JUMP Fall 2016

ISSUE #22

FALL 2016

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THE

RECLAMATION KATE FAUST OF

THE TRANSIT ISSUE: MERCURY RADIO THEATER, BUDDY LEEZLE, JOANNA PASCALE, TIGERS JAW, GIRARD HALL & MUCH MORE!

CONTENTS | Issue #22

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FALL 2016

THE JUMP OFF Buddy Leezle, the Double Decker Music Series, Joanna Pascale (top image), The Free Jawn (middle image), Pine Barons (bottom image), Foxtrot & the Get Down, female sound engineers, Roger Harvey, and WPPB Radio at PhillyCAM.

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THIS PLACE ROCKS The Tusk at Woolly Mammoth is trying to make South Street cool again. Girard Hall is a raw space that can be molded for any kind of concert or party.

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MUSIC & EDUCATION The Green Tambourine offers music lessons to people of all ages, with the idea that music brings people together.

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COVER stories Kate Faust, a Philly-based electro artist, has been a member of numerous bands but she most enjoys being a solo artist.

Recently, she has used her music to deal with serious issues from her past.

The guys from Joy Again have a hit song, a popular album from a previous iteration and the support of adoring fans.

And they are only 19-years-old.

Reggae music has long been popular in Philadelphia, despite not having a signature venue. Until now.

Tigers Jaw shed three members, frontman Ben Walsh moved to Fishtown and they just recorded a new album.

We go on the road with the people who travel with bands, the crew members who make shows run smoothly.

Mercury Radio Theater used to be a three-piece unstrumental band. Now, they have more people and a whole new sound ... with vocals.

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FOOD THAT ROCKS The owners of The Tasty knew each other from the punk scene before they got involved in the food industry.

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INSIDE VOICE After beloved pop punk band Chumped disbanded earlier this year, singer Anika Pyle moved to Philly, where she had a lot of friends, including Augusta Koch of Cayetana. We listened as the two conversed about songwriting and life in Philly.

FRONT COVER: Kate Faust, by Magdalena Papaioannou.

BACK COVER: One Art Community Center, by Charles Wrzesniewski.

CONTENTS PAGE: (top to bottom) Joanna Pascale, by Ben Wong; The Free Jawn, courtesy of The Boom Room; Pine Barons, by Rachel Del Sordo.

JUMPphilly.com

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publisher G.W. MILLER III managing editors BETH ANN DOWNEY, CHRIS MALO photo editor CHARLES SHAN CERRONE contributing editors JESSICA FLYNN, TYLER HORST, BRIANNA SPAUSE contributors LISSA ALICIA, KYLE BAGENSTOSE, GABRIELA BARRANTES, VINCE BELLINO, CHRIS BROWN, MICHAEL BUCHER, JUMAH CHAGUAN, ASHLEY COLEMAN, KEVIN COOK, DARRAGH DANDURAND, CHESNEY DAVIS, MATT DEIFER, RACHEL DEL SORDO, GRACE DICKINSON, EMILY DUBIN, BRANDEN EASTWOOD, MEREDITH EDLOW, LAURA FANCIULLACCI, DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER, ERIC FITZSIMMONS, CHIP FRENETTE, JEFF FUSCO, JENNIFER GRANATO, JESSICA GRIFFIN, JARED GRUENWALD, DAN HALMA, BRAE HOWARD, MORGAN JAMES, JOSEPH JUHASE, SEAN KANE, EVAN KAUCHER, RICK KAUFFMAN, KARA KHAN, DONTE KIRBY, HANNAH KUBIK, MINA LEE, MATTHEW LEISTER, DAN LEUNG, ERIN MARHEFKA, MEGAN MATUZAK, TERESA McCULLOUGH, JOHN McGUIRE, MAGGIE McHALE, BRENDAN MENAPACE, NIESHA MILLER, DAVE MINIACI, ELIAS MORRIS, SAMANTHA MOSS, TIM MULHERN, BRIAN MYSZKOWSKI, TIM O'DONNELL, MAGDALENA PAPAIOANNOU, NATALIE PISERCHIO, ANDY POLHAMUS, CAMERON ROBINSON, BONNIE SAPORETTI, IAN SCHOBEL, EMILY SCOTT, ROSIE SIMMONS, CHAD SIMS, MORGAN SMITH, KEVIN STAIRIKER, SYDNEY SCHAEFER, BRIAN WILENSKY, BEN WONG, CHARLES WRZESNIEWSKI, MICHELE ZIPKIN WE PRINT 10,000 FULL-COLOR ISSUES FOUR TIMES PER YEAR, IN MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER AND NOVEMBER. WE DISTRIBUTE THEM FREE AT PHILLY AREA MUSIC VENUES, STUDIOS, RESTAURANTS, RECORD SHOPS, BARS, CLOTHING BOUTIQUES, GYMS, BOOK STORES, COFFEE SHOPS, UNIVERSITIES, CLUBS AND OTHER PLACES WHERE MUSIC LOVERS HANG OUT. IF YOU WANT MAGS AT YOUR LOCATION, EMAIL US AT JUMPPHILLY@GMAIL.COM. JUMP is an independent magazine published by Mookieland Inc. We put a whole fuck-ton of time into making this magazine, and we make no money by doing this. It's a labor of love, a gift to the city of Philadelphia.

So, please don't sue us. We have no money. None.

We are not influenced by advertisers or people we do business with. We put together the content in every issue based upon what we see happening around the city. We point out stuff we think you should know about.

This is a full-on, DIY, community effort. If you want to get involved, if you have story ideas or if you just have something to say, email us at jumpphilly@gmail.com, tweet us @JUMPphilly or find us at facebook.com/jumpphilly.

Philly rocks. Spread the word. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Publisher's Note

In Search of Strange I went to a show last week and ran into a friend. He introduced me to his girlfriend and I said to her, “I'm George. Nice to meet you.”

She responded, “I know who you are. I was in your class.”

It's a funny thing. In real life, away from this mag, I'm a college professor, lecturing before a few hundred students every semester. In the ten years I've been at Temple, I've taught journalism to around 4,000 students.

Some of those folks have gone on to become professional athletes.

More have become working journalists, many in Philadelphia.

Others have made the news for more dubious achievements (the Philadelphia Inquirer once did a story about the top 25 biggest parking ticket scofflaws in town and a former student was number 12). A lot of kids who come through my class are musicians who perform in Philly and elsewhere (sidenote: I first met the guys from The Districts when they attended a new student orientation session at Temple). I booked one student to perform at a JUMP show immediately after a lecture. Several former students have been featured in these pages.

I run into my students and former students frequently, often when I’m a few beers in and enjoying a show. It’s not the worst thing in the entire world – I’m the same guy in class as I am when I’m out and about. And I genuinely enjoy getting to know my students.

Still, after a while, I kind of want to be anonymous. So I’ve been thinking about moving to Tokyo.

The theme of this issue is TRANSIT, so we spoke with a lot of people making moves and others who are in a state of transition.

Some people moved here - like Anika Pyle of Katie Ellen, Ben Walsh of Tigers Jaw and the guys from Pine Barons - to be a part of the vibrant community of musicians living in the city. Others, like our cover artist, Kate Faust, are thinking about leaving. The music that she makes now isn’t really a style popular here. She needs peers who will appreciate her work and challenge her. She might move to the West Coast, it seems.

It used to bother me when people left Philly, especially when they fled with middle fingers in the air, bitching about how stifling, backwardsthinking and unsupportive the music community can be here.

But I get it. Sometimes we need a change. And it’s easier to blame others – or the place – for our previous difficulties. If that’s what people need to move forward, well, go for it.

I’m from the Greater Philadelphia region and I’ve been living in the city proper for about 23 years. I love it here. I can bike everywhere. I know a lot of bartenders. I attend a lot of shows alone because of this mag but I always run into friends ... and former students.

It’s just super easy to feel comfortable here.

But comfort isn't always the best thing for creative people. Sometimes you need some strange in your life, if only temporarily. In the end, it may make you appreciate Philly that much more.

- G.W. Miller III JUMPphilly.com

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facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off INSIDE: BUDDY LEEZLE p. 8 / DOUBLE DECKER MUSIC SERIES p. 10 / JOANNA PASCALE p. 12 / THE FREE JAWN p. 14 / PINE BARONS p. 14 / FOXTROT & THE GET DOWN p. 17 / FEMALE SOUND ENGINEERS p. 18 / ROGER HARVEY p. 19 / PHILLYCAM RADIO p. 20 /

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Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

Futuristic Itinerant Buddy Leezle has lived around the country and now he's making music here in Philly ... with the help of a beatmaker based in Ireland.

It’s a sweltering Wednesday afternoon in Fishtown and nearly everyone roaming the streets looks haggard, beaten down under the heat of the sun. In spite of the air conditioning inside of Gryphon Café, the mood from outside spills over to patrons seated at tables nursing cold drinks.

But not Buddy Leezle.

As he pushes open the door to the café, Leezle’s presence starkly contrasts the general late summer afternoon mood – a huge grin bursts through his beard and, after a handshake, he apologizes for running late.

“I just got back from Seattle,” he says, wiping away beads of sweat forming along his brow before excusing himself to quickly change into a fresh set of clothes.

Jet-setting comes natural to the 36-year-old rapper who grew up as a “military kid” in North Carolina. Leezle has spent time in Atlanta (where he attended American Intercontinental University and formed his first group, Broady Champs), Austin (where he released Instropectrum under the name Buddy Leroy, via Culture Sound Records) and San Francisco (where he hosted parties for Juxtapose Magazine while simultaneously working with overseas producers, including Rustie and Hudson Mohawke) before moving to Philadelphia in 2009.

Having freshly changed into a red Benetton shirt and hat, denim cutoffs and a sleeveless camo vest rounded out with blue-and-red Polo shoes, Leezle is ready to begin talking about Dwellers on the Threshold, his most recent project. Their debut album, Dwellers on the Threshold - Live from the Black Lodge, was recently released through Philadelphia label Actual Records. Dwellers is the first collaboration between Leezle and fellow Actual Records artist Architekt (born: Mike Pipitone) and serves as Leezle’s first release of all

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original material through the label. “[Dwellers] is very inspired by Twin Peaks,” Leezle says, acknowledging the creative nod to the Black Lodge featured in David Lynch’s seminal television series.

“What I did was pretty much put myself into [the show] as a character,” he explains while nursing an Italian soda. “Some of the stories that are on the album are me talking from a character that’s not on the show, but from that place.”

He stops and laughs for a moment.

“There’s, like, one song about weed but everything else is Twin Peaks,” he adds.

Dwellers was realized when Leezle, along with several members of the Actual Records roster, moved into a house in North Philly last year. Inside the dwelling, which doubles as their de facto headquarters, someone discovered a box set of the television series. Leezle, familiar with the show from his childhood and “out of shit to watch,” decided to revisit the series alongside Architekt. Vibing out to the show one day led Architekt to make a beat, one that Leezle liked so much he put words to it. That beat turned into another and another until the two had enough tracks to put together an album.

“I’d basically just show Buddy a track and he’d give me a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’” says Architekt during a phone interview while the producer vacations in Nashville.

“Ultimately, he never said ‘no’ – and that’s a rarity [for Buddy],” he continues, acknowledging Leezle’s selectiveness on what material he works with and his passion for the music that inspires him. “We went down the rabbit hole together working on this record.”

Architekt, known for his dubstep-defined production, notes that Dwellers provided a contrast to his other material. Describing it as “less beat driven with more groove – like avant-jazz meets broken beat,” Architekt explains that after Leezle would send the studio vocals, he would twist and edit the files on his computer. This would allow them to live in the environment of the song and have Leezle’s vocals become more like an instrument.

The album is accompanied with a series of video releases, storyboarded by the duo and directed by Architekt. The first two, “The Great Northern” and “Eraserhood,” premiered in February and September respectively, while the facebook.com/JUMPphilly

third and fourth music videos, “Twin Peaks” and “Shroomaholics,” are in the works.

Although Leezle is stoked on the reception that Dwellers has received, he’s already gearing up for his next album – The Colorful World of Buddy Benetton. The album will be released under his own name and produced by Mook, a beatmaker from Waterford, Ireland, who worked with Leezle’s first group. While recording Dwellers, Leezle received a series of beats from Mook but was focused on finishing up his project with Architekt.

“I had nothing to write to after the Dwellers project was done, so I had my iTunes on shuffle one day and was like, ‘The fuck is this shit?’”

Leezle says upon re-discovering Mook’s beats in his music library. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, it’s that dude,’ and I go back and listen to probably like 50 beats, picked six of them and wrote those shits immediately.”

Within three days, Leezle had finished writing for the half dozen tracks and began sending ideas back and forth with the producer. Recording and mixing wrapped in June of this year before Leezle was set to go on vacation. The Colorful World of Buddy Benetton will be released later this year, and where Dwellers was an experimental departure from Leezle’s catalogue, the former is a return to straight-up hip-hop. Also set for release through Actual Records, the album features the spoken word track “Edgar Allan Poetry” from label founder and Leezle’s housemate Aaron Ruxbin.

“We are lucky that he has stayed in Philly this long,” says Ruxbin during a phone interview, referencing the fact that out of all the places Leezle has called his home base, Philadelphia is his longest standing. “I implore Philly, while they have this man, to see his work. Buddy creates a hunger to dig through his catalogue and keep going back for all his work.”

It's a catalogue the record label owner hopes to expand on. “[We’ll release] pretty much anything he wants to release,” says Ruxbin, “because we’re waiting for the world to catch up to him.”

- Dan Halma JUMPphilly.com

The Ever-Changing Stage City tour guide Sebastian Petsu launched the Double Decker Music Series this year atop the open-air busses he works on during his day job.

Walking up the steep steps of the open air double decker tour bus, one’s eyes are greeted by the setting autumn sky, illuminated by city lights. Everyone takes their seats and the bus departs from its Independence Hall location just past 8 p.m.

As the bus rounds the corner to begin the traveling concert, Sebastian Petsu, creator of the Double Decker Music Series, warms the crowd up with a rather hysterical historical brief of Philly, talking about Betsy Ross as the bus passes a hot dog cart next to her resting place, as well as the the U.S. Mint.

“Sebastian gives his quirky tour, mixing equally bits of Ben Franklin and Thurston Moore,” says Dustin Hurt, founder and director of Bowerbird - a non-profit organization that specializes in bringing experimental, outsider, avant, unknown, forgotten, futuristic, and rediscovered types of music to audiences across the region - regarding Petsu’s historical rendition.

The bus pulls over allowing the first act of the night, Vessna Scheff and Koof Umoren, to set up shop at the front of the bus in the upstairs section. Once situated, the bus pulls itself back into the Philly night, officially starting the mobile concert.

Scheff and Umoren begin their set with the title track off their newest EP, Echoes, released earlier this year. The sweet melodies of Scheff’s ukulele paired with Umoren’s strong horn make for a magically musical experience atop the double decker bus.

“The idea is to really embrace the fact that you’re in the city and you’re moving,” says Petsu. “There’s this ever-changing backdrop.”

