Make the Most of Our Time

Once upon a time, when my life was very different and so was the Richmond music scene, a new concept took hold.

It was November 2009 when the Listening Room opened up the basement doors of the Michaux house and welcomed in anyone and everyone willing to shut up and listen while the music played, here.

Back then, it was so refreshing to be able to go to a show where you knew you'd be able to hear every note, every harmony. And the string of twinkle lights would reliably fall from the low basement ceiling every time.

Like death and taxes, some things are certainties.

Tonight marked the end of that remarkable string of shows with the final installment of the Listening Room at the Firehouse Theater.

One thing about tonight was non-negotiable: I was going to sit in my usual seat come hell or high water.

So I arrived early enough to stake my territory and hang out with the LR crew whom I've gotten to know over the years. Emcee Chris saw me and said, "I'd have been devastated if you hadn't come."

As if.

When I finally took my seat I was joined by my favorite Jackson Ward couple, also long-time LR regulars.

A few minutes later, photographer Rob, part of the original crew, came over to bring the three of us glasses of bubbly to celebrate our nearly half a decade allegiance to the Listening Room.

One of the LR rules is that shows start on time but tonight's was a tad tardy with emcee Chris taking the stage to acknowledge as much.

He shared that the very first night of the series, Apropos Roasters brought coffee but forgot to bring a grinder. Now, almost five years later, they have an actual coffee shop. Time marches forward.

Appropriately, tonight's first act was Dogs on Main Street, also known as Mac, a fine singer and musician I first saw at the Listening Room back in February 2011 when he was the first one to inaugurate the move from the Michaux House to the Firehouse.

I've seen him many times since  and he only continues to sound less raw and more poignant, although the one thing that hasn't changed is his stellar self-deprecating sense of humor, in full flower tonight.

After his first heartfelt song, he explained that over the next few songs he was going to take us low and then lower and then back up and even higher. "So don't leave," he warned. "I'm not responsible for what happens if you do."

Anyone who had left (no one did) would have missed his second song ending abruptly when a string on his guitar snapped.

He'd come down from NYC on a Greyhound bus and so hadn't brought his usual second guitar. "I'm crashing and burning," he joked.

Mark of second band Vandaveer stepped out of the shadows and offered him a pack of guitar strings, asking, "What do you need?"

A guitar, Mac said and used Mark's to continue while Mark graciously took Mac's guitar backstage to restring it in the meantime.

Singer songwriter and LR originator Jonathan Vassar was called onstage and brought his wife's maternity accordion to join Mac for a song, an obvious mutual admiration society.

"You know what you get for trying to be different?" Mac asked us rhetorically. "A broken string!"

He chose to skip the song called "Gallows" even after he got his guitar returned and restrung, cracking wise saying, "I have download cards, postcards and an overdue credit card."

My favorite lines was, "I'm just an alley cat yearning for something more than this," at least until he played a new song and I heard him sing, "I guess my sins are at an even keel."

Saying that he was still going to be beating himself up about the broken string when he went to bed, Mac shared that at his release show at the Camel, he'd kicked his own cord out. "So what you saw tonight is pretty regular. Come talk to me after the show if I don't seem too unbearable."

Talented, yes. Hysterical for sure. Unbearable, not even a little. Dogs on Main Street is the epitome of what the Listening Room is about.

Talented musician with excellent songwriting chops and distinctive voice is introduced to music-loving masses and becomes part of local scene.

Tonight's crowd was understandably big and I felt a little sorry for those whose first LR was tonight. Imagine experiencing this and knowing it will be no more.

Once the second act began, the LR crew took the stage for a sort of mass farewell. Jonathan entreated us to keep listening. Antonia explained that there were people here tonight who'd been at that first Firehouse show seeing Mac and asked that those of us who'd been at the very first Michaux House show raise our hands.

We were a small group, but undoubtedly with some of the fondest memories in the room.

As he always does, Chris reminded us that the audience was 50% of the LR's success formula and even said, "Karen's been to more Listening Rooms than I have." The man didn't lie.

Next up was Vandaveer, a band I consider my May band. I first saw them in May 2011 and then again in May 2012, meaning I was overdue for my May Vandaveer fix.

They've been on a living room tour since April 1, covering over 13,000 miles with 3,000 left to go before the end of the month.

Leader Mark explained that he lived in Arlington, Virginia, singer Rose in Massachusetts and pedal steel player Tom was from Pennsylvania.

"For those of you keeping score, we play commonwealth music," he cracked. Literate humor, I like that. And if you ask me, it's better described as poetic music.

And I don't just like his voice, I adore his voice, which, as the girlfriend sitting next to me observed, "I even like his speaking voice." Uh huh.

Their sound is sort of alt-folk with his acoustic guitar bumped up with just enough reverb to tread near rock territory but Tom's pedal steel and Rose's exquisite voice on harmony and sometimes lead anchoring things firmly in LR territory.

