Erin Mckeown | cast

June 2nd, 2010

all photos by kristin angel. copywrite 2010 the august company.




i've been keeping a secret these last three months.

no, i'm not pregnant.
no, i'm not ill.

no, my secret is, i've become an actor. like a baby found in a cave and then raised by wolves as one of their own, i joined the august company, a local theater ensemble, and acted in their latest show.

ever since i was a kid, i've dreamt about being in plays. i never dreamt about being a musician; it was just something that happened along the way. growing up, i suffered paralyzing stage fright that kept me from performance camp or community theater. it was ordeal enough to play a concert in the middle school band or the smallest piece in my yearly piano recital.

my senior year in high school, i bit the bullet and took Drama I. every day on the way to third period, i would take a quick detour into the girls room and throw up a little. i was wrecked with fear and anxiety. people in my family did NOT draw attention to themselves. and god forbid, if they were recognized for anything, that they might enjoy the spotlight. in my dreams, i easily broke this unspoken rule. in real life, it was much harder.

my theater teacher must have seen something in me that i couldn't see because she cast me in our one act play festival entry, and later as an evil stepsister in the senior class production of "cinderella" (worst musical ever)(why couldn't they have done "annie get your gun"? i would have nailed that sucker).

i began to slowly get over my anxiety about being on stage. playing music helped. for some reason, it was easier for me to stand up in front of an audience alone and sing a song i wrote about my deepest feelings, than it was to dress up in costume and pretend to be someone else.

in the intervening 14 years, i've spent the better part of my days on stage. i love it and routinely do things up there that surprise even me. the transformation from scaredy-cat to entertainer is still a mystery to me.



so imagine my horror to find, as i drove to my first read through this march, that i was full-on nervous. it had been years since i had gotten nervous for anything. not even playing solo to 10,000 people or being on late-nite TV. yet there i was with a gnawing pit in my stomach, my mouth getting drier by the second.

i thought i conquered this! i thought being in a play would be no big deal, that the hardest part was finding time in my schedule. apparently, i was back at square one with fear and anxiety.

over the last three months, i've experienced a crazy train of emotions. my first rehearsals were exercises in anxiety management. i'd wake up in the morning and have to trick myself into eating (crossword puzzles help). once i got to rehearsal, i'd feel my body- which has always been a reliable extension of my voice and musicality- betray me. i'd feel frozen and small, when i wanted to be warm and big.

my therapist offered me some choices:

THERAPIST
you could quit.

ME
no, i cant, these are my friends. and i'd be letting so many people down.

THERAPIST
if you fell down the stairs and broke your legs, you would have to quit, so...

ME
no, i cant quit.

THERAPIST
ok, then think about this. what kind of grade are you trying to get in this play?

oh, right. i am always trying to do things best. my ego works that way. it always has. sometimes it's made me crazy successful, sometimes it's been downright crippling. but in that instant, i was able to deflate and understand i was a student in a generous and soft classroom. no one was expecting me or needing me to be spectacular. i exhaled, and that's when things started to change.

about halfway through the rehearsal process, it became clear that the company needed some help with the music they wanted to do for the show: a cover of a righteous everly brothers tune, "gone", and an a capella adaptation of the traditional "wind and rain". it was no big deal for me to jump in and help make those moments musical. in fact, it reminded me that even if i was new or inexperienced or just plain paralyzed by this acting thing, i could contribute to the company and help make this show great.

something started to loosen in me. i stopped trying to high jump my limits, and i started to simply walk up to them. i accepted that i only had as much experience as i had, and that it was a long time ago. i let go of trying to compare what i thought i knew from being a musician, and i asked for help.

my fear retreated to a manageable level. by the time we got to running the whole show, i was simply busy. first i sang and played guitar, then i moved some set pieces around, provided an offstage line. Next i was on stage for a tiny monologue, a two-hander, an ensemble scene, then sang another song. and then it was over.

i have rarely felt so satisfied in a creative situation. to get to use all my skills in a 90 minute show was a complete joy. and i did find a few things that my musical experience helped with: second shows are always looser (ie, better); dont forget to warm up; "hurry up and wait" is an art to itself.

