JUMP Spring 2016

ISSUE #20

SPRING 2016

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GRANDE MARSHALL:

THERE GOING BACK

IS NO

THE SCENE IS DEAD: LASER BACKGROUND, SCHOLITO, MARK SQUILLA, QUEEN OF JEANS, LARRY MAGID, THE SAINT & MORE!

CONTENTS | Issue #20

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SPRING 2016

THE JUMP OFF Laser Background, Vita and the Woolf, Hardwork Movement (top image), The Divine Hand Ensemble, Howling Fantods, Scholito, Mischief Brew (middle image), Vicky Speedboat, Red Martina and The Obsessives.

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MUSIC & POLITICS City Councilman Mark Squilla faced a social media shitstorm when he tried to pass some legislation that impacted the music scene earlier this year. We talked to him about the bill (and his respect for music).

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THIS PLACE ROCKS Headroom Studios gives young bands a chance to record with expert engineers in a professional setting.

And we visited the locations of some of Philly's recently shuttered music venues.

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MUSIC & EDUCATION Cosmo Baker brought the Scratch DJ Academy to his hometown. Beyond the Bars gives at-risk youth hands-on training in music, and hope for the future.

The Evening Reporting Center provides an alternative to juvenile detention, putting young people in front of music equipment during peak crime hours.

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COVER stories Queen of Jeans has only been around for about a year but their debut album has found them a world of fans and UK distribution.

Larry Magid is the person who made Philadelphia the music city we know today.

The Internet broke all the rules in the music business.

Artists can now reach fans directly. Music-lovers have control over what they hear. But is it working?

Grande Marshall had dreams of a career in advertising.

He bounced around a bit and wound up back in North Philly. Things got a little rough. But once he started recording music and people started listening, everything fell into place.

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FOOD THAT ROCKS The Sanctuary at Saint Lazarus offers "soul food meets Mexican" in a place you can dance your ass off.

FRONT COVER: Grande Marshall, by Charles Shan Cerrone.

BACK COVER: Queen of Jeans, by Morgan Smith. CONTENTS PAGE: (top to bottom) Hardwork Movement, by Sean Kane; Mischief Brew, by Charles Shan Cerrone; Queen of Jeans, by Morgan Smith.

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, RACHEL BARRISH, VINCE BELLINO, CHRIS BROWN, MICHAEL BUCHER, JUMAH CHAGUAN, ASHLEY COLEMAN, RICH COLEMAN, KEVIN COOK, DARRAGH DANDURAND, CHESNEY DAVIS, MATT DEIFER, RACHEL DEL SORDO, GRACE DICKINSON, EMILY DUBIN, MEREDITH EDLOW, LAURA FANCIULLACCI, CHRIS FASCENELLI, DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER, ERIC FITZSIMMONS, CHIP FRENETTE, JEFF FUSCO, JENNIFER GRANATO, JESSICA GRIFFIN, JARED GRUENWALD, DAN HALMA, BRAE HOWARD, MORGAN JAMES, JENELLE JANCI, SEAN KANE, EVAN KAUCHER, RICK KAUFFMAN,JENNY KERRIGAN, KARA KHAN, DONTE KIRBY, HANNAH KUBIK, MINA LEE, MATTHEW LEISTER, ERIN MARHEFKA, MEGAN MATUZAK, TERESA McCULLOUGH, JASON MELCHER, NIESHA MILLER, TIESHA MILLER, DAVE MINIACI, BRENDAN MENAPACE, ELIAS MORRIS, SAMANTHA MOSS, TIM MULHERN, BRIAN MYSZKOWSKI, TIM O'DONNELL, SHRUTI PAL, MAGDALENA PAPAIOANNOU, ANDY POLHAMUS, BONNIE SAPORETTI, EMILY SCOTT, ROSIE SIMMONS, CHAD SIMS, MORGAN SMITH, KEVIN STAIRIKER, xST / SHAWN THEODORE, JARED WHALEN, BRIAN WILENSKY 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 have no money. Please don't sue us.

I know, I know. We're a shiny magazine. We look kind of nice.

We aren't black and white, reprinted on a copy machine, with a traditional punk aesthetic. But we are punk as fuck. We do whatever we want.

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 and find us at facebook.com/jumpphilly.

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

Publisher's Note

Say It Ain't So, Joe My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital and a rehab facility pretty steadily since September. He's 92-years old with a variety of ailments but he's still full of piss and vinegar.

A few days ago, he asked me how much money I make doing this magazine.

"Nothing," I responded. "I've never made a penny."

"Then why do you do it?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "It's a good thing for the city. We spotlight artists and people who would otherwise get no love in the local media."

"The city has been around for a long time," he countered. "It would be fine without you."

And now, a few days later, after pulling several back-to-back allnighters trying to prepare this issue for the public, I'm left scratching my head. What the fuck was I thinking when I started this endeavor five years ago? Wouldn't the city and the music scene be just fine without us?

The last time I seriously considered shutting down the magazine was when Mark Quinlan bitched about something we wrote on our website after his band, Hop Along, opened for Dr. Dog, Mac DeMarco and The Front Bottoms at The Mann Center. The crowd was thinner when Hop Along began the evening as compared to when Dr. Dog closed out the night. And we wrote it that way.

Mark called us out online, tagging us in an image that showed his bandmate Joe Reinhart standing in front of a healthy crowd.

It would have been easily ignored except there was Joe, my arch enemy, who had previously been a part of Algernon Cadwallader.

When we tried to do a post-mortem on Algernon after the band folded in 2012, he and former bandmate Peter Helmis tried to punk us.

They concocted a grand story about the band's demise being part of a conspiracy with the guys from Paint It Black, who were paying off the Algernon guys to eliminate competition. Or something like that.

And then, rather than Joe and Peter posing for our photo shoot, they sent the two clowns pictured above, who claimed to be Joe and Peter.

I was pretty bent out of shape back then.

There's no reason to fuck with us like that. We at the magazine are earnest in our coverage and our mission is noble. We do the mag simply because there is something magical happening in the music scene right now and we want to ensure that people - especially those not connected to the scene - know about it. The scene is not dead, despite what some media outlets have reported (and despite our sarcastic theme for this issue). I think what we do is kind of important.

We banned all Algernon-related people from the mag for a while.

But then Joe and Peter did Dogs on Acid, which is nearly as good as Algernon was, if not better. Damn it, they make good music.

And I finally met Joe in person. He was a good dude. We have a ton of friends in common. He made it hard to hate on him. In fact, you can find a story about him and his studio on page 29.

Well, at least, we think it's him.

- G.W. Miller III JUMPphilly.com

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facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

INSIDE: LASER BACKGROUND p. 10 / VITA AND THE WOOLF p. 11 / HARDWORK MOVEMENT p. 12 / THE DIVINE HAND ENSEMBLE p. 14 / HOWLING FANTODS p. 16 / Photo by Michael Bucher.

SCHOLITO p. 18 / MISCHIEF BREW p. 21 / VICKY SPEEDBOAT p. 22 / RED MARTINA p. 24 / THE OBSESSIVES p. 25 /

JUMPphilly.com

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Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

Nothing But Time Andy Molholt's personal project, Laser Background, is more complex and deep than you may realize by just listening to the dreamy sounds.

On a different timeline, Andy Molholt might still live in Chicago. He might have finished pursuing a degree in acting. He might even be finding steady work as an actor. His first band, The Armchairs, might still be together and he might find himself touring the country with them. On this same timeline, Molholt might never have started recording his own music under the moniker Laser Background.

But that isn’t the timeline he’s on.

“I think about time a lot,” the Kensington resident notes as he sits on a vinyl turquoise coach that matches the hoodie he’s wearing. “I think about how time rules human existence. It’s a very important part of my life.”

Time has moved increasingly fast for Molholt since he realized he did not want to be an actor. He formed his previous band, The Armchairs, in 2008 with some college friends in Chicago and enjoyed three solid years with the band before they called it quits. Barely a year later, he formed Laser Background, an “unbreakup-able” solo project that affords Molholt the opportunity to create a woozy, intoxicating sound that incorporates his influences of psychadelia, prog rock and pop with ambient flourishes.

Although Molholt’s earliest attempts at songwriting date back to his childhood using a Yamaha keyboard with a built-in four-track recorder that his parents gave him, he has spent the better part of his musical life filling one role or another in any given project – guitarist, keyboardist or whatever was needed. But the one role he hadn’t covered was that of being the entire band. So he created Laser Background as a means of challenging himself as a songwriter. Although he is joined live by a revolving door of guest musicians, Molholt writes the parts for every instrument and performs a vast majority of them himself on his records.

“When I was younger, I wasn’t super confident about my ability to fully flesh out a song, which is something I think I’m still getting better at,” he explains,.

“But because I started a project by myself, I think it forced me to do that.”

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Over the four years he’s spent refining songwriting as Laser Background, Molholt has released two EPs and one LP, and in May of this year, he will be releasing his second full-length album, Correct. Molholt recorded the album in Brooklyn at Gravesend Recordings, a recording studio that’s part of Bushwick’s Silent Barn Studio Collective, with longtime friends Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader of the New York band Ava Luna.

Correct follows a natural progression in Molholt’s sound, incorporating hazy textures and dynamic chord changes, along with synthetic blasts from Gravesend’s Roland Juno-6 (“a big creative inspiration,” Molholt notes) and flourishes courtesy of a cithera – a Hungary zither Molholt utilized, paying homage to his Hungarian ancestry. The glue of the record is recurring motifs and chord progressions – a conscious decision Molholt made going into the record.

“I like to make things tie back together perfectly for me because, I figure, if you can feel there’s a certain thematic continuity but you can’t necessarily identify what it is, then it becomes mysterious and interesting but it’s not immediately obvious,” he explains. “I want people to dig a little bit.”

The desire for keeping things interesting is a trait appreciated by backing band member Daniel “Mac” Kennedy. “[Andy’s] very concerned with being engaging for all parties involved,” says the Queen Village resident. Though the Laser Background live band has an open door policy to incorporate the busy lifestyles of Molholt’s friends and fellow musicians, Kennedy has held one of the longer tenures in the live show sitting in on drums and the occasional keyboard part since late 2014.

“He’s a fun and talented guy, and a great songwriter who injects some playfulness into his songs,” Kennedy says about Molholt.

Though it’s been four years since Molholt formed Laser Background, it doesn’t feel like much time has passed since his time in The Armchairs.

“Time can be deceiving,” Molholt explains, leaning forward in his seat. “It feels like it was a lot more than a year in between my two bands but it’s like that with a lot of time. If you think about when you were 10, a year is one 10th of your life. But now I’m 29, so a year is one 30th. So, that’s why time feels like it speeds up when you’re older.”

But Molholt isn’t in any rush to stardom. He’s in this to perfect his craft and do what he loves.

“I’m a lifer,” he states. “I’m going for the long burn.”

- Dan Halma facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Tunnels Vision

Photo by Emily Dubin.

Vita and the Woolf has evolved over the past few years but the band has found consistency, and their new album has a more cohesive sound.

Jennifer Pague wears a red Victory Brewing beanie and jokes about being sponsored by them. She counts the goals of 2016 for her band, Vita and the Woolf, on her fingers.

“Get a booking agent, go on tour a lot, get some publishing, get a lot more fans and get closer to traveling the world and getting paid to do it,” Pague says.

Pague has always been the mastermind of Vita and the Woolf. She started recording songs in her Kensington neighborhood and played her first show with friends in West Chester, Pennsylvania, when she was 21. The band has gone through several lineup changes because Pague says it was difficult to keep people together.

“Eventually, I was just scared from having so many people and trying to schedule rehearsals that I decided to keep it at two people,” she says.

Over the next two years, 24-year-old Pague had an ever-changing lineup of bassists and drummers. It wasn’t until she was introduced to Adam Shumski through a mutual friend that she found someone with the same work ethic as her. There is something about the two that has kept them together and led to their quick success in Philadelphia and beyond.

“I think that we are both really driven people at our core,” Shumski says.

“We have the same goal, which is to be in a really good band, and I think that is what keeps us together.”

The way the two recent Temple graduates gaze at each other after their responses in comforting silence, it’s apparent they work off each other like balancing weights. Pague is the driving, passionate bullet and Shumski is her reinforcement and right-hand man along the way.

When Pague first started playing the synthesizer, she listened to Of Montreal, Bat For Lashes, James Blake and other artists that somehow fall under the large electronic music umbrella. She would watch live video performances to see the type of equipment they would use on stage.

“It’s so hard to translate electronic music into a live setting because you don’t JUMPphilly.com

want to come off as you just press the spacebar and then, ‘Here you go, that is my music,’” Pague says.

After Pague graduated from Temple with an audio production degree in 2013, she said it was time to take Vita and the Woolf to the next point.

Pague released her debut album, Fang Song, as a solo artist in September 2014, which was followed by her first tour with Shumski as her drummer.

Shumski graduated from Temple in 2015 with a degree in music performance.

The electronic indie pop record features a long list of musicians, including a bassoonist and accordionist. The album, which was recorded in her family sitting room, feels like a large orchestral piece accompanied by an abundance of harmonization.

But Pague’s latest music venture, Tunnels, shows that she has grown, lyrically and musically. Pague says she isn’t as concerned with harmonies anymore.

“Now it is more about, ‘Does this work in the melody?’” Pague says, adding that she was more inspired by R&B music for the upcoming album. “I do a lot with octaves, so I’ll do a melody singing an octave low and then an octave higher and then you get that R&B type thing going.”