When Mark mentioned that Tom was a Civil War buff who had spent some hours looking at Richmond's historic sites like Cold Harbor, he called us the birthplace of entrenchments.

"We used to make out there," my friend said leaning in as he husband sat oblivious on the other side of her.

The buoyant "However Many Takes It Takes," a song about perseverance, a subject I know well, won my vote for the line, "I'll be in the kingdom of your dreams."

"Sometimes it requires all arms and legs be on the ground to solve technical difficulties," Mark said at one point, pulling stuff out of the power strip in front of him and then flinging them over his shoulder. "None of that was necessary but it was for dramatic effect."

Dramatic aptly described his voice and Rose's over Tom's pedal steel or slide guitar and each song shimmered with the talent of the three. We couldn't have asked for a finer band to finish out the Listening Room.

For a soulful song about the coming apocalypse, Mark said, "There's nothing you can do except snap and sing along," which is about what I plan to do when the apocalypse finally does arrive.

Off their album of murder ballads from last year ("We sold dozens and dozens of that album"), they did "Pretty Polly" as Mark put it, "Modernized for your contemporary ears." That meant instead of guitar, he sang and stamped on the wooden floor.

We got another from that album when Rose sang "The Drunkard's Doom" and about brought the house down with her exquisite voice, sort of Emmylou Harris-like.

Then there was more literary humor when Mark told of writing a song because of Beverly Cleary and I wondered how many people in the crowd knew who she or Ramona Quimby had been.

Saying he couldn't call it "Ramona" because of Dylan's "To Ramona," he'd titled it "Beverly Cleary's 115th Dream," although he admitted that he didn't know that it was really her 115th.

Peace and love and harmony
and all the things that lovers need
Like hope and health and clarity and time
Oh, precious, precious time

And, just like that, the final Listening Room wound down. Mark called up the entire LR crew - Antonia, Jonathan, Chris, Rob, Nate- and Mac for the big singalong finale, Tom Waits' "Come On Up to the House."

I've no doubt that some of that crew got a bit misty up there singing because I know the long-time regulars in the room felt that way.

It was a really good run and the Listening Room set new standards for shows in this town. Oh, and the bands I discovered through being at almost every Listening Room. All the people I met there.

But it's not the end of the world, It's just a closing of the circle. It's run its course and now we'll have Listening Room Presents shows on an occasional basis.

What matters most is what Jonathan said. Keep on listening.

You better believe I will.

Gypsies, Tramps and Cheese

Ipanema said it first. "You know what this Superbowl needs? More tambourine."

As luck would have it, the Richmanian Ramblers were playing there tonight, thus giving some of us somewhere to go that didn't involve a screen but promised a tambourine.

The band had doubled in size since I'd first seen them, now up to eight musicians, with singer Antonia looking devastatingly beautiful in a black dress with red belt, red earrings and red scarf on her head.

The miracle of it was that all eight of them were somehow able to fit in that tiny front space to which bands are relegated for the monthly Live at Ipanema show.

Perhaps it was the absence of amps.

And while I have seen the Ramblers many times, I've also discovered some really interesting bands for the first time through this stellar series.

It was a small but mighty crowd (with a few jerseys worn) who came out for Romanian folk music set to multiple accordions, upright bass, clarinet, drum/tambourine, guitar and two violins.

Frankly, after a weekend spent in my own company, I'd come not just for the music but for some conversation with whomever I found.

I empathized with the sax player whose car had been towed last night not long after I saw him driving down Broad Street at 12:30 a.m. and chatted with the musical couple who'd just come from performing at a folk mass to a small, Superbowl-ravaged congregation.

It was while I was eating a slice of red velvet cake, or at least all the parts directly attached to the icing, that the band decided to introduce themselves, noting that they'd chosen "ramblers" as part of their name because, according to bassist Nate, "It was the cheesiest name we could have picked.'

Beginning with a wedding song, they moved on to a Croatian song about having dinner with your sweetheart, although not a particularly fancy one given the meal: potatoes, brown bread and scallion.

Nate said that they'd added Croatian and Serbian songs to their repertoire to make things harder on himself and Antonia when they sang.

Well done, sir. 'Cause singing Romanian wasn't hard enough.

We heard a song about how wine tastes better when you drink with attractive people and bad when drinking with ugly ones, necessitating Antonia saying, "My wine tastes good!"

Drinking must be a common theme in eastern Europe, because we then heard, "Little Bottle" with Nate shouting "ha ha!" periodically and a Serbian dancing song where the singer's partners have a different name with every verse.

"I wouldn't be cool with that," Antonia stated for the record.