and now, about those wolves. i spend so much creative time alone. i write alone, travel alone, more often than not, perform alone. to get to share the love and the work of putting on an evening of entertainment was a revolution for me. and to be accepted by folks who are much much better at this thing called acting was the ultimate complement. it was like finding a big ole circus family that needed my particular act and fitting right in.

we musicians are a wierd bunch, but the story we tell is that actors are even wierder. they throw great parties, but otherwise they're just freaky. i think i understand why now.

being onstage is like getting really really high. honestly, it is the best high ever, and i have tried a few. like any good drug, once you've tasted it, you spend the rest of your life chasing down that first feeling. a favorite phrase of mine about drinking illustrates this:

"a martini is the closest thing to a spiritual experience, that isnt."

which is to say that we humans are really looking for something greater than ourselves, something outside our quotidian perspective and experience. drugs help, but ultimately fall short. i think the thing that happens between an audience and a performer comes even closer. to give a good show or to see a good show is to breathe a special air for a few moments. it charges us, inspires us, leaves us different.

as a musician i have experienced this high and found its release to be part of the show too. the physical act of playing an instrument or singing, somehow helps me not to get overwhelmed with this energy. i exhaust myself even as i rev myself up. like a good joint, time slows down and softens. then you come down, then you do it again the next day, ad infinitum. yet, as an actor, i found myself flying high in a new way, like doing lines of coke or way way way too much coffee. it built slowly over months of rehearsal, and reached a frenzy in a too-short run of 4 shows. i had trouble finding a way to release that electricity. what could i do with myself to come down?

cast party.

and so i found myself on saturday night packed elbow to elbow in a crowded kitchen. the music was loud, the people were boisterous, and i was bouncing around amongst it all like a happy pinball. the sweet tea sloshed about in my plastic cup as i hugged and thanked and laughed with a roomful of new friends.

and guess what? it's no surprise to this kid, but i want to do it again, and again, and again.


the august company cast for "gone":
pam victor, mark teffer, claire kavanah, kelsey flynn, amy koske, liesel de boor, rachel braidman, julian olf, scott braidman, sheila siragusa, kerry strayer, steve angel, dennis quinn

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | the drinking clock

February 12th, 2010

howdy web deizens! i am spending a day in my house for the first time in... well since ireland, uk, italy, france, pennsylvania, ohio, indiana, and michigan. whew!

last night i played a benefit for haiti at UMASS-amherst. i got to sing with the young@heart chorus, hang with my old friend martin sexton, listen to lenelle moise's amazing new poem about michael jackson, and meet an ambitious young acapella group, sonos.

i also saw the following tucked in a corner of the fine arts center prop shop. i stared at it for awhile, wondering exactly how this won-drous machine could possibly work. then i wondered if it was a joke. what do you think???

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | the thaw

January 9th, 2010


i was writing about dancing yesterday. it's been on my mind lately, how i use my body to react to music. sometimes i get frustrated that i have an instrument hanging on my neck so often. my favorite moments on stage are ones where i can put down whatever it is i am holding and move unfettered.

i wrapped up cultureweek2010 last night with a night of dancing to new orleans bands. perhaps because the APAP conference is this week, the musical offerings this weekend were vast. a new friend from new orleans was here in town, so i tagged along while she went around visiting her hometown bands.

after an amazing ethiopian dinner at meskerem, we started at sullivan hall. john ellis, paul sanchez, jason marsalis, and christian scott all took the stage in some form or other. there was tuba, trumpet, harmonica, vibes, and more, all mixing it up. it was early in the evening, and the crowd was moving like they needed more drinks. me too. i hadnt been to a club to just dance in awhile. you have to dance to new orleans music, but it took me a second to get going.

by the time we transfered to the bitter end to see rosie ledet, things had changed. i was feeling looser, and so were the hundred plus people packed into that tiny club.
i played at the bitter end once in 1997. i met one of my oldest friends that night, and duncan sheik tried to buy my $5 cassette with a $100 bill. i just gave him the cassette. wonder if he even remembers?

so we danced and danced to rosie as she played traditional zydeco music. more than once, i stopped dancing to think, this reminds me of afrobeat. both musics are primarly for dancing. they have simple forms. percussion and drone are key components. the washboard and the shekere clatter underneath the music and form a constant backbone. and the music just goes and goes. every song must have been at least 6 or 7 minutes. i really have no idea exactly because i danced until i got sweaty, which was a fantastic feeling in the middle of january.

i hate the way my body feels this time of year. and i hate the way my body feels when i dont get to loosen up and let go with music like rosie's. it took me a week, but i eventually warmed up and thawed out.