Shumski says that much of his inspiration as the Vita and the Woolf drummer comes from his educational focus in jazz music. The 22-year-old also often plays with a drum sample pad, which complements Pague’s synthesizer.

“It has been exciting for me being able to explore that side of percussion and electronic music in general, because I haven’t really experienced it prior because jazz music is all acoustic,” Shumski says.

Singer and guitarist Matt Holden of Legs Like Tree Trunks believes a lot of Vita and the Woolf’s success is their comfort in working together, along with their determination.

“They do tour a lot,” says Holden, who has played on the same bill as the duo.

“They go on a limb, meet people and hustle. That is why they are doing well.”

Pague says she is excited to release Tunnels – a more “cohesive sound” – as her next step in music after Fang Song. The production process has been long but Pague made it clear that this latest project was handled with care.

“It’s always difficult if you are working on something that is your thing that you care so much about it,” Pague says. “Anyone would be crazy about it. It is just intense and you can totally lose your shit over some stupid music, but it’s cool.”

- Emily Scott

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Vicious, Driven and Nice The four MCs of Hardwork Movement bring different skill sets and influences, creating music that appreciates the past while being firmly rooted in the present.

The day after Sterling Duns’ 28th birthday, all four members of Hardwork Movement saunter up the staircase to Duns’ second floor apartment following a full band practice for upcoming shows. Blue streamers still hang from the ceiling, colorful balloons litter the floor of the living room, half eaten birthday cakes sit on kitchen counters and a suspicious gift bag perches on the edge of an end table.

Dwight Dunston (Sterling Duns) along with Rob Ricketts (RB Ricks), Keenan Willis (Rick Banks) and Jeremy Keys (Keys) grab some cake before settling into chairs. All the while, the room teems with a mixture of banter and laughter. A small space filled with people and packed with contagious energy becomes a reoccurring theme when these four MCs get together.

Early incarnations of the group began in 2012 with the Leftovers mixtape. The next several years would see more releases before a hiatus that included temporarily kicking out Keys, then a refocusing of the vision and bringing Keys back into the fold.

Trying to define Hardwork Movement or discern their sound by asking each member of the group who their favorite artist is, or who they listen to, yields eclectic responses.

“But if you ask us to rhyme on a beat, you'll probably have a similar flow. I think that's what makes us interesting,” explains Ricks, an easy grin splayed across his face.

Every member offers a series of skill sets to the group. While each holds his own on the mic and several can play guitar, the reserved Banks frequently handles production duties, the jovial Keys provides vocals as well as occasional cello playing and the laid-back Ricks mans the turntables.

And that’s even before bringing in the band: Rebecca Graham and Martin Gottlieb-Hollis on trumpet, Angel Ocana on drums, Jeremy Prouty on bass and Dani Gershkoff on flute and vocals.

"We also take some pride in having some versatility as well,” Keys says, dressed in a salmon button-down, grey skully and wide smile. “Just the fact that we have this live band with us really

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gives us the potential to push some limits where we see fit and create our own brand of hip-hop that is more modern and something that is a bit more our style, but also celebrating where we came from and where hip-hop originated."

It may be unfair to compare their sound with another hip-hop band that hailed from Philadelphia, but not entirely inaccurate. Imagine Illadelph Halflife mixed with ATL flow and touches of D'Angelo, voices reminiscent of the cadence of ‘90s West Coast artists (Living Legends, Pharcyde, Hiero, Dilated, Lyrics Born, Planet Asia) combined with early ’90s East Coast, an old school hip-hop vibe and a Millennial's perspective.

“I think what really appeals to me about them is the way they bridge generations,” says WXPN’s John Vettese, who recorded them for The Key Studio Sessions. “Even though they’re all young dudes, there’s a throwback element. The smooth melodic production and the ways the beats are crafted definitely brings me back to the best of ’90s hip-hop – Nas, Tribe, De La, even vocal hooks that sound like something out of Philly’s neo-soul scene. But the music also has one foot firmly in the now.”

"A lot of people use rap and hip-hop synonymously,” says Banks, peering through his glasses with the studious look of a scholar. “We rap but the hip-hop culture on a macro-level is more of taking bits and pieces and repurposing things and putting your own spin on it. So I think we do a lot of that, filling in all sorts of different experiences and influences."

Those influences include Broken Bells, Marvin Gaye, Fleet Foxes and Led Zepplin. Those experiences woven throughout their lyrics range from sports and women to traveling. While some artists braggadociously attempt to convince the listener of their mastery of these topics, the MCs of Hardwork Movement relate their experience around these topics, how they impact and affect their lives and dreams. How to be satisfied, but still want more. How to be satiated, but still hungry. How to know who you are, but still explore. The dichotomy of good problems.

Blending talented musicians with skilled MCs rarely results in each element complimenting the other without outshining, and therefore highlighting, the underwhelming inabilities of the other. On “Living Legends,” off the group’s Good Problems album from earlier this year, Duns holds down the second verse with the line: “Prescription: Keep giving them images of what it is/ To be young, black, ambitious and vicious, and well wishing and mission driven/ I be avoiding the sentence/ Yo, I been dodging the symptoms/ To the whites and blacks listening/ Keep it 150/ With yourself holmes...”

“That's the American dream, re-envisioned,” explains Duns, sitting on a stool. From the boatshoes on his feet to his tan pants and grey athletic hoodie, Duns straddles a serious thoughtfulness with youthful energy. “All of us have done work in figuring out how we want to live our life and what success means to us. What it means to be happy and figure all that out and not be fed this message from history or our parents or TV or media. To blow all that up and figure out

what's really important to you.”

To take the information you’re given, both from valid and invalid sources, to define oneself, to deconstruct the projected narrative and pick up those pieces to find the ones that fit is to establish one’s own true identity.

"To be both vicious and driven, it's kind of seen as you have to be one or the other and they really don't have to be mutually exclusive,” Banks points out. “You can be both. You can present a missiondriven front while being kind of nice."

“We're all living legends,” Duns continues.

“But to believe that you have to blow up other people's perspective of you, of what it means to be successful and recreate your own. Then all you have to do is believe.”

A week prior, just doors away from the Girard Station El stop, the group meets in Hardwork Movement’s practice space. Tucked inside an autobody shop on the second floor is a large, facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Sean Kane.

The JUMP Off

cavernous room. In the far corner, a green and white tent shelters the four members of the group as well as the five members of their band prepping for an upcoming spate of shows. The practice comes to an end as the nine members huddle in an embrace and sing “Happy Birthday” to no one in particular.

“When we get in the room together, there's no ego,” Gottlieb-Hollis points out. “Everybody has a voice and we listen to each other. It's a rare thing.”

Those strengths shine weeks later at a nearcapacity show at Boot & Saddle. They’ve come a long way from 2012, selling out a Haitian restaurant in Washington D.C. The four MCs take the stage to a crowd of more than 100 people packed into the venue. Rihanna’s “Work” pours out of the speakers as the MCs replace Rih’s lyrics in the chorus with their own, chanting “Hardwork, work, work, work, work, work.”

As the night proceeds, the band’s horn section JUMPphilly.com

pops up a third of the way through the set in the middle of the crowd, pumping their brass sounds into the atmosphere as they march to the stage and replace songs back by produced tracks. The show swells from the inside out, and once again the energy notches up.

“It's a journey that we take together with the audience,” Gottlieb-Hollis says.

Hardwork Movement’s live performance is gaining its own reputation. Vettese attended a show at the end of 2015 at Kung Fu Necktie, leaving with a distinct impression.

“They absolutely crush it as a live band,” says Vettese. “That’s another unique approach, since I feel like most of the time live hip-hop is either a rapper with a DJ, or it’s a rapper with a band.

Rarely is it both.”

“Whether we are using words or an instrument to tell our stories, we want to be very intentional about every note we play, every single word we

write,” says Duns about coming together with the live instrumentation on stage.

The energetic atmosphere is visceral. The full, rich, crisp-but-not-sterile sounds feed the crowd as a setlist rehearsed at practice, complete with an interpretation of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” takes shape on stage.

The only time the night is punctuates with pause is when Hardwork Movement tells the crowd it is Graham’s mother’s birthday. They ask the audience to serenade her, which the show-goers do with enthusiasm as the band records it on a cellphone, to be delivered later.

It may have temporarily stopped the momentum of the night but to be a reemerging act on stage, with nearly a full house of fans into your show, to stop the gig to show love to a band member’s loved one and risk losing the crowd or moment?

These are good problems.

- Chris Malo

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Making Classical Music Cool The Divine Hand Ensemble shatters sterotypes about classical music by performing everything from classical standards to Black Sabbath, David Bowie and Queen.

On a cold Tuesday night, a few of the members of The Divine Hand Ensemble sort through a box of gifts sent to them by fans. A giant blue peace sign pillow appears, some jewelry, a music box.

“A fan from England sent us all these matching necklaces,” Monique Canniere, one of the violinists of the ensemble, says while pointing to the sparkly silver necklaces she and all the other women in the group were wearing. “We’re going to take a picture of us wearing them and send it to her.”

She’s wearing a yellow beanie with the words ‘funky monkey’ stitched onto the brim.

“A fan sent me this too,” she continues, gesturing to the hat.

The Divine Hand Ensemble engages people because no one else is doing quite exactly what they do. They are a group of very talented, experienced musicians committed to shattering the stereotype that classical music is stuffy and unattainable by performing arrangements of rock, blues, jazz and reggae songs mixed in with opera arrangements and other classical standards.

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“We play everything from Mozart to Motörhead,” Mano Divina, the group’s leader, says.

“But we don’t do Motörhead,” Canniere says, cutting him off.

“Okay, but we do Sabbath, Queen,” Divina corrects himself. They’re currently working on an arrangement of “Space Oddity,” a David Bowie song, to pay homage to the late singer.

Formed in 2010 by Divina, the group is made up of nine musicians: Jonathan Salmon, a cellist who writes their arrangements; percussion player Randy Rudolph; two harpists, Mary Bryson and Gloria Galante. In addition to Canniere, there are two other violists, Julie Myers and Brit Walmsley and one viola player, Hannah Richards. Divina, who leads the group, plays a theramin.

The Divine Hand Ensemble stands out not only for their generational span and diverse musical selections but also because of the undeniable allure of the theramin.

“It’s the only instrument in the world you can play without touching anything,” Divina says. “It’s singing electricity.”

Invented in Russia more than 85 years before modern wireless technology was developed, a theramin produces different pitched sounds depending on where the user places their hands inside the electrical field the instrument emits. In The Divine Hands Ensemble, the theramin takes the place of a voice.

To many people, the theramin is the most unique instrument in the group, but insiders know that’s not true.

Bryson and Galante’s harps are also rare, but it’s not as obvious how.

“We have the world’s first carbon fiber harps,” Bryson says. After getting tired of dragging their facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Branden Eastwood.

The JUMP Off

heavy standard harps in and out of clubs through all kinds of weather, they found out about a man working on prototypes for ultra-light, carbon fiber harps.

“They’re the first two on the planet,” she continues. “They’re made in a Formula 1 race car factory in North Carolina.”

One of their missions is to bring classical styles of music to crowds who would never consider it in the first place. They’ve played for a convention of morticians, the cast of the David Lynch film “Eraserhead” and at an annual show of funerary music at Laurel Hill Cemetery. They’re the musical ambassadors for The Tesla Science Foundation of Philadelphia and even were one of the few groups to have the honor to play for Pope Francis during the Papal Visit in September 2015. In addition to more random locations and JUMPphilly.com

audiences, they regularly book gigs at a variety of more traditional venues, such as The Trocadero, Underground Arts and PhilaMOCA. As the director and curator of PhilaMOCA, Eric Bressler notes how the relationship between the two is a natural fit.

“Associations with death aside (DHE with their funerary pieces, PhilaMOCA being a former mausoleum showroom), the two entities share both a sense of humor and a gravitation toward the esoteric,” Bressler says via email. “They defy easy categorization, which is a rare trait in a music scene where bands are constantly compared and venues classified.”

The group prides itself on being able to adapt its music for any situation.

“One of the unique things about us is that people who know nothing about classical music love the

show,” Divina says. “We can reach beyond a genre to move an audience. We’ve seen people crying, moved by the music ...”

Canniere cuts him off.

“People have fallen and broken their teeth, then stayed for a show,” Canniere excitedly recounts, referring to a story of a drunk fan tripping and falling that Bressler also remembers well.

“It was bleeding but he stayed for the rest of the show and came to the show the next day!” Myers explains.

“That's how good the DHE are,” Bressler says.

“I can only hope that I pass at an early age so that The Divine Hand Ensemble can perform at my funeral.”

Five years, one funeral performance request and one bloody mouthed super-fan later, The Divine Hand Ensemble is doing what they set out to do, making classical music cool again, and with the momentum they’re riding, they’re not planning on stopping anytime soon. - Jennifer Granato

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Enthusiasm Over Ambition The members of Howling Fantods are gathered around a table in bassist Joe Paone’s South Philly home. It is a quintessential Sunday morning scene: coffee is brewing and Paone’s cat sits curled on the staircase nearby.

In recent years, the band has grown accustomed to a quieter lifestyle, both as musicians and people.

Guitarist and vocalist Doug Wright has been at the center of Howling Fantods, performing with a rotating cast of musicians since the band’s inception. Most recently, Paone and drummer Lance Crow joined to form what Wright says is the eighth iteration of Howling Fantods.

“What I love about this band is it’s the only band I’ve ever been in where there’s no ambition that drowns out the music,” Paone says.