There was a song about crossing the river, not on the ferry, but on your girlfriend's back ("Which is kind of awesome," she enthused) and one she described as kind of like that song, "I'd Do Anything for Love But I Won't Do That," except in Romanian.

The beauty of the additional musicians was a much fuller sound and more voices for the choruses and inevitable sha-shas and ha-has that seem to run through gypsy music, no matter what the language.

I'd have to say my favorite element was the clarinet, a slithering, sinuous woodwind that wound its way through the other instruments to give the songs a distinctive gypsy sound.

And don't even get me started on the tambourine, the saving grace on Superbowl Sunday.

With only five songs left, Nate explained, "All of these songs have been danced to at some point in the song's history, so you might as well get started on that now."

Sad to say, no dancing commenced.

A song about a young and old man arguing that death was the only cure for life was enlivened by the discovery that the cure for life comes in a bottle. "Let's drink to that!" Nate said and glasses were raised throughout the bar.

After a dirty counting song and the title song of their album, "World, Sister, World" about the cruelness of the world ("Not coolness," Antonia clarified) they ended with a dancing song that still failed to get the crowd dancing.

But it did get them hollering for one more song and the Richmanian Ramblers obliged with a song about a dowry, which may be a romantic topic in Romania because the guy near me put his arm around his girlfriend and cooed, "What about our dowry?"

A smart man would have had her up and dancing five songs ago. Or perhaps that's what they were going to do when they left.

The rest of us happily made do with tambourine instead of pigskin.

Not only was I cool with that, I say let's drink to that. Spoken like a true gypsy.

Are You A Culture Maker?

It was called a pre-birthday show even though the day is a month from today.

And just to be clear, it only became that once the subject of May come up and I said I liked to spend much of it in an extended birthday celebration.

And if anything was going to kick off a birthday celebration appropriately for me, it was with live music at my neighborhood record store.

Upstairs in the loft at Steady Sounds and ready to play was Jonathan Vassar and the Speckled Bird.

We waited until we had critical mass - as many audience members as band members.

People continued to trickle in as JV&SB played what has become the most beautifully full-sounding Americana being played in these parts.

Josh's cello and clarinet plus Paul's horn add such aural richness to the guitar, accordion and voice talents of Jonathan and Antonia (deep blue dress and grooviest 60s belt ever)

Before they'd begun playing, they'd asked for requests and I'd jokingly said "happy songs" knowing full well there's no such thing with JV&SB.

If I'd been honest and not smart-mouthed, I'd have asked for "Match Made in Heaven" because of the heartfelt romantic lyrics and Antonia's vox saw.

There is no one I know of in this town who can bend her voice to that sound like she can.  It's truly a thing of beauty.

And they played it without me even asking.

At the end of their set, Jonathan said, "Happy Pre-Birthday" and a friend leaned over and whispered, "Happy birthday 2013."

Never leave for next year what you can do today.

Let me just reiterate: at no point was tonight about my birthday, which is a solid month away.

Following them was Ed Askew, considered an acid folk legend and former recluse who apparently had two brilliant albums and then disappeared.

But even while out of the public eye, he kept making music. He's finally been rediscovered and reissued and is back on tour, luckily for us.

He looked like an old hippie, he sounded exactly like a 60s-era folksinger (intonation, vocal stylings, subject matter) and he was a character.

You know a guy is real when he loosens his belt before a show. That's all I'm saying.

Making self-deprecating age jokes in between songs, he seemed to be genuinely getting into performing.

He had an array of mouth harps and played them skillfully; I sneaked glances of Jonathan watching him play.

It might have even been a grasshopper moment.

Most interesting of all for me was hearing songs from his early albums written in the late 60s and early 70s  with lots of eye references, lots of ship imagery, lots of joints.

So here were young man lyrics (often my favorite kind for their angst and impassioned qualities) coming out of an old man's face and body.

But his words.

It was a fascinating dichotomy.

After his set accompanied on banjo and keyboard by two bandmates, he took questions from the audience about the arc of his career.

I have to admire someone still so compelled to write and record as much music as he does.

But it was definitely like being transported to another time and place when music was very different (a time when all the girls had belts as cool as Antonia's).

For the second time in three days, I could have imagined snapping my fingers in applause.

And then for something completely different to close out our loft show, we heard Pull My Daisy, an electronic noise project duo with video.

With a piano score composed by the banjo player and him occasionally playing banjo live, tonight's experience was called "Midnight Suggestion" and was an improvised score to an improvised video.

The way I see it, if my pre-birthday kickoff involves one of my favorite local bands, an acid folk legend and electronica on a Monday night, it's looking to be a pretty groovy birthday season.

Practically a match made in heaven.

Silver Tongues Offer Fool's Gold

I was chatting online with a friend, telling him about the show I planned to see tonight and he responded, "Well, I do want to see a show at Balliceaux one of these days."