Tags:

Erin Mckeown | just.fucking.dance.

January 8th, 2010


every time i set about writing today, i find myself distracted. i was never the kid who put off writing the paper. i was the cranker who turned it out in one sitting two or three days ahead of time and then coasted into the due date. i dont want to think about my blog as homework, but i am starting to feel that way. i felt the same way the other day when i had to write up a set of comments on net neutrality and my internet usage for the FCC. i kept finding reasons not to write. why? am i really that obstinate these days that any whiff of assignment, even self-imposed, results in intractibility? (by the way, you too can file comments with the FCC. instructions here, due on jan14th)

someone either here or on FB recommended the museum of art and design (thank you!), which has an especially attractive pay-what-you-wish thursday option. i went last night with my friend moose, a gifted producer and composer. we each paid $10 and saw a fabulous exhibit of paper sculpture.

both "paper" and "sculpture" were terms taken loosely by the curators. the show featured so many interpretations of that intersection, it was mind boggling. can you really do that with paper? i kept asking myself over and over. the advent of the laser certainly helped. many of the most detailed sculptures were made using high-tech cutting technology. but as a whole, paper as a material seemed to inspire the very basic aesthetic of accumulation. monstrous stacks were laser cut or lathed; tiny cuts on yards of paper added up to vast scenes; a multitude of quaker oats boxes stretched from floor to ceiling; minuscule paper rolls became a table top size floral mosaic.

here's my favorite, Jane South's Wall:

after grabbing a quick bite in columbus circle with moose, i headed downtown to meet the swede, an old old friend and mentor. the swede has recently been hired to write a broadway musical. what an assignment! i dont even know where you would begin, but if anyone can do it, the swede can.

i feel honored that the swede has shared a little of her process with me, and it's led to some really good conversations on the how and why of musical theater. we were talking last week about how broadway musicals sometimes try to manufacture emotion (or something with the appearance of emotion) via musically complicated songs and flashy stage craft. i've observed that i connect emotionally with music via rhythm. if it doesnt have some type of motion and depth rhythmically, i'm not engaged. this set the swede's mind turning. if this were true for more people than me (which i think it is, whether people are aware of it or not), how can this come to benefit a broadway show?

so the swede is here in NY now doing a version of her own culture week, taking notes on other musicals. she managed to get some tickets to the new musical "Fela!" and invited me to come along. i didnt know too much about the show, but i certainly knew that we'd get plenty of rhythm.

"Fela!" tells the story of the afrobeat pioneer and political agitator fela kuti. it's unusual as modern musicals go- there is no dialogue and there arent any scene changes. all the action takes place on the stage of fela's club "the shrine", and the only spoken words are by fela himself. the music is primarily pre-existing fela songs, with a few new bits thrown in for continuity and plot (warning: this musical has no plot, and i didnt care).

i have always loved afrobeat, specifically the drumming and the horns. you can hear both the influences of afrobeat (funk, jazz, hi-life, cuban) and what it has gone on to influence (modern funk and hip-hop, rock, and beyond). in some ways, afrobeat is a linchpin in 20th century music, everything rotates around it. does anyone agree, disagree?

the music of fela survives broadway-ification surprisingly intact. part of that is because core members of antibalas, the brooklyn based modern afrobeat collective, are the house band. and somehow, the simple explanatory style of fela's music lends itself extraordinarily well to the broad gestures of big-time broadway. broadway composers tie themselves in knots trying and failing to write songs that have as much clarity and emotion as fela's music.

broadway lends itself so well to spectacle because it's the one form that marries dance and song inextricably. most purely musical performance doesnt feature movement and most dance performance either works with musical forms besides song or breaks apart the song form with gestures. it was invigorating to see music that i love simply reacted to. it was not re-contextualized, not broken apart, not re-interpreted. the dancers moved as you would have thought they should, feeding on the inherent elements of the music and amplifying them physically without commenting on them. perhaps that sounds like a missed opportunity, but i think it's actually the more entertaining and emotionally engaging choice. if the music makes you want to dance, then just. fucking. dance.

if you can find a way to see "fela!" you must. it absolutely blew me away- eye candy and ear candy and heart candy.