Making its way into Center City, around City Hall and up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the Art Museum, the bus’ route contrasts the soothing sounds of Scheff and Umoren with the restless Philadelphia skyline.

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DDMS was conceived in 2013 when Petsu’s friend asked if he ever thought about having concerts on the double decker buses, the same buses Petsu spends his days on as a tour guide. He didn’t entertain the idea at first but a few years later he realized it was doable and DDMS was born.

“DDMS is the ultimate Philly summer experience,” says Hurt, who joined Petsu in 2016 to make DDMS happen. “You get to sit high up, on the top of an open double decker bus, with the cool breeze blowing against your face.”

This intimate Philadelphia mobile concert experience is one place the city’s nightlife meets its thriving music scene. It incorporates non-musical elements as an essential part of the performance, details Petsu.

“It gets people to consider the environment as an active player in the performance,” he says.

These shows are hosted once a month during May through September, showcasing a sample of what Philly’s scene has to offer. Or, at least, the acts that can set up on a moving double decker bus.

Although there are no rules for choosing performers, Petsu explains that electronic musicians usually have sets based around soundscapes rather than structured songs, which seems to work well with the urban environment.

Philly-based musicians are typically the ones to play these events, however, DDMS has hosted acts from elsewhere – the furthest act traveled all the way from St. Louis, Missouri.

As Scheff and Umoren’s set comes to an end, Philly-based improv electronic duo JNPR makes their way to the front of the bus to play the second portion of the mobile concert. Every set the group performs and every album they release is completely improvised from one synthesizer and one drum machine.

The couple explains that DDMS is a great experience for them and their music due to the significant role that the city plays in their performance.

“We feed so much off of what’s around us,” says Jeanne Lyons, who plays the KORG Volca Beats drum machine in the power duo.

JNPR’s set begins as the bus slowly makes it way down Pine Street, driving through Society Hill on this quiet and still Sunday evening.

Upon finishing their set and arriving back at the bus’s Independence Hall location, the sold-out crowd applauds for the duo. Their faces light up as they join hands to take it all in.

- Sydney Schaefer facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Sydney Schaefer.

The JUMP Off

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Photo by Ben Wong.

The JUMP Off

Rooted in Philadelphia Joanna Pascale was born and raised in Philadelphia, and nurtured by local jazz greats.

Now, she's mentoring the next generation.

Walking into Joanna Pascale’s home, one immediately notices the baby grand sitting in the middle of the vocalist’s living room. Flanked by shelves of vinyl records, everything is vintage. Old advertisements cover the walls, many of them reclaimed. Pascale enters the dining room and sits at a wood table next to a wall that showcases a Barnum & Bailey advertisement as well a poster for “The Bronze Venus,” a 1944 film starring Lena Horne.

“I love treasure hunting,“ Pascale says. “I love going to antique stores, going to thrift stores. I like finding buried treasure.”

That process and love for the feeling of discovery, as well as searching for musical connections, goes back to her youth.

“I remember watching television one day and I heard this woman sing ‘Good Morning Heartache’ and it just kind of stopped me in my tracks,” Pascale says, recounting her first experience with jazz.

Growing up in a religious household, Pascale was not allowed to listen to secular music and would often listen to the radio in secret. “[My mother] allowed me to listen to jazz, but I was not allowed to listen to any pop music of my generation,” she says. “I kind of just soaked it up and ate it up. And so I really had just an affinity for music that was very raw and emotional. And I just connect to it.”

Born and raised in Philadelphia near the 9th Street Market, Pascale eventually found herself on a track to professional singing after attending the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts and Temple University. She released several albums, like 2015’s Wildflower, and performed with some of Philadelphia’s most influential jazz musicians.

“I learned from some incredible musicians on the bandstand. You know, people like Mickey Roker, great drummer. Bootsie Barnes, saxophone player,” Pascale says with reverence in her voice.

“And these were some of the first people I got to perform with.”

Pascale has since taken on the role of mentor for the next batch of Philadelphia jazz vocalists. As an adjunct faculty member at Temple University teaching jazz voice, her students appreciate the experience she brings to the classroom.

“She really pays attention to who you are and

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gets to know you,” says former student Shelia Moser, 25, who studied under Pascale for four years. “And then, that way, she can best help you develop your sound and your voice.”

Current student Rana Tabrizi, 25, also feels Pascale brings something special to the table in her jazz ensemble class.

“She emphasizes the importance of both developing our technical skills as a musician and developing out musicality through our connection with the music itself,” Tabrizi says, “and just focusing on the power of expression.”

“Connection with music” is a phrase that is frequently brought up about Pascale, in part for her desire to find intent behind jazz’s notable lyrics.

“You can say ‘I love you’ in five different ways and it means five different things,” Pascale explains. “It’s also the space between the words that tells you a story and that requires you to be very much in the moment, which is one of the fundamentals of jazz and improvisation.”

Her students are not only familiar with her in the classroom but also her performances.

“She really immerses herself in her own music and she also has quite a command of her own voice,” Tabrizi says about seeing Pascale perform in the past.

”She’s so intuitive,” Moser points out. “She’s not rushing. She’s not anxious. She’s in the moment.

Whatever band that she has with her, she chooses people that she knows that she connects with.”

During a performance at Chris’ Jazz Club, Pascale shares the stage with longtime friend Venissa Santi. The place is dimly lit with the excited patter of patrons waiting for show time. On the walls are old photographs of previous performers. Near the stage is a large oil painting of Louis Armstrong.

During soundcheck, Santi prefers to scat into the mic. On the setlist is a mix of lesser-known songs by legends of the genre, including Cole Porter, Billie Holiday and Thelonius Monk, as well as Santi’s original compositions. Pascale, who At times she finds inspiration in the Great American Songbook, takes the time to bring the audience into the jazz world, offering up kernels of history regarding her song choices. Post-performance, Pascale and Santi mingle with patrons at the bar, adding to the intimacy of the evening.

“I think what was beautiful about being born here, growing up here, learning here on the bandstand, going to school here – I think that my sound is very much rooted in Philadelphia,” Pascale explains. “I think you can definitely hear that sound in my singing, and I’m proud of that.”

- Joseph Juhase facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

Raised in Jersey, Made in Philly Pine Barons were a great band from New Jersey.

Then the bandmates moved to Philadelphia.

They've become staples of the local scene. Their debut full-length drops next year.

A Show of Gratitude The Boom Room has done really well. So the owner is giving back with a monthly, free live streaming video service called The Free Jawn.

It’s 9 p.m. on a sweltering Tuesday night in Fishtown and Gary Dann, in his solid gray T-shirt, geometric patterned shorts and flipflops, is dressed for the beach.

But he’s not ready for a vacation just yet. Perched in his control room, Dann monitors an analog mixing console for a hard rock band in the midst of an explosive jam. The female vocalist unleashes a wail that drowns out her bandmates, prompting Dann to adjust the faders, while he bobs his head with the drums and occasionally tweaks a knob on the massive soundboard. Gradually, a pent up smile relieves the furrows of concentration on his forehead; he’s pleased with the sound.

Dann – an audio engineer, producer and musician – opened The Boom Room, a recording studio and rehearsal spot, in 2011. He’s building the space into a fully-equipped, multifaceted center for the arts, while diligently developing a diverse musical community within the white stucco building that sits across the street from Kung Fu Necktie.

“The location of the studio put me in the right spot at the right time,” Dann says. “Not only has The Boom Room grown but around me, the whole neighborhood has exploded. We have a really awesome family of R&B, hip-hop, rock, jazz, ’80s cover bands and everything in between.”

Though acts like Billy Paul, The Heavy, Aimee Mann and Beanie Sigel have come through since The Boom Room opened, big-name clientele is not the norm.

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“We’re in between the high-end studio guys and the basement recording guys,” Dann explains.

“It’s a really wide market.”

Dann is riding a wave of success in his niche and he’s sharing the love with his extended musical family. Because of the support he’s been shown not only in the last five years of having the studio, but also in the 10 years of being an engineer and drummer in the city before that, he wanted to do something to give back to the local music community.

So once a month, he brings in artists to use The Boom Room’s new live streaming video service for free. Called “The Free Jawn,” this gift gives artists an opportunity to shoot, record and stream their live performance with professional-grade video camcorders, microphones and lighting.

“If you don’t have a performance video, it’s hard to get in anywhere,” Dann says. “For most people, video production is just not accessible.

I’m helping to uplift these artists who would not otherwise have a way to show the world what they’re doing.”

And since most people have the ability to stream video from their phones or laptops, people from anywhere in the world can watch these live performances.

Philly musicians are already feeling the love.

“Gary is extremely professional and meticulous when it comes to getting the sound, the camera angles and ambiance just right,” says JaE The Artist, a soul-infused rocker who recorded a free set in June. “Over 8,200 views later, it helped us book events in Charlotte, North Carolina, and two music festivals, one in Virginia and one in South Carolina.”

In a sense, The Free Jawn is an extension of The Boom Room’s overall philosophy: take good care of the family, provide a cost-effective space with the latest and greatest in music technology and the community will grow.

You get the feeling Dann is already looking for the next jawn to add to his repertoire.

- Ian Schobel

The five guys in Pine Barons like to think that they’re like the “Terminator” movies—they’ve only gotten better with time. At least drummer Collin Smith uses that analogy.

Nestled in a small booth at Front Street Café in Kensington, a few blocks down from where guitarist/vocalist Keith Abrams, bassist Shane Hower and keyboardist Alex Beebe live, the guys reflect on their handful of years as a band and the new album they just finished recording at The Headroom Studio.

The yet-to-be-named album, produced by Kyle Pulley, was special. After all, Pulley’s younger brother Brad plays guitar in Pine Barons. The album also marks the beginning of the band members’ lives as full-time Philadelphians after moving here from the small Jersey towns of Shamong and Southampton about a year and a half ago.

“My older brother has lived here for a long time,” says Brad Pulley, 24, of West Philly. “So I guess I was always coming here to do stuff and see shows.

I also go to school here. I always imagined myself coming here, though. It always made sense.”

“We moved here for music,” Abrams says. “We kind of, I felt like, established ourselves here.”

Now that they’re here, they can go see bands and build friendships with other bands whenever they want, not just the nights they trek up Route 70.

“It kind of allows us to feel like we’re more a part of it, at least for me,” Brad Pulley says. “I feel like I’m more a part of it. Before, I felt like somewhat of an outsider.”

“It feels like less of a night out and more like our neighborhood,” Beebe, 24, adds.

For Beebe, Abrams and Hower, they really did record right in their neighborhood at Headroom.

And Brad Pulley obviously had a familiar face in his older brother behind the mixing board.

When asked if the Pulley brothers butted heads, as brothers tend to do, Smith assures that they duked it out when they were little. Smith, 25, who spent his teenage years in South Philly but put down roots in South Jersey, tends to sit back in conversation, saving his words for a well-placed joke. It’s a lot like how his drumming is full of facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Gabriela Barrantes.

Photos by Rachel Del Sordo.

thoughtful fills that abruptly pop out of the steady foundation, adding to the overall depth of the songs.

“Brad knows I’m the boss,” Kyle Pulley, 32, says with a laugh. “I’m eight years older than him, so he knows his place.”

Jokes aside, the elder Pulley says his experience working with Pine Barons was nothing but positive.

“It was so much fun,” he says. “There would be days that I’d be doing long sessions with other bands or working on other stuff, and the days I got to do Pine Barons honestly felt like a day off.

We weren’t too hard on ourselves. We tried to just make it fun. Most of the time it was cool just to hang out with my brother, you know?”

Keeping it loose and fun is a fitting approach to recording Pine Barons’ sound. It’s got the jaunty nature and melodic, riffy, ethereal jams of outdoor-festival-ready rock, but with a poetic and emotional nature that brings the typically soft-spoken Abrams’ voice to peaking highs.

Add to that just enough distortion and crash cymbal to make them right at home in a Philly basement show. It’s a cohesive unit of five friends who have not only practiced hard together for years, they practiced being friends for even longer.

“I would say that this record was a turning JUMPphilly.com

point,” Hower says. “We started to really learn more about working with each other. I think the point was always to make the songs really good, but I think it became more of that we would play things because they were fun sometimes. And with this record, it was like, OK, these parts are fun, but do they serve a purpose? Just learning to

be more critical about our songwriting process.”

As both producer and older brother, Kyle Pulley has an insider's view of the band’s growth.

“They started out as being, you know, someone’s first band, and now they’re really great,” he says. “They’ve always been musicians. Their musicianship has gotten better over the years, but I think their tastes and their songwriting and their aesthetic has just matured.

They’re all good players. They can all play whatever. And I think, between the first record and the full-length we did together, they figured out a little bit of the less-is-more kind of thing, and just doing stuff that’s more tasteful.”

So now, after wrapping up their debut full-length (which is due out next year, and follows their 2013 selftitled EP), finalizing their five-man roster and putting a real-deal tour or two under their belts, the future looks promising for Pine Barons. And, with a metaphorical pat on the back from not only an older brother who is also a major player in the Philly music scene, they’re on their way to big things.

“I think they’re already on that journey on their own,” Kyle Pulley says. “I just kind of helped them along the way.”

- Brendan Menapace

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Photo by G.W. Miller III.

The JUMP Off

The Journey to Progress The members of Foxtrot & the Get Down had to leave Philly temporarily to hone their talents. They traveled to Nashville - multiple times - to record their latest EP and forthcoming album.

Foxtrot & the Get Down hopped into an RV, drove 15-plus hours south while listening to Kanye West, Otis Redding, Bruce Springsteen, G. Love, Elliott Smith, Sublime, John Mayer, Stevie Ray Vaughn... and forged their own luck.

A plucky bunch.

“You have to leave here,” says South Philadelphia vocalist Erica Ruiz, 30.

“This is kind of a safety blanket.”

Colin Budny, 24, the band’s lead vocalist and primary songwriter attests that Foxtrot’s desire to hone their artistry by any means necessary led to them leaving, if only briefly, their beloved hometown.

Foxtrot is the inverse of the country boys (and gals) who leave home to make it in the big city.

As the bandmates tell it, they had to leave their big “blue collar” city for the not-so-country-super-hip-southern-industry-town that is Nashville, Tennessee.

When asked how they went from singing in coffee shops around West Chester and Philly to being signed to a Nashville label, they unanimously quip, “Drive!”

Since the beginning of the year, the Foxtrot crew have road tripped to Nashville seven or eight times. They've lost track.

“I’m totally OK with flying more,“ laughs bassist Ken Bianco, 25, of Havertown.

“I’m okay with the drive,” Ruiz adds.

But it was Budny, Foxtrot’s passionate visionary, who reached out to multiple labels and ultimately got their mixtape in the right hands. Tres Sasser, of American Echo Records outside of Nashville, took the bait.

Sasser and his business partner Robyn Davis listened to Sold to Soul, Foxtrot’s first EP, and were drawn to its rawness. As a producer in Nashville, Sasser says he is surrounded by over-produced alternative bands that he laments are auto-tuned to high heaven. He and Wright found Foxtrot refreshing.

Sasser ended up producing Foxtrot’s latest EP, Black Coffee, and the band’s JUMPphilly.com

upcoming full-length, Roots Too Deep.

