JUMP Spring 2017

ISSUE #24

SPRING 2017

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AN ALBATROSS:

PUTTING EVERYTHING LINE

ON THE

THE SPRING CLEANING ISSUE: SADIE DUPUIS, JJ'S DINER, KOREAN SEAN, SILK CITY, SHY BOYZ, PURLING HISS & MORE!

CONTENTS | Issue #24

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SPRING 2017

THE JUMP OFF Octave Cat, Eight, Gavin Riley Smoke Machine, Korean Sean, Marquee Lights, The Vernes, Purling Hiss, LOUD! FAST! PHILLY!, ManhattanSideProject, Del, Captain, We're Sinking and Shy Boyz.

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THIS PLACE ROCKS Silk City has been home to good times for decades, and is still going strong. Gary Viteri created The Pharmacy as a community-building project in Point Breeze.

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MUSIC & EDUCATION The Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth, which recently received a $2.53 million grant, is providing increased access to music for students from underrepresented communities.

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COVER stories An Albatross has been making music since Clinton was the president. They put on an energetic performance back then.

And even today, they go all out whenever they hit a stage.

When the Ground Up guys decided to go their separate ways, it didn’t mean the music would stop. Less than a year later, Alexander Charles (who previously went

by Azar) landed a record deal with a major label and continues to work with Bij Lincs.

The women of JJ’s Diner make the West Philly house venue a welcoming place for everyone.

Sadie Dupuis, who performs with Speedy Ortiz, came to Philadelphia for some rest. Within a few weeks, she had completed her debut solo project. And she decided to move here.

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FOOD THAT ROCKS The owners of Front Street Cafe created a menu for healthy dining, a space for locals to convene and a venue for musicians to perform.

FRONT COVER: An Albatross, by Charles Shan Cerrone.

BACK COVER: Sadie Dupuis, by Rachel Del Sordo.

CONTENTS PAGE: (top to bottom) Korean Sean, by Charles Shan Cerrone; Marquee Lights, by Kevin Barr; An Albatross, by Charles Shan Cerrone.

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publisher G.W. MILLER III managing editors BETH ANN DOWNEY, CHRIS MALO photo editor CHARLES SHAN CERRONE contributing editors RACHEL DEL SORDO, TYLER HORST, BRENDAN MENAPACE, BRIANNA SPAUSE contributors LISSA ALICIA, MIKE ARRISON, KYLE BAGENSTOSE, KEVIN BARR, GABRIELA BARRANTES, VINCE BELLINO, MICHAEL BUCHER, JUMAH CHAGUAN, ASHLEY COLEMAN, KEVIN COOK, DARRAGH DANDURAND, CHESNEY DAVIS, MATT DEIFER, GRACE DICKINSON, EMILY DUBIN, BRANDEN EASTWOOD, MEREDITH EDLOW, LAURA FANCIULLACCI, DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER, ERIC FITZSIMMONS, CHIP FRENETTE, JEFF FUSCO, JENNIFER GRANATO, JESSICA GRIFFIN, JARED GRUENWALD, DAN HALMA, BRAE HOWARD, MORGAN JAMES, JOSEPH JUHASE, SEAN KANE, EVAN KAUCHER, RICK KAUFFMAN,KARA KHAN, DONTE KIRBY, HANNAH KUBIK, MINA LEE, MATTHEW LEISTER, DAN LEUNG, ERIN MARHEFKA, MEGAN MATUZAK, TERESA McCULLOUGH, JOHN McGUIRE, MAGGIE McHALE, NIESHA MILLER, DAVE MINIACI, ELIAS MORRIS, SAMANTHA MOSS, TIM MULHERN, IAN NEISSER, MAGDALENA PAPAIOANNOU, NATALIE PISERCHIO, ANDY POLHAMUS, CAMERON ROBINSON, DAVE ROSENBLUM, BONNIE SAPORETTI, IAN SCHOBEL, EMILY SCOTT, CASSI SEGULIN, ROSIE SIMMONS, MORGAN SMITH, KEVIN STAIRIKER, SYDNEY SCHAEFER, BRIAN WILENSKY, BEN WONG, CHARLES WRZESNIEWSKI 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 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.

Of course, if you were willing to pony up some cash, we're open to testing our journalistic integrity. Flash the green. And don't be stingy. Six figures could get you lots of JUMP love. Unless you suck. Then you get nothing.

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

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

Publisher's Note

The Rites of Spring A good publisher steers the ship, setting the tone but allowing the editors to make the best decisions. Instead, the person at the top of the masthead focuses on the relationship-building and the business stuff. Actually, it's mostly the business stuff.

So, when our editors said the issue #24 theme would be "Spring Cleaning," I bit my tongue. They had made the decision and, despite how basic the idea seemed to me - especially coming off our amazing DISSENT issue in January, I went with it.

But deep down, I thought, "Wow. That sounds about as exciting as a white dude rock band from South Jersey."

(No offense to my white dude rock friends from South Jersey ... but you know what I mean, eh?)

Over the past few months, however, as we've assembled the material you see in this edition, I must admit the theme has grown on me.

Spring cleaning is a ritual. It's something we all do, even if subconciously. And I say this as a person who has not cleaned his house in, let's just say, several months.

But we all move those winter jackets to the back of the closet.

We find the shorts and sun dresses we haven't seen in months and make them more accessible. Outdoor fun stuff rises to the top of the pile - baseball gloves, tennis rackets, beach towels, etc.

Also, we mentally shift from the doldrums of winter, when "it's too cold to leave the house" is actually an acceptable excuse to skip a show, to the excitement of the first 65 degree day of the spring (open every window ... despite it only being 65 degrees!).

There are things we do. We have these things in common.

Oh, and, of course, some people literally clean.

That spring cleaning is a ritual of transformation, marking a season of change. The best is the first time every spring when I hear the music pumping from Festival Pier or other outdoor venues near my home. I didn't attend the Mastadon/Opeth show outside the Electric Factory in May but I heard it, loud and clear, and it made me very excited.

