in its high-pitched guilelessness. So it's not surprising that, when we meet at the confluence of the L, F, and V lines below 14th Street and Sixth Avenue to re-create a session from King's days of busking past, she offers a cookie. And not just any shortbread, either. No, the multiple musical threat arrives with a selection of black-and-white cookies replete with Seinfeld-ian symbolism—you know, the undulating universality of New York City. These proffered pieces of frosted baked goods are a foreshadowing as well, for, as we will learn, they resolutely represent King's munificence of spirit.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"Busking," she says, "really came out of . . . it totally dealt with 9/11. I started busking because it really was something to just . . . do. Like, how does one spend their time?"
When the planes hit, King was just short of completing her studies at NYU. In fact, her colloquium—sort of an oral defense in her field of study, Music and Aesthetic Philosophy ("What I studied was a lot of literature, a lot of philosophical text, and a lot of music")—was scheduled for September 12, 2001. "Instead of having, you know, the future ahead of me, and life is beautiful, I'm in New York going, 'What . . . am . . . I . . . doing?' And we were all like that."
Yes, we were.
Within the most unique aftermath in the city's history—a period defined by shock and suspicion, reaching out and reassessment—Kaki King took her guitar and headed toward the subway.
"It was a hell of a lot better than sitting at home," she says. "The following weeks, it was terrible being around, because all the photographs of people were everywhere, on every bus stop and everything. And you realized pretty soon that those people were all dead. So it honestly just gave me a healthy way to spend my time."
There were other benefits as well. The mettle of the moment, combined with the uncommon sight of a sprightly Southern female barely able to restrain a definitively dramatic talent, added up to more than a little pocket change at a time when King was technically unemployed.
This, of course, was all before Atlanta native and NYU graduate Kaki King became "Kaki King, recording artist." And so, over an eight-month period, from the autumn of 2001 into the following spring, she played through a roughly 12-song repertoire (plenty for a guitarist who starts and stops in time with the trains as they enter and exit the station)—a Martin Simpson cover, a Preston Reed cover, her own material. Instrumentals like "Night After Sidewalk," "Happy as a Dead Pig in the Sunshine," and "Close Your Eyes & You'll Burst into Flames" were all performed underneath 14th and Sixth in front of a transient and transiting audience. And each of those expansively titled tunes found a home on King's first album.
"A lot of it," she says, "was sort of my training ground to get really good at those songs."
Soon enough, King was performing with the Blue Man Group; then came a regular gig at the Knitting Factory and a recording contract. And yet those underground sessions brought her something else. Something, as saccharine as it may sound, even more important than the first firm footsteps of what would become her career.
"I would play, and people would thank me," she says. "Or they would write me a note. And I don't think that would happen now. And for me, being able to just play music and be in the world . . . having a shared experience during that time was really very important. I felt like people really appreciated having someone just playing music—like a generosity of listening. It was a very nice experience, but a poignant one at the same time."
Possibly 4th Street
Volume II, Issue Eleven (Part Two)
a/k/a Subway Series, v1.2
Kaki King
Who:
Atlanta native and six-string (not five-button) hero Kaki King
When:
About 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 24th
Where:
The downtown platform along the F and V trains below 14th Street and Sixth Avenue
Something Kaki King has never ever done:
“I have never been on a camping trip.”
Something King has done once and one time only:
“Ecstasy.”
A book she’s read at least twice:
“Catch-22.”
A movie she’s seen at least three times:
“Waiting for Guffman.”
The album she’s listened to more than any other in her life:
“Definitely an album called Split by the band Lush. Absolutely.”
Do you own a rake?
“No.”
Did you apply to NYU because it was NYU or because you wanted to come to school in New York?
“It was definitely a bit of both, but NYU had a very interesting school, college within the university called Gallatin, and I was very interested in that program, so it was definitely a bit of both.”
And what’s the course of study?
“The course of study is that you design your own course of study. Which can attract a lot of – I do not say this in any way (negatively) because I love the college so much – it can attract a flaky element, but it can also attract some of the most incredible, individual people who are 18 years old and ready to think for themselves.”
Were you one of those people?
“I think by 19 I was one of those people. Maybe not at 18. At 18 I still needed a little scholastic guidance, but by 19 I was very much, I was really, really into going after what I wanted to learn.”
How long did your busking period last?
“Probably about eight months. I started in the fall and I stopped in late spring because I had my album and I started playing a regular gig at the Knitting Factory and that’s where I met my label and management.”
photo by Rob Trucks
Why did you decide to play in the subway as opposed to above ground? I mean, in September and October the weather’s still nice here.
“I think you actually get hassled a bit more (above ground). The problem with playing outside is there’s nothing for your sound to bounce off of, so you’re just gone, you know. People just can’t hear you.”
But you played through an amp.
“Yes, but even so . . .”
And amps are technically illegal.
“They’re technically illegal and I was doing it anyway. The thing is that before 9/11 the people that policed that system were undercover MTA cops, and after 9/11 they had a hell of a lot more to worry about than subway musicians using amplifiers.”
Let’s talk about the title of your new album, Dreaming of Revenge.