Sasser implemented his expertise and polish but ultimately retained what he admires most about the band – a from-the-streets, honest sound.

“They’re Philly kids who love the blues and whose love gets filtered through Springsteen,” Sasser says with a chuckle.

“I like to say a Black Keys bluesy-ness with a Springsteen kind of an energy,” Budny agrees, defining their sound as a mix of a lot of American music.

“We’re red, white and blue. We love America. America is so lucky to have so many different cool forms of music. And to take that and mash it all together is just the way it’s worked. We didn’t choose to do this. We did what we love.”

“It sort of found itself,” adds guitarist Eric Berk, 24, from Northeast Philly.

Soulful Americana would best describe Black Coffee and its continuation, Roots Too Deep.

Both records chronicle the time period when the band had to journey to progress as artists. The EP and LP are about leaving Philly because you know you have to leave, realizing how much you miss it and coming home.

Frontman Budny resides in Manayunk but is from Northeast Philly, which certainly helped foster his “everyday man” charm.

“Obviously, he’s in love with Philadelphia,” says Sasser of Budny. “He is a Philly boy top to bottom. He kind of exudes that. He’s infectious when you talk to him.”

Sasser believes Foxtrot boasts a rare quality in the industry and that is what ultimately makes the band a special find. Foxtrot doesn’t try to be anything other than what they are.

That’s a sentiment the bandmates share.

“We’ll stay true to our Philly collective ideals,” Berk says. “But going to Nashville taught us there’s time to use the knife.”

“We’re all just so laid back,” Ruiz chimes in. “We’re not cool.”

“Well, I’ve always considered myself a male Patti La Belle,” Budny says with a smirk. “I wake up every day and I think that.”

Jokes aside, Budny doesn’t want Foxtrot to be the band flipping hair out of their face and wearing Wayfarers indoors, but rather the regular dudes buying concertgoers shots at the bar, just trying to hang out.

“And then we SLAY,” he says with a laugh.

A slayage that reverberates from Philly to Nashville and beyond.

“We get hounded constantly to move to Nashville but we’d rather drive the 15 hours when we need to...” says Budny.

“And be able to come back to Philly,” Berk adds.

- Morgan James

17

Photos by Dan Leung.

The JUMP Off

Sound Advice For Women Female sound engineers used to be unheard of. But more women are pursuing the craft and they're banding together to support each other.

Most people enjoying a concert don’t see who’s behind the mixing board but if they did, they might notice that it’s very often a man.

Although the live music industry has been largely dominated by men, more and more women have broken into the field in the last decade or so.

“Women in live sound were virtually unheard of when I started in the late 1980s,” says Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato, an established sound engineer and co-founder of the California-based organization Sound Girls, which offers a support system for women pursuing careers in live sound and audio engineering. “But these days, I can rattle off a good list of women sound techs and engineers.”

It’s not clear what previously caused so few women to enter the field but better communication and networking may be changing the industry’s demographics.

Although the numbers have increased, women still make up less than five percent of producers and engineers, according to Women’s Audio Mission, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that helps women find jobs in the field.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates only 9.2 percent of broadcast and sound engineering technicians and radio operators are women.

Barbara Adams currently does sound at Tin Angel and World Cafe Live in Philadelphia.

She graduated from Full Sail University, an entertainment and media school based in Winter Park, Florida, in 1995. Out of 60 students in her class, only three of them, including herself, were

18

women.

After graduating, she initially got a job at Sonic Recording Studios in Philadelphia.

“There were no female engineers when I started,” Adams says. “I was definitely part of a boys club.”

Adams offers theories as to why there has been a shortage of women in the field, pointing out the lifestyle that comes with the job can be difficult, and it’s also physically demanding.

“Studio work has long hours,” Adams says. “It’s not a money-maker, by any means. With live sound, it’s a lot of heavy lifting. When you get started, you’re lugging a lot of gear around and setting a lot of heavy speakers up.”

From the outside, a career in audio might seem appealing but in reality, it requires a lot of work.

"It looks great,” Adams says. “People think, ‘I get to work with musicians and listen to music every night and work in a venue.’ But then they start, and it's not all glamour."

Adams has a young child and says it has been difficult to build a career and a family.

"Yes, it can be done,” Adams says. “I have a son and a family and still manage to do this. It's not easy in that aspect. It's a lot of planning."

Some women pursuing careers in audio are bluntly told that they will have trouble finding work because of their gender.

“This may be doing them a disservice and discouraging them from pursuing their goals because they feel there is no place for them, and that is simply not true,” Sabolchick Pettinato says. “While you may have to work harder to prove yourself, which just makes you better than the competition, there are plenty of opportunities out there.”

Ali McGuire has been working as a studio engineer in Philadelphia for eight years and doing live sound for five. She got her start in live sound working at The Legendary Dobbs, which played a big role in propelling her career forward.

Although some musicians she worked with questioned her ability because of her sex, she never let that get in her way.

“No matter how they treat me, I know what my skill level is and I know what I can do,” McGuire says. “So I’m always going to go out and do the best job that I can do for myself, not to prove to someone else I can do it.”

Even though far fewer women than men are interested in working in audio production, more women have found success in the field in recent years. This may be because there are more ways of communicating and networking than in the past.

Many women may not be aware that working in audio is a viable career path, something Sabolchick Pettinato is trying to change through Sound Girls.

Through the organization, Sabolchick Pettinato and Karrie Keyes, another veteran live sound engineer, facilitate conversation amongst women in the business to help them advance their careers. Fortyfive women working in sound and other aspects of the music industry in the U.S. have profiles on the website.

“If it wasn’t for Sound Girls, I would still know Barb as the only woman sound engineer that I’d ever met in Philly,” McGuire says.

Sound Girls serves as a resource for women in the business to share experiences and ask each other questions in a friendly, welcoming environment.

“It’s also a great place to go when you have an experience that sucks,” McGuire says. “They’re the only people who can really understand what you’re going through because it happens to them too.”

While the scales of a career in live audio may not be even, nor the path easy or fair for women, organizations and resources are starting to offer help in balancing things out, which is always good to hear.

- Michele Zipkin facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Teresa McCullough.

Staying Golden Roger Harvey has toured around the world and continues to do so.

But he's sort of settled in Philadelphia. For now.

It is an uncharacteristically busy Wednesday night at 2nd Street Brew House in South Philadelphia, something Roger Harvey instantly notes. Sipping a tequila on the rocks, Harvey, 29, settles into a metal chair outside the bustling pub.

For someone who has toured the world incessantly, typifying the rock star lifestyle, Harvey is particularly soft-spoken. In appearance, he is almost a cliche - long, dark curls frame his angular cheekbones and his clothes are black-on-black. In character, Harvey is sagaciously mindful. Each tale is presented thoughtfully, each piece of the puzzle as significant as the last. He is constantly seeking out meaning, attaching it to everything he can.

“I think it’s part of the human condition,” he says, “to desire and want validation of meaning in the things that you do so you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time and you’re doing something that’s worthwhile.”

Born and raised about 45 minutes outside of Erie, Pennsylvania in what Harvey describes as “basically a farm town, but now it’s a meth town,” he always felt like he was different. At the age of 10, he befriended someone eight years his senior who introduced Harvey to the local punk community he didn’t know existed. Homeschooled from 14 to 16, Harvey later graduated and left for California, staying two years before heading to Europe and then New York City to pursue solo endeavors.

While in New York, Harvey began to seriously write his own music. Though he didn’t initially have the confidence to share it, he tried out an open mic night at a dive bar in the East Village and ultimately landed a monthly showcase spot there.

Traveling is an influential constant in his life and that is reflected in his lyricism. In this modern era of music-making - an industry fueled by social media and driven to entertain, Harvey acknowledges that everything is a learning experience.

“Personally, that’s one of the things I find joy in with making music,” he says.

“Constantly learning and constantly discovering what’s good and what’s valuable and being able to contribute to an old tradition.”

Harvey released his debut record, Twelve Houses, in 2015. J. Vega, who recorded the album at his studio in Pittsburgh, says it was all about experimentation and discovery, and was created with the intention of requiring repeated listening.

JUMPphilly.com

“Big recurring themes were transformation and dreams,” Vega explains.

“So the production had to be very visual, cinematic, endlessly moving, transforming.”

At 2nd Street, Harvey switches from tequila to Miller Lite, saying “the cheaper, the better. I don’t really care about craft beers.” He then explains his next record, a project for which he’ll be venturing to Music Row in Nashville to collaborate with Justin Francis and Adam Meisterhans (of Rozwell Kid), will be nothing like Twelve Houses. He hopes to create an inherently sparse record, simplified in production but saturated in meaning.

“It’s more so about what it’s like to exist in this time and live inside of a phone, and how that’s basically deconstructed our ability to feel anything,” he says, adding that he may want to call the record Gold, somewhat ironically. “But also in a way to exemplify the lack of value in anything, the deconstruction of value in anything because of our desire to find gold in all the wrong places.”

After years of not really having any roots anywhere, Harvey came to live in Philly when an opportunity came up to move into a room in the Dickinson Narrows neighborhood in South Philly. He praises the support he’s experienced since settling in. The local music community has been both unusual and special, especially compared to New York, where there’s essentially no communal support, he says.

Tom May of the Menzingers is someone Roger cites as being especially welcoming and supportive, and May reciprocates that love.

“He is a well-traveled man with stories as good as they come, and I think his accepting and curious approach is a fresh one,” May says. “He'll be influencing songwriters and musicians with his music, and I think he may have an equally large influence through his personality. He tends to really bring out the thinking-person inside of those around him. In that regard, the more musicians and people in the scene he meets, the more he'll be shaping their lives for the better.”

Harvey notes that after spending his summer essentially stationary in Philadelphia while writing new material, he is particularly excited to travel again. He has a few things lined up, including an upcoming European tour with Bouncing Souls and the Menzingers, but ultimately doesn’t quite know what the future holds. Aside from continuing to put thoughtful meaning into his music.

The bartender begins stacking the outdoor tables and Harvey shifts in his seat. He reaches for his beer while watching a motorcycle rev down the street.

“Promoting and supporting positivity is so important,” he says, sipping the last of his drink and placing the empty bottle in front of him. “Because almost everything is negative, and it affects us in such a deep way.”

- Maggie McHale

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The JUMP Off

WPPM at PhillyCAM is now live, on the air, broadcasting local music and community information in ways that have been missing in recent years.

PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s non-profit community media center, recently hit the airwaves in a new format. Where they traditionally delivered content via their television station, they are now a mixedformat outlet with an FM radio station, WPPM 106.5, broadcasting shows and playing music made by and for the people of the city.

Live programming launched on Oct. 20, which is Community Media Day, during Free Speech Week.

WPPM 106.5 FM, and other community radio stations across the country, are a product of a lawsuit that the Prometheus Radio Project brought against the Federal Communications Commission in 2003.

West Philadelphia-based Prometheus, a nonprofit organization trying to balance the media landscape, argued that the FCC allowed for a consolidation of radio and TV broadcast stations that damaged media diversity in local communities.

That case, along with the Community Radio Act, paved the way for hyperlocal FM stations like WPPM to exist.

“We’re just extending our mission to create a space where people can come together to learn and make media that is representative of the cultural, ethnic, racial and economic diversity of Philadelphia,” says

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came to the United States on a basketball scholarship 16 years ago and found music after a car accident caused him to drift away from the sport. Palacio goes by Udini La Voz and rhymes in “Spanglish” as a way to bring cultures together.

He works with PhillyCAM Latino, hosting the television show "Atrevete" and intends to have a show soon that will service the community while showcasing his music.

Photos by Branden Eastwood.

Sound Salvation

station manager Vanessa Graber.

She says commercial stations don’t engage the community, aren’t relevant to the listener, don’t speak to them and don’t include them in the conversation like WPPM hopes to.

“Radio is not dead,” says Graber. “Don’t hate the medium. It’s not the medium’s fault that these commercial corporations play bad content.”

Inspired by some of the other great community radio stations like KPFA in Oakland and KPFT in Houston, Graber says she wants to revitalize the community’s interest in radio by making it sound like the cultural blend of Philadelphia.

As a low power FM station, WPPM will operate at a maximum of 100 watts and cover a five mile radius that reaches north as far as Lehigh Avenue, east to Camden, west to Mantua, south to the stadiums and all of Center City.

PhillyCAM is also building a Philadelphia music archive.

“Making sure there’s a space for local music is a big priority for the station,” said Gretjen Clausing, executive director of PhillyCAM. Odin Palacio, originally Panama City, Panama,

“They don’t have to be on some big radio station to have the community hear them,” says Palacio about local artists trying to take their career to the next level. Palacio believes the emphasis PhillyCAM puts on delivering a positive message will help artists grow and see a new way of furthering their career. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

“The game is so messed up right now,” Palacio says. “They think that, ‘Oh we got to do it a certain way to get on the radio.’ Naw, the PhillyCAM radio station is not like that. You’re allowed to be yourself but in a positive way.”

Independent artist Brian LaPann, a New Jersey native who currently resides in South Philly, thinks it’s great to have another outlet for local musicians to reach the masses. Another station, like WXPN, that is more approachable and doesn’t require major label backing or a national hit to get on the airwaves.

“It’s member supported,” says Lapann about radio stations like PhillyCAM. “People who really want to support the radio are going to be avid listeners. So you have a super fanbase. And those are the kind of people I’d love to be in front of. People who are committed to it rather than someone who’s just surfing the channels.”

While plenty of great music exists and can be found not just in bars, clubs and coffeehouses but online as well, getting that music on the airwaves isn’t always an easy or simple process.

“We had a workshop on copyright and licensing,’” says Graber. “That’s when it really occurred to us, ‘Oh wow. With this local music we really need to get clarity on how we can use it.’”

WPPM modeled their licensing after Denver Open Media, which had artists coming directly to Denver Open Media to sign the licensing agreements.

WPPM invites local artist to have their music played on the radio and streamed through its website through after filling out a release online.

“If you mine Bandcamp or Soundcloud, you can JUMPphilly.com

find plenty of local artists. But we don’t actually have permission to play their music,” says Graber.

So WPPM created a form for artists that details their genre of music, top three tracks and gives WPPM permission to play them on the radio and stream online.

Jonathan Houlon has been working as a musician for 21 years, making his musical bones in West Philly. He currently performs with musicians he met in West Philly in the folk/blues band John Train. He’s donated his entire discography to WPPM’s music archive.

“Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, turning on a radio in the car or wherever, was how you found out about new music,” Houlon explains.

He recognizes that the musical landscape has changed in the Internet age.

“Everyone has a radio station,” says Houlon.

“They post things on YouTube or Facebook.

People have their private radio stations. But even given that, radio is still important. I hear that WPPM has the potential to reach a lot of people.

Someone could hear my records, then come out and see the band. You still try and be hopeful of that even within the reality of the internet and how it's changed music.”

“We’re trying to be reflective of the community that we serve and provide a space for dialogue, art and music that people here can really celebrate and appreciate,” says Graber. “We hope to have a radio station that inspires, informs and gets people excited about the things happening in the city that we are really proud of. “ - Donte Kirby

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Bottom photos by Mike Arrison. Top photo by G.W. Miller III.