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | elevate, escalate, remember

January 7th, 2010

i got home last night from a friend's birthday party in the far away land of the Upper West Side, and was too tired to type. a contributing factor i am sure was the pounds of italian food i ate at gennaro. squid-blackened risotto, kale salad, truffle salad, more gnocchi, octopus salad, fettuchini bolognase, then mousse, flan, and tiramisu. happy birthday jane!

i finished up "zeitoun" the other night, tearing through the 4th segment of the book like a mad-woman. i needed to know what happened more than i needed to sleep. i love books like that, even though they make my head ache from all that reading and leave me short of breath from all that excitement. i am contemplating a move to new orleans, and a book like "zeitoun" mostly makes me want to live there. i have always wanted to be a part of the type of community that has formed there. although there is a part of me that is consistently horrified by every new story i hear about katrina-related atrocities, i also wonder if an event like the flood has to define a city forever. i suppose like any place, there's gonna be ups and downs, and new orleans just happened to have had a very very famous down. i need to think more on this.

so instead of reading last night, i decided to watch a film. the first one i saw on the shelf was "ladysmith black mambazo: on tip toe". i could do a whole entry on this documentary. maybe i will when i dont have too many other things to get to in this one. like most people, i heard of LBM when i saw them with paul simon on SNL back in 1985. "graceland" had just come out, and paul simon was BIG. i was too young to catch any of the debates swirling around the record (politics, expoitation) and i still havent resolved my feelings on all that (and i have a damn ethnomusicology degree).

what i remembered about that performance then is what also struck me last night watching this film. i am so taken with the substance of joseph shabalala's music- its subjects of god and hope, it's harmonic form, and the choreography. something about the dance language that LBM employs always catches me. i love the synchronicity, i love the small movements in time broken by bigger athletic gestures, the freeze-frame posturing and then the supple way the pose is broken.

the movie traces the history and influences of the isicathamiya style of singing and gives a brief timeline of the group. watching it, i couldnt help but think about another movie, paris is burning, about a similiar way that dance, fashion, and performance competition fufill a distinct social function in a culture. can someone with more time compare and contrast these two films? i know wont get to it until the spring, and i think there's something really rich there.

my big cultureweek2010 adventure yesterday was to go to the guggenheim with my friend Z, a wondrously talented musician, writer, and painter. she's got an eye and a mouth on her, all the better to view and provide running commentary.

the exhibit in the main hall of the guggenheim was a kandinsky retrospective. one of the first artists to be collected by the guggenheims, the show worked its way in a roughly chronological manner as you walked up and up and up toward the top of the rotunda.

i didnt know much about kandinsky, but it didnt matter because i like any experience of visual art. i especially like to see where someone's biography intersects their output. perhaps it is not fair to wonder where someone was living, who they were sleeping with, what they were listening to, what were they were reading might have affected their creativity (god knows i get cranky when people do it to me), but i find myself hungry to have that information as i look at a person's collected work.

i dont have all that much to say about kandinsky's actual art, but that i liked where it arrived by the time he died. as he closed in on his earthly end, he had discovered bio-morphic forms and pastel colors. picture ernst haeckel meeting bed bath and beyond, which is surprisingly engaging.

i'd never been to the guggenheim before and was completely stunned and overwhelmed by the space. i have rarely been in architecture that inspires such a physical reaction (see my entry ages ago on the jewish museum in berlin). but as i walked up and up and up into the museum, my heart raced, my head spun, and my mood shifted from calm and grounded, to ethereal and floating. i almost wanted it to stop because i felt like at any moment i would teeter over and fall... where?

one of the gifts of the space too is looking down through the spiral and catching glimpses of work that you saw a few minutes earlier. the feeling is a physical translation of memory. with distance, you see something differently. with distance, you can see a lot of things at once. because of the spiral, you walk a few more feet and look again, and some things that were near are now further, and vice versa. here's a pic i took from the top before the security guard made me stop.



speaking of memory, my favorite piece of art in the whole museum (and perhaps my favorite thing i have experienced all week) was anish kapoor's installation "memory". i wish i had written down my thoughts on seeing it before i watched this little movie about it, because the curator and the artist of course explain it more eloquently than i can, but i will say the following:

i was struck by the size of the object, and its relatively organic feel despite being made of giant steel plates bolted together. it was as though a big construction crane had laid a quivering steel egg in the too small room at the museum.

