No Idea Festival @ Lola's Stockyards, 2.24.2009
I finally made it to one of Brian Forella's new spots in the Stockyards -- the little one, downstairs from the Star Cafe, where I used to go for lunch when I worked down the street a couple of years back -- but surely not the way I expected.
It started out early Tuesday evening, when my sweetie came up to see me at work. She'd gotten a call from Lee Allen at Lola's 6th Street, where the No Idea Festival was scheduled to go down that night. No Idea's an international festival of improvisation, masterminded by Austin percussionist Chris Cogburn and promoted locally by muso-impresario Aaron Gonzalez's Inner Realms Outer Realms (who recently brought Eugene Chadbourne to Dallas).
"They're shutting us down," quoth Lee-boy, the "they" in question being the city's health department (for some water heater issue that Lola's wizard o' sound Andre Edmonson says should be resolved quickly). "Somebody needs to know!" My sweetie got on the horn to Aaron and word spread via the grapevine quickly enough that all the interested parties were able to make it to Lola's Stockyards, situated on West Exchange, just west of Main Street amid all the touristy western-themed junk.
When I got home from work, she was on her knees in her paint-slinging room, making a big sign to re-direct folks (especially the out-of-towners) to the new venue (including the j'int's phone number) and li'l map (which I rushed her out of the house before she could label the streets on; I suck). After a quick stop to hang the sign on the gate at Lola's 6th Street, we headed up to the Stockyards.
It wound up being a pretty good turnout -- especially for a Tuesday night with a change of venue. There were maybe 40 people there who weren't performing. A few were bar regulars or clueless barflys (like the kid who asked me what the drinks specials were and evaporated not long after I told him, "I dunno, son -- why doncha ask yer bartender?" A number were doubtless improv aficionados who'd made the trek from Dallas or Denton.
Whoever was controlling the music made sure that the out-of-town musos (besides Cogburn, Berliner Annette Krebs, Zurich-based L.A. expat Jason Kahn, and Japanese-born, Pennsylvania-based Tatsuya Nakatani) got an authentic Texas experience, spinning the kind of "Texas country" that sounds like music for pickup truck commercials.
When Krebs started her strangely subdued and tentative performance, the conversational level at the bar was actually louder than the music, which mostly consisted of barely audible tones from her electric guitar mixed with static and random snippets of radio transmissions in German and English. Kahn and Cogburn's duo was similarly low-key, with Cogburn coaxing sounds from a variety of instruments, including bowed cymbals (a recurring theme of the evening) while Kahn manipulated the sounds electronically. (Other Arts impresario Herb Levy had warned me up front that "some of the best stuff you'll hear will be by the people who are doing the least.")
The second set started out with a group consisting of Krebs, occasional Zanzibar Snails participants Sarah Alexander (voxxx, electronics), Michael Maxwell (kalimba, electronics), and an oboist I was unable to identify. I dug the interaction between the four musos. At one point, Lee Allen dropped in and exclaimed, "I didn't know KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN was going to be in the house tonight!" And indeed, a noisy interaction between Kahn and head Snails Michael Chamy (electronics) and Nevada Hill (violin and electronics) managed to summon the shade of the 20th century master composer and arguable father of psychedelic music.
My attention was somewhat distracted during the second set by my sweetie's realization that she didn't have her wallet and subsequent attempts to locate it, which included her leaving the club to retrace out travel route and search the house, in vain, for the missing item. (It later turned up at home. Hooray! This is why it's never good to rush when you're steppin' out.)
Most visceral and exciting set of the night was definitely Nakatani -- the most fluid of percussionists -- with trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez, bassist-promoter Aaron Gonzalez, and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, AKA Yells At Eels. Nakatani employed a lot of the same techiniques as Cogburn had earlier (bowed cymbals, scraping cymbals against drum heads) and added a few of his own (blowing on cymbals, humming against skins) in the context of a freewheeling four-way blowout with the Gonzalezes careening into orbit like late period Coltrane (Dennis was even whooping into the mic at times), the four players listening and responding to each other at a whirlwind pace. They left more blood on the stage than any of the performers that preceded them, which was a good way to end the evening.
Kudos to the No Idea folks and to Aaron for bringing this event to the Fort -- proof positive (if anybody's paying attention) that there is and audience for experimental music in this town. Here's hoping this will be the first of many more such nights to come.
It started out early Tuesday evening, when my sweetie came up to see me at work. She'd gotten a call from Lee Allen at Lola's 6th Street, where the No Idea Festival was scheduled to go down that night. No Idea's an international festival of improvisation, masterminded by Austin percussionist Chris Cogburn and promoted locally by muso-impresario Aaron Gonzalez's Inner Realms Outer Realms (who recently brought Eugene Chadbourne to Dallas).
"They're shutting us down," quoth Lee-boy, the "they" in question being the city's health department (for some water heater issue that Lola's wizard o' sound Andre Edmonson says should be resolved quickly). "Somebody needs to know!" My sweetie got on the horn to Aaron and word spread via the grapevine quickly enough that all the interested parties were able to make it to Lola's Stockyards, situated on West Exchange, just west of Main Street amid all the touristy western-themed junk.