So, I'm now cool with the theme.

I think that we've captured the transformations of people in this issue, and we learn about what they have coming next. For example, we see the impact of punk music on Joe Gervasi, and what he's done to honor the genre since 2013. We learn about the 18 year history of An Albatross, and we listen as the bandmates explain how the music industry has changed. We hear from Sadie Dupuis, who recenty moved from Massachusetts to Philadelphia and started her solo career.

Spring represents optimism, like that feeling we get for a hot minute at the start of every Phillies season. It's that time when anything feels possible. And maybe it is.

- G.W. Miller III JUMPphilly.com

Photo by Ben Wong.

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The JUMP Off

INSIDE: OCTAVE CAT p. 8 / EIGHT p. 11 / GAVIN RILEY SMOKE MACHINE p. 13 / KOREAN SEAN p. 15 / MARQUEE LIGHTS p. 16 / THE VERNESp. 17 / PURLING HISS p. 19 / LOUD! FAST! PHILLY! p. 20 / MANHATTANSIDEPROJECT p. 21 / DEL p. 22 / CAPTAIN, WE'RE SINKING p. 24 / SHY BOYZ p. 26 /

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Synth-Heavy Jam Band Octave Cat brings together members of jam band legends Lotus and Dopapod, but with a twist.

The members of Octave Cat sit at a table at Pizza Brain in Fishtown, the world’s first museum dedicated solely to pizza. The walls are covered in pizza-themed kitsch. One wall in particular is covered entirely with novelty pizza-inspired records spanning decades and a plaque from the Guinness Book of World Records that certifies that this is, in fact, the world’s largest collection of pizza memorabilia.

It is a rare occurrence that all three members are present in the same room, even while recording and producing their self-titled debut.

Octave Cat formed in May of 2016 when Lotus bass player Jesse Miller reunited with an old friend, Eli Winderman of Dopapod. Five years prior, Winderman opened for Lotus when he was in a band called Tiger Sapian.

“Me and Eli got together and we were just kind of testing out keyboards and started recording some stuff and it was just a very organic process,” Miller says about Octave Cat's formation.

Charlie Patierno was brought in after a few

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tracks started coming together to round out the group on drums and percussion.

Miller says the idea wasn’t exactly as simple as “Hey, let’s start a band.”

Playing together as Octave Cat was more of an outlet for Miller and Winderman to explore and further their love of vintage analog and modular synths in a way that wouldn’t be possible with their other main projects.

Their love of synthesizers runs so deep that even their name is a reference to that, specifically one made in the ’70s by Octave called “The Cat.” This isn’t Miller’s first foray into the world of synths. In addition to being a founding member of Lotus, since the tail end of the ’90s he also been releasing music as Beard-o-Bees, a much more synth-based electronic project that laid the groundwork for this new project.

The self-titled Octave Cat album released in March is definitely a departure from albums that Dopapod or Lotus have put out throughout the years, due in large part to what Miller refers to as the organic nature of the whole project.

Both groups have a fairly large following in the jam band scene and these spur-of-the-moment improvisational elements are huge sources of inspiration for Octave Cat. Having only played just a few shows live at this point, Octave Cat has seen success by uploading their live sets online and gaining a small following in the process. Mike O’Donnell, of the Long Island, New York jam band Sofus, first heard

Octave Cat’s music after a friend sent him a link to a video.

“I didn't always understand where the sounds were coming from and how they were doing it,” O’Donnell says, describing listening to them for the first time, “but every note, sound and groove were just perfect.”

In today’s music landscape, it is not uncommon for members of a group or band to have side projects or to play in other groups. Octave Cat isn’t different in that it isn’t the members’ main project, but it is unusual in how each has to juggle all their different projects along with this one.

Miller plays anywhere between 60 to 80 shows a year with Lotus and Winderman plays almost double that with Dopapod.

All three bands balance a busy schedule when the summer rolls around and music festivals come back into season. Octave Cat will play their last scheduled local show (Beardfest in NJ) in June before Winderman heads north on tour with Dopapod and Lotus goes west to bigger festivals like Electric Forest and Camp Bisco.

Miller sees the Octave Cat process as an experiment in controlling chaos.

“So much about music writing, at least the way we approach it, is about a mix of chaos and organization,” says Miller. “If everything becomes too organized or too sterile, you lose something.

A lot of time we work, it is just, like, let’s plug in this keyboard and there’s just a lot of running around involved.”

- Will Stickney facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Ben Wong.

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Photo by Emily Dubin.

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An Infinite Loop of Philly Tunes The band Eight brings together a trio of longstanding Philly music scenesters.

“There’s one lyric in one of the songs where it says, ‘I’d rather see it end than watch it rot,’” Mimi Gallagher elucidates on a sunny day outside of Milkcrate Cafe in Fishtown. “That’s just sort of about, like, the end of something, and not wanting to see it drag on.”

Gallagher, originally from Kennett Square but now residing in South Philly, is the frontwoman of Eight, a three-piece punk rock outfit dripping with punchy instrumentals coupled with folksy vocals.

Gallagher and bassist Cat Park were both in separate projects (Year of Glad and Amanda X, respectively) before coming together 18 months ago to form Eight. The women both sport brightly colored hair and maintain an effortlessly cool, definitively punk aura.

The duo initially cycled through a few drummers before securing current and permanent drummer Pat Brier, of Three Man Cannon. Now working on their yet-to-be-titled sophomore EP, the band mates feel they’ve hit their stride.

“These songs definitely have a slightly different feel,” Gallagher explains. “We’re definitely more of a unit now.”

“I think it sounds the same [as the first EP], but better,” Park concurs.

Friend and fellow musician Greg Labold, who played drums with Park in a previous band, is incredibly optimistic about Eight’s future and says that they have no need to break into the scene.