Z and i approached it from the outside on two different sides before we saw what the artist called the "aperature". approaching it, from a room filled with picasso and gaugin, i thought it was a modern rothko-type painting- a giant 2-D canvas that explored the color black. but as i got closer, i realized i was looking into a giant void, and that void was the interior of the sculpture. i took my glasses off, as if that would help; i stepped closer and further, nothing helped me make sense of what i was seeing. slowly, as my eyes got used to the darkness i could begin to discern the curved steel walls receding into an interior that was too big and too far away for definition.

thank you Art for the way you can disorient and dislodge my day-to-day.

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | intermission

January 5th, 2010


i spent the day stuck in front of my computer and on the phone dealing with Real Life. no worries, after a day of nose to the digital grindstone, i think i got done almost everything i needed.

i did go out to dinner in manhatten at frankies 17. there is one in brooklyn too. amazing italian food. we had beets and meatballs with raisins and tiramisu and cheesecake.

i was joined by my friend, the irish director jimmy fay. he's got a new sam shepard play opening at the atlantic next week. i'm not going to get to see it until later in its run, but it promises to be, as they say, a corker. jimmy is one of the smartest, deepest guys i know, and that's from only hearing about half of what comes out in his crooked irishman's accent. imagine if i understood everything he said.

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | translations from the good book

January 4th, 2010

i woke up today feeling hungover and tired from all the stuff i have been pouring into my days. besides my cultural diet, i am also gorging on old friends and long catch-ups. so i took today easy, kind of.

when my friend c.Love and i had coffee this morning, i asked her if she was doing anything interesting tonight.

"yes, trans, dolly, gospel."

that's really all i heard, because i got so excited by what she was describing.

"stop," i said."i want to be surprised."

so i ended up tonight at joe's pub in manhatten seeing an incredible transwoman perform the gospel-oriented repertoire of dolly parton, complete with 7 piece band and choir.

it's so rare that i see something i knew nothing about ahead of time, and i think it's a major contributor to being blown away. i dare say, that only the first time or the hundreth time you see a performer, it has the potential for real transcendance.

our lady J got me tonight. she re-arranged and re-contextualized songs like "the grass is blue", "traveling", "two doors down", "9-5", "the seeker", "i will always love you", combining hits and more obscure tracks, switching between secular and non-secular music. not only was she a killer piano player and arranger, she had 4 costume changes! i was taking notes.

listening to song after song, i was also struck by the depth of the writing. that was the real brilliance of the show for me and what makes dolly parton such a rich vein to mine for comment. not only does she write with humor and flair and craft, she also writes from a deeply spiritual place that anyone can connect to. it's tempting to love dolly parton ironically, for her exagerated appearance, for her gaudy production values, for all her shiny country sheen, but that's all sequins to make people buy things. only later do we consumers realize there is the heart of a true artist beating underneath the costume.

it's really important to me that we make a space in our culture for people who don't fit in narrow boxes, who would rather make their own categories. people like dolly parton. or our lady j. and that's how i think of myself, for sure. the category of erin. i am especially attracted to those who push at the gender spectrum, who shade it with finer and finer grades. when you combine that with good old fashioned show biz, then i'm a goner.