“It’s actually a quote from Gauguin. And the quote is ‘Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.’”
Is that something you identify with? It sounds a little harsh.
“No. And I knew that I’d be answering this question every time I did an interview.”
Well, yeah. There’s a good chance someone might ask about your album title.
“I know. But I feel like it opens another fun can of worms which is, it’s entirely tongue in cheek. To me. I mean, it’s something that, in a way, it’s so true, and yet he couldn’t possibly have meant that. He couldn’t have possibly been saying that with utter truth. There must’ve been some kind of impish cynicism, a slight tongue in cheek way.”
I don’t know. Some of us have a tendency to luxuriate in our contrariness.
“Maybe that’s exactly what he was doing, but I just found the quote so funny. And I thought that it was so kind of appropriate. But I think of it as something that Morrissey would say, you know. It’s like this dark, humorous thing.”
I can absolutely see Morrissey saying it. But I’m not sure that people see you and Morrissey as possessing the same brand of dark humor.
“Well, I’m the least vengeful person in the world. In fact, I wasn’t really raised religious, but I was raised in the Methodist church, in a specific church.”
A former boss of mine once said that you can believe anything you want to believe and be Methodist.
“Yes, exactly. It was all about forgiveness. And I’ve never ever held a grudge and I really don’t think I’ve ever had a vengeful thought. If I have had a jealous thought, I try to turn it into an inspirational thing.”
So if you’ve never had a vengeful thought I guess no one’s ever broken up with you.
“People have certainly broken up with me, but I’ve been trained in some way to transfer negative feelings into something positive. And not to say that I’m not as depressed and fucked up as every other human being, it’s just in terms of Dreaming of Revenge, it’s not me that would be the one dreaming of revenge.
“It just makes no sense for that to be something to spend your mental energy on, to be cross with someone about something, or hurt and carry that hurt with you and hold grudges and bring shit up that happened in the past.”
I find that relationships and reason have very little to do with each other, though.
“Yeah, that’s true. That’s totally true. But I would say that if anyone was dreaming of any type of revenge, like ‘I hope she is alone forever,’ it wasn’t me.”
What do you want to do that you haven’t done?
“I want to go to Newfoundland. I want to drive from New York, up through Nova Scotia, go to Halifax, then take the ferry to Newfoundland and drive the circumference of Newfoundland, and then I want to take the ferry back and drive all the way back to New York.”
Why Newfoundland?
“Because it just seems doable. And I already planned it and I was going to do it. And because I want to see Northern Lights, which I’ve only seen one time in my life, and you can see them there. And—I don’t know—it’s a destination.”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 12:00 PM, February 29, 2008
This is #10 of Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, a regular column in which he invites musicians he likes to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City. Peruse the rest of them here.
Say Hi play the Bowery Ballroom this Sunday, March 2, with Illinois, Meowskers, and the Postelles. Tickets still available here.
Yes, that is a bandmate holding an amp in front of his face; photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 10, Part One
Say Hi
Text and photos by Rob Trucks
In a way, of course, every album is a fresh start, a new beginning, a chance to break open the seal on a figurative carton of milk without worrying exactly why it turns bad three days earlier in New York City.
And so it is for Say Hi’s Eric Elbogen.
On the first Saturday in November, approximately seven days after the initial advances of his upcoming disc The Wishes and the Glitch are first placed in the mail, a new supporting cast—drummer Westin Glass and bassist Sam Collins—accompany Elbogen on his current tour stop through the land of early expirated dairy.
An even bigger shift is the name of Elbogen’s band. Terribly tired of stale mother jokes, Elbogen recently shortened the somewhat breathy moniker Say Hi to Your Mom to just Say Hi.
“The whole band name to begin with,” he says, “was somewhat of an experiment. It was a poor choice on my part. “I considered, actually, starting an entirely new band name, but I wasn’t brave enough to do that. As DIY and indie rock as people like to think bands are, I do this for a living and I was too scared to take that leap.”
But one immensely major move Elbogen was not afraid to make was a move all the way cross country. The former Brooklyn resident now calls Seattle home, and Wishes is the first Say Hi album recorded west of the Mississippi River. In a very real sense it is Eric Elbogen’s first album born outside of New York.
Whereas its’ predecessor, the delightfully charming Impeccable Blahs, concerned itself with the plight of “everyday vampires” (not a huge leap for a songwriter whose favorite television show is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), Wishes, definitely, does not. As in the liner notes explicitly state, “This record is not about vampires.” But if not vampires . . .
“A lot of it,” Elbogen says of his latest work, “is about my move and my sort of changing a lot of things in my life and starting afresh in a different city with different people and different ideas and goals.”
Yes, I see. An explanation unmistakably murky enough as to hint at a story of hurt and heartbreak.
“Well,” Elbogen says, “there’s a heartbreak story in every piece of art. “But yeah, there’s a relationship that sort of was about to end before I moved.”
But just about seven years ago, Elbogen’s situation was just about reversed. A year and a half after graduating from UCLA, Elbogen, a West Coast native, visited New York and made a decision.