This Place Rocks

Welcoming All Weirdos The rock 'n' roll lifer who runs The Tusk at Woolly Mammoth wants to bring fun back to South Street.

South Street was once the literal edge of the city and that frontier spirit lasted for generations. The strip became home to head shops, hippies, punks, freaks, loud music and general debauchery.

Now, the once famous commercial district, where The Roots perfected their art on street corners, is pretty mellow, resting smack dab between gentrified Queen Village and posh Society Hill.

The Tusk, located on the corner of South Street and Passyunk Avenue, wants to bring the weird back to the east end of South Street. But with morals.

The venue, located on the second floor of the Woolly Mammoth, is the brainchild of a man who calls himself Mikey Primadonna. Primadonna, 44, of Northeast Philly, has worked to create an independent atmosphere. The bar in the rear looks toward the performance space, flanked with vintage-looking couches and walls adorned with giant, leopard print sound dampeners. For items meant to quiet things down, they are loud as hell.

Primadonna (right) is a rock ‘n’ roll lifer. He has a rock 'n’ roll pseudonym, his arms are covered in tattoos, he’s dressed in black and his jet-black hair is shaved on the sides and tossed around on top. He’s had plenty of experience playing in bands and that’s helped shape how he wants to run a venue. Having been through the bad aspects of touring, like getting shafted by promoters and venues, Primadonna wants to make sure others don’t have to go through that at The Tusk, whether they’re passing through Philly on a tour or they’re a local act that lives down the street.

He keeps the audience in mind, planning earlier showtimes, which allows people to hang out afterward rather than get forced out into the street as soon as the band is done. This also lets the band decompress after a set. They don’t have to immediately pack up their gear and leave.

“Me, being in a band, I always figured if you open a bar with the idea of having live music as your income, you should be responsible for your own costs like sound and a door guy,” Primadonna says.

Primadonna’s foresight is allowing for great shows at The Tusk played by happy bands.

“Mikey was really great,” says Johnny Ott,

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vocalist/guitarist for Trentonbased The Cryptkeeper 5, who played at The Tusk in June. “He treated us really fairly and we had a great time. They seemed to have a pretty cool crowd that was hanging out there too.”

It’s because of this mindset of fairness that Primadonna has loaned out his personal drum set, bass amp, stage lights and PA system to benefit of the venue.

To make sure every band that plays at The Tusk gets their due pay, Primadonna gives them a choice—bring your own sound guy at your own expense and get 100 percent of the door, after charging what you wish, or play the show without a cover and take 10 percent of the bar’s money at the end of the night.

“I always make sure I don’t touch any money from the door,” Primadonna says. “And they always get the 10 percent. They get a receipt to make sure they’re happy. Knock on wood, you know, but I’ve never gotten an email or any kind of social media complaints from anybody.”

Primadonna wants to make The Tusk a place where people can go to see things that might not be as prevalent in the city, like burlesque shows, fetish shows and every kind of music, from metal and punk to country and classic rock ‘n’ roll. He wants to give the venue its own identity, separate from the bar downstairs.

“We’re trying to be the weirdos,” he says. “We’re trying to keep it fringe and rock ‘n’ roll, you know?”

Primadonna, the self-described “everything man” at The Tusk, works as a bartender, door guy and pretty much anything else, and essentially has autonomy over the venue. But he still had to get the OK from business owner Matt Woody, who was on board from day one.

“Mikey’s got a lot of connections in the music industry from being in a band for, man, like 25 years himself,” Woody says. “It turned out to be a good idea that he really fostered and took care of and turned it into the venue that we have now. We would have bands from time to time up there, but sporadically at best.

Mikey really turned it into a more consistent thing.”

As part of the continual transformation of the neighborhood, a new Milkboy location opened down the block in August. For some live music venues, this could be scary - a well-established city venue catty-corner from the upstart. But Primadonna and Woody, true to the venue’s ethos, are all about fairness. “[People] think everyone’s got to be in competition,” Woody says. “I find it kind of ridiculous. You do your own thing and you make yourself known through that, and you make your living that way. Listen, Milkboy’s a great spot. I know the owners personally. It’s a great spot and it’s great to have multiple places that offer you, you know, similar things. But they all have their own flavor.”

“I think it could be good for both of us,” Primadonna says. “You know, maybe some people go there after here and vice versa.”

In the near future, Primadonna wants to start booking shows every night of the week, including an comedy open mic night, and he wants to add a separate entrance on Passyunk Avenue.

“I want for this to be a rock ‘n’ roll bar where people can come in and eat and drink,” he says.

“Then, at night, go to a cool show where they don’t feel like they spent a lot of money but they’re still going away with some good entertainment. And for bands to want to play here and be happy that - Brendan Menapace they are playing here.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Ben Wong.

Charmingly Grungy Girard Hall doesn't look like much from the outside. But inside, it buzzes with creativity.

It’s almost impossible to notice Girard Hall if you’re walking past it on the street, but hidden inside one of the many nondescript brick exteriors on Girard Avenue is this cavernous hub of creative energy.

“This is the best this space has ever been,” says André Altrez, who manages Girard Hall.

Altrez isn’t sure how to fashion his title, as Girard Hall isn’t a place for official names, but he’s been in charge of operations there for a year and a half.

Girard Hall stands in the Philadelphia tradition of DIY venues but easily sets itself apart by its size alone. Rather than cramming folks into a dripping basement, Girard Hall welcomes visitors to a warehouse-sized space that’s ready to be transformed for any purpose.

Altrez takes the stairs from the street up to the second-floor space and walks into the highceilinged, cathedral-like interior. There’s a full stage set in front of a wall-length mirror. Disco balls hang down, remnants of a past life for the building, like the sliding garage door that leads to Altrez’s “office” and recording studio.

There’s plenty of room in which to play around, and it’s all open to interpretation.

Girard Hall has been home to everything from hip-hop shows, noise festivals, Afro-Caribbean dance parties and off-beat performance art.

“It’s a raw space and you can mold it into JUMPphilly.com

anything you want to,” says Altrez.

Altrez, now 25, was new to the DIY scene when he first moved to Philadelphia five years ago to study industrial design at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. At the time, the warehouse space was run by a collective of Temple film students who had the intention of turning it into a collaborative studio, with shows and exhibitions happening there only occasionally. The building had been known as Girard Hall through its many past incarnations (Altrez says with a laugh that it was a porn studio at one point).

As Altrez began to spend more of his time in the space, the original collective slowly went different ways. Having fallen in love with Girard Hall and its potential, Altrez stayed and continued to expand its original vision, booking larger popup shows with artists like Philly darlings The Districts or off-kilter rapper Slug Christ.

“What it is now is not what it was then,” Altrez explains.

Though it’s gained notoriety as a performance venue, Girard Hall has retained its identity as a creative studio. Six artists rent studio space, their respective laboratories tucked away in side rooms or at the top of the winding spiral staircase.

A quick tour through the space will also find two makeshift recording studios, a homemade bookshelf and reading area, and a loft with one lonely drum kit that any artist passing through is welcome to knock around.

Jordan Smith, 28, uses Girard Hall to create ambient music scores under the moniker J. Galleo, but also books metal shows there.

“Everybody falls in love with the space as soon as they walk in,” Smith says.

Metal bands love the space for its acoustics, he explains. The massive room makes it so bands don’t even have to mic their drums. Even though

shows he books at Girard Hall have ranged from a crowd of 100 to just the bands playing for one another, Smith says draw has never been a concern for the venue.

“The spot is here for creative people of any make,” he says. “You can’t exclude certain things because it makes less money.”

Sofiya Ballin felt similarly welcomed when she packed the place out with WUK, her AfroCaribbean dance party. The 24-year-old resident of North Philadelphia had visited her parents’ native Trinidad for Carnival and wanted to bring that festive atmosphere back to Philly. Her partner in the event, Mathos Sokolo, knew just the place. “[Girard Hall] had that homey, basement, inthe-cut vibe, but it could hold like 300 people,” says Ballin, a former JUMP staffer who now writes features for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

That charmingly grungy feel is partly just what you get when you keep six artists together in the same space, and partly because the space is undergoing some minor renovations. Buckets of drywall sit under the stage, and brooms lean against the speakers.

Altrez says he is constantly trying to elevate the space to its next level. On Halloween, however, the city shut down the building and wouldn't even let the residents back into the premises. Altrez says that he has no idea what will happen next but that he is committed to making the venue operational again.

“It’s a big space but without people, it’s nothing,” Altrez says.

It’s no small task for Altrez and company to make the place a legal venue but for Altrez, the reasons for doing so are simple.

“I don’t like to see wasted potential,” he says.

- Tyler Horst

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Radius 0.53m Gravity

Marc Brownstein, the bass player for The Disco Biscuits, co-founded HeadCount with Andy Bernstein in 2004. The organization aims to translate the power of music into action, largely by registering young people to vote. The nonpartisan group has registered more than 350,000 people so far.

Our G.W. Miller III spoke with Brownstein, the son of a career politician, about the importance of voting.

Air Time 1.01 seconds

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Ambition

Counting All The Heads

Photo by Chip Frenette.

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DARLENE CAVALIER

The Science of Cheerleading is an interactive book designed to help cheerleaders achieve a greater understanding of how and why certain movements work through science, technology, engineering, and math. Made possible with support from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, this highlyengaging and informative ebook is available for free at the iTunes store.

Find out more at sciencecheerleader.com 26

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is a private foundation located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Find out more at bwfund.org facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Brianna Spause.

Music & Education

The Life Lesson of Making Music The Green Tambourine offers music lessons to people of all ages, with the idea that music brings people together.

It’s time for Ensemble and right on cue, a thunderous sound erupts from the hallway. Seven pairs of feet, some barefoot, come barreling into the back room.

It’s the last day of summer camp at The Green Tambourine, a small studio just off Baltimore Avenue and South 50th Street in Cedar Park that offers year-long lessons to musicians of all ages, from toddler exploration to adult lessons.

The current students are itching to practice the song they’ve been working on all week.

In a big bluesy voice, third-year teacher Charlie Heim leads his team of blooming musicians through their newest ballad, “The Ice Cream Blues.”

“We’re keeping it fun and accessible,” he says.

The team at The Green Tambourine believes music is for everyone. Though it was its first year of hosting summer camp, the studio has been opened since 2013. The summer camp encompassed six one-week courses for children ages 5 to 17. With no musical experience, kids were eligible for Introduction to Instruments to learn the basics.

For those with basic skills, Instrumental Summer Camp challenged students of diverse backgrounds to navigate playing and learning together.

That’s where Heim’s expertise comes in.

“There’s nothing really like the experience of playing with other musicians,” says Heim, who plays drums with the eight-piece absurdist soul outfit Johnny Showcase and the Mystic Ticket.

“You can play by yourself as much as possible, but learning how to make your part fit with other people is really powerful.”

The room is filled with bright-eyed energy as the students, broken into two teams, take turns practicing the songs they would perform for their parents later that afternoon. The theme: “Jazz, Blues and the Heart of American Music.”

Nina, 7, memorized her chords earlier that morning. She methodically plays an electric bass that appears massive in relation to her petite stature as her feet swing freely, inches above the ground.

A short distance across the room, Kayla, 5, stumbles through the drum beat, sporting a JUMPphilly.com

bashful grin.

“In the ensemble, you can really see what kids are comfortable with themselves and what kids still need to work on confidence or self-esteem,” Heim says. “But the playing field gets so even whenever everyone has to play because everyone is responsible for their own part.”

Ann Schwartz, the founder of The Green Tambourine, strives to create a positive musical experience no matter the age of her students.

There is undoubtedly a large difference in cognitive and social skills between children ranging from 5 to 17. For Schwartz, that’s the key to the beauty of it all.

“People can play music at different levels, with different styles and instruments, but there’s an ingrained ability to work together,” she says.

“That’s the magic. Music has the ability to [bridge the] gap not only age, but socioeconomic, racial,

religious and even geographical differences.”

Ira Deglopper, 14, is quiet. He likes to sit back and observe during lessons. He listens to folk music on his hour-long bus commute to and from his home in Bala Cynwyd each day.

Despite being the oldest by several years of the campers that week, and throughout his tenure at The Green Tambourine this summer, Ira says the learning opportunities at camp are special.

“There are moments that are just timeless that you get in camp that you can’t get anywhere else,” Ira says. “Working with the younger kids is awesome.

You have those moments when someone gets something wrong and you can watch them realize how to fix it. That stays with you.”

Learning to play music in an ensemble setting has a large social impact on youth, Schwartz says.

The Green Tambourine encourages the early development of not only basic skills like beat and rhythm, but also of patience and practice.

The acute intricacy of balancing sound and dynamics is a much larger lesson when you read between the lines.

“When you introduce music young, it just becomes part of them,” Schwartz says. “Then they can understand the role of their movements, and the bigger picture. There’s so many types of people, kinds of perspective and kinds of music.

We strive to create a place where every approach is respected and encouraged.” - Brianna Spause

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Cover Story

THE

RECLAMATION KATE FAUST OF

The Philly-based electro artist has been a member of numerous bands but she most enjoys being a solo artist. Recently, she has used her music to deal with serious issues from her past.

Story by Emily Scott.

Photo by Magdalena Papaioannou.

K

ate Faust says she can remember writing songs in her head before she even knew how to write words.

“I would just scribble down pretend words because I really liked the way people’s hands looked when they were writing words,” Faust says.

“I remember being a kid and watching my mom write and just watching her hand glide over the paper.”

She once found a journal from second grade that had song lyrics in it and she remembered how the song went in her head.

“I think basically I’ve always been the same person,” says the Philly-based R&B-electro artist. “I’ve just been very different versions of the same. I have always been this someone who needs to make art to interpret the world around them.”

F

aust, who grew up in Lancaster County, lived in a music-friendly household. Her father is a drummer and her mother is a music lover.

When she was 14, she went without Christmas presents and used her life savings to buy a Casio Privia, which she still has today.

26

“Some really special music has been composed on it,” she says. “I will never sell it. I may pack it up in my mom’s attic for years but I’ll never sell it. It’s too special.”

Faust says she didn’t want to attend college because she wanted to pursue music, but since her parents felt it was important, she decided to study voice at The University of the Arts. She graduated in 2011.

The first time she ever heard Jill Scott’s music, she says, it opened up a “richness and beauty in the world” that she never knew was possible.

“It sort of shifted everything because up until then I hadn’t been exposed to anything like that,” she says. “I finally felt like I had something that my spirit and soul recognized in the world around me.”

A

lthough Faust has always made music solo, she has also been in bands like Perkasie, Toy Soldiers and Lady. She also is now in a duo project called King Kate with Kingsley Ibeneche.

“She writes really depth-filled songs, which can be pretty intense, but Kate is very atmospheric,” Ibeneche says. “She fills the space instead of focusing facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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Photo by G.W. Miller III.

Cover Story

on dancing and she finds ways to incorporate both. Definitely with your body, you can really get down to that.”

In 2012, she began creating electronic music again and released the solo EP, Crucial Companion.