“There might be literally no ambition,” Wright says.

What Howling Fantods might lack in ambition, they make up for in pure enthusiasm for playing music. The musicians are more focused on enjoying their time together rather than making a name for themselves in the Philadelphia scene.

“For me, and I think Joe too, we spent a lot of our youth touring around and doing that kind of stuff,” Crow says. “In this band, it’s like, we know what that’s about. Do we really want to get involved with that?”

Although the members are not as active with Howling Fantods as they were with projects in the past, they admire the younger acts that give Philadelphia its reputation as a destination city for music.

Paone says house-show staple Mumblr is the best band in Philly “bar none,” while Crow is partial to Lithuania, the collaborative project of Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick and DRGN King’s Dom Angelella.

The members agree that their age puts them in an interesting place in the youthful DIY scene in Philadelphia. Wright says the band is “totally removed” but still grateful to contribute to the thriving music community.

“My friends don’t live in houses where they have punk shows in the basement,” Wright says. “My friends are all 35.”

The band faced a major loss in February of 2014, when the South Philly practice space used by them and other Philly-based acts, like JJL, burnt down. Most of the group’s gear, including Crow’s prized drum set, was lost in the fire.

Though Paone calls the dilapidated space a “death trap,” the band shares fond memories of their time spent practicing there.

“We were like, the greatest rock band in the world when we were up in that little room,” Wright says.

After the fire, Peter Santa Maria of Philly-based punk band Jukebox Zeros offered the band gear and a place to practice, providing the push the members needed to continue making music together.

“I’ve known Joe at least 16 years,” Santa Maria says. “I played in a band [The Thirteen] with Lance for a couple years. These people are our friends. We’ve known them for years and we just wanted to help them out.”

The fire allowed Wright to refocus the subject matter of the band’s most recent effort, Forever. Wright, Paone and Crow did not let the tragedy interfere with the experiences they share playing music together.

“That might be the joy about being in a rock band,” Wright says.

“It’s so over the top that you get swept up in it,” For now, Howling Fantods will continue to practice when they can and play shows when they are offered.

“It’s a good feeling to create,” Paone says. “Knowing these guys gives me so much energy. It’s really awesome.”

- Tim Mulhern facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Bonnie Saporetti.

The members of Howling Fantods are older than your average Philly DIY band but they love being a part of the scene.

The JUMP Off

JUMPphilly.com

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Photo by Matt Deifer.

The JUMP Off

Crossover Kid Scholito worked with Allen Iverson's music team and he shared a stage with Beyoncé.

Now, he's working with Freeway.

When you’re talking with Scholito, he has a way of making everything sound grand. At this point, he’s been a rapper for most of his life, so a penchant for wordy explanation comes with the territory. You can see him reliving memories in his head as he describes them out loud, just like a good rapper should.

“I get a call from our manager saying that he wanted to go for a ride, so I should get dressed,” says Scholito, laughing while thinking back to a night in 2001. “I’m extremely stubborn at times and that night I was wearing a red and grey velour Rocawear sweatsuit and I just put comfy slippers on. We go pick up my cousin and he takes us to a restaurant called Harry’s. It had a deck, people were playing cards. One guy had his hood up and it was Allen Iverson! I was stunned.”

He didn’t just get a call to meet The Answer though. Years of grinding got Scholito to this point.

“My cousin Locious and I had been performing as LNS at this open mic at a place called Club Flow on Columbus Boulevard,” explains Scholito.

“Larry Larr, the host, stopped us from leaving the stage one night and told us and the crowd that A&R guys from Allen Iverson’s camp had been coming to the club to check people out for [Iverson’s] label.”

Scholito and his cousin were signed shortly afterward to the 76ers guard’s imprint, ABK Music Group, but didn’t meet with the man who was Scholito’s “all-time favorite” at first.

After months of not meeting with A.I., Scholito remembers a fateful night that started with watching TV on the couch.

“I was watching commercials and the one with Iverson dribbling through the maze came on and I thought, ‘I could take him,’” he says as he relates the story of his first big break as though it just happened yesterday.

“He was always nice at music but he could have been varsity in basketball,” says S. Frank, Scholito’s producer and friend since their days at Swenson High School in Northeast Philly.

But any hoops dreams were not in Scholito’s immediate future. At least not on that night.

The smooth, card-playing A.I. asked the 16-yearold rappers if they were ready to make some money.

And for the next few years, LNS were made in the shade. Opportunities like opening up for a freshfrom-Destiny’s Child Beyoncé in Miami kept the cousins happy, but it wasn’t meant to last.

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After a management disagreement and Iverson’s sudden disinterest in music managing, Scholito quit the group and fired his manager.

“I saw a lot of things, both good and bad,” says Scholito of his time under the tutelage of A.I.'s team. “Life is like chess because if you got two people playing, it’s hard for us to see everything.

But when you have someone observing from the outside, they can see everything.”

Back at square one and still barely old enough to drink, Scholito decided an epic rebranding was in order. His first mixtape as a solo performer would be Insanity Plea, a concept album from the perspective of a mental patient. From there, Scholito wanted to rekindle a musical relationship with his high school friend S. Frank.

“I was working on this mixtape called Man in the Mirrors and I went over to Frank’s house on the same exact day he got this new beat-making machine,” says Scholito. “I told him I wanted two records for the album. He didn’t know how to use the machine yet.”

“FedEx had just brought the machine!” S. Frank says with a laugh. “But he just sat me down and was like, ‘Listen man, I know you got this. Let’s

cook up some records.’ ‘Lito can convince you of anything. He could wake up tomorrow and decide to be a doctor or lawyer and then go and do it.”

With the working partnership settled, the duo soon started eyeing up a worthy collaborator. As it turns out, Scholito’s father knew Philadephia legend Freeway from back in the day. After sending tracks back and forth, the three became a tight group, releasing songs over popular beats in the form of a collaborative mixtape, Freemix.

“We wanted to infuse modern sounds with classic Philadelphia soul, something all cultures around the world can relate to,” Scholito says.

“We made it 10 percent in Frank’s basement and 90 percent in my living room, so it is literally inhouse.”

As Freeway continues to help the young duo, Scholito looks forward to what he considers his proper debut. Free Dell, a project due out in the spring and named for Scholito’s brother who has been in prison for almost 25 years, is a point of pride.

“On this album, not only am I speaking for my brother, but also for all the juvenile lifers that people forget about,” says Scholito.

- Kevin Stairiker facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Philadelphia Jazz Project Presents:

The Year of the Savant: A Concert at the Intersection of Jazz and HipHop

Venice Island Performing Arts and Venice IslandCenter Recreation

FRIDAY April 29, 2016 8:00 PM

A Concert at the Intersection of Jazz and Hiphop

Featuring Philadelphia’s returning son, rapper, musician, composer, producer and writer, Performing Arts and 7 Lock Street, Phila., PA 19127 Ohene Savant. He will be joined on stage by Recreation Center a team of Philadelphia musicians lead by NU *Pay Parking Lot On Premises 7 Lock Street, GRuV Network leader and drummer Kim Pedro.

Phila., PA 19127 For Info: philajazzproject.org

Tickets: $15 in advance [More at the door]

Buy tickets at: ohene.eventbrite.com

Philadelphia Jazz Project (PJP) is a sponsored project of CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia, with funding provided by The Wyncote Foundation.

JUMPphilly.com

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facebook.com/JUMPphilly

DiNucci photo by Jared Gruenwald. Le Yikes Surf Club photo by Michael Bucher.

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

Still Making Mischief

Mischief Brew are still punk after all these years. And they're still dropping new music.

Mischief Brew began at the end of the world.

Well, almost the end of it. Erik Petersen was in Baltimore at a Y2K (New Year’s Eve 1999) party, one too tame for an “end of the world” party.

Petersen handed his friend a bucket to bang on and paraded around the house, strumming his acoustic guitar and singing punk songs. The music spilled out of the house into the street, creating a public singalong. And thus, Mischief Brew was born.

“That was the point when Mischief Brew really started,” Petersen, guitarist and singer, says. “You can create chaos without any electricity.”

When Petersen began Mischief Brew, very few other punk musicians were playing the acoustic guitar. It was the first time now-bassist Sean St. Clair had ever heard anything like it, at a show in State College, Pennsylvania. St. Clair didn’t know what to make of Mischief Brew, which was then a solo project by Petersen.

“At the time, that was really strange,” St. Clair says, reflecting that shows were less diverse when Mischief Brew started.

Today, they are a three-piece punk band that has continued to try to push the limits of what the band can do and sound like.

Right now, Mischief Brew is in the process of re-releasing old albums, including Smash the Windows. It will be the first time the punk album will receive a United States vinyl pressing. They also re-released Bachannal ‘n’ Philadelphia and, in 2015, they dropped a new album, This Is Not For Children.

The band has managed to accomplish what it has largely through DIY means. The members of Mischief Brew all work day jobs in order to sustain themselves. The band tours whenever they are able to make time. Petersen says the satisfaction of doing it that way is one of the most rewarding parts of Mischief Brew’s journey thus far.

“There was no point when a big label took us under their wing, or a manager or publicist tried to hype us into something we weren't,” Petersen says. “It seemed more natural to do it our way, not necessarily out of defiance, but more instinct and ethics. Today, we still own it all and while it's hard work, the rewards are greater and we reap them all.”

Mischief Brew has released albums on Fistolo Records, as well as through other labels.

JUMPphilly.com

Bachannal ‘n’ Philadelphia was released on Square of Opposition Records and This is Not For Children was released on Alternative Tentacles Records, something Petersen considers one of the band’s best achievements. Fistolo, the record company Petersen runs with his wife, not only has put out Mischief Brew’s music but they have also released music from other artists and friends of the band.

Franz Nicolay has worked with Petersen and Fistolo many times over the years, both as a solo artist and with his band, Guignol, releasing a small collection of music on Petersen’s label over the years.

Nicolay has also seen and occasionally filled in for Mischief Brew. He feels their musicianship is under-rated and that they continue to get better, remembering seeing them years ago at Kung Fu Necktie when he first heard the band incorporating other, non-punk elements into their music.

“I just remember watching them thinking, ‘Wow. They’re really making a play for not just the best

punk band going, but the best band full-stop,’” Nicolay says.

“That’s shit I dreamed of when I was little,” St. Clair says, speaking of Mischief Brew’s fans who know their music and sing their songs back at them when they play out.

In the tradition of punk rock, Mischief Brew has written protest songs over the course their career - songs that may be just as relevant this year as they were when they came out.

“Three steps forward and one step back,” Peterson says. “We tend to focus on the one step back. It’s sad when you look at it like, ‘Oh, this song written in 1999 is still relevant in 2016.’”

Regardless of the state of politics in the world, punk rock will continue on and Mischief Brew will endure to see, hear and play it.

“Scene’s gonna change. There’s always gonna be people who think it’s dead,” Petersen says.

“Mostly older punks kinda go away,” St. Clair - Vince Bellino laughs. “We stick around.”

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Photo by Magdalena Papaioannou.

The JUMP Off

Something Simple Vicky Speedboat stripped down their tour gear and now they plan to see the world.

The first glimpse the world got of Vicky Speedboat was when members Sean Huber and Will Lindsay played at Philadelphia’s graffiti pier, while shotgunning Hamm’s and setting off fireworks. This was in the release of the band’s first video for “Passing Through Wales,” off of its debut EP, Two Years No Basement.

The world had seen Huber and Lindsay before— Huber as the drummer of Modern Baseball, Lindsay as vocalist and guitarist in W.C. Lindsay, and both playing together in Steady Hands.

But this new project is their way of doing something simple, just the two of them—and doing it a little more dangerously.

“We’ve been planning on doing this for a long time,” says Huber, 24, of Brewerytown, with a handful of tattoos peeking out from under his shirt as he describes how the project came to fruition when the two were on a Steady Hands run in the U.K. “It was just the two of us and we had a rental car, just, like, crashing at venues.”

Huber and Lindsay had done their fair share of tours before but not like this. This was a strippeddown Steady Hands tour, featuring only Huber and Lindsay, as opposed to all seven members of the band. It was just two friends on a road trip abroad—no vans or trailers full of gear. They crashed at venues, drank a lot and borrowed equipment.

“Just the experience of touring with just the two of us, having nothing but guitars - and just kind of having so little to carry around, was really exciting and freeing,” Huber says. “We talked about other opportunities where we could travel and pack really lightly and see what we got into. We thought the best way to do that was form a rock band.”

“We did that Steady Hands tour and we were like, ‘Shit, we could do this anywhere,’” says Lindsay, 24, also of Brewerytown. He has long, blondish hair pulled back, and his voice is low and relaxed.

“We really only need a guitar and a pedal board,.

Anything else we can borrow.”

They decided that this wouldn’t be a project that involved painstaking writing individually. Much like their tours, it needed to be two friends having a beer-soaked jam session in a basement, writing fun punk rock music.

“I would describe both of those projects as

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maximalist,” Lindsay says of both Steady Hands, due to the huge sound created by seven players, and W.C. Lindsay, due to the amount of electronics and production.

He adds that many of the songs he and Huber write together for Vicky Speedboat wouldn’t work for these other projects.

“So this is all the rock songs that we’ve been writing for years but never had a place to put them,” he says.

They also didn’t have a place to play them. After one successful jam session in Huber’s basement, Huber moved, leaving them basement-less for two years (hence the EP’s name).

Luckily, a friend had a basement to loan, and the two went back to work.