“I just absolutely fell in love with the city,” he says, “and within two months I had sold my car and a bunch of my music equipment and bought a plane ticket and just moved. Which was probably the most important thing I’ve done. And it was after that move that I sort of figured out what kind of songs I wanted to write and made the first Say Hi record.”
Three more albums, including Impeccable Blahs, all conceived in New York, followed.
“After seven years,” he says, “I don’t know . . . there was a lot going on. I just felt like I needed to change the pace of my life a little bit.
“New York is amazing. I think it’s probably the most amazing city in the world, but it’s very hectic to live here and I was just sort of tired of not being able to park my van on the street and living in close quarters, and the Pacific Northwest was sort of always a breath of fresh air when we would tour there, and so I was just starting to think about moving. My discomfort with the quality of life and some other stuff, some relationship stuff, sort of all of that hit at once and it just made sense for me to move. For a while. Indefinitely.
“I still love this city. I wish I could afford to have homes on both coasts and come here when I wanted to and leave when I wanted to. I may move back at some point, but for the time being I’m actually very, very happy in Seattle.”
Even if, for now at least, it’s a city that’s vampire free.
"NORTHWESTERN GIRLS"
Possibly 4th Street
Episode 10, Part 2
Say Hi
by Rob Trucks
Who:
Drummer Westin Glass (shyly holding the amp in front of his face), bassist Sam Collins (taking respite on the bench behind) and keyboardist/singer Nouela Johnston. Plus Eric Elbogen, who is pretty much the mastermind behind the musical idea called Say Hi.
When:
Late afternoon, November 3, 2007
Where:
Columbus Park in Chinatown
Songs performed:
“Northwestern Girls,” the single from Say Hi’s recently released Wishes and Glitches disc, and “These Fangs” from Impeccable Blahs.
Something Eric Elbogen has never ever done:
“Skydiving.”
Something Elbogen has once and once time only:
“Running with the bulls.”
A book he’s read at least twice:
“I don’t think I’ve actually read a book twice. I’m not a book kind of guy. I have been thinking about reading Infinite Jest again because it’s been a few years and that’s probably my favorite novel.”
A movie he’s seen at least three times:
“The Big Lebowski.”
Do you own a rake?
“I inherited one when I moved into my duplex.”
Was there an occasion in your career where you might’ve taken a guitar or even a little Casio and played outside in order obtain either money or the attention of young women?
“Um, that was very much me in college. I used to, to the dismay of many of the other residents of my dorm building, stand outside of a building most days playing guitar. Mostly for the latter, to attain the attention of young women. But, you know, I think moreso in high school I went through that phase where we would be at a house party and there would be a guitar laying around and some of us who played songs would trade off and play songs for everyone.
“And that’s very, very much not me anymore. I have become more shy in certain senses. I’m comfortable being at home making the music, and occasionally comfortable up on a stage if the moon is right and there are people there and they seem into it and the band is playing well and the mix onstage is good. Then it’s a lot easier for me to not be shy, but most times the stars aren’t quite aligned like that and it can range anywhere from discomfort to excruciating pain.”
Was Wishes at least a fun record to make?
“It was fun to make. Making a record is always insanely frustrating as well, but the overall feeling I get once I get the final mastered version back brings me more joy than anything else.”
What do you miss most about Brooklyn?
“Not needing a car to get around.”
Say Hi play the Bowery Ballroom this Sunday, March 2, with Illinois, Meowskers, and the Postelles. Tickets still available here.
Posted by Camille Dodero at 11:30 AM, January 25, 2008
Tonight, January 25, Nicole Atkins and the Sea headline the Bowery Ballroom. It is already sold out.
Bigger version after the jump
Possibly 4th Street
Episode Nine, Part One
Nicole Atkins and the Sea
Text and photos by Rob Trucks
No matter how much we’re tempted to romanticize, the major-label musician’s road is not all champagne, rosebuds and chatting up Slash backstage at Letterman. No, sometimes along the way there are obstacles like multiple moves (including nights on nasty mattresses) and trying to hold down a job without losing sight of your dream. And sometimes you get by with a little help from your friends. So while Nicole Atkins has danced with Lenny Kaye and downed tequila shots with Bruce Springsteen, if her music career has a guardian angel it’s very likely an Upper West Side entrepreneur by the name of Gustavo Szulansky.
On the last Thursday in November (not Thanksgiving, but the week after) we’re in Gustavo’s neighborhood. And though we’ve been in dog runs and back alleys, this is our strangest location yet. On the Upper West Side, on the second floor of a building, with fake Astro-Turf below and some glaringly harsh florescent lights above, we’re surrounded by a swarm of orange-shirted preschoolers, boys and girls, the tallest just about belt-high, and they’re chasing silver soccer balls. That is, when they’re not wondering what we're doing in the middle of their indoor field.
We’re here because of Gustavo, of course. I don’t know who’s doing who a favor – Gustavo for Nicole (again), or Nicole for Gustavo - but this is his all-ages, year-round, indoor soccer camp that started in his basement almost eight years ago.
“I met Gustavo at one of my shows,” says Nicole. “He came out to Piano’s during our residency, and after the show he gives me his card and he’s like, If you ever need anything, just call me. And I look at the card and I’m like, 'Super Soccer Stars?' Yeah, I’ll call you if I need soccer lessons.”