They’re already part of a larger network of people who have accepted them for who they are.

“When Eight plays shows in Philly, all their friends are there in spirit and in person,” Labold says. “The scene is only a perspective. It's as big as your circle of friends. So they may want to widen the circle or make it smaller. But in Eight's case, they are making an infinite loop of tunes for the Philly scene forever.”

Eight’s sound is laced with wailing guitar riffs and pithy drum beats overlaid by Gallagher’s mesmerizing lilt. The band has curated a unique dichotomy of sounds that are simultaneously angst-ridden and harmonious.

Though the group oozes punk rock ethos to its core, Gallagher notes they draw from a variety of different influences, including The Who, Neil Young and even contemporary pop radio.

“I guess our sound doesn’t really reflect our influences,” Gallagher notes. “Sometimes, if I’m JUMPphilly.com

in the car, I’ll put on Q102 to see what’s hot right now—but nothing is really impressing me right now.”

Labold recognizes that Eight’s sound is wholly unusual, and that their punk rock attitude is undoubtedly reflected in their musical creation.

“Eight does what Eight wants to,” Labold says.

“They make many different sounds, so I can't say they sound like anyone else.

[They are] overlooked, and underappreciated, probably because they don't over-saturate the event schedule with a million shows featuring the same circle of bands at the same venues. They are modest and mindful musicians.”

Just as their influences remain varied, the band doesn’t typically adhere to a specific theme with their songwriting, either.

Their self-titled first EP was representative of a specific breakup Gallagher was going through, but the group says that this next release will be a more general narrative.

“My songwriting just depends on what I’m going through at the time.”

Gallagher explains.

Eight harbors a sound that gleans raw authenticity.

Their cohesiveness as a band seems destined to

only grow stronger now that they have secured their current iteration.

“It’s just really rewarding to write a song and perform music and play music with other musicians that you respect,” Gallagher says.

- Maggie McHale

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Photo by Ian Neisser.

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The Adventures of Gavin Riley

Photo by Mike Arrison. Art by John Karel.

Gavin Riley Smoke Machine has created a choose-your-own-adventure animated video program, as well a live show that gets the crowd involved.

Imagine you’re out for a midnight stroll in the park with your dog when you come across the principal of your middle school digging a shallow grave. Your dog takes off, scaring the principal, who also scatters deeper into the woods.

Do you dig up what your principal buried or search for your dog?

It’s a predicament that Gavin Riley has spent a lot of time thinking about for his project Gavin Riley Smoke Machine, a choose-your-ownadventure animated musical.

“For many years, I don’t think I understood it either,” Riley says. “But when you see the show, you understand.”

Riley, who lives in Kensington, has been writing and performing songs that form the narrative of the “Space Needle Mystery” throughout the past 10 years. Roughly, the story involves a middleschool-aged protagonist who discovers the existence of an insidious psychoactive drug called Jazz. It goes some pretty weird places from there.

At the end of each song, listeners are made to choose between diverging paths in the story, each of which will take them to a different song and then on to more choices.

“It’s pretty mythical, I would say,” Riley says JUMPphilly.com

about his story. “We haven’t gotten there yet in terms of the endings but we’re going to have nine different endings. A lot of them are pretty metaphysical.”

The concept is based on the young adult books of the same name, wherein readers are the protagonists of the story and choose how to advance the plot at the end of each chapter.

Instead of flipping a page in a book, visitors to the world of “The Space Needle Mystery” navigate the story by clicking hyperlinks if they’re experiencing it on YouTube, or shouting their choice at Riley when he performs the show live.

Riley tried applying the choose-your-ownadventure concept to other musical projects, but it never seemed to stick. Eventually he began writing songs on his own that at first were just random narrative vignettes, but then he hit upon a way to tie it all together.

“I had an image of a guy blowing up the Space Needle and it flipping—I think I stole this from The Simpsons actually,” Riley says. “I had an idea of it cracking in half, flipping upside down and then landing in town like a giant lawn dart or something.”

Riley has always considered himself a visual person first and a musician second. He studied photography at Drexel and worked for a time at the Philadelphia Art Museum, where he met John Karel.

“He’s like my bandmate,” Riley says about Karel.

“I can’t even imagine the project without him.”

Karel is an animator who now creates work for the popular entertainment company Super Deluxe, but at the time he met Riley was just beginning to learn animation.

“I asked him, ‘Do you want to do this ridiculous project with me that’s going to take forever?’” recalls Riley. “And he said, ‘Okay.’’’

Karel began creating the animations for Gavin

Riley Smoke Machine in 2011. The visuals fill out the world of the story and also imbue the project with an appropriately retro vibe.

“My initial inspirations for this were ’90s video games, specifically N64 and early Playstation,” says Karel. “The story is supposed to be vaguely set in the mid-’90s, so I look to a lot of ’90s styles of clothing, cars, electronics, etc. when designing the 3D models.”

With Karel on board, Gavin Riley Smoke Machine was starting to take shape. Sort of.

“For anyone who wants to make a project like this, I would recommend that you start with a plan first,” says Riley, laughing.

The labyrinthine nature of the story was itself a difficult prospect but on top of that, Riley says he didn’t have a clear vision of where it was going until recently.

“I had to create notation for myself to understand the ideas that I had and tie it all together,” he says.

In the past few months, Riley has gotten serious about organizing his vision for the project. He created a system using numbers, letters and colors to organize the narrative and create the definitive set of all possible choices. When the project is complete, there will be 21 different songs and nine different endings.

After the story is finished, Riley says he wants to expand on the performance. He doesn’t want a live audience to see and hear the same things they can find on YouTube. He hopes to add new visuals and songs, and even incorporate his own silhouette into the performance using rear projection.

“This project could go on infinitely,” he says. “Not only could you add prequels and sequels, but you could add to the middle of it. It’s simultaneously an awesome proposition and completely terrifying.”