They recorded together at Kennedy Studios in Burlington, Massachusetts, a place run by friends of theirs. True to the band’s ethos, it was just a fun three days of cranking out songs together and sleeping in the studio. Lindsay did the guitars and bass, Huber did the drums and they shared vocal duty.

“They just recorded everything themselves,” says Steve Aliperta, a co-owner of Kennedy Studios.

“They were down to treat it like a record—big parts that needed to be big. It was really effortless and we didn’t put a lot of frills on it.”

Due to their minimal size and equipment, the idea was to tour places that are inaccessible for a lot of other bands.

“We could start going to places bands don’t go,” Lindsay says. “I had this super crazy time last year in El Salvador and Guatemala, hanging out with these punk kids, going to these DIY shows down there. They were just so stoked on every band because bands just don’t go there.”

Lindsay and Huber named regions like Central America, the Middle East and Russia as their dream tour destinations.

“I’ve heard there’s a super awesome hardcore scene in Baghdad,” Lindsay says. His voice starts to show a little more excitement. “I’ve got a friend who lives in Kuwait. There’s a big hardcore scene in Saudi Arabia too, and it’s entirely against the law by, like, every metric. They have these crazy DIY shows that sometimes get broken up by the cops and the cops beat the shit out of people. I want to play one of those shows. Oh my god, so badly.”

Huber is quick to note that they aren’t going because of the danger itself, or to get beaten and sent to the gulag.

“We’re not trying to write a book,” he says of just wanting to play music in interesting places.

They’d rather bring the same music, and have the same amount of fun doing so, as they would on any other tour.

“You can find these pockets and these amazing scenes,” Huber expands. “So many people are like, ‘No, don’t go to that place,’ and we we’re like, ‘No, the reason that no one is going to those places is - Brendan Menapace because of you.’” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Rachel Del Sordo.

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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 Mumblr showed off their 1989 Dodge 350 after a recent gig at Ortlieb's. from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, this highlySadly, on their way home from a show in Middletown, Connecticut, the engaging and informative ebook is available for van died. The bandmates say they will always look fondly to their van, free at the iTunes store.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is a private Find out more at JUMPphilly.com

sciencecheerleader.com

which took them to so many places. foundation located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Find out more at bwfund.org23

Photo by Magdalena Papaioannou.

A Cool Mosaic Of Sound Red Martina's music defies categorization, so they created their own genre: West Philly basement.

The chemistry between two or more people is sometimes instantaneous and undeniable.

Once formed, these bonds are hard to break.

For Haley Cass of Red Martina, this moment came when she created music for the first time with bandmates Ish Quintero and Ben Polinsky.

“We wrote the hook of our first song outside the first day we all met,” says Cass. “We knew it at that moment.”

Before Red Martina became a seven-member band creating music in a West Philadelphia basement, they started off as a foursome.

Quintero, the group’s multi-instrumentalist who decides what they’re going to sample, was working on hip-hop and trip-hop projects with Stoupe, a local Philadelphia producer.

Once Polinsky and Cass were invited on as vocalists, the sound and rhythms to Quintero and Stoupe’s previous projects became more diverse. Red Martina was born.

“When Haley and Ben came to start working with us, we realized we could use what we had in different ways,” says Quintero. “We didn’t have to stick to the formula of a rap song where Ben would rap and Haley would do the hook or chorus.”

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Their ability to stray from any set formula was amplified after the additional members, Noam Szwegold, Adam Williams and Aaron Blouin joined the group. Drawing on various musical influences like Parliament Funkadelic, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Caribbean and Latin rhythms and Billie Holiday, Red Martina’s songs blend elements from a broad range of genres. To categorize them as pure hip-hop would be ignoring the richness and complexity of their sound.

“What makes a good band are the sum of its parts and since we all come from different backgrounds, it’s kind of like a creative tension in a good way because it creates a unique sound,” says Szwergold, the band’s pianist.

“The songs are versatile, and I think that’s reflective of the Philadelphia music scene.

There are so many backgrounds and genres that come together and make this cool mosaic of sound.”

This mix of sound and their ability to bring it all together in a cohesive, head-nodding way, forces the audience to truly listen during Red Martina performances says Cass.

“It’s not just young kids or one type of person,” she says of the band’s fan. “We get people who really want to listen to music, who are not there to party, but to listen to what we have to play,” Fans have flown from Chicago and Denver to listen to their live performances, which they have started recording as a tribute to their followers, both in the States and abroad.

“They had their first show at Milkboy in Philadelphia and I was utterly impressed with their performance, especially it being their first

one,” says Taylor Gannon, a fan of the band since their early days as a foursome. “More people in Philadelphia should get a chance to listen and see them live.”

Gannon adds that the band’s complexity in being rooted in hip-hop, jazz, funk and even reggae is what makes them all the more interesting.

“With all of the new music coming out these days, even just in Philadelphia, it's nice to hear something straight up different from the rest,” she says.

To get lyrical inspiration, Polinsky says he does not look much farther than his own home of Philadelphia. Whether it is taking a walk around the streets to clear his head or hopping a ride on SEPTA, the stories are all around him.

“It’s like Mr. Cheeks from Lost Boyz says, ‘Sometimes I take the train just to clear the brain,’ and I think it’s really true,” says Polinsky.

“It’s tough to write if you don’t get out to see what people are doing.”

While Red Martina is working on their next album, they have not set a release date yet.

“We will release it when the moment is right and we feel good about what we’re putting out there,” says Cass. “For music that draws from so many people and tastes, we can’t rush.”

In protest of having that album, or any of their other work boxed into one genre again, Red Martina created their own. They call it West Philly Basement.

“It’s where we make our music and it embodies who we are, where we’ve come as a group and where we still can go,” says Szwegold.

- Hannah Kubik facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Magdalena Papaioannou.

The JUMP Off

Two Guys.

Same Page.

The bandmates from The Obsessives found each other in the 8th grade and they're still making music together.

The Obsessives’ approach to performing live is a good analogy for the years the duo has spent together as friends and musicians.

Guitarist and vocalist Nick Bairatchnyi uses a signal splitter to run his guitar through a guitar amplifier and bass amplifier to give his fingerpicked melodies more depth. Drummer Jackson Mansfield anchors the band’s sound, hitting his drums as hard as he can.

They don't perform with anyone else because they don’t need to. They have each other and that is more than enough.

Virtually inseparable since meeting in 8th grade drama class, Bairatchnyi and Mansfield began making music together at the after-school music program, School of Rock, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The two experimented in bands with other musicians in the program but always felt most comfortable writing, recording and performing with one another. It wasn’t until they saw “Under Great White Northern Lights,” the 2007 documentary centered on The White Stripes’ tour of Canada, that performing as a two-piece seemed feasible.

JUMPphilly.com

“I think you meet a couple people in your life who you’re on the same page with,” Bairatchnyi says.

After a short stint as a blues-rock band - not unlike the aforementioned The White Stripes Bairatchnyi and Mansfield quickly discovered influences like Say Anything and The Sidekicks, which inspired them to play the emo-leaning punk found on their most recent recordings.

“We went to go see Say Anything and then we were like, ‘Maybe we should try open tunings,’” Bairatchnyi says.

In their current iteration, The Obsessives cut their teeth playing shows at Northern Virginia DIY spaces The Lab and The CD Cellar, where the idea of touring in support of their music was first presented to them. During the summer after their senior year of high school, Bairatchnyi and Mansfield embarked on a 40-date U.S. tour.

Devoting a majority of the last two years of their time in high school to the band meant they were committed to making music, so it wasn’t a surprise when the two suggested taking time off before college to focus on the band.

Bairatchnyi and Mansfield knew that Philadelphia was a good place for the band to develop, so Bairatchnyi messaged friends in the area in an effort to find roommates. Ryan Collins, who provided them with a place to stay in the city on their second tour, and who currently works with the band as tour manager, offered Bairatchnyi and Mansfield a room in the Michael Jordan house in West Philly. Eager to make the move, the two accepted.

The duo addresses the often-hard-to-swallow realities of adolescence on Heck No, Nancy, their

debut LP. Recorded during a two-day stint in a Fort Wayne, Indiana studio, their initial effort was released with the help of Near Mint, a label based in Virginia and Indiana.

Bairatchnyi says the band’s involvement with the label is one of the primary reasons he and Mansfield are still pursuing music.

James Cassar, the band’s manager, and Corey Purvis, who together run Near Mint, discovered the duo through a Bandcamp keyword search of “emo” and “Washington D.C.” Cassar was hoping to find a band local to northern Virginia, where he attended high school and lives today, to help launch Near Mint.

“Pretty much all Corey and I wanted to do was help build a band,” Cassar says.

Purvis was hooked on the band’s sound, but Cassar was not immediately convinced. After listening to Manners, the duo’s 2014 EP, Cassar and Purvis decided to reach out to the band.

Later, after hearing rough demos of Heck No, Nancy tracks that Bairatchnyi sent him, Cassar was convinced The Obsessives would follow in the footsteps of seminal punk and emo bands that came before them.

Bairatchnyi and Mansfield were on separate vacations at the same beach with their families when they received an email from Cassar and Purvis asking to re-release Manners, which would be the label’s first project. Later, the label released Heck No, Nancy.

The passion and dedication the band has for their art is evident. They are aware of their roles as writers, musicians and performers and they take the responsibility seriously. - Tim Mulhern

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Music & Politics

Earlier this year, First District City Councilman Mark Squilla was easily the most hated man in the music scene locally and he was ridiculed, well, around the world.

In January, Squilla proposed a bill that was loaded with vague language that stirred fear and anger in the hearts of musicians, promoters and fans. The music scene rallied and Squilla backed away from the bill ... for now.

Our G.W. Miller III sat down with the councilman to learn about the purpose of the bill, what will happen next and about Squilla's plans to capitalize on his newfound fame to actually help the arts in Philly.

What was the original intent of the bill?

It was a special assembly bill, which is a license that all venues need, a venue that has 50 or more people and has dancing and hires live performers, DJs, whatever. We had some nightclubs that were actually running without the license. The reason why they were running without the license is because they weren’t hiring a DJ or any type of

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If all that information is going to be collected, ultimately it’s going to become public and therefore become a registry of sorts, no?

But there would have to be somebody to keep track of that. There was nothing that was going to be tracked. It was just in case there was a problem, they’d know who to contact.

Normally, I’d say, “Why do you need that? You can just call the venue and you can find out who was there. They’ll give you the information.” The city was OK with that. They said, “K, we really don’t need that.”

But once it blew up and it got out there and it became “this is what’s being created,” it really went wild.

It was much more fun that way though.

It was! It was kind of exciting for me. I was trending on social media. My social media guy said, “You can’t pay for this!” We tried to turn the negative into a positive.

I think a lot of people in the music industry don’t understand the way legislation works, what the process is. Once the language is put out there, then there is time for public hearings. People can get their input to council and we tweak it. We amend it at the public hearing.

Initially, we were going to pull out the language that was causing most of the problem and then amend at the hearing, then put the bill through.

But there were other things that were put out facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by G.W. Miller III.

Harnessing The Negative

performers. They were just promoting music over an iPad or iPhone, streaming music and therefore getting around the law.

The intent of the bill was to actually create a way to pick up any amplified music, whether it was a DJ, band or a stand alone guitar player. If they had amplified music, they would need to get this license.

The reason why we want them to have the license is if there are issues with a venue for some reason, this is a way to make the venue comply with the regulations. If you don’t do everything possible, you could lose your license for that venue.

What the law department said was that because these places no longer hired DJ or had any performers, the way legislation was written, they really didn’t need the license.

We put our language in to get “amplified music” put into the license. The administration added some other language, such as the collection of names and addresses for performers at the locations.

Once we proposed that, we had some pushback from some of the venue operators, of which I have the most in my district. As soon as we heard that, we pulled that language out of the bill.

But there was so much controversy. Some blogger wrote a tory about some music registry that the city was creating that would keep track or every performers name and address and stuff, which wasn’t the case. No names would be kept in any registry. There was never a registry that was going to be created. The person made that up.

there on the blogs, that the police would get to pick and choose what venues could have what performers. That wasn’t in the bill either. The only thing that was in the bill was that the venues have to get a license from L&I that would be approved by the police department, which is always the case. That’s the case now and it will be the case in the future.

Somehow it got put out there that the police would have the authority to stop a performance.

Or they could say, “Oh, you can’t have that act, you have to do it somewhere else.”

To get on top of that was too difficult. It was out there like it was a fact. We know that sometimes perception becomes the reality. We couldn’t get on top of it to say, “No, that has nothing to do with the bill.”

If you read the bill, you’ll see that it has nothing to do with that. The police can’t pick and choose what performances go where. There is no registry being created. So, instead of just amending it, we’re withdrawing it. We’ll reintroduce it later with just the loophole part about amplified music.

What’s the status of that?

Right now it’s in the law department for a review. It shouldn’t be a problem. We’re hoping to reintroduce it in the next couple of weeks, with the support of the venues. They support it. We met with them after the blow up and they said, “Why should we be treated differently than anybody else? Why should some people have a license and other people do not, even though they’re doing the same thing. They’re just not hiring a DJ or any other type of performer.

There are other organizations that go out and say, “Did they pay for that music? Do they have a license to play that type of music?”

We turned those organization on to the paces that are doing this.

Are you talking about the ASCAPs, SESACs and the BMIs of the world?

Yes. Is that where this originally started? How did the whole thing begin?

We found some venues that were having really serious police issues. When we went to see if they had a special assembly license, they didn’t.

We asked L&I why they don’t need them. They said that they received a law department opinion that said because they don’t hire anybody to play music, they really don’t need the license.