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | the spirituality of subtraction

January 4th, 2010



what happens when we take things away? i've been thinking a lot about that recently. perhaps part of it is because of the new year, and many resolutions involve giving something up. but i am thinking of subtraction as something even more fundamental and lasting than a new years diet. what happens when we abstain? what happens when we set limits for ourselves around consumption and accumulation?

i dont drink, smoke, or take drugs anymore. the subtraction of these items from my life has been miraculous. everything has shifted for me- my relationships to people, places, and things especially food, sex, and god. i am closer, clearer, and more present for all three. it's been a beautiful and i hope permanent shift.

i have always been a house purger. every once in awhile, i comb through my place and get rid of things. mostly clothes and shoes i no longer wear. but also music and books. i try to keep only what i need. i have three plates, a few glasses, 2 pots, and just enough cutlery. i find that when i want something i used to have or i need, i like looking at why i wanted it in the first place.

some of my subtractions are temporary. i like to give up meat every once in awhile. it gives my wallet a break and my intestines too. i feel lighter somehow. and then when i pick the meat back up, i feel my muscles rejoice at the new fuel. i also like to fast. i usually do a seasonal cleanse of some sort. it's great for me to think about my relationship with food and get a big old re-set by shifting that around regularly.

i saw two shows yesterday that seemed to fit in with my current thoughts on subtraction. the first was "wishful drinking", carrie fisher's one woman broadway show about her life. based on her memoir of the same name (which i listened to in the van on tour), she hilariously recounts her family history, her mental illness, and her addiction and recovery. i always find it inspiring when people share their addiction memories, though it's a very fine line to walk between engaging and off-putting. the writing in "wishful drinking" is so bulletproof and flawless, that it makes the very question of "is this naval-gazing self-centered bull?" completely irrelevent. see it or read it, now.

one of the things that carrie fisher regularly subtracts from herself is her memory. as a treatment for bi-polar disorder, she undergoes ECT, a modern version of shock therapy. one consequence is she often loses her short term memory (about 4 months of it). as she says, anything important that happened in the last 4 months will probably happen in the next 4 months too. for her, the trade-off is worth it.

i like this idea. i hold on to too much in my brain that i dont need. i am wondering how i can let go of more that i hold on to. in the same way i like to change my perspective on food or material posessions by subtraction, what can i let go of emotionally to live more in the moment? that's the question, right?

there is a song by one of my favorite bands, the bad plus, called "silence is the question". in my current thinking about subtraction, silence is the answer too. the space between notes, the quiet parts of the day. what happens when we remove the clatter?

after carrie fisher, i went to see the bad plus at the village vanguard. i'd never been to this historic club, as much as i have heard and loved plenty of recordings made there. i went with another musician, and we sat right up close, about 3 feet from the drum kit.

the bad plus- pianist ethan iverson, bassist reid anderson, and drummer dave king- create by deconstruction. or really, thats too kind a word. they create by exploding songs and letting the pieces fall where they may. sometimes the deconstruction is so sly that you guffaw out loud when you realize what they've done. other times, its so raw and volatile that you can only sit back and be overwhelmed by it.

the set last night was a mix a cheek and bombast, though leaning more heavily toward physical cascades of overlapping explosions. this most obviously manifests itself in the drumming of dave king, who gave a virtual clinic on the dissolution of beats and drum kits as we know them. however, occasionally, and for me, most importantly, silence became the question, and the trio deconstructed by placing big hunks of silence where there once was chaos. in those spaces, where king makes his kit sound like it is coming through your next-door-neighbors wall, where reid simply breathes and occasionaly plays a note, and iverson goes two finger, there is that shift of perspective that leads me to clarity. i feel the fast, the abstinence, and the clearing of my memory.

Tags:

Erin Mckeown | time waits for no woman

January 2nd, 2010

i couldnt sleep last night. not because of being in a new place, or even the clatter of the F tracks outside my window, no, i couldnt sleep because i was reading "zeitoun" until the wee hours. I Could Not Put It Down. a gift, that book is. i mean, we all know whats gonna happen. a hurricane is coming, then a devastating flood. so what could be the hook? real lives painted in hyper color. i wish someone could take my day to day and go beyond reporting to commentating, contextualizing, and in short, elevating to literature, the daily sentences of life.

it made sense then to start my day at the strand in manhatten. as i was wandering about, i spotted a celebrity or two, including gretchen phillips, the punk-rock queere-core legende. after perusing the stacks a little more ( i bought nothing, she art books and the autobiography of helen keller), we decided to get some lunch.

a short hop away was souen, macrobiotic and beautiful asian food. i'd been there before, but didnt realize until i walked in the door and saw the split level layout. i love their grain coffee, a chicory and root combo that lives somewhere between coffee and tea. it reminded me of the tea that the spaceship heart of gold tries to make for arthur dent in the hitchhikers guide. something "very like" coffee, but not quite.