But Gustavo and his wife didn’t lose touch with the aspiring singer-songwriter. They took Nicole to lunch, for example, decided she needed a website and had one created for her.
Gratis.
And when Nicole found herself working long hours as a graphic designer for the smaller salary of a receptionist, Gustavo and his wife gave her a job.
“They were like, If you need work, you can work here. And since you’re getting courted by labels you can work here one day a week or you can work here seven, whatever you need.
“It was like really at a time when I really needed it. Like when I was super broke and getting fired from pretty much every restaurant in Manhattan. It really happened at the right time.”
And though Nicole has since moved back to New Jersey (Asbury Park, to be specific) and no longer puts in hours at Super Soccer Stars, that doesn’t mean the end of a relationship. Not at all. As she and three-fourths of the Sea stand in the middle of an indoor soccer field within a traffic circle of confused five-year-olds, at the end of the floor, behind some impressive netting, Gustavo Szulansky beams.
photo by Rob Trucks
photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street
Episode Nine, Part 2
Nicole Atkins and the Sea
by Rob Trucks Videocamera-holding by SOC blog emcee Cami D
Who:
Nicole Atkins and the Sea (get it?).
When:
Thursday afternoon, November 29, 2007
Where:
Inside Super Soccer Stars, a day camp for Upper West Side youngsters on Columbus between 89th and 90th.
Nicole Atkins’ number one friend on her MySpace page: Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti (“he’s from New Jersey,” Nicole offers brightly.)
Nicole Atkins’ number two influence on her MySpace page:
Patsy Cline
What Nicole Atkins and the Sea sound like when they’re full out on the Neptune City album as opposed to stripped down on an indoor soccer field:
Well, yeah, there’s some Patsy Cline and Angelo Badalamenti in there. As if k.d. lang got stuck in a horror movie (particularly on the album’s title track). A little torch, a little twang. Absolutely.
The three states Nicole Atkins has called home for the past decade even though she’s never lived in one place for more than six months at a time during that period:
New Jersey, New York and North Carolina.
Something Nicole has never done before:
“Smoke crack.”
Something she’s done once and one time only:
“Took something that I didn’t know what it was. At a Dead show a long time ago.”
The title of a book she’s read at least twice:
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
And a movie she’s seen at least three times.
“Mulholland Drive.”
What album have you listened to more than any other in your life?
“Probably The Jayhawks’ Tomorrow The Green Grass.”
Really?
“Yeah. Probably that, because I had that in high school, or when I graduated college I got Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tape stuck in my car. It was the only thing I could listen to. It would play but it wouldn’t come out, and Steve Malkmus’ first solo record was on the other side of the tape so for a whole summer . . . and I didn’t mind it for the whole summer, but then I just took a butter knife and stabbed it.”
Do you own a rake?
“No, I don’t. I don’t own a backyard.”
New Jersey musicians have a tendency to name their albums after local settings. Springsteen has Greetings from Asbury Park, The Wrens have Secaucus and Bon Jovi decided he’d just use the whole state. Your album’s called Neptune City. Is this a point of pride or are you being ironic?
“I didn’t have a title for the album and my parents go to this bar called Bilow’s, which is a bar in a liquor store in Neptune City. And it’s like I basically grew up at this bar. So, you know, my parents have all their little bar friends and stuff. There’s like wood paneling on the wall and this guy, Uncle Danny, that plays guitar to a karaoke machine and I’ll get up and sing Kid Rock songs with him if I get drunk enough.
“And I was just like, What if I just named the album Neptune City and then you guys will have an album? Screw Greetings from Asbury Park. We’ll make Neptune City like a thing and then it’ll get popular and I’ll open up a rock venue here and we’ll have something other than just a pizza place and a tombstone carver and Bilow’s. And they’re like, Yeah, let’s do it. So I was like, Yeah, I’ve got to do it.
“And I figured Neptune City, too, it seems so ominous. It sounds like very, you know, aquatic and mysterious. People don’t even know it’s an actual town.”
The distance between Neptune City and Asbury Park, New Jersey:
Just about two miles.
You flunked Morality in high school?
“Yeah, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I did until the day I graduated.”
I didn’t even know there was a course in Morality.
“I went to Catholic school so there was like Bioethics and Morality and they wanted us to do this project where we picked a job out of a hat and budget like for a two-week vacation and groceries. Like all this stuff like kids, and I just didn’t know what that project had to do with morality.”
So it wasn’t really morality as much as it was housewife training.
“Yeah, housewife or typist. That was my job. And I’m like, 'Dude, are there even typists any more?'”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 3:30 PM, January 9, 2008
Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians he likes to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run frequently here at the Voice music blog. This week's Deadstring Brothers installment took place when we were still shooting with a Fisher Price digicam. Consider the dateline for this issue BC (Before Camera).
photo by Doug Coombe
Possibly 4th Street
Volume I, Issue Eight (Part One)
Deadstring Brothers
by Rob Trucks
If ever one band embodied a singularly iconic, angry ‘70s classic rock album it would be Detroit’s Deadstring Brothers. Kick Out The Jams, you venture? Fun House, you guess? No. The Nuge’s Catscratch Fever or Double Live Gonzo? Not even close. And no Seeger, Suzi Quatro (though that might be interesting), Motown or Mitch Ryder either. Nope, the Deadstring Brothers heartily eschew their Midwestern roots (well, the Midwestern roots of singer, songwriter and head Deadstring Kurt Marschke) by copping a close, respectful feel of the Stones’ Exile on Main St.