So this started as a public safety issue?

Right. That was the whole gist of it. The way it all blew up is that people thought it was some kind of anti-music legislation, a taxing bill or something.

I said, “Listen guys. It has nothing to do with that.”

The License & Inspections guys said they wanted the information because of what they call bandit signs. Some of these venues, especially the smaller ones, the bands and promoters would go all around and litter the neighborhoods with JUMPphilly.com

posters. It was a big thing for L&I to figure out who was doing that. They figured if they could just contact the venues, they could tell them to take down the signs or they’d get a violation.

That’s why they wanted the names.

This was all over the country. We got emails from Miami. The bill was posted in the New York Times and all these places that read the blog and said, “Look at what Philly is trying to do.”

Did the music licensing people contact you?

They contacted me after the bill. So, we gave them the names of the places that are operating without the license. We had nothing to do with that. It’s not a city thing. We don’t usually do that but I said, “These are the places we’re having problems with.”

They went after them on their own.

I don’t really know how it all works but supposedly, you have to have a license to play certain songs. If they don’t have them, they get fined. I guess they see this as an opportunity to protect the music industry.

Our message was: we’re a big time music city. We promote music. We love music. If it wasn’t for music, art and culture, well, that’s what’s attracting all these young people here.

The Millenials are driving that and we want to encourage that.

When you have a bad actor, even the other venues get upset. If there are a lot problems around one specific place, people won’t go to their location either because they don’t want to be mixed up with that.

All this was meant to do was put everyone on the same playing field. It just got really blown out of proportion because of certain language that was added. Because it was an administration bill, everything that was in the language that I wanted was fine. I really didn’t pick up the other language that people say as a major issue.

People who don’t understand how legislation works thought this was already a bill. They thought once I introduced it, it was a law.

I imagine you’ve worked with the venue operators pretty frequently already?

The Fillmore, Penn’s Landing, Electric Factory, TLA, Union Transfer, they’re all in my district.

It sounds like you have an appreciation for music and the talent and what that all brings to the city.

It’s really a driving force behind the growth of the city. We worked with Live Nation to create legislation to make The Fillmore happen.

How do we help all these venues as competition increases? Is there a way to subsidize these smaller venues or make the bigger venues help the smaller venues out? That’s something we can do with the industry and council to see if there is a viable solution together.

Are you a music person?

I love music. My wife loves music. My district, which has the most venues in the city, is also very high in arts and culture. We have the Cultural

Fund for the city of Philadelphia. Half of the grants that we give out citywide were to places in my district.

It would be hard to get venues to work together.

But City Council has control over how much money gets dispersed by the Cultural Fund.

We could increase the Cultural Fund and push some of these groups that have never applied to apply for Cultural Fund money.

A lot of these people do it because they love it.

They don’t do it to become rich. They just love the industry and they want to be a part of it. It’s a lifelong passion. They’re happy to keep going.

We want to try to help them as much as possible because they are going to draw even more people to the city.

The Cultural Fund reached the lowest amount of money to be given out a few years ago, didn’t it?

Yes, but it has increased. Two years ago, we increased it. This year, it stayed the same. I’m on the board of the Cultural Fund. We would love to have more money but unfortunately, with a new mayoral administration coming in, they’re taking care of their priorities first.

Do you see support for the arts amongst your fellow council members?

Yes. I think most people on council look at that as the reason why Philadelphia is growing.

One of the things that this bill did was it showed how the music people can come together to fight for something. If we could get them to harness that energy for a positive thing? Imagine what we could do to make life better for the music people of Philadelphia.

We look at places like Nashville, where the music industry brings in millions and millions of dollars. That’s a great way to grow the economy.

That would not only give people jobs and foster creativity but it could also bring in a lot of tax dollars to the city coffers.

Did you think about this stuff prior to the noise about the bill?

Oh, yeah. There are people who think that every time you try to create something, you need additional resources. You have to tax something to make something happen. I don’t think that is necessary. By helping this culture grow, it’s creating its own worth. It would bring in additional tax dollars into the city. It would actually pay for itself.

All we have to do is harness and organize all these thoughts. If I can use the negativity that was brought on by this bill and try to have an outreach to these people, who will hopefully stay engaged on a positive note, maybe they can come up with ideas to grow the scene and attract more people.

We’re going to listen to them.

Do you perform?

No. I can’t even sing.

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The Scene is Dead?

Over the past few years, the city has lost some of its iconic places to party. We checked in to see what's - Charles Shan Cerrone happening at some of our former favorite music venues.

The Blockley, 3801 Chestnut St. Once a major stage for reggae artists, jam bands and hip-hop talent - as well as just about everything else, The Blockley shut down at the end of 2013. The venue that hosted the likes of Talib Kweli, Ghostface Killah and Toots and The Maytals is now Furniture Campus Home Store. The tight space is wall-to-wall packed with cheap home goods for Drexel and UPenn students as well as West Philly residents.

North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St. After 34 years of serving good food and better music, the North Star Bar closed its doors in the October of 2015. The new ownership promises to reopen as a craft beer garden and restaurant sometime in the future. But there will be no more live music in a space that was a regular spot for Evan Dando and a place to find rising stars, like the White Stripes in the early aughts.

The Legendary Dobbs, 304 South St. One of South Street’s most famous spots, Dobbs opened in 1975 and had numerous iterations. The club famously presented Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam and many others before they were mainstream famous. The club closed its doors abruptly in late 2015, with no plans announced for a next wave. The sidewalk in front of the venue is often covered in hoverboards and mannequins from shop next door.

Shampoo, 417 N. 8th St. Shampoo, located in the base of an office building, presented EDM before it was known as EDM. It closed in 2013. It's just offices now.

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The Ox, 1617 N. 2nd St. Founded by Andy Molholt, Greg Johnson, Brendan Mulvihill and a crew of creative friends who didn't mind not having heat, The Ox was a DIY warehouse space that saw the likes of Anamanguchi, Creepoid and Sun Airway. It was shut down by police during Two Piece Fest in 2011. "We were young," says Molholt. "None of us really knew what we were doing. Absolutely no humans should EVER have inhabited that building. But I wouldn't change a thing about that period of my life."

Golden Tea House, 403 N. 40th St. Probably the most beloved of the recent DIY places to shut down, Golden Tea House served as a clubhouse for punk and pop punk fans until closing in 2015.

It's solely a private residence now. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Also recently departed or not doing music anymore: Tritone, Khyber Pass, M Room, JR's, Danger Danger Gallery and Sigma Sound. The Barbary and Kung Fu Necktie are both up for sale ...

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone.

These Places Rocked

This Place Rocks

Music Mentors

Photo by Rachel Del Sordo.

The guys from Headroom Studios make expert engineering affordable for younger acts.

Kyle Pulley sits at the console in Headroom Studios, his head flanked by speakers resting underneath two new plants that he’s quick to point out upon entering his workspace.

One hears lots of loud, fast clicks as Pulley expertly isolates instrument or vocal tracks, playing with the volume in the mix or fixing some end of a musical phrase. As the gears in his head turn, he’s seemingly unaware of a few mutters of “that sounds weird” and “hmmm” that he lets slip out.

Pulley has been focusing on this one track for the past six hours. It’s for the upcoming LP of Jerseybased rock band Pine Barons on which Pulley has been working on and off for months. He’s been at it for slightly less time today than the band. After playing a show at The Foundry the night before, they returned to the studio to work and ended up sleeping over.

Working hard and with what time and resources you have has been a mantra of Headroom since the time Pulley and partner Joe Reinhart started in Big Mama’s Warehouse, a space where they lived and worked recording bands with a few mics and a laptop and sometimes for the payment of $20 and a case of beer.

“We knew a bunch of people who were willing to live like crazy people,” Pulley says. “It was a great JUMPphilly.com

space to start, because you could take a lot of risk on bands and work for no money for something you really believed in.”

Pulley and Reinhart moved their studio work into the current space on Coral Street in Kensington in July of 2014 and are now a go-to team for dozens of local bands for a quality recording experience, as well as sought after by out-of-town acts searching for the same thing. Reinhart says he believes they’re valued because of the input they provide during the recording process and the fact that they enjoy being as creatively involved as possible or required.

“We know where bands are coming from; we’ve been in bands our whole lives,” he says by phone while on tour with Hop Along, for which he plays guitar.

Reinhart says this experience in bands also means he and Pulley understand not having a ton of money to record. That’s why they try to keep prices reasonable, bridging the gap between expensive studios and bedroom recording.

“We talk about raising our rates but always come to the conclusion that, right now, we’d still rather be affordable for younger bands and bands who are still starting out,” Pulley says. “I’d rather work on a cool record for less money any day.”

There are plenty of cool bands coming into Headroom and cool records coming out. From well-known local acts like Lithuania and Modern Baseball, to out-of-towners like Joyce Manor, Headroom is gaining ground by word of mouth.

Zoë Allaire Reynolds, vocalist of buzzworthy indie folk band Kississippi, says the band decided to record with Pulley as fans of his current band

Thin Lips and previous band Dangerous Ponies, as well as having heard about good experiences from multiple peers.

“Kyle had a hand in motivation and gave us a friendly push to take risks,” she says. “Through this, I discovered things I didn't know I could do with my voice before. It definitely paid off in the end, not only on the recordings, but at shows, too.”

Pulley and Reinhart are understandably happy with Headroom’s headway. They both admit it’s hard to be so active in the studio and on the road with their respective bands. There have even been instances when Pulley or Reinhart have started a project but a tour opportunity popped up and the other person had to step in to see it through.

“It’s a lot because the people in your band are counting on you,” Reinhart says. “That’s something they take super seriously. It’s their band and it’s how they make a living and you’ve gotta be there for them. Then there’s these other bands, a ton of bands that I’m working with, and they’re counting on you. Their baby is in your hands. That’s a huge responsibility. I take that super seriously.”

Being absent or busy also allows the many assistants and interns at Headroom to get valuable hands-on experience, or even book their own time in the studio. Acting as mentors and working on projects based on passion as opposed to necessity are what keep these two engineers content.

“Every day, every morning I wake up and walk to the studio and I’m, like, pumped to work on what I’m working on,” Reinhart says. - Beth Ann Downey

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Photos by Rosie Simmons.

Music & Education

Mixmaster Classes The new Scratch DJ Academy in Old City teaches students how to work the turntables.

The teachers are some of the world's greatest experts in making people dance.

“There used to be a bartending school here but I guess it’s gone,” murmurs a middle-aged woman, as she walks past the doors of 209 Chestnut St. She seems disappointed at the loss of a hip icon of Old City.

“There also used to be an art gallery here,” says Cosmo Baker, director of the newly opened Scratch DJ Academy in Philadelphia, after hearing about the woman’s words.

These days, the Academy offers an opportunity for those looking to hone their DJing skills or get an education in music production. Classes range from DJ-101 (Beginner DJing) to M-202 (Intermediate Mixing). They also offer private lessons.

Scratch DJ Academy started in New York City almost 15 years ago when Rob Principe and Jam Master Jay came together in hope of making turntablism more accessible. Now, in 2016, Scratch DJ Academy has operations in six of America’s most prominent music scenes: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and now, Philadelphia.

As a renowned DJ, music producer and South Philly native, Baker has played shows everywhere,

30

from Puerto Rico to South Korea. He is a part of a long, storied lineage of DJs in Philadelphia. DJs Cash Money, Tat Money, Jazzy Jeff, Spinbad, Too Tuff, Cosmic Cat, Lady B, Josh Wink, King Britt and DJ AM - all with national and international recognition and respect for their contributions to the art of turntablism - hail from Philadelphia.

“What people don’t know about the Philly DJ scene is that it is alive and well,” says Rich Medina, a DJ and instructor at the Academy, who has built a loyal worldwide following. He says that many people don’t realize that Philadelphia’s DJ scene is the father of all other DJ scenes.

Baker knew Philadelphia was an obvious choice when he found that Colin Kelly, vice president of Scratch, was looking for the next city to expand in.

“There are kids playing in warehouses,” says Baker. “All they want to do is belong, and they find that in Philadelphia’s DJ community. There are also 16-year-old girls in New Jersey who don’t know a thing about turntables, but want to, because they know Skrillex.”

With the intention of both drawing attention to the scene here and capitalizing on the potential of its talent, Baker put in the legwork to open a Scratch DJ Academy in his hometown.

The Academy, which opened in January, is full of DJ equipment in what looks like an upscale warehouse setting. Almost every wall features funky and colorful pieces by Mike Davis from Burlesque of North America.

Baker wanted to create a space that would appeal

to anyone - young or old, novice or advanced, guy or girl. Baker also hopes to contribute to the Philadelphia DJ community by making the Academy accessible and useful to everyone.

“The indie/hipster collective, the Gayborhood, the working adults, the professionals,” Baker says about the target market, “there is a place for everyone here.”

Baker hopes that the diversity of the instructors – from Regina “Gun$” Garcia to Rich Medina – will encourage people from all walks of life to feel comfortable in the Academy.

Nick Spinelli, a wedding DJ in Philadelphia, has been very satisfied with his experience as a student at Scratch.

“We are learning from the best of the best here,” says Spinelli. “It’s just insane. There’s just so much to learn. It’s the hands-on approach – you have some of the biggest names in the industry picking up on your mistakes and teaching you how to fix them.”

“We have different teaching styles, and different teaching experience,” Medina says. “It’s like a football team. All of us bring a different skill set to the table.”