- Tyler Horst

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Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

K-Popping Off There is more to Korean Sean than just being Asian. He's got flow.

“So let me start with my name, since that’s usually the first thing people ask,” says Sean Stevenson, unprompted. “It’s from my Grandma and Pop. They don’t sugar coat things and neither do I. I like to put on an image when I’m rapping, but really, I’ve been ingrained in the culture.”

So says the 22-year-old rapper who goes by the name Korean Sean, sitting in a small studio brimming with energy. His friends pile onto a couch while the studio’s regulars gather around a computer, queueing up a rough copy of a song Sean’s been working on from his phone.

The Uptown (by way of Mt. Airy) native has recently been making a name for himself with his knack for churning out tracks. His last mixtape, Halftime, gained the artist new admirers. He’s been featured on HipHopSince1987.com and he opened for Gucci Mane. The accomplishments are impressive considering he’s only been in the game for two years.

“Right now, I have very much that street sound,” he explains. “I moved to that hood sound because I have the experience to back it up. Eventually, I want to move toward the conscious pop sound.”

In March, Sean released “Do What I Want” with producer Rell1hundo.

“We just plan on being independent,” says Rell1hundo about his partnership with Sean. “Just paving our own way, keeping everything within the family.”

Looking around the room, it’s obvious just how much of a family Sean has made for himself.

“I always make sure my five good friends are with me,” Sean says.

He and his friends help each other out with musical aspirations, wanting to form a label called Wave Entertainment.

“The name is from Washington Avenue,” Sean explains, taking the first few letters of each part of the street name as inspiration and representation.

“We all used to live around there and we just shortened the name.”

Having their own imprint seems more important than signing to a major.

“They don’t let you be as creative as you want to be,” says Rell1hundo.

Sean presses play and previews songs from his upcoming project. He has some things and people he wants to address.

“On this one, I’m giving credit to the nondoubters,” he says.

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But it’s not always easy for this up-and-comer.

Sean previews two as-of-yet untitled songs. On the first, he addresses his family.

“My family shunned me when I told them I wanted to rap,” he recounts. “It’s interesting because they always told me I could be whatever I wanted, but now I know that they still had certain expectations of me.”

After being kicked out of home, Sean moved in with his girlfriend, Temia Billups, but managed to stay connected with his extended family. On another track, he talks about killing his alter ego.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Are people just interested in me because of me being Korean?’” he wonders.

“Or can I really rap?”

On a different day, Sean works at Batcave Studios with fellow Wave Entertainment rapper Nero, Sean’s manager El, his old mentor Chase and ever-present Billups. The vibe in the room feels like one might expect when you find a group of friends hanging out together as they tease each other and

laugh at videos streaming off their phones.

“I’m in the studio almost every other day,” Sean explains. “Usually from about 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.”

Sean’s recording a slower jam, going over the rap numerous times before heading into the booth.

“I just need to add another bar and I should be good,” he muses.

Sean has become known for his fast flow, and today’s project is a wordy delivery over a deceptively simple beat.

Always having music on his mind, Sean has been laying down the groundwork for a busy 2017. He’s planning to drop an untitled project in early June and has been prepping for a performance at the Liacouras Center in April.

He’s willing to share his story, musical process and dreams. It can be difficult to get a word in edgewise around the rapper, but he offers a simple explanation.

“I was just rapping,” he says with a laugh.

- Joe Juhase

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Photo Photo by

by Kevin Kevin Barr.

Barr.

Music Making An Impact The bandmates from Marquee Lights have donated their time and talent to help children.

Marquee Lights’ formation comes from an interesting and unlikely place: Craigslist.

“We met in June of 2015 because I answered Andrew's Craigslist ad,” says Lyndsay Mahalis, singer of Marquee Lights. “It was a first Craigslist experience for both of us, and we're both just really glad we didn't get murdered.”

“I actually intended to murder but it turned out she was a pretty good singer so I kept her around,” jokes Andrew Ryan, the guitarist of the duo.

At its inception, Marquee Lights began performing covers and working on original material. Despite having very different musical backgrounds, the two found a way to work together.

“My style of music has changed so many times since then it actually hurts to think about,” Ryan says, “but it's pretty interesting to see the handful of songs I've made on my own and how different they all are, then introducing them to Marquee Lights and seeing how much they change again.”

Inspired by A Day Without Love, a project of Philadelphia musician Brian Walker, Marquee Lights have been using their musical talents to help others.

Walker performed 90 covers in 90 days to benefit

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Erika’s Lighthouse, an organization aiming to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and depression in adolescents and young adults.

“I wanted to do 90 covers in 90 days to make myself better and to illustrate that it takes 90 days to make a change in making yourself better, whether it be mentally or physically,” says Walker, who worked with Ryan on a few A Day Without Love studio releases and live performances.

Marquee Lights followed suit after gaining Walker’s blessing, releasing a cover song per week until their EP dropped. The profits of Marquee Lights’ cover project went toward Cara’s Sweethearts (where Mahalis’ cousins are the organizers), a nonprofit that benefits CHOP, Ronald McDonald House and other children’s programs. There is an annual benefit in the fall, where the band volunteers, as well as a toy drive before the holidays. In April, CHOP hosted a battle of the bands for teenagers in the hospital who cast votes to pick the winner.

“It’s a really good thing for me to be a part of,” says Mahalis. “I was amazed to bring light and positivity in any way, at all, to kids who are sick, can’t go home, can’t be with their friends and lead a normal life.

She realizes that any help makes a difference, regardless of the form it might come in.

“However small your contribution is, it impacts them, and feels great to be a part of their recovery in any way,” she points out. “Whether it be through the nonprofit, or you go in and play music for them, you make them smile for one minute out of their day stuck in a hospital.”

“If you’re going to cover a handful of songs, it’s more redeeming to do it for kids where it means a lot more to them than a bunch of drunk college kids at a bar on a weekend,” Ryan adds.