I am not the first music writer-type to point this out. I may not even be in the first fifty music writer-types to point this out. In fact, you may safely say that, on this point (that is, the Deadstring Brothers sounding like the Stones’ Exile on Main St.), there is an undeniable consensus. (If only gun control, abortion rights, stem cell research and universal health care were this easy).
Even Marschke and his partner and fellow band member, Masha Marijeh, agree.
“It’s obvious,” says Masha. She laughs warmly as she cuts in front of Marschke (who has a mouth full of Doritos) to answer a question so blatant it might as well be rhetorical.
Late (late) on a Saturday afternoon, the ‘Strings have completed a long drive (from State College, PA), loaded their gear (including an electric organ that appears hernia heavy) into the Mercury Lounge, and laid claim to a parking spot (no small feat that) to rest their exhausted van and trailer.
Waiting for the delivery of two acoustic guitars (so we can, you know, do this thang) is an interval seemingly made for junk food ingestion. At least for road weary musicians. Music writer-types pass the time hoping the sun doesn’t vanish completely before the guitars arrive.
While confined to backup duty on earlier releases, on the ‘Strings third and most recent album Silver Mountain (Bloodshot), Masha not only sings more, she sings more out front. Which makes the whole Exile comparison a little less of an issue since Nellcôte didn’t host what you would call a strong female presence.
So when Masha sings lead, like on disc starter “Ain’t No Hidin’ Love,” the similarity of sound between Exile and their kindred Deadstrings does not immediately reach out, punch you in the face and take your lunch money.
This is not the case with Starving Winter Report, Silver Mountain’s predecessor and the band’s first record for Midwestern indie Bloodshot. At the same place (disc starter “Sacred Heart”) just one album prior, Kurt’s vocals, Kurt’s guitar, indeed, the overarching ambiance of “who gives a fuck? let’s play” (maybe that’s what Detroit offers) has reared back, let loose a host of haymakers, and pummeled its prey into an aggressive acquiescence.
Here Marschke (now Dorito-free) does not exactly concur.
“I think it sounds like a really wimpy version of it,” says the surpassingly self-deprecating Kurt of Winter Report’s commute to Main St. “I thought it was kind of Stones Lite, personally.”
Nevertheless, his vision, as it were, for the Deadstrings’ sound has remained constant.
“It was conscious ever since we started the band,” he says. “It was Dylan, the Stones and Willie Nelson. The outlaw movement and that late sixties country rock movement was basically all I really wanted to represent with this band.”
“I think you can write better songs, and you can get better at songwriting but I don’t really want to do anything musically that much different with this band. I kind of like what we’re doing, the way it sounds.”
But is it a problem, a dangerous dalliance with derivation perhaps, when your band is recognized for its strikingly similar sound to a record that just celebrated the 35th anniversary of its release?
“I don’t mind being compared to that,” Kurt says with a smile. “I have no problem with it at all. I just wish we did a better job at it.”
photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street: Deadstring Brothers
Volume I, Issue Eight (Part Two)
by Rob Trucks
Today the part of 'videographer' will be played by Karan Rinaldo
Who: The Deadstring Brothers. All six of ‘em. Kurt, Masha, E. Travis Harrett, Jeff Cullum, Spencer Cullum and Pat Kenneally.
When: Just before that time of night when it’s just too dark to see the ball anymore and mothers across America call their children home using their full and proper names.
Where: The Southwest corner of Ludlow and Stanton
Doritos consumed at: Hot Bagels & Pizza, Houston St.
Something Kurt Marschke, the youngest of seven children, has done once and one time only:
“I only played hockey once. But I can ice-skate.
“When I was young we didn’t have any place to skate even though we grew up in Michigan. We skated, but nobody ever played hockey. And then I played hockey once and got the shit kicked out of me, and I figured, 'Well, maybe that’s why I don’t play hockey.'”
A short reminiscence regarding growing up the youngest of seven in a house full of music:
“I was like five years old when I actually put a needle on a turntable. You know, I was really young. That wasn’t because I was passionate about music. It was because I wanted to do what everyone else in the house was doing. They were putting records on and shit.”
Two things Marschke, a right-handed guitarist, does left-handed:
“I shoot pool left-handed. I skateboard left-footed, too. My friends, when I was a little kid, used to say, ‘You’re goofy-footed.’ I’d say, ‘What the fuck is goofy-footed?’ I don’t know. Skateboarding is something else I sucked at.”
The album he’s listened to more than any other in his life:
“Do I have to admit Exile on Main St.?”
Kurt’s favorite Stones albums (in chronological order):
“Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile.”