Baker was able to take his turntable dreams and turn them into a career. He hopes his story can inspire others while the Academy helps them achieve their goals. World tours as a partyrocking DJ might not be everyone’s goal, but now students of the culture can get an education and the experience to make it possible.

New school and old school are in session.

- Shruti Pal

facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Branden Eastwood.

Juvenile Attention Beyond the Bars gives at-risk youth hands-on training in music, and hope for the future.

Matthew Kerr is promoting an idea that pushes back against the crushing momentum of modern education policy. That in a time when music and the arts are often the first budget line items on the chopping block for school districts, particularly in Philadelphia, they are in fact one of the most effective tools to keeping youth out of trouble.

“Why music? Because many students in Philadelphia have been exposed to a large amount of trauma in their lives,” explains Kerr, 23. “These students have the same emotions as anyone else... and without arts and music, they're often denied healthy means to express their experience in a society that continually tells them they're nothing.”

Through his nascent nonprofit, Beyond the Bars, Kerr is directly encouraging some of the city's most at-risk youth to express themselves productively. Founded in the fall of 2015, Kerr and the organization's volunteers head twice a week into the Philadelphia Industrial Corrections Center (PICC) in Northeast Philadelphia to teach music to juvenile inmates between the ages of 14 and 17.

Toting along instruments like guitars, bass, drums and keys, Kerr and other instructors work with anywhere from several to a dozen students at a time. They teach them whatever they want to learn and pack in as much jam time in as possible.

Kerr, a 2014 graduate of Temple University's education program, says he has learned from working with traditional students in schools around Philadelphia that having a chance to play as a group can actually be more important than the learning component.

“A lot of students quit if they don't get something right away,” Kerr says. “But when they play together, they get instant gratification. And I want my students to feel like musicians.”

Kerr says the program has been a success so far. Many of the students keep showing up and the classes have an influential, inside supporter in Karen Bryant, deputy commissioner of Operations & Emergency Services with the Philadelphia Prisons System.

Bryant's daughter was one of Kerr's students when he worked as a music program coordinator at the Charter High School for Architecture and Design, and sung the graces of his teaching style JUMPphilly.com

to her mother.

“The youth who participate in Beyond the Bars consider it a lifeline,” Karen Bryant says. “Jail is day after day of the same thing. So, for those who participate, they cannot wait for the two days of the week to get together with someone outside who shows that they care and gives them such a great tool.”

But the program's success has led to new problems. Some students turn 18 and transfer to adult corrections, and still more finish their time and leave the facility. Kerr says the latter route is a dangerous prospect, adding that 70 percent of kids who leave juvenile facilities are back within a year.

“I had a student that was like, 'I love this but I'm getting out in two weeks and I don't have an instrument,'” Kerr says. “And I'm like, 'Aw shit. I'm just a Band-Aid right now.’ I'm just helping kill time.”

Finding a dearth of music nonprofits that help youth navigate the transition out of juvenile prison, Kerr has established a relationship between Beyond the Bars and The Center for Returning Citizens (TCRC), an organization that provides a variety of services to people leaving correctional facilities. Starting this spring, Kerr says Beyond the Bars will be using space in a TCRC building at Seventh Street and Girard Avenue to continue educating students who left PICC. But more than just keep teaching music, it's Kerr's hope that students will begin utilizing the center's other services, such as job training, legal aid and counseling, to their advantage.

“Our end game is a very holistic experience,” Kerr says. “We want to hook them (with the music) and then we want to help them get access to careers.”

Jondhi Harrell, founder and executive director of TCRC, says programs like Beyond the Bars are essential in helping to make prison more than just a repressive and punitive place for inmates.

“What Matthew and his staff [are] doing is dynamic, needed and should be part of the model of rehabilitation and restorative justice,” Harrell says. “Prison should be a place of transformation

and change. Learning a new skill that can further your ability to move forward in life is critical.

Mastering music is a way to give confidence to young people and show them that many things are possible.”

And Kerr himself has completed a personal transformation. The education major and former member of Philadelphia rock outfit Family Vacation has chosen to live the nonprofit life. Last fall, he mostly left the formal world of education behind and took a job with the nonprofit Community Integrated Services. The 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. hours afford him afternoon daylight to meet with stakeholders for Beyond the Bars and free up his evenings for classes at PICC and TCRC. He's brought on a handful of other executives to run the business side of the organization and now enlists the services of about a dozen instructors.

At the moment, all are working for free as donations and other financial support goes to purchasing and maintaining equipment.

Kerr is looking for support from all levels of the city's music scene. He hopes to grow a more diverse roster of teaching volunteers - as most of the current volunteers are white - and also seeks donations of cash and gear. He encourages bands to throw benefit shows of any size.

“Even if it's just a basement show with $50 ... hey cheers, that's great,” Kerr says.

He hopes to soon get his volunteers some pay and has stepped up his fundraising efforts. The Districts will be headlining a benefit show on April 17 at World Cafe Live and Kerr expects it to be a major boon to Beyond the Bars' coffers.

Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin, a growing philanthropist of the arts and disadvantaged populations, along with Eagles lineman Jason Kelce, have thrown their weight behind Kerr’s effort.

“I'm excited to get to meet them and try to hug them but my hands probably aren't going to reach around them,” Kerr says, laughing. “And I'll also thank Barwin for sacking Tom Brady.”

- Kyle Bagenstose

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Music & Education

A Second Chance Through Music The Evening Reporting Center provides an alternative to juvenile detention, putting young people in front of music equipment during peak crime hours.

The young boys at the Evening Reporting Center are writing their own soundtrack in the juvenile justice system.

“At ERC we be learning/ getting some jobs in return,” rings out through the speakers in the sound booth in the recording studio, which sets up Lee’s verse. “Here they teach us about real life/ not ‘x to the two’/ they should come to my school/ teach a lesson or two.”

Just hours ago, Lee was released from house arrest. At 4 p.m., he promptly arrived at the Northeast Treatment Center at Second and Norris streets - this time, on his own accord.

For the past six months, Lee has been one of the adjudicated delinquent youths under the community-based supervision of the Evening Reporting Center. He’s been working with his peers to put together a theme song for the ERC and voluntarily came to the music program today to use the third-floor recording studio.

The kids at ERC are all given a second chance.

Instead of being sent away to a juvenile detention center, they are placed under supervision in their communities.

After school lets out, youths arrive to the courtmandated, alternative placement program. They are supervised between peak crime hours, 4-8 p.m., then return home - their GPS ankle

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monitors make sure of it.

Here, they learn to cook meals for one another, to plan finances and to develop social connections through music, art and sports. The creative alternative to juvenile detention “works to view the whole child,” says Adam Serlin, ERC program director and former musician.

“It’s not always what the child did. It’s what has been done to the child,” Serlin says.

At the ERC, he says they first ask, “What are the ways we can address the deeper causes for behavior?”

In other words, the program pays special attention to rehabilitation instead of punishment.

Through the juvenile justice system, the ERC works with the Department of Human Services and Philadelphia Family Courts to provide community supervision during the length of house arrest. To provide music programming as a form of creative expression, the ERC is partnered with the nonprofit Limelight Arts.

“We give them interests they can connect to so moving forward, they’ll have some new passions that can prevent issues or recidivation in the future,” Serlin says.

Co-founders Frank Machos and Avery Coffee provide ongoing opportunities for the at-risk youths to build tangible skills in music. Machos utilizes his role as the director of music education for the Philadelphia School District to help secure equipment for the ERC and place kids who complete the program into school music programs after the end of their sentence.

His partner, Coffee, visits the program every Wednesday to provide hands-on music instruction. For Coffee, watching kids engage with unfamiliar instruments as an act of creative expression is what makes this program special.

“They get to have a voice,” Coffee says. “In this system, you’re getting talked down to constantly.

You’re constantly surrounded by adults who don’t facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Brianna Spause.

understand your situation. They aren’t looking you in the eye. They’re writing stuff down and you’re getting passed down the line. In here, you get to say what’s on your mind. This is your outlet.

You’re not just a number.”

It was Serlin’s goal to create pro-social programs that would allow his kids to feel heard and find a productive way to let off steam.

“Our kids are not different than any other kid,” Serlin says. “A lot of times they just have fewer programs to go to and fewer things to do. That typically leads to trouble.”

Serlin identified music as a transferrable skill that can be carried anywhere and used as a coping mechanism if the child has issues at home.

“Music helps me express myself because I can get stuff off my chest,” Lee says. “If I’m having an issue with something, I can rap it and it will relieve it a little bit.”

The measurable successes of the Evening Reporting Center in its pilot year have allowed the branch to expand from a pre-adjudicatory program that supervised youths awaiting trial, into a six month post-adjudicatory program that serves as a true alternative to juvenile detention.

According to the DHS, in 2014, 82 percent JUMPphilly.com

of youths placed in Philadelphia ERCs were successful in exiting the juvenile justice system.

Fajr, a 17-year-old alumnus from West Philadelphia, was one of them. The skills he learned in the music program landed him internships with Jr. Music Executives and PhillyCAM before being hired to measure data by the ERC. “If you’re interested, everything is in your reach,” Fajr says as he sits behind a keyboard in the live music room, mindlessly pressing keys as he speaks. “They’re not asking you to do anything except play music. I was blind to everything when I came in here. They presented me with ideas that

worked in my own head.”

The ultimate goal of the Evening Reporting Center is to provide at-risk youths with skills for rehabilitation. They aren’t looking to make a star of every kid that walks in the studio. Instead, they are focused on the healing power of music and the potential of a second chance.

“Even if it’s just making the process a little more palatable throughout, making their journey through the juvenile justice system something that is a little less terrifying, that’s a success,” - Brianna Spause Serlin says.

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Cover Story

QUEEN OF JEANS: A

Queen of Jeans has only been around for about a year but their debut album has found them a world of fans and UK distribution.

Story by Andy Polhamus.

Photo by Morgan Smith.

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M

BAND

iriam Devora does not smoke pot.

This, she acknowledges, might come as a surprise to the rock critics who have praised her band.

“I’m not a stoner in any way,” she says over a beer in Center City. It’s late January, just a few days after two feet of snow were dumped on Philadelphia, and the band has hunkered down in Oscar’s Tavern on Sansom Street.

“I’ve done it a handful of times and I just got paranoid,” Devora says.

WITH

VISION In a few days, Queen of Jeans will play a soldout album release show at Kung Fu Necktie. Their self-titled EP has already gained distribution in the U.K., thanks to London-based Super Fan 99 Records. Back in the States, Indianapolis label Third Uncle Records has taken up the QoJ cause - all this before 26-year-old Devora, along with guitarist Matheson Glass, 27, bassist Nina Scotto, 28 and drummer Patrick Wall, also 28, have played a dozen shows together. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

kit,” Devora adds. This little jab is true, as it turns out - Wall’s first time playing the songs on actual drums was the day he joined the band.

Devora says her influences skip the majority of recent college rock. Instead, she draws a more direct line back to the 1960s, citing girl groups like The Ronettes. In fact, the only contemporary act she acknowledges as an influence is Warpaint.

“I’ve seen someone use the word ‘stoner’ to describe us three times in 500 words,” says Wall.

“One person said we would be too high to notice if we ever got popular.”

But if you want to think of them as a bunch of lovable California burnouts, they’ll take it - even if they respectfully disagree.

“If you put us in the same class as Best Coast, I’d say, ‘I can do that.’ We’re at the mercy of other people, like, 'What playlist would you put us on?'” says Scotto. “But I haven’t been offended by anything anyone’s said.”

B

Q

ueen of Jeans formed in early 2015, borrowing their name from the iconic South Philly denim outlet King of Jeans.

Devora was in a psychedelically influenced band at the time and wrote the first batch of songs as a side project. She made Queen of Jeans her top priority after Glass and Scotto signed on. Wall joined six months later after answering a Craigslist ad on a whim.

“We’d basically been casually online-dating drummers,” Glass now says.

JUMPphilly.com

In true Millennial fashion, the band found it difficult to seal the deal with people they’d met on the Internet.

“No one wanted to commit to us,” says Scotto, grinning.

But eventually, they found that commitment.

Wall, like Scotto and Glass, was drawn to the completeness of Devora’s songwriting craft.

“I could tell that this was a band that had a vision,” Wall says. “I was immediately excited.”

“It’s worth mentioning you didn’t have a drum

ecause everyone in the band is an experienced musician, they’ve been able to avoid rookie embarrassments. There have been no ill-fated dive bar tours and with all four members working day jobs, shows are carefully chosen to make each performance worth the effort.

“We keep busy to the point that sometimes we all complain about it,” says Devora. “But that’s a good complaint to have.”

They’ve been busy in London as well, despite having never been to the city. The EP, recorded in a sweltering, now-defunct Fishtown industrial space last summer, got indie label attention almost by accident.

“The recording process was completely DIY,” says Glass. “Our friend was recording us. He admitted he was learning as he went along but so were we. And it turned out that we liked it.”

Months later, Super Fan 99 founder Luke Barham heard the single “Dance” while listening to Soundcloud at work. “Dance” starts off with a catchy, if unassuming, ‘60s guitar riff before giving way to a brilliant, twinkling chorus.

Charmed, Barham asked if he could hear more.

“I like records that transport me to a different time and place; ‘60s and ‘70s-influenced bands with a penchant for the West Coast often tick a lot of my boxes,” he writes in an email. “Everything I put out is rooted in strong melody.”

Queen of Jeans, then, is a perfect fit. Barham has been able to get the band airplay on London’s local indie station and even earned them a few plays on BBC1 radio.