“One of the reasons I stopped being in bands was also because I met up with some of those people who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years and none of them were playing music anymore,” she says. “I’m not about that life ever, so it’s just easier sometimes for me to get shit done the way that I do it now.”

In 2015, Faust released two EPs: Arrows and Undercover. She currently has a five-song EP “ready to go” and eventually hopes to release a full-length debut album. She released a music video for the song “Your Body” in late August.

She’s also working on a short film that was shot at the Rigby Mansion, a Germantown home where she has spent a lot of time making music and playing shows. The film is based around a volume of poetry that she will be releasing.

O

ne of her strongest inspirations is intimacy, she says.

“Arrows was heavily influenced by the concept of self-discovery through intimacy,” says Faust, who added that Arrows is named after a speech by feminist and writer Audrey Lorde. “I feel like my music has a lot of those erotic undertones … I mean erotic in the sense of this chaotic, sort of very emotional, intuitive underbelly, the glue of every interaction that we have.

I feel like I had always operated in that space but until I heard her perspective on it, it had never been so clear to me. It kind of just helped me put a frame around the work I had been doing in my mind.”

Faust says she’s in a “weird, transitional place” and is unsure of how much longer she will be in Philadelphia. She's thinking of moving to the West Coast in the next few months.

“I love Philly,” she says. “I just don’t think there is really a scene for the kind of music I do here. If there is, I think we reached the top of it because I don’t think there is anywhere else to go from here.”

F 28

aust also feels that overall, the music industry is disrespectful toward women.

“It is a microscopic view of society at-large,” she says. “There are

always people who are predatory to us, whether it is management people, whether it’s producers, whether it’s other musicians.”

Faust was offered the opportunity to work with a person she refers to as a “very famous producer” whom she looked up to. She was set to visit his studio one night but she called to say she wasn’t going alone.

“I’m a woman,” she says. “I’ve never met you before. I am not going to your house by myself. I am bringing my bandmate because we are here to work on music.”

The producer cancelled on her at the last minute.

Faust, who is a victim of sexual assault, says it infuriates her that she has to think and worry when working with a man in the music industry.

“Actually, only a few weeks ago, I got the courage to tell my other bandmates what had happened as part of my own healing process,” she says. “Seven fucking years down the line. And I am not unique.”

Faust feels that sexual assault in the music industry is too commonplace, looking back at Kesha’s case to break her record contract due to the fact she said a producer sexually assaulted her.

“She’s not lying,” Faust says. “This is the shit that happens all the time and no one talks about it. And when they do talk about it, someone like Kesha, what happens? Nothing. He’ll go on and be fine. But that trauma to her body, to her life, to her spirit, will live with her. And it forever changes your DNA, how you walk through the world.”

Faust says a lot of the poetry in the short film focuses around the idea of sexual assault and sexism in society as a whole.

The poem in the film is called “Pray,” Faust says, and at the end it repeats, “You did not die.”

She adds that the best thing she did was address her trauma through movement and music.

“That was a turning point,” she says. “Since that floodgate opened, I haven’t been able to stop loving people, or being giving and generous with my time, heart and spirit. Once I was able to reclaim my body, it just changed everything for me. Music is a great way to do that because that’s where my voice is. It’s here.”

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Greg Caputo wanted to explore writing as a mode of healing after a life-changing accident. He unlocked so much more with Penn’s Master of Liberal Arts.

To learn more about our student-designed graduate studies, visit

www.upenn.edu/myMLA

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Cover Story

LOOKING OUT JOY AGAIN FOR

Sachi DiSerafino and Arthur Shea are just 19-years-old. They have a hit song, a popular album from a previous iteration and the support of adoring fans. You'll find them slinging

coffee until they make their next step ...

Story by Andy Polhamus.

Photos by G.W. Miller III.

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Cover Story

E

veryone seems to know Sachi DiSerafino and Arthur Shea.

It’s a sweltering night near the end of summer and Goldilocks Gallery, an arts space in Center City, is overflowing with art school kids watching this week’s set of lo-fi acts. It looks as though no one can leave the show before they shake hands with DiSerafino and Shea - not the audience, not the guys running the door, not even the hired security staff and their band isn’t even playing tonight. Getting recognized is becoming a common occurrence for the pair, both of whom are barely out of high school.

The boys of Joy Again, whose debut 7-inch single “Looking Out For You” came out in January, are leading charmed lives. They’ve sold a song for use in a commercial, performed at South by Southwest and recorded at New York’s Red Bull Studios, all at an age when most bands are just trying to get out of mom’s basement.

“Looking Out For You” is everything one could ask of a lo-fi single. A twee acoustic hook draws the listener in before the song gives way to a deceptively simple melody. There’s an eloquence in these songs that oustrips the usual lyricism of East Coast slacker bands, dropping Joy Again’s music somewhere between the breezy Brit-pop of the late 1970s and the throwback ‘90s sound currently permeating New York and Philly.

“This is a love song for a girl who will never know it’s about her,” they croon on the breakout track. In an early acoustic song called “Sorry You Didn’t Get to Kiss That Boy You Wanted to Kiss,” Shea and DiSerafino lament that “she’s telling me I’m nothing but a sad boy. I’m expensive and I’m worthless and I can’t speak any German.” It’s adolescent, sure, but when put into practice, it’s anything but dumb.

Shea and DiSerafino knock back Pabst Blue Ribbons as they talk, interrupted every few minutes by fans, friends of friends and well-wishers. These days, the duo live in West Philly, supporting themselves by working as baristas in separate coffee shops. The pair are joined by Blaise O’Brien on bass and guitar, Logan Burke on keys and a revolving door of guest drummers.

“A girl came in and made this face. She said, ‘Oh my god, you’re Sachi from Joy Again,’” DiSerafino says, dragging on a hand-rolled cigarette. He looks embarrassed, remembering the stains on the clothes he’d worn to work.

“I was having a horrible day,” he notes.

J

oy Again started in the comfortable suburb of Glen Mills when Shea and DiSerafino were still in high school. It began, as so many bands do, as an escape from teenage angst.

“We went to kindergarten together, and didn’t see each other for years,” says Shea.

“I was having a really shitty time in high school,” DiSerafino continues. “I got bullied and pushed around a lot. But [Arthur and I] reconnected on Facebook, and we started messing around on a 4-track Tascam digital recorder.”

Joy Again first formed as Joy Kolicious, taken directly from the name of one of Shea’s old love interests. A few strongly-worded messages from the girl’s classmates was enough to make them get rid of that name, which was followed by the moniker Forever Lesbians.

“Obviously, we weren’t accepted for that,” Shea says sheepishly. “We thought it was supportive.”

They were accepted by at least a few people, though - Forever Lesbians put out a full-length cassette, Sherry, with Third Floor Tapes and played under that name for more than a year.

“The response [to Sherry] was strong from the get-go,” says Dante Scaglione, 17, who runs the tape label with help from his friends. The 10-track album dropped in May of 2014 to instant underground popularity.

“People just clung onto it, especially kids our age,” Scaglione continues.

32

“But it went beyond that too. There are old-heads in the Philly scene who have been in bands for awhile that really dug that record.”

Scaglione, who met Shea and DiSerafino through O’Brien, said he recognized immediately that the band were putting out music at a higher level than your standard 12th-graders.

“As it is with a lot of great records, the chemistry was right, and it came out at the right time,” he says. “That record is a songwriting achievement. It’s one of those albums that’s a moment in time. They nailed it with those recordings.

It sticks with me in the same way a lot of my all-time favorite records do.”

Finally, without really trying, the band found their permanent name almost by accident. The group was standing around on prom night, shooting the shit, when Shea came up with their new band name.

“We wanted to use the word ‘joy,’” says Shea excitedly. “I said, let’s be ‘Joy Kolicious’ again.”

They censored themselves this time, leaving out the girl’s last surname.

B

ut the new band name stuck, and soon after, they received an email from a producer who made a tempting offer. He’d worked on music videos for Chris Brown and wanted to do the same for Joy Again.

“I thought, you’re fucking kidding me,” DiSerafino says.

The music video never happened (although a charming DIY video can be found on YouTube), but that exchange was enough get the band booked for a session at Red Bull Studios in Manhattan in March of 2015. Shea and DiSerafino were 17, and O’Brien just 15. Joy Again recorded with Caleb Laven, a sound engineer who has also worked with Frank Ocean. The band was so young that their parents were reluctant to let them sleep alone in New York City.

“They kept telling us not to drink in the studio,” DiSerafino recalls.

The band keeps the reminiscing about New York to a minimum, but a lone Facebook photo shows O’Brien running down the street, mouth wide open, a mannequin under his arm. It’s a scene that recalls the early days of The Replacements: a bunch of unruly kids making a beautiful noise.

“It’s incredibly catchy. Not your standard recipe for pop music,” says Luke Myers, a promoter and friend of the band who has booked them about a dozen times. He considers “Looking Out For You” to be the band’s maturation.

“When I listen to Joy Again, I immediately think of the friendship between Arthur and Sachi,’” he continues. “It’s clear that they’ve been friends for years.

Sherry is very much ‘we plugged a tape recorder into the mic and hoped for the best.”

“Now, you can see they’re working with good producers,” Myers says. “You can see a complete transformation, going through their discography.”

The 7-inch, distributed by Lucky Number records, sold out of its original run of 300 copies. “Looking Out For You” was even used in a New Zealand ad campaign for Teva sandals — odd, perhaps, since Shea and DiSerafino both say they hate sandals, but the commercial earned them enough money to pay the rent.

The bandmates say the news that their music had been used in an ad for a major brand raised a few eyebrows.

“As soon as there’s money involved, people go, ‘Who are you?’” says Shea.

“But it’s just us. We both work at coffee shops.”

“We’ve had the biggest stroke of luck,” adds DiSerafino. “It makes us feel like assholes sometimes, for having things fall into our lap.”

T

he songwriting duo seem nervous about how they’re perceived in their local scene. But it’s hard to tell how much of this scrutiny is real and how much is a projection of their own self-consciousness.

“They’ve got enough of a following in Philly that, at this point, they could do pretty much whatever they want,” Myers says.

An EP, also recorded at Red Bull, is on the horizon, but the band has yet to decide on a release date. Half a dozen tracks have been waiting for their release since that first session on Manhattan.

“We wanted a really strong single before we did the EP,” DiSerafino says, adding that more material is coming “as soon as possible.”

“The label is asking us to do another pop song,” says Shea. “But we don’t know if we want to do another pop song.”

Scaglione is among the many people waiting for that EP, though he’s personally attached to the innocent fumbling of their first tape.

“I want to see the best for them as a band,” he says. “It would be great to see them on a bigger label, whatever that means for them. They were the best possible band I could’ve started with. It was a mutually beneficial experience.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

M

eanwhile, the two are slinging lattes while DiSerafino also screen prints T-shirts for local bands as a side gig. This past spring, they hit the road for the first time as Joy Again, touring through the southern U.S. to play a string of dates at South by Southwest But their fondest stories from the road have nothing to do with dodgy bars.

It’s a set of decidedly more heartfelt experiences that have made left the biggest impressions.

Not long before Joy Again went on tour, they got a direct message on Twitter from a high school kid named Stefan who wanted to see them play. He had tickets, he said, but needed a ride home. Could he bum a ride from the band in exchange for gas money and some smokes?

“He looked really young,” DiSerafino recalls. “I was surprised he came at all. He told us he had to sneak out and tell his parents that there was a coffee shop event at his school that night and that he wouldn't be home 'til late, when JUMPphilly.com

in reality he took an Uber to the Metro and a train into D.C. — an expensive commute to see us.”

Stefan rode shotgun in the van, talking music and listening to “Grass Shack”

by Guerrilla Toss on full blast. The band had to drop him off a few blocks from home to keep his parents from finding out where he’d been all night.

If the attention dries up and the money disappears, DiSerafino says he’ll keep playing regardless. He’s seen other bands fall apart after the novelty of youth wears off, and he doesn’t want Joy Again to be one of those bands.

“I don’t want people to be into this just because we’re a bunch of young guys,” he says, taking one more sip of beer. He’s thinking, maybe of his next beer, maybe of a high school kid in D.C., or maybe of a lost weekend in New York.

“We want to keep inspiring people with our music, and we hope that we can keep doing this for a long time.”

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Cover Cover Story Story

A

ROOT

FOR

REGGAE

Reggae music has long been popular in Philadelphia, despite not having a signature venue where the sound reigns supreme. Until now.

Story by Dave Miniaci and Tyler Horst.

Photos by Charles Wrzesniewski.

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T

he rain falls down in sheets on a Sunday afternoon at Penn’s Landing.

It’s an abysmal day to be outside but the Great Plaza teems with people.

Staccato island rhythms lift off a stage lined with flags from Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti and other Caribbean islands and, as it turns out, some of those thick rain clouds are actually jerk spice-infused smoke. Welcome to the 30th Annual Caribbean Festival in Philadelphia.

Many parts of the city, West Philadelphia in particular, are home to communities from West Indian islands like Jamaica. One of that nation’s bestknown exports, reggae music, has seen its share of ups and downs in the city.

Amid the other vendor tents at the Caribbean Festival, Delroy Gray hides from the wind and rain beneath the banner for his business, Whagwaan Entertainment. Jamaican-born but a resident of Northeast Philly, Gray sells reggae-inspired apparel and manages and promotes local artists like Ras King.

“If I’m being honest,” Gray says, “real, conscious reggae is in a downward slope.”

Not for lack of available talent, Gray says, but it’s been difficult to get people out to reggae shows. One reason could be that young people of the local Caribbean-American community seem to have gravitated more toward dancehall, a genre of music that shares roots with reggae but evolved to have more similarities with rap and R&B (think Sean Paul, not Bob Marley).

Classic, full-band reggae isn’t easy to come by in Philadelphia but Gray believes it’s due for a resurgence.

“It’s building,” he says. “It’s coming.”

T

ucked away in a corner of the basement of the Creese Student Center at Drexel University is an unassuming but fundamental cornerstone of Philadelphia music.

A simple sign, WKDU, hangs outside the door. Inside is about what you would expect at a college radio station: a few well-worn couches, concert and band posters plastering the walls, walls and shelves of meticulously arranged albums of all genres.

Few places have done as much to promote reggae music in Philadelphia as WKDU. Since the ’80s, the station has aired a Reggae Marathon, airing 100 straight hours of reggae music each Memorial Day weekend. Their all-day Saturday reggae programming makes it feel summer time all-year-round.

“Most of us who are doing radio are still doing it,” says Duprex Snape, a DJ at WKDU. “Reggae radio is reggae radio. I used to do a two-hour show and now I do a four-hour show.”

Snape is radiant with a big smile and jovial personality. He came to the United States from Jamaica in 1979 and has been behind the reggae dial at WKDU for around 16 years.

“We are very proud people. We respect and we love our music,” Snape said of Jamaicans and reggae music. “We own our music. We own reggae music.

Other than white overproof rum, reggae music is our main industry. Rum can be made in other countries but reggae music is made in Jamaica.”

The reggae scene in Philly has changed and evolved since he’s been a part of it. While some successful acts have come out of Philly, local live music isn’t as apparent anymore.