The band has been working on their debut EP with Kyle Pulley at The Headroom studio, creating a fuller sound and leading to talks of incorporating a full band into their live sound at some point in the future. The duo has enjoyed working with a third opinion on the new material, especially from a seasoned producer like Pulley.

The four-song release will be comprised of material originating before the band’s inception, songs started with other bands as well as original music the duo has come up with.

“It takes what we're considering our best work since we've met and presenting a ‘We're Marquee Lights, nice to meet you’ to anyone who takes the time to listen,” says Mahalis.

“It’s nice for both of us to be able to have a lot of say in something,” Ryan says, “but for both of us not to feel like we are the individual carrying everything, and be in the same zone with a different point of view.”

- Kevin Barr facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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The East Coast Effort

Photo by Kate McCann.

Four members of The Vernes left their California roots to make music in Philadelphia, where they found their drummer and a supportive scene.

In the nascent and muddled stage of a band’s formation, questions about name, specific genre and the atmosphere of future live shows are often met with excitement. That feeling is often paired with nervousness, as the willing participants dive deeper and deeper into uncharted waters, not knowing what the future will hold.

For The Vernes, the unknown was not contested. It was embraced and accepted with each piece of clothing shoved into a bag as one by one, they left their homes out West to join their friends ­on an adventure.

With the exception of the drummer Pat Degan, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, the bandmates grew up in the Bay Area of California, playing shows together but in separate bands. Without a unifying bond other than proximity, the glue that brought them together was passion.

“We were all the respective members of our bands that wanted to try the hardest,” says guitarist Fabian Mera.

Before The Vernes had been established as the five-member group it is today, it began as front man Matthew Gragg’s recording project. Gragg was the first to move east after aborting plans of finishing college at Las Positas in Livermore, California to move to New York with a friend.

“I was dying slowly in the suburban town I grew up in,” Gragg says, adding that the phone call to move out east “was the best thing to happen to me.”

Gragg knew Mera and bassist Robert Sesma from California, and after a convincing conversation, the two bought one-way Greyhound bus tickets and haven’t looked back since.

The last piece of the puzzle was Cole Breggan, who plays the trumpet and keys. During a post-Christmas-break visit, Breggan got hooked on Gragg’s JUMPphilly.com

recordings and dropped out of Berklee School of Music in Boston to join the guys.

“I think the thing we all had in common was that we really needed to get up, get out and get away from the city we grew up in,” Gragg says. “We all had this common thought of needing to travel and at least try something.”

Uprooted and ready to turn Gragg’s lyrics and melodies into tightly rehearsed, multi-dimensional songs, the band needed a home, and they found that in the City of Brotherly Love.

Cara Stefchak, a close friend of the band and co-worker of Sesma and Mera in a Fishtown restaurant, immediately thought The Vernes had a place in the city’s music community after listening to their recordings.

“A lot of people romanticize that notion of taking that leap of faith outside their comfort zone, but don’t actually ever pull the trigger and take that risk,” says Stefchak. “The Vernes did. I think it’s a testament to their drive and hustle to do whatever it takes to keep doing what they love. Or maybe it just means they’re just totally insane people.”

Needing an atmosphere to harness and encourage this hustle, Philly’s music scene has met the band’s needs. In California, they listened to and drew inspiration from bands like Dr. Dog and Man Man. While they haven’t changed their music to fit one specific area, Philly is where they collectively agree their music seems to fit the best.

The Vernes came together like puzzle pieces, but they also represent one unit. Gragg, who at a young age would listen to songs and interpret their meaning, loves to write and record, while Mera and Sesma are known for going nuts on stage. Breggan and Degan fit somewhere in the middle, enjoying the shows and the people they meet, yet also respect the writing and recording process.

Attracted to their solid songwriting and nice melodies and hooks, Andy Molholt, who has been active in the Philly music scene for 10 years with acts like Laser Background and The Armchairs, compares The Vernes songs to the early Shins.

“We played a house party together in Kensington a few months ago and I’ve been recommending them to touring bands that ask me about local bands to play with,” says Molholt.

In order to make their presence known, the band cleaned up their recordings and released their first self-titled, full-length album in March.

Up until now, Gragg would write and record all of the songs and have the band members learn their parts for live performances. Currently, each member is contributing in the studio in the hopes that the songs will reflect them collectively as a five-member band.

Looking forward, the band sees theatrical performances similar to that of the Flaming Lips with the audience wielding laser pointers and the band members dressed in costumes. The purpose behind such a show is to provide more than just music, but rather an art piece. They want the audience to have an experience and feel like they are participants in the show.

“I’ve never found anything I love as much as this, and I want to be able to look back in 10 years and say at least I tried,” says Gragg. - Hannah Kubik

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DARLENE CAVALIER

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

Find out more at sciencecheerleader.com 34

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

The JUMP Off

Non-Stop Purling

Photo by Natalie Persico.

Purling Hiss frontman Mike Polizze can't stop making music.

JUMPphilly.com

Mike Polizze, frontman of Purling Hiss, is a lot like a shark. If he stops moving, there’s a real chance he might die. After releasing his band’s latest full length, High Bias, in October, Polizze already has the wheels moving for more releases.

“I’m always going to do more stuff,” he says.

“It’s kind of funny because I was thinking recently about how you get bored doing the same thing, or you feel like you’re in the same cycle with whatever it is that you’re doing. Like, for me, it could be with touring or with jobs. But lately, I’m kind of like, instead of going a new route or making it complex, like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll go back to school,’ I’m being lizard brained about it - I’m going to do the same thing. I’m just going to do more of it.”

For Polizze, a 35-year-old in Fishtown, that means writing music and working.

“I just don’t want to be bored,” he says, nursing a Guinness in The Abbaye in Northern Liberties. “I’m in a mode where I just

don’t want to stop. I have this demo-type thing that I didn’t really plan on doing anything with, but it could make a really cool self-released tape.”