“There is a real craft to their songwriting and journey within many of their songs,” Barham says. “When they sent through the EP, I was pleasantly surprised at how varied and dark it was. They strike me as a band who have a clear vision and unity in how they deliver their songs.”

The early spring will consist of one-off gigs in Philly and New York. The band’s next goal, though, is to impress their moms.

“There’s definitely a Queen of Jeans parents club,” says Scotto.

“And they all want to be mom-agers,” says Devora. “My mom will say, ‘You sound so beautiful. But you need a new wardrobe.’”

She pauses, then adds, “Don’t write that down.”

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Cover Story

L

arry Magid remembers when there was no rock 'n' roll in the city.

“Nothing happened in Philadelphia,” Magid says. “There was no scene.”

Long before Union Transfer and Underground Arts, before stadiums like the Wells Fargo Center would even think about holding concerts and before Ben Franklin smiled from the roof of the Electric Factory, Philadelphia was mostly a jazz town. In the early 1960s, a young Magid was just getting his feet wet in the music industry. Over the course of the next half-century, the West Philadelphia native would become responsible for many of the city's most historic music memories.

“You just ride the wave,” Magid says with a shrug, reflecting on the towering list of acts he helped bring to Philadelphia, from Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix to the international phenomenon of the Live Aid and Live 8 concert events.

Sitting inside a spare conference room of the modest offices of his company, Larry Magid Entertainment, the man whose name is on the door is dressed as unassumingly as his attitude in a simple button-down shirt and thickrimmed glasses.

Plaques and guitars are stacked in corners, waiting to decorate the walls but the work always comes first. Magid doesn’t need to prove himself to anybody at this point. Now 73, Magid still isn't ready for his career to be considered a retrospective. The music mogul takes a break from another hectic day. He's just got off the phone with London, and he has an appointment to keep with Bruce Springsteen's people later in the afternoon.

T

he music business was not Magid's first intention.

Magid studied communications at Temple University in the 1960s.

Hoping to become a writer, he worked for a small music publication run by a friend. One afternoon, someone in the office asked Magid to book bands for a fraternity party at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I said I would do it, then I had to figure out how I would do it,” he recalls with a laugh. “And it worked.”

The new career path stuck.

Magid never finished his degree. He left for New York City to work for a booking agency and learn the ropes of the music business before his hometown started tugging him back.

When visiting home, Magid liked to spend time at the Showboat, a jazz club that was run by the Spivak brothers: Allen, Jerry and Herb. The Spivaks knew Magid was a talented booker, and one day in the late ’60s, they pulled him aside for advice. Magid says the Spivak brothers saw what was happening in the rest of the country and wanted to get in on the rock business here in Philadelphia. Magid's advice?

“You have to start building things.”

Soon after, out of the shell of an old tire warehouse on 22nd and Arch streets, the Electric Factory was built, and Magid was the one chosen to fill it.

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he original Factory held 2,500 people, far beyond what any other venue in Philadelphia could handle at the time. It opened in 1968 with a concert by psychedelic soul act the Chambers Brothers. It was just in time for a period that many remember as a counter-cultural revolution, and the artists that supplied its soundtrack could be found night after night at the Electric Factory - Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and the list goes on. Fans saw the greatest talent of their generation with tickets costing only $3 per show, courtesy of Magid.

Some of Philly's own got to take the stage as well, like renowned musician and producer Larry Gold, who played the Electric Factory many times with Michael Bacon as the band The Good News.

“It changed the core of the city,” Gold says about the Electric Factory's cultural

36

impact. According to Gold, the music and culture of the day was already present in the city, but the Factory provided a place for it to come together and be amplified. Nobody else was bringing the music quite like Magid.

“Larry [Magid] is one of the people who invented the rock 'n' roll business,” says Bryan Dilworth, co-founder of Bonfire Booking and a talent buyer for the Electric Factory. Dilworth worked for Magid for several years when the Electric Factory re-opened at its current location on 7th Street near Callowhill.

“The procedures, the way we market things, all the way down to the way we present shows—he had to come up with all of that,” says Dilworth.

I

n 1985, Magid helped bring Philadelphia to the world stage through Live Aid, the historic benefit concert held simultaneously in England and the United States. Magid's friend and veteran promoter Bill Graham was asked to spearhead the organization of the U.S. portion and told Magid he was thinking about doing it in New York City.

But Magid could think of no better location than Philadelphia's own JFK Stadium, the former open-air sports stadium in South Philly.

Magid was tapped again 20 years later when he was 63 to organize Live 8.

Many people might have taken such a massive moment in their career as a good note on which to retire, but Magid isn't like most people.

Magid has experienced his fair share of changes in this latter half of his career.

Though he still owns the Electric Factory venue, he sold his company, Electric Factory Concerts, to SFX Entertainment in 2000. SFX was acquired by the Clear Channel Entertainment division, which later became Live Nation. An empire was building, and Magid had a view from the top as a chairman.

But his heart wasn't in it.

“Clear Channel was a prison sentence,” Magid says. “I used to joke that I was the Count of Monte Cristo, counting off the days in my cave with chalk marks until I was free.”

Selling his company meant the promise of job security for Magid's many employees, but it also meant a contract. What Magid realized was that he didn't want to be somebody else's employee.

So in 2010, at the young age of 67, Magid decided to strike out on his own.

“You start over again,” he says about his decision. “But you don't have to start from scratch, and you don't have to do what other people want you to do.”

S

ince leaving Live Nation and starting Larry Magid Entertainment, Magid has been much happier. Rather than working 12-hour days and dealing with hundreds of concerts per year, like he did at his old job, Magid is now able to be more hands-on with a few heritage acts he's grown close to over the years, like Billy Crystal and Bruce Springsteen.

“Nothing could make me prouder than watching Bruce Springsteen, who started as an opening act, become the biggest act in the world and knowing that I was a part of the catalytic force that enabled that creativity to grow,” he says.

These are the parts of his work that stick with him—watching Crystal go from a club comic to a comedy legend, or putting on a concert for Billy Joel before he had put out his first record.

“It's like a doctor bringing a baby to life,” he says.

Seeing the potential in an act is what Magid believes set him and his team apart. When Magid caught a glimpse of the future in an act, he did everything in his power to make his premonition come true.

“We weren't just working on that one show, we were also working on the next show,” he says about putting together concerts for promising acts.

“We were building something.”

More than just building world-famous entertainers, Larry Magid was building Philadelphia into the music city it is today.

JUMPphilly.com

Larry Magid is the person who made Philadelphia the music city we know today.

SCENE BUILDER

THE

Story by Tyler Horst.

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

JUMPphilly.com

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Cover Cover Story Story

THE

AGE

OF

DISCOVERY (ONLINE)

The Internet broke all the rules in the music business.

Artists can now reach fans directly. Music-lovers have control over what they hear. But is it working?

Story by Brianna Spause.

Photo illustration by Charles Shan Cerrone.

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facebook.com/JUMPphilly facebook.com/JUMPphilly

T

he 21st century took the music industry and flipped it upside down.

As the change fell from the pockets of industry giants and big-name bands, it landed in the hands of the people. Slowly, the oligarchy began to crumble as the public gained free access to the music scene.

The Internet put power in the hands of the people to shape the scene and created a democracy where independent musicians could build their own global platform.

Bruce Warren, program director and ultimate gatekeeper of WXPN, calls it a standard case of “classic disruption innovation from the business school perspective.” The introduction of the Internet to the local music scene created an entirely new ecosystem.

And it’s been a long time in the making.

“Early to mid-2000s, I noticed broad changes in the musical landscape,” Warren says.

Music blogs like Aquarium Drunkard and My Old Kentucky Blog began to take over where the infamous Napster left off, serving as forums for illegally sharing mp3s and encouraging conversation around the music.

“What a concept! It’s like walking into a party and meeting a bunch of people who are into music, but now it’s on a digital platform,” Warren says.

The music blog scene changed the way Warren looked at the world, circa 2003.

Why just listen to publicists when the people could emerge as tastemakers?

“I learned then that there was a big, open, vast space of music discovery that was pure and uncoopted by publicists, marketers, brands and major label hype machines,” he says.

F

ast forward to 2016, when the Internet has ensured that free music reigns king. You don’t have to get in your car and drive to the record store anymore. The incredibly diverse world of music is just a click away.

For Ronald Spencer, the driving force behind Hank McCoy Productions, 15 seconds is all it takes. Spencer strategically places beats behind photos on Instagram, utilizing the autoplay function to insert his music into the daily lives of more than 3,000 followers.

“I’m able to reach as wide of an audience as it can get,” Spencer says. “Being a producer, it gets old and pointless to just send out beats regularly in hopes that someone says, ‘I like this.’ I treat myself like an artist rather than a producer. I want to make myself have a fan base. I interact so I can continue to build that, and then people will be seeking me out to get beats.”

His low-budget marketing technique? #Beats. #Producer. Strategic hashtags put his music in the right place at the right time, Spencer says. Often, rappers and artists sift through hashtags to find inspiration. That’s where he comes in.

Spencer has success selling beats off the 15 second tease, without spending a dime on promotion.

“It evens the playing field for people like myself without huge budgets behind them,” Spencer says. Spencer says he hasn't spent a dime on promotion since he began producing music with his cousin, Chill Moody, in 2006. He attributes the power of social sharing and audience interaction for his success.

In return for free music hosting and global exposure provided by the Internet, Spencer offers his beats and instrumental mixtapes out to artists on Bandcamp for free download - or an optional donation.

“You can give $1, $5 or if you want to give me $1 million, that works too,” Spencer says.

O

n one end, industry giants would argue the streaming services and free downloads are detrimental to the entire music industry. Here in Philly, Spencer is handing out his music for free as a way to elevate his sound to a global audience and build a foundation for success.

“The digital tools have lowered the barriers for not only creation, but distribution and promotion,” Warren says. “It’s good for culture. It’s good for community. It’s good for commerce.”

The rise of the Internet has brought in a flood of new artists, genres and sounds. Sure, anyone can upload a few videos to YouTube and call themselves a musician but Warren says the oversaturation does not interrupt the natural order of success.

“The cream will still rise to the top,” he says, because people talk about what they like, not because the artist has a $100,000 marketing budget.

The democratization of the music industry allows local artists the freedom to experiment with non-traditional projects that will get them noticed.

JUMPphilly.com

“People own the Internet,” says Steve Iannettoni, drummer for the indie rock band Sonnder. “You don’t need a recording contract. There’s so many chances to get your voice out there.”

Taking matters into their own hands, the band did just that. Sonnder strapped down in a South Philly bedroom to record their full-length LP, Entanglement, due out in April. In a grand experiment, the band uploaded a new single every month in 2015 to test the waters with their audience.

“People don’t really listen to full-length EPs of bands they’ve never heard of anymore,” says Sonnder frontman Ryan Weidman. “So, we thought, ‘What if we just release one song a month, let it breathe on its own, let it tell the whole story of the band?’”

Streaming a new tune like clockwork each month, Sonnder’s social media buzz started to turn some heads. The singles project got picked up by several blogs, including WXPN’s The Key, which launched them onto the radio.

The project got people talking and set the band in motion to receive a flood of coverage as the year wore on.

“We look really good on the Internet,” Weidman says. “But it still is about who you genuinely connect with. We have a year and a half worth of exposure, but for a while, people weren’t coming to our shows.”

Weidman says when Sonnder began to pick up steam, they remained dedicated to maintaining genuine, human connections. After all, the point of their project was to interact with their audience and take feedback with finesse.

It worked. Weidman says the band quickly stepped up from playing “crappy clubs” to selling out World Cafe Live in December for the final release of the project and album namesake, “Entanglement.”

Sonnder gave the public the chance the bask in a free taste of the entire album before its official release, which Iannettoni says has been a major talking point when the band gets the chance to interact with fans.

“The Internet is a distribution platform,” Warren says. “Ultimately it comes down to people talking about it. Whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s in a club or over beers at a friend’s house.”

And sometimes, it’s on the front page of Reddit.

H

ometown heroes The Districts experienced the epitome of making it in the cyberscene in 2013 when their “Funeral Beds” music video went viral. Then a young, unsigned band, their recording session with HotBox Studios made the local rounds online before reaching a global audience after it was picked up by Reddit and the Huffington Post.

“It was really weird,” drummer Braden Lawrence says of the viral experience.

“On Facebook you can look and say, ‘Oh, it got more likes’ or whatever. But then we would do a tour in Memphis and play for one meth-head or something.”

For The Districts, the momentary online fame didn’t immediately translate to a physical audience. Frontman Robbie Grote says the exposure gave them a foothold in the local scene, but it took two years of “sitting in a van, driving around and working hard” on tours for The Districts to make a name for themselves.

“Playing a show to people you can see and hear feels way better than a bunch of Facebook likes, anyway,” Grote says. “That’s why we do it.”

T

hough we exist in a constantly pulsing cyberscene, there are a few things the Internet simply cannot change. One is the principle of music itself, which is the ability of sound to connect with a person.

Another? The definition of success.

“You can’t look at the Internet as an isolated thing when you’re talking about how bands get famous,” Warren says, stressing the fact that eyes and ears are listening in behind the screen. “[In the past] you would go to a club and you would see either 30 people or 300 people,” Warren says. “That was the evidence.”

The cyberscene simply measures popularity by the click of a button.

Because of this, the value of human interaction through music has not been diminished. The Internet has just built a new bridge to it.

The digital tools of the 21st century allow artists to rise without the noise pollution of the million-dollar music industry holding them back, and their fans to share the experience of music as they climb the ranks.