“It’s become very mainstream in Philadelphia for reggae music,” he said. “It used to be, if you heard about a live reggae show, it would be in West Philly or “somewhere like that. Now, there are reggae shows at places downtown like The Trocadero. Stephen Marley was recently there.”

I

n Philly, you get a lot of happy-go-lucky, commercial reggae,” contends Jonifin Marvin Benjamin. “Real reggae makes you want to dance. It makes you want to scream.”

Benjamin fronts the Philly Reggae Band, a project he started out of what he believed was a need for more “authentic reggae” in the city, like the kind he heard through the speakers which lined his childhood home back in Jamaica.

This was due to Benjamin’s father, who was a reggae DJ, which Benjamin explains has a different meaning in his culture.

In reggae, the DJ is more akin to a singer or hip-hop MC, singing or “toasting” (rapping) to the music. What those outside the culture would typically think of as a DJ, spinning records and selecting rhythms, is known as a “selector.”

A full reggae band is hard to come by in Philadelphia, Benjamin says. And one with a Jamaican singer?

“You’re not going to find another band,” he says.

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A

ccording to Benjamin, the reggae scene is split into different camps.

There’s the West Indian communities in the city, which tend to favor dancehall music and lone reggae DJs (remember, like MCs), and there are the “white rastas” who enthusiastically embrace reggae culture and who hew closer to the classic sound and the trancelike, heady variant known as “dub.”

I Yahn I Arkestra is one such band. The core of the group, Derek and Kathy Myers, a husband-and-wife duo from Fishtown, have been performing with a cast of musicians, including Chuck Treece, since 1997.

“We’ve seen [the reggae scene] ebb and flow a lot over 20 years,” Derek Myers says.

I Yahn I Arkestra plays its hometown every chance it can get, mostly at smaller rooms like The Fire or Silk City, where Myers says crowds can really soak in the vibe and feel comfortable. Myers agrees with Benjamin’s assessment of the scene’s divisions and adds that his band’s music gets much better traction at beach towns in Maryland and New Jersey.

“I will live and die for reggae music,” Myers says, then adds with a laugh, “the people who inspired me didn’t necessarily do it for money either.”

Reggae has also come out in other genres, creating a kind of fusion, points out West Kensingtons' guitarist Bill McKinney.

“There’s a lot of stuff that comes from soul or ska or punk,” he says. “It’s also from a cultural standpoint too. What’s going on in North Philly may sound different than what’s happening in West Philly.”

Snape echoes that sentiment.

“We’re a people who love to move around,” he says. “Every community has its own little place going on. There’s no one big reggae club. There’s no big liquor license club for reggae.”

More than anything, Benjamin would like the different reggae communities across the city to unite into one cohesive scene. The biggest challenge is finding the right place to do it.

“There’s not even a viable reggae club,” he says. “We don’t have a proper home.”

T

he entrance to One Art Community Center barely stands out amongst other storefronts on North 52nd Street. But as you pass by, you notice the gate opens to a peaceful-looking courtyard filled with plants and tall grass.

If there’s going to be a spot in Philly that serves as a base for the scene, many artists agree, One Art could be it. It’s not hard to see why.

Malaika Hart, a Philadelphia native who co-runs the space with her Jamaican-born husband, Ewan Gilpin, opens the gate and walks in toward the courtyard.

Stepping into One Art, one feels as if they’ve suddenly left Philadelphia and gone someplace else. The sounds of traffic disappear and are replaced by an oasis of calm. Once a junkyard, the massive space has been transformed into a welcoming open-air music venue.

“What we’ve created is a place for people to call home,” says Hart.

Her late husband, Benjamin Reed, was a Jamaican immigrant living in West Philadelphia who founded One Art in 2001 as a space for community, healing and music. Now, One Art is home to a farm, kitchen, recording studio, multipurpose space (for classes like yoga or African martial arts) and an outdoor stage that frames a mural full of reggae and African symbols. It’s hard to believe that a venue of this size exists, just out of sight, in West Philadelphia.

“If you want to have a reggae show, this is the only place,” says Gilpin, who also plays reggae under the name Jah1.

One Art works with Philadelphia promoters like Delroy Gray and hosts Philadelphia artists like I Yahn I Arkestra, but it has international appeal.

In August, One Art brought roots-reggae band Akae Beka from Saint Croix, Virgin Islands and reggae singer Jah9 from Jamaica.

“You don’t have to be from Jamaica,” Gilpin says about the music’s appeal for fans and artists alike.

He sees the talent in other local acts, and while he recognizes the challenges facing the scene, he’s optimistic about the future “I feel like we are spreading all over,” he states.

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Cover Story

THE

SHOCKING RETURN OF

TIGERS JAW During the band's first performance in Philly, frontman Ben Walsh kept getting electrical shocks from a faulty hook up.

He's back in town, living here now, and the band is now recording as a duo rather than as a five-piece.

Story by John McGuire.

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

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F

or Ben Walsh, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for Scrantonfounded band Tigers Jaw, the first show he ever played in Philly came with a shock.

Literally.

It was 2008 and Tigers Jaw was sharing the stage with fellow Scrantonites, the Menzingers, at a basement show in a house on Titan Street. Walsh suspected the amps, PA system and pedal boards were all plugged into one extension cord running from an outlet upstairs.

“I would get close to the mic to sing and I would just get shocked so badly,” he recalls with a laugh.

Walsh is reminiscing about Tigers Jaw’s relationship with Philly on a September morning in his Fishtown home after caffeinating at his favorite coffee shop (ReAnimator on East Susquehanna Avenue). As the sun pours through an array of hanging plants into the space where he writes music, he remembers how he wasn’t about to let a little face-numbing pain ruin Tigers Jaw’s first Philly experience.

“We were determined to show Philly what we could do,” Walsh says. “It was really cool for us because we could tell that there was a familiarity in the room with some of our songs. That was definitely one of the first out-of-town shows where we were like, ‘Wow, people have heard of us before.’ It was pretty surreal.”

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igers Jaw has come a long way since the days of being nearly electrocuted in basements. While Walsh will forever appreciate a good house show, the band’s two most recent headlining gigs in Philly were at Union Transfer, which has a capacity of 1,200.

As evidenced by Tigers Jaw’s moment on Titan Street, the music of Scranton area bands has been trickling into the Philly scene for some time.

But now the musicians themselves are trickling in as well. Like members of the Menzingers, Petal and Captain, We’re Sinking, about two years ago, Walsh made the decision to move to Philly, a city where he says the creative opportunities are seemingly endless.

“In Scranton, it’s very difficult to sustain a venue or sustain a scene, and Philly has just been doing it right for so many years,” Walsh says while strumming a beloved guitar he bought at DiPinto Guitars on Girard Avenue.

For Walsh, Philly, with its plentiful and boundless music scene, was an inspirational setting to write the upcoming Tigers Jaw album, a process that Walsh knew was going to be a challenge.

In 2013, three out of Tigers Jaw’s five members - drummer Pat Brier, bassist Dennis Mishko, and guitarist/vocalist Adam McIlwee - decided to part ways with the band. It was a transition that Walsh and keyboardist/vocalist Brianna Collins never expected.

For a time, Tigers Jaw’s future was uncertain.

Despite their departure, Brier, Mishko and McIlwee agreed to record 2014’s Charmer with producer Will Yip at Studio 4 in Conshohocken. Walsh and Collins toured in support of the LP with a temporary lineup.

Walsh and Collins remain on good terms with McIlwee, who started experimental hip-hop project Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, as well as Mishko and Brier, who are both in Philly band Three Man Cannon. Ultimately, Walsh and Collins decided it felt right to continue making music as Tigers Jaw.

Photo by Kevin Barr.

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t’s hot outside and the duo has returned to Studio 4 to work with Yip on the next album. Yip began working at Studio 4 in 2006 and has since earned recognition for his production work with bands like Circa Survive, Nothing and Balance and Composure.

He says his goal is to become as vital as a member to every band he works with, but this Tigers Jaw album is particularly important to him because Walsh and Collins are two of his closest friends.

“Everything comes from the heart,” Yip says. “We want to be here every single second of the day and it’s going to show on the record. It’s going to be a special, special record.”

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At the studio, sinking into a couch surrounded by framed Beatles posters, Walsh recalls the pressures of the songwriting process for the upcoming record.

“I was definitely intimidated by it,” Walsh says, as Collins is heard tracking on a grand piano in the next room. “I didn’t want to finish songs just for the sake of reaching a certain number. I didn’t want to force myself to write stuff that I wasn’t totally happy with.”

In the past, Walsh primarily contributed guitars and vocals. Now, he’s also tracking bass and drums. He used to share the bulk of songwriting responsibility with McIlwee, with each typically contributing about half of the songs on each album. But this time around, Walsh was determined to double his usual quota.

“Before we even stepped foot in the studio, I wanted to have 10 songs that I really felt proud of,” Walsh says.

Walsh focused on writing the record for two solid months, free for the first time in his career from commitments like college or working full-time as a speech therapist.

While Walsh accomplished his 10-song goal, Collins composed songs on her own, broadening her already crucial role in Tigers Jaw. “Even at the most basic level, she’s contributed so much to the sound of the band,” Walsh says. “And now she’s definitely stepped up and brought some really awesome song ideas to the table.”

When Tigers Jaw was a five-piece, Collins says she had always been content contributing keyboards and vocal harmonies. Being a songwriter for the band was an idea she had never truly entertained.

“When the other guys left, I knew in my mind that maybe this is the time where I could step up and try,” says Collins, a Temple University grad who lives in Kingston, Pennsylvania.

Having only two members helped Tigers Jaw be more articulate than ever in choosing a creative direction. For this album, Yip says Collins and Walsh’s choice to record without introducing new members to the process was the right move.

“It is their vision right now,” Yip says. “They have a pretty steady touring lineup but the band is Ben and Brianna, so why not track it that way instead of forcing another person into the situation?”

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n the control room, Collins listens as Walsh tracks the bass line for a song she put together while Yip works behind the mixing board.

When Walsh and Yip finish, Collins discusses how she has always loved that Tigers Jaw has been a band with multiple voices containing distinct perspectives.

“I always thought Ben and Adam’s songs were different in their own unique ways,” says Collins. “So, I thought that dynamic could stay the same if I was writing.”

Collins says the positive reception for “Hum,” a single from Charmer, helped boost her confidence as both a singer and a songwriter. Walsh encouraged her to write part of the song, which evolved into Collins singing its verses, making “Hum” the first song Tigers Jaw recorded for which Collins contributes lead vocals. Walsh loves how the track turned out and he says the upcoming album tends to gravitate toward that style. He expects this record will sound more cohesive than prior Tigers Jaw efforts.

“Thematically, it’s coming from the same place,” Walsh says, “but it’s more of a complete thought, more of a realized vision.”

In part, this cohesion stems from the amount of time Tigers Jaw had to record the album, which Walsh expects will drop during the first half of 2017. Past LPs were recorded in a week or less, limiting the band’s freedom to explore ideas. This time around, Walsh, Collins and Yip were in the underground studio six days per week, for four weeks, allowing for plenty of opportunities for the trio to experiment with the composition of the songs.

“We’re really working together, the three of us, to push [this record] to be something we’re really proud of,” Collins says.

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Cover Story

ON THE ROAD BACK PHILLY AND

TO

Traveling with and working for a band isn't the romantic experience portrayed by Hollywood and mythologized in popular culture. It's hard work, as many folks based in Philly will tell you.

Story by Beth Ann Downey.

Lead photo by G.W. Miller III. Portraits by Natalie Piserchio 38

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T

hough Cameron Crowe’s Showtime series “Roadies” was one of the first times pop culture shed light on the many different types of professionals it takes to put on a high-caliber tour, many of Philadelphia’s own roadies can tell you behind-the-scenes touring is much less colorful - and much more labor-intensive - than the show depicts.

For instance, it’s not the norm to find a crew member whose sole purpose on tour is to babysit and make coffee, as Machine Gun Kelly’s character did on the show. More often than not, each crew person will serve more than one vital function, with a focus on tour managing, sound engineering, teching, coordinating merch or driving the bus or van.

And despite what those unfamiliar with the touring lifestyle might expect, crew members who’ve worked with real bands as reputable as Crowe’s fictional Staton-House Band agree that the bigger, high-profile tours are easier than the small ones.

“It’s still a lot of work and long days and stuff, but usually there’s more money, more manpower,” says sound engineer CJ Blair (right). “If there’s more manpower, everyone can have a job they’re good at instead of doing 10 different things.”

Blair sits in his Port Richmond studio behind knobs, dials and monitors. He looks content and busy, working on recording projects and preparing for an upcoming tour for which he will tour manage and do front-of-house sound for the Rochester, New York-based indie band Joywave.

Sitting behind these knobs, dials and monitors is something Blair does most days of his life.

But more than half the year, it’s out on the road with bands like Haim, Andy Grammer and Catfish and the Bottlemen. He finds comfort in doing sound and in touring, the latter of which is something he’s been doing to some capacity since dropping out of high school at 16.

Blair likes being busy, being part of the crew - a job he describes as nothing short of a constant rollercoaster.

“It’s the best job in the world to get paid pretty well to travel the world,” Blair says. “That’s super awesome, but it’s just not a normal life. I appreciate some normalcy in my life.”

Every time he tours, Blair leaves behind a wife, a niece and a close group of family and friends for whom he’s constantly missing birthdays or hangouts.

Even when he gets home, it takes him awhile to get back in the swing of home life. Sometimes, as soon as he reorients to home life, he has to start prepping to leave again.

“So it really kind of fucks with my head a little bit,” he says matter-of-factly.

Blair’s experiences have run the gamut of crew scenarios, from van tours that included a few “fucking miserable” weeks on Warped Tour to working with a band that opened for Taylor Swift on her 1989 World Tour. He’s worked with difficult artists and been out on tours he would never do again but he says there are instances when the culture surrounding this profession can feel like a home away from home.

“It’s cool when you do find that sweet spot and get out on tour and everyone is having a good time - band, crew, artist, whatever,” he says. “It’s awesome, and it’s everything on the road.”

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any touring professionals get their start going out with friends.

That was the case for Mark Henkel , who started touring with Man Man in 2008. He had previously lived with the band’s singer, Ryan Kattner. Henkel filled in for the band’s regular merch person on the tour following the release of Rabbit Habits, Man Man’s first album on Anti Records.

“I found this and I never planned to do it as a job,” Henkel, of South Philadelphia, says while sipping on a Gaffel Kölsch at The Pub on Passyunk East. “But then, a year after finishing college, they were touring quite a bit, so I just kept doing these tours, just selling merch.”

About three years later, Henkel was tour managing Man Man. On the road JUMPphilly.com

he met other tour managers and touring professionals - most of them older who started getting in touch with him with more work. Now, Henkel’s TMing (tour managing) roster includes tUnE-yArDs and Brazilian band Boogarins, and he also runs a small booking agency representing five bands.

“There’s no application process, so when people ask me, ‘How do you do it?’ Well I have no real answer,” Henkel says. “Just go on tour with your friends and do a good job, I guess.”