i ordered "boxB" which was full of rice balls, pickles, seaweed, and salmon in ginger. i forgot to take a picture i was so hungry. halfway through, i remembered i was trying to blog about my week. document, erin, document!

thus here is a picture of gretchen with two important pieces of trash we spotted. there is a pun in here somewhere. how about a newyorker style caption contest?



i was hoping to walk the highline, the new elevated park that just opened above 10th ave. but if you were in NYC today, you know that would have been downright stupid. it's so cold here, it's dangerous. mind you, not chicagojanuarycold (which is the coldest i have ever experienced, colder than my alaskan trips), but very very close. fuck you windy cold air.

back in brooklyn, i ate dinner with my friend dame-o at flatbush farm. is this a relation of the farm on adderly? dam-o and i shared a salad with bacon then the ricotta gnocchi. my mom is straight up italian (parents born in italy) so i grew up knowing the proper way to say "gnocchi". it's not quite a silent "g", it's like youre still thinking of the "g" but dont need to say it.

i could have eaten myself silly and sat at the bar all night, but dam-o and i had other plans. we headed down flatbush to BAM to see my friend todd sickafoose's band. todd names his band based on his current album, so tonight, it was "tiny resistors".

i've known todd for a long time, and played with him alot. he's been a big part of my creative process- somehow being around and part of the writing of some of my best music. he plays on "sing you sinners", "lafayette", and he produced my sideproject, "emma". we also see eachother alot because he's been ani difranco's right-hand guy for years now.

the show was free and in the upstairs BAM Cafe space. i'd been to another show there a couple years ago, and the room was just as gorgeous as i remembered. an open industrial space, it's made more cozy by metal arches lined with thousands of tiny lights. the effect is something like a giant tin can with pinholes, or more elegantly, like a million little stars twinkling overhead.

todd always plays with an 8 piece ensemble. my brother erik deutsch was on the piano, and my good friend adam levy played guitar. last time i saw adam was on my tour with jill sobule. adam showed up just in time at our chicago show to jump onstage and kill on "survivor".

my favorite thing about todd's music is that it is open. i never think of form when i listen. i am not hearing a "head" or an "A section" or a "B section", i am simply hearing a sound that gets thinner or fatter, louder or softer, subdivided or elongated, depending. there is plenty of room for players to put their own personality into it, but no one voice ever dominates.

tonight, todd's music felt brawny to me. i heard something muscular and fierce in it that i have never heard before. like a big timber being heaved onto strong, thick shoulders and carried easily. i knew all the songs, but never felt like i had heard them before. it was entirely fresh to my ears. i closed my eyes a few times and thought of what i would play if i could join them. but, mostly i just swayed in my seat and took it all in.



Tags:

Erin Mckeown | culture week 2010

January 1st, 2010


for my vacation this year, i didnt choose to go to an island, someplace sunny, or even someplace warm. i chose instead to come to brooklyn for a week and pack in as much music, theater, art, and food as possible.

i have a friend who lives in carrol gardens. she has a fabulous little apartment not far from the F Train, where i've often stayed when i come to town. she's currently in africa, doing amazing political and activist type things, and she offered me her keys in exchange for watering her plants. i think i got the better end of the deal.

my plan is to be here for 8 nights and to pack every day with as much as i can hear, taste, and see. i regularly spend long stretches in brooklyn, but this time i am consciously setting out to overstimulate myself before i have to get back to work.

so, day one, i drove in and started out easy with an evening showing of guy ritchie's sherlock holmes. it's been awhile since i have been to a rock 'em sock 'em blockbusta. what a pleasure to turn off my mind and watch things explode. there was enough of a plot to hang some great fights on and plenty of eye candy (hello jude, and hello production designer) to satisfy me. sequel please. by the way, i dont know why but i am rooting for guy ritchie. was he done wrong by madge?

ok, how about some restaurant recommendations. i need an interesting dinner spot near BAM and a good sunday morning brunch spot (not too pricey) in midtown. also, what art should i see? anything special going on this week? hook me up!

PS: book for the week is zeitoun by dave eggers


Tags:

« Older Entries