“That’s the purest delivery of passion about an art form,” Warren says.

The ease of music discovery is at an all-time high in the democratic world of the Internet. The public is granted the privilege of open expression regarding the music they like, and they’re always talking.

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Cover Story

A

GRANDE PLAN FOR

SUCCESS

Grande Marshall had dreams of a career in advertising. He bounced around a bit and wound up back in North Philly.

Things got a little rough. But once he started recording music and people started listening, everything fell into place.

Story by Dave Miniaci.

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone.

I

t was a long bus ride back to Philadelphia.

Grande Marshall recalls it vividly. Leaving Atlanta, he had little on him; mostly about $60 in his wallet, lyrics in his head and dreams of hitting it big. The bus travelled all day. He stepped out at the Greyhound terminal near Market East and took in his surroundings. The rapper was home, but it wasn’t necessarily a grand homecoming. What would happen next?

“I kept thinking to myself, that whole bus ride,” he remembers, closing his eyes tight and putting himself in the moment, “just keep at it. Be confident and calculated in what you do. There’s no going back.”

It sounds like a story out of a feel-good family film, a young musician following his dreams to become a star. Fresh off a new album and having received plenty of local buzz, Grande is finally getting there. But it was never easy.

I

t’s a blistery cold night in Philadelphia but you wouldn’t know that from being with Grande. His radiant personality and talkative nature exude warmth.

He is wearing a heavy coat but if he is cold, he doesn’t let on. He has some boyish features, and frequently rubs his stubble where a beard is coming in.

But the maturity he evokes does not seem that of someone college-aged.

40

“Music was something I really felt was my calling,” Grande recalls. “A lot of people were telling me, ‘You don’t wanna be 20 to 30 years down the road, getting old and listening to the radio thinking damn, this could’ve been me.’”

Grande was born in Philly and lived in North Philly and Yeadon as a child before moving to Maryland with his mom during middle school. His family impressed upon him the importance of maintaining a job and going to college.

Grande planned a career in advertising and marketing and had internships under his belt. He briefly attended Howard Community College in Maryland, but a turning point was spending a few weeks living with his grandparents in Atlanta.

Wanting him to work, his grandfather drove Grande to a nearby shopping center and told him he would pick him up in a few hours after he applied at every store there. Grande estimates he made it to three or four.

“This isn’t work,” he says, reflecting on the experience. “I don’t see Target jumping me into marketing and advertising, so there’s no point in forcing it.

And my grandfather said to me, ‘At some point, you’re going to be 20, 30, 35 and something has to change.’”

And that led to his bus ride back.

“I thought of all the places I could make it, all the places that would feel like home,” Grande says. “In my mind, Philly was it.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

JUMPphilly.com

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Cover Cover Story Story

Photo of Reef The Lost Cauze and Grande by Marie Alyse Rodriguez.

A

nd so here he was, a young rapper in North Philly, unsure of his next move. He bounced from one couch to another, mainly spending time at his friend Sheldon Abba’s apartment at 12th Street and Girard Avenue. He continued writing and found his way into various studios, spending countless hours working on material.

It was a humbling time for Grande. The weight of his situation was on him.

He had friends and relatives who had been in jail. He wasn’t working, aside from selling some weed here and there. It was just the music, and his situation was feeling dire.

“I was in the basement, living off McChickens and making beats,” Grande remembers.

“There were no windows in that jawn. I had no idea if it was day or night and I didn’t know what would happen when I came out of there. It was push forward or end up on the street.”

Grande speaks with affection for those close to him who have helped him through the years. He is jovial, with a hearty laugh and quick to a joke.

But he gets somber when mentioning family. This is a man who knows where he comes from and knows how indebted he is to family and friends.

“I love my Mom and we have this tough relationship,” he says. “She always told me not to be sorry but to be careful. I do and act to others how I want to be treated.”

A

ll that studio work finally paid off. His first tape, 800, came out to encouraging reception, from inside and outside the community.

“I was blown away,” says Bear One, a DJ and producer for P3 Records, who worked with Grande on 800 and his follow-up Mugga Man. “At the time, I think he was only like 17 or 18 and it was incredible. His beats were up to par and his lyrics, for someone his age, were incredible.”

Grande earned shoutouts on websites like Complex and landed a gig opening for A$AP Rocky at the TLA. It was 800 that caught the attention of big labels, including Interscope. Grande met with several and says he had offers, but the allure of a major label wasn’t enough to sway the grounded Grande. He knows what his music and his background means to him.

“Psshh, no you fucking don’t,” Grande remembers thinking in the back of his head when a label exec told him they love his music and gets where he’s coming from. “You’ve got a large garage with a bunch of cars. You are rich and well off. That’s not to say people who have money don’t have problems. But

JUMPphilly.com

these guys have lived their life. And the vibe I got from them doesn’t feel real.

I just wasn’t getting a human vibe from these guys.”

And so he kept looking.

T

hat led him to Brooklyn-based label Fool’s Gold, after catching the attention of founders A-Trak and Nick Catchdubs.

“For me, what was most interesting was how self-assured it was, from the artwork to the production to the lyrics, especially for how young he was,” Catchdubs says of 800. “[Fool’s Gold] is about finding people who are the the complete artist and someone we can help put their existing je ne sais quoi on a higher level.”

“It was a big deal to me that they were so interested in me,” Grande says, recalling meeting with Catchdubs at Johnny Brenda’s. “We were just talking and they weren’t trying to just push a contract on me.”

He released his fulllength debut album, My Brother’s Keeper, on Fool's Gold late last year to positive reviews.

It’s a personal album, one which even required some time off to collect himself before finishing. And years of hard work pay off in tracks like “Pullup’s Theme,” the video for which uses North Philly, the neighborhood that made it all came together for Grande, as the backdrop.

“The great thing about My Brother’s Keeper is that it’s like an onion,” Catchdubs says. “There are just so many layers that every listen unveils something new.

You can rediscover stuff on this album 10 years down the road.”

But, true to Grande’s nature, he won’t put on the brakes. He’s still in the studio working on new material.

N

ow wiser and with a headful of lyrics and beats, Grande finally has a clear path in front of him. And the work, support of his family and friends and determination to succeed that carried him so far just keeps him going.

“I told my grandfather that if I turned 21 and wasn’t happy with my life and things weren’t going well, I would drop it all and go back to school,” he says, then lets out a laugh. “And here I am now at 22 and things are going pretty good.

“When I was a kid, my father was trying to teach me how to ride a bike and he told me that if I quit trying to learn to ride I would quit everything. That always stuck with me. I rode that damn bike.”

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Food That Rocks

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Continued from page 47 ...

parts, how to refine his painting.

“Every day, instead of focusing on what I didn’t have, I started focusing on what I could do if I gave it a whirl and challenged myself,” he says.

So when the corner bar previously known as Wonder Years went up for sale, Olkus found his next challenge.

Having worked in and around the service industry since 1992 he was well aware of what works – and more importantly, what doesn’t work – in the nightlife world. So, with backing from his mother, Olkus purchased the bar in 2013 and renamed it Saint Lazarus, after the biblical figure who rose from the dead.

Since then, he has experienced a rebirth by creating an inviting, eclectic bar adorned with JUMPphilly.com

the paintings and sculptures he spent years perfecting.

Paramount to this new chapter in his life was ensuring that Saint Lazarus was a “haven from the stresses of daily life” for everyone, Olkus says, regardless of their looks or background.

“I’ve dealt with club owners for so long that were fucking clueless, who treated people like shit,” he explains. “[They] had these stupid, antiquated door policies enforced by troglodytes, and I was like, ‘You know man, when I get myself to a point where I can do that, I’m gonna say, “Fuck that” and I’m gonna have some fucking impact on things.’”

This belief has helped shape Saint Lazarus into a local hangout where one can find themselves in a diverse crowd of kind, eclectic people enjoying their night in harmony. On any given night patrons of Saint Lazarus can experience this firsthand, whether it’s the Tuesday Night Hangout hosted by Fame Lust, Wednesday’s All Th@ throwback night which Olkus also DJs, Philly DJ Group’s Thursday night social featuring appearances by DJ Ha and occasionally Hogans on the decks, Stunt Loco’s Friday night residency or one of the many other rotating nights of programming.

“If you’re inclusive and treat people with kindness,” Olkus says, “you get the best out of people.”

- Dan Halma

45

The Sanctuary at Saint Lazarus offers "soul food meets Mexican" in a place you can dance your ass off.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here that night,” Tommy Hogans begins.

He’s seated at a small round table at Saint Lazarus, located at 102 W. Girard Ave., cradling the cup of coffee in front of him as he recounts the summer night that changed everything.

This time last year he was working as a salesman for Honda – a job he had held on and off for years – but felt that he need a change. So Hogans quit and spent the following months selling food on the summer festival circuit.

One night after festival season ended, he was out with some friends and ended up at Saint Lazarus, better known simply as The Saint. It was here that a chance meeting with owner Brendan Olkus led Hogans to his dream job.

“I’d known of Brendan for years but hadn’t met him until that night,” Hogans says, grinning ecstatically as the words leave his mouth. “We were just in the right place at the right time and he was like, ‘Listen, I need a chef,’ and I was like, ‘Okay.’ And there it is.”

Since that night, Hogans has served as head chef for the Sanctuary at Saint Lazarus – the official title given to the restaurant portion of the bar – crafting a hearty, delicious menu that 46

facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone. Bottom photo by G.W. Miller III.

Crowd-Pleasing Music and Food

he describes as “soul food meets Mexican,” before adding a “maybe” and a laugh.

“It’s bar driven, obviously - you don’t want to have a sloppy meal at a bar - and the space is confined, so you want to have stuff that is finger food or very easy to eat,” he explains. “Then you have taco trucks up the street, so I figured to even come into this neighborhood I would have to do a couple different things.”

The Sanctuary’s menu reflects the need to do something different. Patrons can find familiar eats such as a cheeseburger and Triple B Burger (topped with bacon, blue cheese and barbeque sauce), and variety of wraps including chicken cheesesteak, buffalo chicken cheesesteak, chicken caesar and a roasted veggie wrap for vegetarians.

If tacos are of interest, the Sanctuary has them – chicken, beef, jerk chicken, pulled pork and vegetarian options. Special taco varieties also make appearances during their weekly Taco Tuesday night.

For those in the mood for comfort food, there’s also an IPA Mac and Cheese and Collard Greens based on his grandmother’s recipe, and one of the biggest draws for food – wings, in several varieties including Honey Sriracha and Korean.

Key to the menu at the Sanctuary is that everything is bought fresh, as needed, and nothing is ever frozen.

“Granted everything would be easier if I got

Food That Rocks

frozen chicken and bought frozen fries and got cans of greens, but that’s not what I came out of,” Hogans notes, continuing that his love for cooking stems from helping his mother and grandmother in the kitchen while growing up.

“If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it fresh.”

This choice dates back to Hogans’ time spent on the festival circuit. He notes one particular night after DJing when he was looking for something to eat, and all of his options were gray tinged food sitting out under heat lamps.

“At that point I said to myself, I can do this for way less money and have it way better,” he

explains. “Sure it would be more work, but it would be way better, and that’s kind of where it all started.”

But while the menu at the Sanctuary has several stalwarts, Hogans notes that the food options are constantly evolving as he tries new recipes and sees what customers keep coming back for.

“Every week I just try and come up with something new,” he says. “I have all these resources and use them and figure out new ways to make people happy when they eat.”

The resources that Hogans has aren’t strictly limited to the kitchen – friends and fans alike have proven to be a vital asset to the chef as he perfects the menu.

When he realized one of his wing recipes JUMPphilly.com

wasn’t selling as much as the others, Hogans took it off the menu. Upon experimenting with Honey Sriracha wings and finding customers raving about them, he added them.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now without the community that stands behind me,” Hogans explains. “They’re really amazing.”

The community extends beyond patrons of Saint Lazarus. One of Hogans’ longtime friends in Delaware provides the secret rub for his wings. Another friend provides the locally grown mushrooms for several of his vegetarian

options, and longtime friend and chef at Front Street Café, Brian Mahon, has been a vital sounding board and help for Hogans in the transition from festival circuit to restaurant chef. Mahon also helps Hogans throw one of the Sanctuary’s special food events – Sunday Family Dinner, held on the last Sunday of every month.

Family Dinner features an entirely unique menu and makes use of its 300 pound smoker to create special food items.

Outside of his passion for making great food and experimenting with new flavors, Hogans is also an active DJ who spins under the moniker Tommy Hogunz.

“If I’m not here, I’m probably somewhere

DJing,” he says.

While the mediums might seem disparate to some, Hogans notes that he feels an intense connection between the two.

“Music and food are almost the same,” he explains. “You’re always trying to please your crowd and when people are happy, and they’re enjoying your music and enjoying your food, it gives me a feeling of euphoria.”

Hogans’ dedication to making people happy is shared by owner Brendan Olkus. Like Hogans, Olkus spent years as a DJ, going by Brendan Bring'Em, holding several residencies in the city

and touring with Spank Rock and the Beastie Boys. He would have kept up his intensive DJing schedule had it not been for experiencing severe hearing loss and becoming “functionally tone deaf” six years ago.

Cutting back on his DJing coincided with a messy divorce, and soon the Fishtown native started questioning what to do with his life.

“I had to redefine myself,” Olkus says. “I was broke and alone and things had completely fallen apart. I had two ways to go – just collapse completely or power up and fight through.”

So Olkus started learning new skills - how to build furniture, how to build robots from junk ... continued on page 44

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