It wasn’t until 5 years of doing the job that the fact that this was his job really clicked for Henkel.

“I am doing fine,” he recalls telling himself. “I live by myself in an apartment.

I’m paying my bills doing this job and just this job.”

Steph Godshall, who does merch and drives for Hop Along, got into touring a similar way. Her first tour was three years ago with friends in Lancasterbased metalcore band This or the Apocalypse. Though it was supposed to be an opportunity for her to dip her toes into the touring pool, the tour was a full two-months long, which Godshall quickly learned was way longer than she was comfortable with for many reasons.

“I don’t work with bands in that scene so much anymore,” Godshall says, remembering the many times she was asked “Who’s girlfriend are you?” while on that tour. “Yeah, I don’t get that question anymore. I was green, too. Now I would be much more willing to stand my ground.”

Godshall has now been working solely with Hop Along for the past two-and-a-half years and tries to strike a balance between how long she’s out and how much she’s doing at home, which includes working at R.E.Load Bags on North Second Street.

“I get bored doing either one for too long,” Godshall says.

Godshall has enjoyed seeing Hop Along get bigger and bigger support slots on tour and gain more and more notoriety in the time she’s been working with them. She says it’s the opportunity to support the band, along with the travel aspect of the job, that make living in a van, long hours and lack of sleep worthwhile.

“It’s really personal for me to be with them, specifically, and just be a kind of support structure on the road,” she says. “It’s a really present and important feeling. You have to be constantly navigating how people are feeling and you have to be really adaptable and understanding and kind of empathetic. Those are the people I try to work for, the kind ones.”

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rystal Stokowski’s Point Breeze home is an homage to the job perk of traveling the world. As the long-time merchandise coordinator for Modest Mouse, Stokowski (left) has seen a lot due to her touring profession, as well as discovered a lot that remains important to her today. The surf boards nestled on a shelf in her living room pay tribute to the years she spent living in Hawaii after travelling there with Modest Mouse for a show in 2009.

“We traveled and hung out and in those 10 days, I was like, ‘I think I need to live here,’” she reminisces. “I want to surf, I want just figure this out, this island culture.”

There is also a Paipo - a small wooden bellyboard. That she made while interning with a specialist in creating these types of boards in Australia. It was through this internship she found her love of woodburning, a love she brought back to Philly when she moved back two years ago.

Stokowski, like many other crew members, stays busy on and off the road.

She has a deep artistic repertoire but specializes in quilted installations that also utilize wooden and found materials.

“Touring to me is actually like a secondary part of my life,” Stokowki says.

“When I’m in Philly, I’m teaching art or working in the studio.”

Her love of art goes back to her early days of screenprinting merchandise for her musical projects and fashioning new creations from thrift store clothing, giving them away to friends.

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Cover Cover Story Story

Though doing merch is directly connected to the start of her artistic passions, she rarely finds time to pursue them when she’s out with Modest Mouse.

Doing merchandise, Stokowski says she’s usually the first crew member at the venue for each gig to set up shop. Then she’s also the last one to leave, counting out and settling sometimes until 3 in the morning depending on the volume she sold that day.

“With touring, I’m working 24 hours a day,” she says. “Not many people understand how intensive being on the road is, [doing] merchandise especially.”

Blair finds this same dilemma in the dichotomy between priorities in his work and home life. The hardest thing for him to find time for, whether at home or on the road, is being creative in writing music for his own projects.

He says striking this balance is a never-ending process that drives him nuts.

It’s also something many crew members likely grapple with, as Blair estimates 80-90 percent of crew members are also musicians themselves.

“Days off are really hard. You really have to be good at saying no to things,” Blair says. “If writing music is something you want to do that day, be ready to say ‘no’ to the other five people who are going to ask you to go to the movies or dinner, then movies, then the bar, which are all awesome things and the camaraderie on the road is important. But if you do that too many times, then I start to remember, ‘Oh, I need time for myself. I’m constantly around people.’ Even if it’s not writing music, I need to remind myself, ‘You need to go hang out with yourself for a while.’”

For Henkel (right), finding this alone time is something he strives for at home. With additional hobbies like reading, cooking and riding his bike on the Schuylkill River Trail, he also makes bedroom recordings, playing every instrument himself. And he chooses to keep these recordings to himself instead of putting them out and playing shows, which he says is somewhat a result of what he’s seen other bands go through.

“I see bands that are doing really well then they fall apart,” he says. “When you start to see these patterns in the music world, you’re like, ‘I don’t think I really want to put myself out there like that and subject myself to that.’”

Henkel enjoys the fact his job rarely makes him feel frustrated or stuck, like he sees with friends with 9-to-5 gigs. He enjoys the unstructured time something he knows would drive some others crazy - but also addresses some of the drawbacks, like maintaining relationships, in a job that has him out on the road for up to half a year.

“There are people who do it and do it well,” he says. “I tend to not have a girlfriend, basically. Or if I do, it doesn’t last that long, you know?”

He can't have pets or anything living that requires nurturing.

“All of my plants are cacti or succulents that can survive for a month without water,” he continues. “I mean, I could have someone water my plants or feed my cat, but when you’re coordinating that literally every month, for the entire year, it seems kind of stupid.”

Bottom photo courtesy of Dave Williams.

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ave Williams (right) just flew into Tokyo and is currently on his way to a festival site for a production meeting. He’s on the road as sound engineer for 24-year-old pop star Charlie Puth but Williams, with a background in and inclination for punk music, is bummed he’ll miss seeing Radiohead at the festival as they are playing a different day.

Not that watching Charlie Puth perform every night is something to scoff at.

“He’s actually classically trained and a jazz pianist, which a lot of people don’t realize, so between that and having a live band behind him, it’s a pretty cool show,” Williams writes in an email. “My least favorite thing is that the musicianship, I’m sure, gets lost to the ‘TMZ audience,’ I guess.”

JUMPphilly.com

Having played drums since age 9, Williams found his love for audio recording and put it to practice at age 24, upon moving to Michigan from his native Australia in 2012. He studied it in school, practiced in studios during his free time or through internships, and then got experience doing live sound at local clubs. His first touring break came when he convinced Michigan-based post hardcore band La Dispute to take him out on their second Australian tour. Since then, Williams has toured the U.S. more than a dozen times and internationally on three continents.

“It’s both a very challenging and very rewarding experience,” he says. “I’ve basically given up any kind of normalcy in my life at the moment but have been presented with a ton of new experiences, travel, friendships and have been given a creative outlet that I’ve eventually been able to make a living off of.”

It’s these friendships that inclined Williams to move to Philly in 2014, along with the fact the city boasts one of “the coolest music scenes in the country,” in his opinion. Though he enjoys picking up shifts doing sound at Union Transfer when he’s home, Williams says he knows he could live anywhere in the U.S. and still be leading essentially the same professional lifestyle.

“Living in Philly means having access to a great community of musicians here, and close access to New York City,” he says.

Williams’ professional state is almost the antithesis to Nikolas Mondo’s, in that Mondo has so much going on at home that it’s kept him from taking once-in-a-lifetime tours.

This past spring, he was asked to go out as a monitor engineer with Portugal.

The Man on their tour with Cage The Elephant.

“I had a couple friends on that tour and I knew it was going to be a really fun run with some of the best guys around, which is why it was super difficult for me to make a decision,” he says.

That decision was to turn down the tour. Even though he'd make a decent salary and enjoy the company of those he was working with, he had just started working at a Philly-based production company as a project manager, and the stable gig was too good to give up. These days, he's doing more designing and producing events than engineering.

“The tour was three months of work,” Mondo says. “Then, I would be back in Philly looking either for another tour or another job. I ended up choosing stability over the tour, which I know was the right decision, but it was a really hard one to make, also. There is just something about traveling with guys who always end up becoming family after that much time together.”

No matter what the case or caliber of touring they’re used to, crew members tend to feel right at home in Philadelphia. Blair calls the city a great “landing spot” for a crew member because of what the city has to offer. Plus, there’s plenty of touring work to go around.

“Your money goes a lot further here and there is a good community of people here and it’s not like an elite person’s club,” he says. “Everyone is down to help everybody out.”

Godshall says she can list half a dozen people moving to Philadelphia from other cities because of the professional opportunities related to music they can find here.

“I know more people in my immediate friend group who tour than do not,” she says. “It’s so common here, both because it’s a supportive community and because people can afford to live here.”

Stokowski finds the musical and artistic community here to be unbelievable in the way everyone collaborates. With a laugh, she says Philly is so “blue collar” and “broke” that everyone is always looking out for each other.

“I feel like Philly being our home base, it just makes sense,” she says.

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Cover Story

MERCURY RISES AGAIN Mercury Radio Theater has been making music since 2000. But the sing-along music they make now is way different from their instrumental surf rock/horror show roots.

Story by Eric Fitzsimmons.

Photo by G.W. Miller III.

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B

uddy Mercury is the alter ego of mild-mannered criminologist Kurt Fowler, the guitarist in the band Mercury Radio Theater. He's a reallife Batman moonlighting as a rock star. Or maybe vice-versa.

He sits at a bar table inside West Philadelphia’s Local 44, across from fellow guitarist and writing partner F. Woods, chatting excitedly about the band’s new album, Oh, This Can't be Good, their fourth studio album.

Fowler, 38, who recently moved to the neighborhood after many years in Fishtown, wears a black T-shirt with a giant red star and banner advertising a Communist Party of China rally. Retro communist propaganda also served as the basis for the three-part concert series the band performed in 2014 and 2015, entitled “The Fabulous Red Menace.” They debuted several of the songs on the new album during the series.

The story of Mercury Radio Theater, Fowler explains, began 16 years ago and it has all the usual ingredients: three friends, a lot of empty bars, a van, the road, a few albums, personnel additions and subtractions, etc.

The band on Oh, This Can't be Good is much different from the one that recorded 2011’s Kilroy, let alone the trio that released their debut album in 2003. There are more musicians now, including a brass section, and after years honing a distinctive, instrumental sound that blended surf rock and horror shows, they now feature vocals and crowd sing-alongs.

“I actually believe that good art comes from restraint,” Fowler says. “I believe that. But I felt that there comes a time where restraint becomes stifling.”

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ercury Radio Theater started playing as a trio in 2000. The band played a unique blend of surf punk (“Monster Freak Twilight Hour”), exotica (“The Hypno-Eye”) and a little pop-punk (“Dejected, adj. Depressed in spirits; disheartened”). They set a daunting task in the beginning, coming out with a brand new “episode” for every big concert. They created new music, flashed new visuals and wrote new spokenword horror stories that played between their instrumental songs. Their first three albums followed that same mix of narration and music.

Woods, 37, says theatrics were always part of the show. Though he isn’t a founding member of the band, he has been around on-and-off since the beginning. He initially provided the live sound effects for the radio play segments of their first show, an idea they immediately abandoned for being too difficult and unreliable.

“We tried to make it a spectacle on stage,” Woods says. “We were tired of seeing four guys on the stage, playing guitars real low by their knees, not moving around. It wasn’t much to look at, so what can we do to make this interesting?”

A Mercury Radio Theater concert was a show in every proper sense but they didn’t draw much of a crowd in their native Philadelphia. So they spent many of their early years on the road.

“It became a years-long whirlwind of being on the road and not being in Philly,” Fowler says. “We would draw crowds by the thousands in Arkansas but no one at home knew who we were.”

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ow did the band go from the instrumental horror shows of their early days to lyrics and chanting and farfisa organ now? The excitable Fowler can tell you when the change started but his answer changes every few minutes.

It could have been the arrival of a steady bassist in Jason Todd or the process of putting together their third album, Kilroy. But it seems to always go back to their return from the road after 2006. Fowler went back to school and other members got into different music projects or day jobs. The band still existed but they performed less frequently, and mostly in the Philly region.

Mercury Radio Theater was playing to a growing audience of repeat customers and found it to be a different experience. Woods had been away from the band for a few years and got to see what it was like to be in the audience. He says people liked the music but they were playing a strict format and instrumental music did not give people a lot to get excited about.

Fowler took it more personally.

“I recall being at a show and I overheard somebody saying, ‘I’ve seen this episode already so it’s nothing new to me,’ and it was just like, ‘Agh!’ It was like a dagger,” Fowler says, clutching his side where the metaphorical blade had been slipped through his ribs.

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ilroy retained many of the surface elements of the earlier albums but the story was kept to a few interludes — instead of one story track for every song — and new instruments were brought in. Tom Scheponik

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contributed to that album on the vibraphone and accordion.

The numerous musicians who contributed to Kilroy were invited to play the album release party.

“That was just a lot of fun,” Scheponik says. “You got eight musicians together who can play and feed off each other. You can see different little influences coming in. And we’ve been going since then.”

The new lineup for Mercury Radio Theater started that night.

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he band now features a vibraphone, saxophone, trumpet and that farfisa organ. That allowed for a lot of room to experiment with new sounds and traditions on Oh, This Can't be Good, which was recorded in a studio The Black Keys have used and was mastered by the guy who did David Bowie's last album.

Songs like “I Don’t Owe You Know More” strike a note somewhere between Woodie Guthrie and Bob Hoskins’ big musical number at the end of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” But their roots still shine through in a few moments, like in “A Reasonable Suspicion,” which comes from the same framework the band used 13 years ago.

Things have changed thematically, too. Fowler says he started seeing past the boy-girl themes and he started looking at the people around him.

“My dad always said to write what you know - one of the only pieces of advice that my dad ever gave me that made any fucking sense,” says Fowler.

“What I know is that I work really hard, my friends who are brilliant and amazing work really hard, and everybody is scraping by all the time. So, let’s write some fucking music about it!”

That economic disaffection found expression in the music and story used in Mercury Radio Theater’s “The Fabulous Red Menace” concerts. The band had moved away from the werewolves and mad scientists of their early albums and looked at communism. Performed as three concerts over the course of about 18 months, “The Fabulous Red Menace” included narrated story segments and was built around the look of old communist propaganda.

This opened the door for Mercury Radio Theater to write songs about larger themes of money and community, which Fowler was wrestling with in his own life, and to do so in a way more playful than preachy.

Todd remembers Fowler, who was then completing his doctorate in criminal justice, composing fun beer songs for everyone to sing together at an annual “Friendsgiving” party.

“In one of the classes he was taking, he was working on a project which was basically about different forms of community,” Todd says. “Being a musician for so long, he was talking about how writing songs with your friends and singing together is a very therapeutic thing and also a way to build community.”

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he new music is meant to be more engaging, Fowler says. Some of the songs have Fowler singing — something previously unheard of in Mercury Radio Theater songs, and nearly all have a part where the audience is supposed to join in.

This affection for community can be seen beyond the music too. When they are booked at a venue, Fowler says they book the entire night, bringing openers they love to work with, like Big Lazy and Scheponik’s other band, Gringo Motel. For the bands, it means you work with friends and know the crowd you’re going to get. It’s a perk of being a steady draw.

“I am always a fan of when local bands own their shows,” says Chris Ward, who handles booking and promotion at Johnny Brenda’s.

Ward has been booking Mercury Radio Theater since 2008. The next show at the Fishtown venue is on December 2nd.