Six by Dylan:
"Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood on the Tracks and Desire are my favorite Dylan records.”
We might as well close this trinity and talk about Willie Nelson:
“Shotgun Willie was my favorite early ‘70s studio record that he did. Willie and Family Live is one of the best records, I think, ever made. Those versions of those songs live are better than the studio recordings.”
Kurt’s one previous busking experience:
“I used to stay in D.C. My sister works at a hotel there, and I used to walk down to Dupont Circle from the hotel a lot. And this dude was always playing Hendrix songs on his guitar. He was there all the time. Every night I’d walk by and he’d be playing his guitar. He had this battery-powered amplifier and this really cheap electric guitar. And I’d sit there and talk to him, and he’d ask me, ‘Hey, do you want to sit up and play some tunes.’ And so I’d sit up there and play. And so that was me busking.
“All he played was Hendrix songs. That’s all he played was Jimi Hendrix. And the guy believed that he was somehow cosmically related to Jimi. It was kind of a strange thing. He was a sweetheart of a guy. He kind of even looked like him a little bit. A little heavier. But he told me that he thought that he and Jimi shared relations somehow.
“He used to take the bus there. He used to live in Southeast, which is not a very nice part of D.C. And he’d take the bus to Dupont and play his guitar and sing. He didn’t do drugs either. He seemed like a pretty straight up guy. He seemed like a good guy. I hope he’s doing all right.”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 3:00 PM, December 5, 2007
Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites big-shot musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run frequently here at the Voice music blog. This week's Michelle Shocked piece also ran in the print version of this here fine publication; part one also appears over here.
photo by Tina Zimmer
Possibly 4th Street
Volume I, Issue Seven (Part One)
Michelle Shocked
Words by Rob Trucks
Once upon a time—say, a little more than 20 years ago—Michelle Shocked was known as Michelle Johnston. And after graduating from the University of Texas, the young woman headed west with musical instruments in tow, and performed in a street band up and down the coast of California. "When I used to play with them, I had a little, teeny-tiny voice," she says. "And now, between singing in a rock band and singing with a gospel choir, I was louder than that police siren. Did you hear that?"
Yes. Yes, I did.
Beside Tony Rosenthal's Alamo (a/k/a the giant rotating cube near Astor Place), Michelle and Michael Sullivan (a/k/a Reverend Busker, a Shocked friend and street-corner accomplice) perform for nearly an hour. The set list includes Michelle's "Fogtown" and "Cement Lament," Michael's "Becky's Tune," Hank Williams's "Jambalaya," and Randy Newman's "Baltimore," among others. Change accumulates in Michael's guitar case, and with every turn in the traffic light, a new round of boot jockeys and busses—the M1, M2, M3, M8, and M14A—rumble by.
"In those days," she says of her California years, "I wasn't on a career track. I was a romantic poet, but I considered myself a political activist. And there was so much compatibility. It was a sustainable way to be a political activist." That is, until a man named Pete Lawrence had the audacity to field-record the post-feminist folk singer somewhere near Kerrville, Texas, (hello, 1986 debut TheTexas Campfire Tapes) and make Michelle Shocked an indie sensation in Great Britain (hello, "international star") before she even knew she had a record out.
Shocked's accidental career now stands at a dozen albums (count the live gospel ToHeavenURide as the latest) and more than a few memorable tunes, like "When I Grow Up," which manages to somehow summon an acoustic breath of grounded whimsy appropriate for a young woman looking west while her feet are planted in Texas. And then there's "Street Corner Ambassador," the one song from 1996's Mercury Poise disc (call it an early greatest-hits collection) that makes its way into Michelle's Astor Place set.
For this, the guitars are laid down, Reverend Busker stands to the side, and Michelle does the solo thing a ca-fucking-ppella. She hits (hits, I say) the chorus, hard, then does so again:
And it's toss into the old tin cup
A shiny copper penny
Sing along that old refrain
Can you spare a little change, man?
Can you spare just a little change?
Police sirens don't stand a chance. And when she's done singing with a voice now oh-so-much more than "teeny-tiny," Michelle Shocked unabashedly works the line of her concrete congregation, hat in proffered hand. It's something she hasn't done in years. It's something she likely won't do again. "Once you're Michelle Shocked," she says, "the context is entirely different. I'm very self-conscious now. The context has changed so much that you can't go back. You can't go back to that."
Possibly 4th Street
Volume I, Issue Seven (Part Two)
Michelle Shocked
Who:
Michelle Shocked and Michael Sullivan, a/k/a Reverend Busker
Michelle and Michael’s last collaboration before this one:
A recording of Michael’s song “Becky’s Tune” for Give US Your Poor, a compilation, according to the disc’s liner notes, aimed at creating “public awareness” of “the rising crisis of homelessness.” The CD also includes performances by Madeleine Peyroux, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, among others.
A Michelle/Michael collaboration from much further back:
They played together in a street band up and down the coast of California.
How Michael and Michelle met:
Through Neti, a classically trained violinist and friend of Michelle’s from Texas who Michael later dated.
photo by Cami D
A short Neti story (told by Michelle):
“Neti was living in a closet in exchange for doing this gal’s dishes, and it seemed like a good deal, but it wasn’t because that gal made more dirty dishes than anybody I have ever seen. It was a mountain of dishes. No closet was worth that.”