Part of his sense of urgency is the freedom that comes with his position. Purling Hiss started as a creative outlet for Polizze himself. It was always his show. He could do as much or as little as he wanted. But, after his friend Kurt Vile invited him on the road, he recruited friends to fill out the band.

Now, he’s fully embraced the band dynamic for the new record, which they recorded with Jeff Zeigler.

“We’re really stoked on this album because it’s really a band album,” he says, noting that Ben Leaphart played drums and Dan Provenzano played bass. “I’m the primary writer but they put their spin on it, their personalities in it. We just work it out. And Jeff Zeigler is great. We recorded with him on the first Drag City album, and we went back to this one. He just did a great job capturing it.”

“I knew he was in the process of working out songs for a new record and we talked about working on this one again and kind of approaching it differently,” says Zeigler. “It’s got more of a spiky, angular vibe than the more, sort of, grungier sound of some of the older stuff.”

For Polizze, the real difference here was that the album sounds the way the band sounds live.

Obviously, there is the usual overdubs that come with the professional recording process but they scaled back on things so when they play songs live, they sound correct, and vice versa.

“What we sound like on the album is what we sound like live,” Polizze says. “We did it as a band. The difference would be, on the last album, I recorded later a lot of light guitars or piano, or the song just really needed t w o guitar players.

And it sounds great in the studio but we just didn’t have two guitar players, so we’d skip a song. Or a song, in my opinion, would be lacking, and we’d have to make a different version of it. So we just made this really powerful power trio, so that it’s just seamless.”

“We did everything pretty much straight up,” Zeigler says. “They’re always fun to record because they do everything pretty much live. We’ll just sort of add from there. I’m used to working on a lot of records where it’s kind of built up layer by layer. There’s certainly some overdubbing on this but it started as more of a raw, traditional band approach than sometimes happens.”

Now that the album is out and the U.S. tour is over, the band will head to Europe. When they return, Polizze will keep writing songs.

“It’s me,” he says. “It’s my thing. It’s just what it is. I’m more than happy to play and share with my friends and have them be a part of it, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to wait for people.

That sort of was a reaction to all my life waiting for people—high school, end of high school, in my early twenties, having to rely on people. ‘Come on man, let’s start a band!’ I’m just going to do this - Brendan Menapace myself.”

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Photo by Ben Wong.

The JUMP Off

The Tapestry of Voices The Philly punk scene inspired Joe Gervasi. To honor it, he created LOUD! FAST! PHILLY!, which presents raw interviews with punks past and present.

Joseph Gervasi was first introduced to punk music in 1987.

That moment was like a lightning bolt to his head, he said.

As a teenager, he couldn’t relate to the pop music he heard on the radio. He found it rather innocuous. But when he discovered punk, it opened doors for richer ideas and thrilling music.

“When I found out there was a scene, active with people interested in the music and progressing, then I thought this might be something for me,” Gervasi says.

He’d take the PATCO line from his home in Blackwood, New Jersey with his younger brother to see the Philadelphia hardcore and punk shows.

Thirty years later, Gervasi still finds a way to stay involved in the punk community that first drew him in as a teen. Since 2013, he has run LOUD! FAST! PHILLY! — a series of unedited, recorded interviews with people involved in the city’s punk and hardcore music scene.

To date, Gervasi has conducted around 75 interviews, ranging from musicians who performed in the 1980s, to individuals involved in the punk scene today, like Ruben Polo and Pierce Jordan of Soul Glo. When he and his brother found the Philadelphia scene, it wasn’t what they expected.

“Because the city at the time was very violent, there were a lot of Nazi skinheads who would come to shows, people with drug and alcohol problems who were fighting at these events,” he says. “It was a world of fuck-ups.”

Gervasi adds that it inspired him and his brother to look for ways to create more positivity in the punk scene.

When the two moved to Philadelphia in the early 1990s, they started hosting shows as the Cabbage Collective at a church in West Philadelphia. Later, they became the first to bring music to the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, which is now used by R5 Productions.

The collective disbanded in 1997, the same year Gervasi became involved with Exhumed Films — a group that organizes 16mm film screenings in the city at places such as International House

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Philadelphia.

“I wanted to bring in what I learned from DIY punk ethos, which is what brought a lot of people back,” he says. “That vibrant sense of community, I wanted to bring that to the film screenings.”

The idea for the interview project stems from a live event Gervasi was involved with at Cinedelphia Film Festival in 2013. Gervasi curated a collection of home recordings of Philly punk bands. Most of the videos were recorded by fans as far back as 1983 and many had never been seen before.

“I wanted to show it was an active continuum … and didn’t have a definitive ending date because I know that it is still something that is here and real,” he says.

Because the event would be fleeting, Gervasi wanted to create a documentary-based project with more permanence.

The idea was that the individual would be free to speak at length and the interviews would be posted online, unedited and unfiltered. Most of the artists were people Gervasi didn’t know.

Over the last few years, Gervasi has talked to people from both past and present Philadelphia punk. He says he sees a lot of parallels in today’s punk scene to what he experienced in his younger years, like fears of police presence and finding spaces to host shows.

Ralph Darden, who played in ’90s punk groups Random Children and Franklin, says the interviews are an interesting way to see Philadelphia’s contributions to the punk movement.

“He interviewed bands I had seen and only had this cursory acquaintance with, but it gave me a look behind the curtain as to what was inspiring these people,” says Darden, who is now based in Chicago and makes music under the moniker DJ Major Taylor. “It was cool to hear people involved in the same thing as you were but coming from different perspectives.”

Gervasi also spoke with members of R.A.M.B.O — an early-2000s hardcore, straightedge punk group that sometimes traveled to small villages throughout Southeast Asia for tours.