“They're a rarity in Philadelphia - they don't play enough,” Ward says. “They make every show that they do special, and that is awesome.”

He says they remind him of his days touring in a band and the comfort of being invited to play with local bands in different cities. Ward says he knew the local guys cared about putting on a good show.

“In some ways [the band members] become like the promoter that night,” he adds. “They get to own the room that night and if they own it and respect the room, like they do, then it's amazing.”

Oh, This Can't be Good is in many ways a homecoming, and it sounds like one too. The songs feel like the band is back in front of its home crowd and having a great time.

And at Local 44, Fowler and Woods are having a good time too, busting chops with the bartenders. Until, without warning, Fowler suddenly picks up the tab and disappears into the night.

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Food That Rocks

From Punks to Plates The owners of The Tasty knew each other from the punk scene before they got involved in the food industry.

It all started with a listing in the “Passyunk Post.”

When Ben Pierce saw that the property at 1401 S. 12th St., then home to Passyunk-area staple Atlantic Pizza for nearly three decades, was up for sale, he quickly put it out to friends via Facebook that he was interested in opening a coffee shop. Close friends Sofia Baltopoulos and Kate Hiltz responded, saying that they were interested in housing their vegan diner in the space.

“I said ‘sure,’ and [Sofia] calls and says, ‘We have an appointment with the realtor on Tuesday’,” says Pierce.

This was in June of 2015. In May of 2016, The Tasty opened its doors.

“It sounds crazy, and I guess it is crazy,” Hiltz elaborates, “[but] when Ben posted the thing we were like, ‘Okay, let’s go look at it,’ and then, ‘Okay, I guess we’re opening a diner in Philly now.’”

Now several months into operation, The Tasty has taken up the mantle of neighborhood breakfast and lunch spot left behind by Atlantic Pizza, albeit with a twist – the entire menu is vegan, but the owners are quick to distance themselves from the title of vegan diner (“You can call it a ‘neighborhood diner,’” says Baltopoulos.).

At a quick glance, the menu at The Tasty resembles what one might find at a traditional diner - breakfast sandwiches and burritos, monte cristos, pancakes, waffles, even biscuits and gravy, but a discerning look over the options show they’re not quite traditional. Items like porky roll, soysage, chikn, cheez and bacun are misspelled nods to their carnivorous counterparts and illustrate the diner’s vegan roots. While long-time patrons of Atlantic Pizza, curious of the new restaurant taking the space of their old haunt, were skeptical of the change, the trio has noted that so far, reception to the menu has been extremely positive.

One might guess the beginnings of The Tasty were rooted in a shared interest in food, but the owners of the The Tasty point out that they came together through their involvement in the punk music scene. Hiltz has spent the last 23 years as manager of Bouncing Souls and owner of Chunksaah Records. Baltopoulos booked shows in her hometown of Boston. Pierce has been the guitarist, keyboardist and tour manager of Philadelphia-based band Restorations for the last eight years. Pierce met Baltopoulos when she booked his band for a show in 2011, and Baltopoulos met Hiltz after her boyfriend’s band Luther released a record on Chunksaah in 2012.

The transition from music to food came four years ago during Home for the Holidays, the annual post-Christmas festival hosted by The Bouncing Souls and Chunksaah. Hiltz, who between splitting her time between tour managing and running a label had also spent years refining personal recipes by feeding bands in the scene, needed to break away from the kitchen to attend to tour manager duties.

“I looked at [Sofia] and said, ‘You ever cook before?’ And she kind of shrugged at me,” Hiltz says. “I asked her, ‘Could you finish this?’ She says, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ She shows up with everything perfectly done and set up how I’d do it. I thought, ‘Something just happened.’ That’s when we started talking

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about cooking together and being partners someday.”

Prior to opening The Tasty, Hiltz and Baltopoulos (both longtime vegans) had channeled their love of cooking vegan-friendly recipes with their desire to open a vegan eatery in the form of vegan catering and pop-up shops, but seeing Pierce’s Facebook post allowed them to take their dreams one step further.

In true punk DIY fashion, after their lease began in December of 2015, the trio set about renovating the space themselves, working around the clock to make their dreams happen. The kitchen was redone entirely, the bathrooms gutted and re-tiled (along with the floor in the dining area) and appliances replaced. With each modification came a new challenge.

“We would just take out equipment and find something new [that was wrong],” says Baltopoulos, but the trio wasn’t phased by any inconveniences that arose.

“We’re DIY punks all the way,” adds Hiltz with a laugh.

“Coming from the punk scene, you just find a way to do it. There’s no way we could have opened this place [as quickly] if we had to pay and wait for contractors [to do work outside of electrical and plumbing work].” In keeping theme with the nature of DIY punk, the diner derives it’s name from the nickname of a guitar that belong to Pete Steinkopf of Bouncing Souls, which now belongs to Tom May of the Menzingers.

In May of 2016, only six months after their lease began, The Tasty opened its doors.

Almost half a year into operations, business shows no signs of slowing down. The trio work every day to serve the diners craving delicious veganfriendly meals. While they bristle with excitement for menu plans and new dishes, future plans for the owners are pretty simple – hiring additional staff so they can take a day off.

“One or two days off a month would be ideal,” says Baltopoulos.

“We’re lucky that things are going well enough to even be thinking of taking a day off this soon,” adds Hiltz.

- Dan Halma facebook.com/JUMPphilly

GRAND OPENING FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2ND ILLADELPH GLASS GALLERY IS AN EXHIBITION AND EVENT GALLERY FOR HIGH-END GLASS ARTWORKS IN PHILADELPHIA. WWW. ILLADELPHGLASSGALLERY. COM JUMPphilly.com

68 N. 2ND STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19106

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Photo by Sydney Schaefer.

Inside Voices

"It’s Important to Tell Your Story."

After beloved pop punk band Chumped disbanded earlier this year, singer Anika Pyle moved to Philly, where she had a lot of friends, including Augusta Koch of Cayetana. We listened as the two met up at Chapterhouse Cafe and talked about songwriting and life in Philly. - Sydney Schaefer Augusta: So, you’ve had a lot of changes in your life recently, Anika, from parting ways with Chumped to starting Katie Ellen, making the move from New York to Philly. What about Philly attracts you as an artist?

Anika: I moved to Philly for many reasons but one of them was the robust community of creatives who live here, like you and so many friends that I’ve met playing music, a bunch of people I haven’t met but that I admire. I think it’s just one of the best towns to be in if you make any kind of indie, emo, punk, DIY music.

I wanted to devote more time to making art and getting better at doing that,.

So, I thought it would be a really good move to surround myself with people who are doing the same. I think when you belong to a community, you can do all that cool stuff – support each other, be inspired by each other, learn from each other. Hopefully, that will help me want to keep going and do better.

Augusta: Totally. It’s affordable too.

Anika: Yeah, that’s the other thing. New York’s a tough place to be if you’re a creative who doesn’t work in a money-making creative industry. It’s really hard. It’s cool because it’s nice to have access to a bunch of people who you work with, or publications. It’s a nice place to get exposure. But it’s so expensive. It’s also that I was so stressed all the time, constantly stressed trying to make my rent, constantly stressed trying to devote myself to a bunch of different projects that didn’t allow me to experience joy but just helped me avoid the pain of reality. So, it’s like, I don’t wanna be working seven days a

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week and commuting two hours a day and hoping to find time to write when I get home or write poetry on my shift break.

So that’s nice. That’s a big stress reliever. Philly’s just a more manageable city.

It’s nice. I can think more. And hopefully apply that thought to making music.

Augusta: You recently released a split with the legendary Mikey Erg, who plays in the Philly band Warriors and, like, 18 other bands. You released it under your own name for the first time and you recorded all the songs using your iPhone. How did it feel to share such an intimate, raw product?

Anika: It felt a lot less scary than sharing other things, I don’t know why. I just made a bunch of music that was, like, in a studio, more produced, than anything I made before. It was really nice to just be like, “OK, well, I just wrote this song. I just recorded it. And I sent it to only one person on the planet.”

Then, to capture that moment of vulnerability or complete nakedness, and then just send it straight to vinyl, it felt a little scary because there’s always the concern that people might not get the point, which is to share something.

Like, get back to the very root of songwriting, which is about the song.

I did have a little bit of fear, being like, “OK. This is the first thing I release under my own name. What if everyone thinks that I just put voice memos out, and that I can’t sing as well as I can into a fancy microphone, and maybe that I didn’t put a lot of thought into it?”

But, A). I’m trying not to care what people think because it’s not really about them and B). I think it’s important to send a message that if you want to write a song, or you want to to make something, you can do it. And it doesn’t take thousands of dollars and a bunch of equipment. If you want to write a song, you can write a song without even having an instrument. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Augusta: It’s easy now too with computers and phones. I did that the other day and I posted it on my Facebook and XPN reposted it. But it was just a cover because I was bored. And then I was like, “Damn. This is on the Internet now.”

Anika: Yeah, it’s crazy!

Augusta: Oh, you mean Trump?

Anika: Yes, Trump. Even the experience of, like, watching Hillary Clinton, whether you like her or not, it is amazing and so inspiring to see her as a presidential candidate. That means so much for so many people. That is the most intense kind of visibility that you can gain as a woman.

Augusta: I think that’s empowering for people because recording is expensive.

Anika: Yeah, and I think we’ve seen that shift. It’s hard for people to think back to the “golden age” of rock ’n’ roll. Think of, like, Fleetwood Mac making a studio record. It cost like $200,000. Or a band like Nirvana, an idolized grunge-punk band, that makes a record in a really expensive studio and puts it out on a really prestigious label and there wasn’t a lot of distribution. Before the Internet, before GarageBand, before your smartphone, how did you record music? Like an 8-track?

And now I think that’s opened up this crazy world of possibilities for so many different kinds of music. That’s why there’s so much more obviously electronic music then there has been before. But it’s pretty amazing. There’s less of a barrier to entry, which also means that there’s a lot more content that you have to sift through to find something that you connect to.

Augusta: What I’ve interpreted from a lot of your newer work is a feeling of craving truly intimate relationships with others and yourself. How do you feel like your music has changed since leaving Chumped?

Anika: I think these songs, the songs that I’ve written since Chumped disbanded, are a lot more candid. They’re more thoughtful. Not because I didn’t think about the songs I was writing in Chumped, but that was the first time I had written music since…

I’ve been writing songs since I was 5 but I’d never written them with the intention to record them or release them or put them out. So, I’ve gotten a lot better at songwriting. More honest. I think I have a fresh start and a little bit of a fresh perspective in the new project, so it’s nice to let my guard down and allow myself to say some things that I didn’t feel as comfortable saying or talking about in my first project. I think they’re a lot more politically motivated and a lot more feminine. They’re softer, even though they’re still rockin.’

Augusta: A lot of your songs incorporate a lot of strong, feminist ideals, both directly and indirectly. What does feminism mean to you and how does it affect you as an artist?

Anika: I think feminism fundamentally is about equality. The equality of the sexes. I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersections of feminist and queer theory because my experience is very specific. I'm saying something like, “Feminism is about equality of the sexes,” and then in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, “Well, your sex is not always cut and dry.” There’s a lot more of a spectrum to both sexualities and, as we have learned and are learning, it is becoming more of a mainstream conversation.

Feminism is about understanding that women are marginalized and have been marginalized because we live in a patriarchy. That means that most positions of power, in all areas of life, are held by men. We strive to break down that barrier, to get increased visibility and opportunity for women to participate in every aspect of society. That’s what feminism means to me.

I think that directly influences my songwriting because, to increase visibility and opportunity, you have to tell people’s stories. You have to make people aware of the experience of marginalization or the experience of oppression.

I’m a woman experiencing things like sexual objectification and discrimination in the workplace, economic discrimination, a constant fear of being assaulted or abused or violated. Those are realities of living in a patriarchal society. A lot of people, when they say, “Well, sexism is dead. Feminism doesn’t mean anything anymore. You have all the rights that you need. You have all the economic, social and political rights that you need. Yeah, you might make 70 cents on the dollar but that’s just because women aren’t good at being CEOs.” Those are people’s real-life responses. We’re seeing this so violently in our political landscape right now. It’s disgusting.

JUMPphilly.com

And so, when I write a song, my experience is coming from the feminine. I’m a woman and therefore everything I write, in some way, is from the standpoint of feminism. But, as I’m writing more and more, I think specifically speaking about my experience in all these different realms of society. My experience as a woman has driven a lot of my songwriting recently because it’s important to tell your story. That way people understand your struggle. When people understand your struggle, they may or may not get behind it, but at least they’ve heard where you’re coming from.

Augusta: You’re always very open with your fans and me, your friend. You talk about the importance of self-care and growth often. Have you always been that way? Was there anything that gave you the strength to share your vulnerability so freely?

Anika: I’ve always been a vulnerable person. I’ve always been an emotional, candid, open person. I think that being compassionate, empathetic and willing to share are qualities that I’ve always really admired in myself.

It has taken a really long time to say something like that, but I think vulnerability is like the first pillar of being able to trust someone.

I’m in the period of my life when I’m trying to learn to balance my own vulnerability. You can get hurt if you have a lack of boundaries and you can also do a lot of things that you don’t want to do. But, that said, I think you can’t truly connect with someone unless you’re willing to open yourself to them.

That’s where I find the most joy in this life, being able to share something that’s intimate, personal. I can trust in someone. I think that’s where you make the most strides in personal growth, allowing yourself to learn from other people, allowing yourself to share with other people, and seeing where that takes you.

I guess I’ve really always been that way but definitely, dealing with hardships and constant change, personally has required a lot of opening up. Although I’m an emotionally open person, I’m also a person who keeps a lot of things I’m afraid to share. I’ve had a bad habit in the past of withholding feelings and withholding emotions that I’m afraid will hurt other people’s feelings. So, I haven’t been able to be as honest because I’m protecting somebody else.

Augusta: Do you think it has to do with moving around so much? Maybe moving to Philly and all the stuff that’s changed, that’s given you the strength to be more honest? I’ve seen that change in you, even playing on your own now or playing in your new band. It’s different than I feel like you used to be.

Anika: I think the loss of significant relationships in your life, to people and places and partnerships, a band or a project, that forces you to reset. Change is almost always difficult but you can either take it positively or negatively.

I’m a person who doesn’t always deal well with change but I’ve accepted this place in my life. I used it as an opportunity to make a lot of improvements in myself, and to find strength in vulnerability, even if that is a scary place to be.

Augusta: If you could tour with any band - living or dead, besides Cayetana, who would it be and why?

Anika: I would love to tour with Dolly Parton. It depends what you want out of the experience. I would definitely go on tour with Whitney Houston, just to hear Whitney Houston sing every night. I just want to tour with a strong, talented, woman. I want to learn from people. I just want to feel the energy.

Augusta: Since we’re here at this lovely coffee shop and you love coffee so much, I put down here that you’re a coffee connoisseur. I had to Google how to spell connoisseur. It’s French and I am not. If you were a coffee drink, what would you be and why? This is hard.

Anika: Black coffee. Straight up, hot, black coffee. The working people’s beverage. I just like it, You can do anything with it. It’s a blank slate.

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