What Austin was like when Michelle left for California:
“Cowboys would pull up and park their pick-up trucks on Sixth Street, take the tailgate down, sit in the back of the pick-up truck and play music. And then you would walk up and down Sixth Street and basically it was just like a big jam session.
“It was a very nurturing environment. It was like you could really suck there and still be given encouragement. So I remembered when I left Austin thinking, Wow, if it’s this good here, imagine what I’ll find elsewhere. And then you discover that Austin was a little Petri dish. It was very unique in that respect.”
When Michelle and Michael played in New York City:
A little after 4 p.m., Thursday, September 27th
Where:
Within spitting distance of Tony Rosenthal’s Alamo (a/k/a the giant rotating cube near Astor Place).
Where the three of us had dinner (Michelle’s suggestion, Michelle’s treat) afterwards:
Angelica Kitchen.
A completely out of context quote from Michelle at that dinner:
“And that’s when I saw the UFO.”
Something Michelle has done once and one time only:
“I dressed as the Popemobile in a Mardi Gras parade. It was for that year before Katrina where they had predicted the hurricane was going to hit, but it didn’t. But everyone had packed up and they called it Premature Evacuation, so we were all dressed up like cars and I chose the Popemobile.”
A movie she’s seen at least three times:
“Harold and Maude, and I’ve seen it like a hundred times. I watch that the way some people watch Rocky Horror.”
The album Michelle Shocked has listened to more than any other in her life:
“It was when I worked in the summers for my dad, and it was Guy Clark’s Old No. 1.”
If you had to live the rest of your life in a foreign country, what country would it be?
“I think Italy.
Do you own a rake?
“Yes I do.”
photo by Cami D
Did you expect to be recognized when you played on the street?
“I assumed that people wouldn’t (recognize me). And part of that is because I try to live my life like people aren’t going to recognize me. Now there is, I’ve noticed, like you do the Letterman show and for like a week afterwards you can’t get in the elevator. You can’t take out the trash. Nothing. But it has a half-life, and almost literally each week it’s half as famous. But to have been this under the radar for as long as I have been, I’m basically an insider hipster underground thing now. I enjoy living my life like nobody’s going to recognize me, and then what’s cool is the people who do recognize me are cool people.
“I think the truth is I didn’t care. I really didn’t care. If people recognized me, that was fine and if they didn’t recognize me I was having fun.”
Volume I, Issue Six (Part One)
Tara Jane O’Neil
Words and still photos by Rob Trucks
Tara Jane O’Neil’s first take, “Sunday Song” (a delicate equation on its best day), is overwhelmed by noise. We’re outside the back door of Max Fish, famed Ludlow Street watering hole slash art gallery, and a couple lots towards Houston there’s an exterior elevator continually scaling a new high-rise. There’s a parking lot behind us and more construction going on next door. And if that’s not enough, the wind is positively biting like an obscene phone call from a borderline asthmatic into our microphone.
We’re surrounded not only by a menagerie of plastic figures – smiling blue bears, an orange witch astride her broom and a red and merry Santa; about what you would expect from the back alley of a bar known for its character – but, further down the building, by detritus of the discarded variety more carelessly placed (though much less now, Tara says, than the old days, when the trash used to be “up to the windows”). Sure, some has been bagged in white and bright blue plastic, but most (tennis shoes, plywood, paint cans, chairs with missing legs) roams haphazardly free.
And yet pretty much everything surrounding this seemingly static alleyway, this urban courtyard, this open yet enclosed space (minus the moored Max Fish, of course), is evidence of how this neighborhood (which happens to be Tara Jane O’Neil’s old neighborhood), is changing or has already changed.
“The apartment, the bar and the coffee shop, when I lived there,” Tara Jane says, “that was kind of my reality. Of course, there was this whole big city all around it but that was kind of my nest, all those buildings. And so that would be like my view from where I lived. I would look out and that was like my backyard. That construction site with the elevator and the giant new high-rise, that stuff wasn’t there when I was there. It’s just interesting how things tend to change in this city.”
“That was definitely a special vibe during that time and that place,” she says of her time (circa 1997-2000) there. “I was in my mid-twenties. Everybody that I was hanging out with, you know, was making music. We were going to each others’ houses, jamming, doing whatever.”
“Sunday Song,” says Tara Jane, “corresponds with the place so nicely. I was spending a lot of time at the Pink Pony. It was kind of like my living room, and my friends worked there and the owner was kind enough to turn a blind eye to the coffee we consumed for free.
“Anyway, my friend Josh was playing guitar. He was working and playing guitar one day and kind of dared me to write a song with fucked-up tuning. So I took it upstairs to my apartment which was next door and worked on it a little bit and brought it back down to the Pony as a half-finished song. I think there’s actually a line about me drinking at Max Fish in that song, so it’s totally like my experience on that block.”
We're sorry you missed it.