When I got home from work, she was on her knees in her paint-slinging room, making a big sign to re-direct folks (especially the out-of-towners) to the new venue (including the j'int's phone number) and li'l map (which I rushed her out of the house before she could label the streets on; I suck). After a quick stop to hang the sign on the gate at Lola's 6th Street, we headed up to the Stockyards.
It wound up being a pretty good turnout -- especially for a Tuesday night with a change of venue. There were maybe 40 people there who weren't performing. A few were bar regulars or clueless barflys (like the kid who asked me what the drinks specials were and evaporated not long after I told him, "I dunno, son -- why doncha ask yer bartender?" A number were doubtless improv aficionados who'd made the trek from Dallas or Denton.
Whoever was controlling the music made sure that the out-of-town musos (besides Cogburn, Berliner Annette Krebs, Zurich-based L.A. expat Jason Kahn, and Japanese-born, Pennsylvania-based Tatsuya Nakatani) got an authentic Texas experience, spinning the kind of "Texas country" that sounds like music for pickup truck commercials.
When Krebs started her strangely subdued and tentative performance, the conversational level at the bar was actually louder than the music, which mostly consisted of barely audible tones from her electric guitar mixed with static and random snippets of radio transmissions in German and English. Kahn and Cogburn's duo was similarly low-key, with Cogburn coaxing sounds from a variety of instruments, including bowed cymbals (a recurring theme of the evening) while Kahn manipulated the sounds electronically. (Other Arts impresario Herb Levy had warned me up front that "some of the best stuff you'll hear will be by the people who are doing the least.")
The second set started out with a group consisting of Krebs, occasional Zanzibar Snails participants Sarah Alexander (voxxx, electronics), Michael Maxwell (kalimba, electronics), and an oboist I was unable to identify. I dug the interaction between the four musos. At one point, Lee Allen dropped in and exclaimed, "I didn't know KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN was going to be in the house tonight!" And indeed, a noisy interaction between Kahn and head Snails Michael Chamy (electronics) and Nevada Hill (violin and electronics) managed to summon the shade of the 20th century master composer and arguable father of psychedelic music.
My attention was somewhat distracted during the second set by my sweetie's realization that she didn't have her wallet and subsequent attempts to locate it, which included her leaving the club to retrace out travel route and search the house, in vain, for the missing item. (It later turned up at home. Hooray! This is why it's never good to rush when you're steppin' out.)
Most visceral and exciting set of the night was definitely Nakatani -- the most fluid of percussionists -- with trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez, bassist-promoter Aaron Gonzalez, and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, AKA Yells At Eels. Nakatani employed a lot of the same techiniques as Cogburn had earlier (bowed cymbals, scraping cymbals against drum heads) and added a few of his own (blowing on cymbals, humming against skins) in the context of a freewheeling four-way blowout with the Gonzalezes careening into orbit like late period Coltrane (Dennis was even whooping into the mic at times), the four players listening and responding to each other at a whirlwind pace. They left more blood on the stage than any of the performers that preceded them, which was a good way to end the evening.
Kudos to the No Idea folks and to Aaron for bringing this event to the Fort -- proof positive (if anybody's paying attention) that there is and audience for experimental music in this town. Here's hoping this will be the first of many more such nights to come.
posted by stashdauber at 5:20 PM
3 Comments:
Damn. I showed up at 6th and saw yer sign, it was already late and I just couldn't go the hunt for a venue I'd never been to before. Wish I had now. Thanks for the review.
K
Thanks for your support Ken. Musically the evening turned out to be truly great, even greater than I expected. An unforgettable experience.
Unfortunately as evidenced by the above comment, there is no way that "all interested parties" survived the migration. Some got lost, some gave up, some scratched their heads and went home. It's a shame, I would have liked to have seen how many would have turned out. It never felt empty at all, but I think the missing parties were unfortunately the difference between us breaking even and not.
But I think we generated enough excitement and maybe even curiosity from some who didn't come to do it again here in the future, I hope!
- MC
zanzibar snails
I'm sorry we had to leave when we did, but I had an early and long day on Wednesday. I liked what I heard and was also heartened to see the number of people who were there for the music. That said a couple of comments on your responses to what I heard before we left.
I can understand why it may have seemed that Krebs' solo was "strangely subdued and tentative," but that's what she does. There's a whole array of folks working in what's often called "electro-acoustic improvisation" (EAI), who don't do "heroic" solos in the jazz or free improv sense. Based on the recordings I've heard, what Krebs did is of a piece with the body of work she's making now.
That's a big part of what I meant when I said what you remember as "some of the best stuff you'll hear will be by the people who are doing the least" (which doesn't sound quite like I would have phrased the idea, but hey).
I'm also pretty sure that Jason Kahn wasn't manipulating Chris Cogburn's sounds, which is how I read what you wrote here. Rather, Kahn was using an old-style analog modular synth. I didn't see it, so I don't know if it was a recent home-brew setup or a real antique like a Buchla or an Arp, etc, but he was definitely just generating his own sounds.
I'm glad to read that Kat found her wallet. I'll see you online. Now back to lunch.
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