“They got to go hiking in some jungle in

Indonesia and although, at least at the time, I would have considered them anarchists, I always thought they were really fantastic representatives of the U.S.,” he says. “They weren’t going all crazy, acting like assholes. They would be really kind to the people who were there.”

Gervasi says it was important that the project wasn’t him presenting his version of the punk musician.

“I understand that in conventional print or radio journalism ... that something has to be edited into a workable form,” he says. “You pick out the parts that you think are more fascinating about what they said … and have something tight you can present to people.”

“I wouldn’t want to remove a story that they felt really defined their life in some way because I didn’t think it was that important,” he adds.

After a 2014 interview, one of Gervasi’s interviewees became a guest interviewer — Stacey Finney, who was a singer in the early ’80s punk group Kremlin Korps.

Finney, who says she has always had an interest in autobiographies, interviewed bands like Electric Love Muffin and Thorazine for the project.

“You don’t take as much time to get to know the more meaningful aspects about them, what they like and think about,” Finney says. “But hearing about how they grew up, I just felt like I gained a new perspective and appreciation for those people. I knew their music and who they were, but it helped me gain a different appreciation.”

Although Gervasi is slowing down the interviews to every couple of months, he doesn’t want this to seem like the end of the project.

Gervasi says that punk music left an indelible impression on those involved in the scene and the interviews aren’t just an act of nostalgia.

“I think they really took something forward into life and went into different trajectories because of their experiences with punk,” he says. “I think they all know people who contributed, what I like to call a tapestry of voices. I think there’s a certain generosity and spirit that comes through in the people that I talk to.”

- Emily Scott facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Ian Nessier.

From Abyss to Clarity ManhattanSideProject's David Klyman reached personal lows while crafting his latest album. He used that experience as a point to begin striving for better mental health.

Tucked in the corner of David Klyman’s Spring Garden apartment is Mace Space Studios - a desk filled with audio engineering equipment. The makeshift studio is aptly named after his black cat, Mace, whom Klyman claims “generates a lot of static electricity.”

Last year when he got the cat, Klyman was in the process of moving out of his now ex-partner’s place and dealing with a serious drinking problem.

“2016 was an extraordinarily rough year,” he says. “I was not doing so good.

And then I came out of 2016 and I was like, ‘No, no more of this.’”

Klyman, lead guitarist of Philly-based rock band Restorations, was writing his third entirely self-produced album, MSP, for his solo venture ManhattanSideProject as he got sober.

From guitar and vocals to producing and mixing, ManhattanSideProject is a one-man operation, featuring only Klyman. In each record since the release of One Big Mess in 2012, the sounds of the side project go from softer ambient rock to heavier, louder guitar and synth. All of the records are scattered with light vocals and are seamlessly stitched together, a planned process easily heard in 2013’s Hyperthesis.

“I’ve always been such a huge fan of Pink Floyd, and for the most part, their songs and records flow,” Klyman says. “Everything moves in and out of each other. All of their songs have these clearly well-thought-out transitions, and that’s what I was trying to accomplish as well.”

Klyman has been self-recording since he was 13-years old, playing guitar back into cassette players and recording that into another cassette player. His rudimentary processes has obviously grown.

Before pursuing audio engineering, Klyman graduated with a degree in English from Temple University in 2004. His appreciation for words can be found in his book-filled apartment ands, more subtley, in the tracklisting of Hyperthesis, which forms a sentence.

But unlike the previous two ManhattanSideProject albums, MSP contains more vocal tracks and full-band-like delivery. The album serves as a documentary of Klyman’s struggle with alcohol and the negative manifestation of his feelings, which he says is most apparent in the song JUMPphilly.com

“Fork.” But for Klyman, the dejection conveyed in the album is allowing him to aim toward progression.

“I started writing [MSP] in 2016, usually drunk most of the time,” Klyman says. “So, you tell the story and it’s you, but you have that cool detachment.

When I was listening to my final mixes and getting ready to release it, I sat back down and looked at the lyrics and was like, ‘Wow, you were pretty fucked up at the end of 2016, buddy. I’m real glad that’s not you anymore.’”

But instead of becoming moored in pity upon self-reflection, it became a point of departure looking forward.

“That’s an important thing about sad songs or intense or depressed music,” he explains, “documenting the way the things were so that I can move on from there.”

The way things were gives his bandmates a moment of pause. Restorations drummer Jeff Meyers says listening to songs like “Fork” are hard for him, considering his relationship with Klyman spans 20 years.

“He needed to make this record,” Meyers says. “This was his relief. His way of taking what happened and try to find a way to understand it. A lot of us were seeing the darkness in him.”

Restorations singer Jon Loudon hears Klyman’s low points in the record but also hears him transcending his struggle.

“That record you could watch him go from complete abyss to total clarity,” Loudon says. "To be able to finish a record at the end of that kind of transformation is a really special thing. You don’t see people do that often.”

Klyman’s last drink was in May 2016. Since, he’s started school for audio engineering, moved into a new place and started paying attention to his mental health. Klyman credits much of this new dialogue surrounding mental health to the movement that’s been going on in music, particularly with Philly’s own Modern Baseball.

“They have been such giant advocates – not just in Philadelphia, everywhere - for taking care of your mental health,” Klyman says. “That’s a really big thing a lot of people don’t do a lot of the time. I know I for sure was not. So, for the first time in a really long time, I stepped back and asked myself, ‘What do I do in this situation that would be the best for me?’”

Klyman realizes that he has no control as to what people take away from the album. But he wants those listening to know where he is in the album isn’t where he is now and, if they’re there too, they don’t have to be.

“Was there a chance I wasn’t coming out of that? Yeah, that was a real thing,” Klyman says. “If that’s you where you are, know that you can figure it out. You can hopefully find a purpose in the purposelessness. It can be worth it.”

- Shealyn Kilroy

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The Second Life

Del was raised in Philly during a time of great music and he DJed parties

that got people dancing. Then he was sidetracked by a career in health care. After nearly 30 years, he's back to focusing on his turntables.