Color me surprised because he's a show-going guy, much the way I'm a show-going girl (in fact, it's how we met; you can only see someone at shows so many times before introducing yourself), and yet he'd never been to Balliceaux for music? It was news to me.

If you've read this blog for more than a week, it's pretty obvious that Balliceaux is a regular destination for me and with good reason. The food is creative, the acoustics are good and a variety of musical genres (as well as film and storytelling) are booked in the back room.

Now let's see, I've seen rhythm and blues, free and experimental jazz, neo-soul, Ethiopian-style grooves, rock, '60s Asian pop, brass bands, New Orleans parlor-style jazz and that's just what I can remember off the top of my head.

Tonight's show was being called "1001 Nights: A Musical Tribute to Lhasa de Sela," the world music singer who died of breast cancer just over a year ago at age 37. The evening's proceeds were going to the Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation in her memory.

The event had been organized by Evrim Dogu, one of those people I admire for his multiple major talents. Besides being a devoted de Sela fan, he's a talented musician and the baking genius behind Sub Rosa Bread (if you've ever been to the Byrd House Market, you know the crusty perfection of his loaves).

He'd been planning the event since her death last year. Twelve local musicians and one out-of-towner were interpreting de Sela's catalog one song at a time. There were songs in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, all languages de Sela had used on her albums and in concert.

Some performers I was familiar with, like the Bird and her Consort (Jonathan and Antonia Vassar), Laura Ann Singh (Quatro na Bossa) and Chris Milk (the artist/musician/puppeteer, whose painting of a guitar player, "Song," hangs in front of me as I type this).

Others were new to me, but not to the large crowd of friends and fans who'd come to hear this dream bill; the place was packed. And one musician was familiar to me, but not on the program; playing his always-superb trumpet was Paul Watson.

It was a night of truly beautiful music and after each song, you'd wonder how the next could possibly match it, but it always did. At one point a friend turned and tapped me on my leg, whispering, "It's so amazing!"

And she'd had no idea who Lhasa de Sela was when she'd walked into the room; I say that because I had to tell her. On the other hand, I had known and I was every bit as impressed. You can't hear a song like "Fool's Gold" and not feel the passion inherent in her songwriting.

It's just too bad that my friend didn't choose tonight to have divested himself of his Balliceaux virginity with this once-in-a-blue moon performance.

Now use your silver tongue once more
There's one thing I'd like to know
Did you ever believe the lies that you told?
Did you own the fool's gold that you gave me?

Let the Creepy Season Begin

Halloween season officially kicked off tonight with the Silent Music Revival's showing of short films by Slavko Vorkapich at Gallery 5. I made sure Andrew and I had front row seats for the kick-off.

These were creepy and disturbing short films, made all the more unsettling by the band Silver Top Beauty, featuring the operatic voice of Antonia Vassar.

The guitar, keyboards and that haunting voice began with an improvisation to a 1920s student-made film Day of the Dead and followed with two avant-garde shorts of Vorkapich's, including the classic The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra.

Vorkapich was a special effects whiz and a master of the montage, talents he utilized in 1930s-era Hollywood to great notoriety. His mad skills in both areas were in evidence in the films we saw tonight, complemented by Antonia's voice, the only one I can imagine being able to do justice to these films.

Afterwards, I spoke to a couple of newcomers to the event and they were blown away by the synchronicity of the film and music, which is exactly what moves me month after month at SMR. That and the admission cost: zero.

It really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated and tonight's near-capacity crowd would have gladly sat through a much longer show, but organizer Jameson likes to keep it fresh by mixing up the screening lengths. Tonight's ended all too soon for Andrew and me, and probably most of the audience.

Jameson always invites conversation after the screening and I love to geek out with him about silent films; he knows so much more than I do that it's almost like a silent film school lesson. I ask, he answers and we both get all worked up. Andrew says he loves to just stand back and watch us go at it.

Once I got that out of my system, Andrew and I headed to Avalon for drinks and basket o' fries ("You know me so well," he said when I showed him the menu) while catching up. Somehow, despite me having to walk home and get my car, I arrived first and ordered my drink from long-time bartender Jason.

When Andrew arrived and ordered, Jason asked, "Same tab?" and I clarified, "No, he's in a relationship." I don't know who thought that line was funnier, Jason or Andrew, but it definitely resonated with both. Well, he is.

He had lots of good stories and gossip for me and we talked about music because that's what our friendship was originally based on and we'll never let that go. I gave him a hard time about a couple of things, he told me he hated me and I reminded him that he really doesn't.

He admitted as much and we went back to talking about other people, especially the ones we don't like. We're like an old married couple who just go through the motions of challenging each other, knowing that we really think the same deep down.

It's kinda creepy. Not like Slavko Vorkapich pre-Halloween creepy, but definitely not right.

Neither of us would have it any other way.