Possibly 4th Street
Volume I, Issue Six (Part Two)
Tara Jane O’Neil
Who:
Visual and recording artist Tara Jane O’Neil
When:
Around 2 p.m. on Friday, November 16th
Where:
In the back alley/backyard behind Max Fish, 178 Ludlow Street
Songs performed for us:
"Sunday Song," a cover of Richard Hurley's "New River Blues," and "Blue Light Room," a song of which O'Neil says "I now no longer relate."
One thing Tara Jane O’Neil has never done:
“Grown a beard.”
Something she’s done once and once time only:
“One time I opened a show for a Buddhist monk at a temple.”
The name of a book she’s read at least twice:
“Trickster Makes This World (Lewis Hyde).”
And a movie she’s seen at least three times:
“Xanadu.”
The album Tara Jane O’Neil has listened to more than any other in her life:
“Probably The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell, but I think it might be a tie (between) that and Sign ‘O’ The Times by Prince.”
If life on Ludlow was so damn special, then why did you leave?
“Well, I mean, I think everybody who lives here (New York City) should probably escape every so often to see some trees, but that’s just me. Most specifically, our situation, we were living in an apartment that had a sublet. Someone that had a lease sublet to us. It was still relatively cheap for the neighborhood that was about to change into what it kind of is now, so in our building everybody was getting evicted and they were renovating the place and charging twice as much and we were just kind of safe inside of this sublet. But then the landlord blew the whistle after three years or whatever and so we had to go. And the way my life is structured, it’s a pretty delicate weave of economics. You know, I can’t continue doing what I do if I have to get a full-time job, so we had to go somewhere and there weren’t really any options in the city and had kind of been looking to get out anyway, so we went upstate.”
Was your time in the city productive?
“I tend to be pretty productive wherever I go because that’s just what I do with my time. I make shit.”
Speaking of . . . your second book with CD, Wings Strings Meridians: A Blighted Bestiary, is ready for release. Is this the closest, so far, to a merger of your music and drawing?
“Well, it’s the most comprehensive document of those two pursuits. But there’s other projects I work on that are more of an actual merging of the visual and the musical side. This is a more a document. It’s a project in that I’m compiling all of those things, but it’s not a composition. I didn’t make all the things specifically for the book and make all the songs specifically for the CD that goes with the book, you know. It’s not like a specific project with a big concept behind it. It’s just a collection. There’s a lot of doodle work in there. And unfinished pieces in there. Like little sketches of things that maybe I brought to some other form later. You can call it like a monograph.”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 6:00 AM, November 7, 2007
Possibly 4th Street is a regular SOTC feature in which Rob Trucks invites musicians to play songs somewhere, anywhere, in the five-borough public. Previously, Steve Wynn performed in a dog run and The Black Lips played a couple songs in Sara Roosevelt Park. Today, we've got the gorgeously plaintive Phosphorescent in Grand Ferry Park.
photo by Camille Dodero
Possibly 4th Street: Phosphorescent
by Rob Trucks
Crack audio and video recording by Camille Dodero.
Volume I, Issue Five
Who:Phosphorescent, the recording name of Bed-Stuy resident Matthew Houck
Who Phosphorescent is today, October 4th: Matthew Houck, Ben McConnell, Jeff Bailey, Scott Stapleton, and Elizabeth Barfield
When: About six o’clock on Thursday evening
Where: Grand Ferry Park along the East River shore, in Williamsburg
Songs Played: "Wolves" (scroll for MP3), "Be Dark Night"
A book Matthew Houck has read at least twice:
“Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (by Denis Johnson)”
A movie he’s seen at least three times: Mulholland Drive.
The album he’s listened to more than any other in his life: Another Side of Bob Dylan.
The circumstances under which he wrote “Wolves,” the highlight of Phosphorescent's recently released Pride:
“It was specific about . . . . I was living with a girl and, and it was, something about, something about . . . . We had talked about some stuff and kind of . . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to know exactly what really, but it’s something about . . . .”
Was this morning? Afternoon? At night?
“Morning, morning. Morning with that one.”
Okay, so you’d been talking about some stuff . . .
“Well, maybe not talking about some stuff. Maybe going through some stuff, and it was all just kind of how there was always . . . . I mean, you know, it’s pretty just metaphorical, pretty directly metaphorical on purpose to where it’s not too specific where you can kind of apply whatever you want to it, I hope.”
Is she in the room when you write it?
“No.”
You have to leave the room that she’s in in order to write it.
“I do.”
But she's awake.
“She’s awake.”
More about "Wolves":
It's the first song Houck wrote upon arriving in New York and the only song (so far) that he's written on ukulele. The orchestration is sparse (a bass drum here, an acoustic guitar there), though still a sturdy bedrock for layer upon layer of voices (yea verily it's a 21st-century Gregorian chant by way of Brooklyn), thin like a cabin window without insulation, vulnerable, and hauntingly transparent. What remains is something tenuous, transforming and, in just the right light (say, sundown on the East River), resoundingly timeless.
For video of Phosphorescent performing "Wolves" on the East River shore, click below on that "read on" link. For further discourse on this October afternoon, consult the piece that also ran in print over here.
Matthew Houck and Elizabeth Barfield
photo by Rob Trucks