Robert Del Femine, who goes by Del, has a collection of memorabilia stashed in his home’s customized DJ deck. As he flips through various saved article clippings and old photos, the memories come pouring forth and he smiles wistfully. Recently retired from an almost 30-year stint at Johnson & Johnson, Del has entered into what he likes to call “phase two” of his life. He aims to focus on mentoring younger DJs and spinning dance jams for the masses, one of the only aspects of his life that has lasted longer than his career.

A youth of the ’60s, Del credits his initial love for music to his early childhood.

“My dad, he always had a turntable and he loved Frank Sinatra, jazz, especially jazz with a lot of percussion,” Del says. “He loved the tribal beats and loved melodies. My mom always liked it. She would always give a little shake of the hips.”

Venturing out of his South Philly haven and into the sundry streets of the city only further cultivated his taste. As a pre-teen, Del attended Masterman Middle School, exposing him to a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and the flood of soul and funk of those times. This would teach him that diversity is the key to a comprehensive musical palate.

“So suddenly, what's coming out then?” Del asks. “All the early Philly soul, Earth, Wind and Fire, Isley Brothers, Parliament Funkadelic, Cameo.

All those groups that really were completely at the soul of dance music.

Completely at the foundation of what would become disco, funk, soul, early hip-hop – what would translate into house, eventually. So, I’m in it, because of school. And then I went to Central, where again, you're getting a melting pot of everything.”

A deep passion for gyration-inducing bass and percussion already instilled,

22

it would take only a mild push from Del’s older brother, Jimmy Del Femine, to send him spiraling into the DJ culture. Jimmy Del Femine bought his little brother his first turntables (Technic 1800s) and was even sneaking him into clubs at the age of 17. As an acclaimed lighting engineer at seminal ’70s dance club Second Story, the older brother even got his younger brother his first DJ gig.

“My brother called me up. It was a Saturday early night,” Del recalls. “He said, ‘You need to get your records together - don't tell mom - and come up here. I need you to play for two hours. We'll give you $70.’”

The pressure was intense. Culture giants frequented Second Story and its basement club, Catacombs, a fact Del was well aware of.

"Philipe Rose, who was one of the Village People, he used to always go to Catacombs,” Del said. “I remember times when Grace Jones or Lolita Holloway would swing by. It was crazy."

And not only did Del deliver under pressure, but he fell in love. Despite his worries, all of his groundwork paid off.

“I looked a little better then – the full head of hair, the full disco bush. I looked like Borat with a mustache,” Del reminisces. “I was so nervous. And the great thing was, people just danced. I knew the good songs because I had been writing them on this little notepad.”

He would go on to throw events around the neighborhood and DJ parties while attending Penn State in State College. He even scored a gig as the first white DJ at the school’s radio station with his dance mix show, “University of Jams.” Despite the allure of all that the dance nightlife and DJ culture offered, Del made a somewhat difficult choice with regard to his future.

“I really decided I didn't want how much I loved it to get in the way with my passion,” he says. “So I didn't want to make my living from that. And I loved health care, so I started getting into health care work at Hahnemann Hospital.”

Del utilized his Bachelor of Science degree in health planning and administration to gain entry into the field at Hahnemann, and then moved to Johnson & Johnson.

After almost 30 years as a senior executive with Janssen, Johnson & facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Teresa McCullough.

The JUMP Off

Johnson’s pharmaceutical division, Del has finally entered that second phase.

Though he’s stayed active in the music community, he’s now ready to dedicate more time to his craft.

“I planned to stop working early to do more of this, to mentor and coach kids and still try to stay somewhat relevant in music,” Del says.

Fellow DJ Francisco Collazo insists that it is Del’s extensive experience and musical knowledge that has kept him relevant and helped bridge the generational gap.

“Del has helped me learn more about disco,” Collazo says. “He lived in that time, and has an impressive collection. He's helped me discover a lot of classic songs from the past.”

In phase two, Del is especially passionate about fostering future talent in the music world and passing on knowledge gained during his decades-long journey. One of his key methods for success is simple: be prepared.

“If you're playing an hour, have 50 songs,” Del says. “Probably 90 percent will be in those 50 songs, but know there may be the one that's in the other section, you may need to pull that. You gotta be on point."

John Tordini, host of his own bi-weekly podcast on DeepHouseLounge.com, met Del four years ago at the Goodie Party, a Philly favorite. He has continued to be inspired Del ever since.

“No B.S. with Del,” Tordini says matter-of-factly. “He becomes the music and embodies every part of it when he DJs. He literally connects with every individual on the dance floor. Not just with his selections but with his antics and overall passion for the music that fills the room. It’s very inspiring as a DJ to witness.”

Del’s current projects include serving on Central High’s Board of Alumni, continuing his long-running Do You Wanna Boogie? event, as well as acting as senior editor for house music publication 5 Magazine. His column, Foundations, inspired Del to create an event around the concept.

“Foundations was my attempt to connect and show that OG music, OG funk, has absolute complete relevance to a millennial, or even the next generation,” Del says. “So then I said, ‘Let me try to start and do some parties.’”

The first Foundations party, hosted in Miami, featured the DJ talents of Rob Paine, Rich Medina and Francisco Collazo, among others. Collazo, also a cofounder of “Do You Wanna Boogie?” has expanded his musical knowledge, as well as his bottom line, since Del became a part of his life.

“He's helped me discover a lot of artists [and] given me a lot of advice pertaining to personal relationships and finances,” Francisco says. “He's become one of my best friends. I can always count on him to support me.”

Del shows no signs of slowing down. The selfproclaimed Philly fanatic has big plans for the city’s cultural scene, including a dance party to raise money for the programs FRIDAY TO SUNDAY UNTIL 5PM at Central High. $10 LUNCH “I always try to put SPECIAL my voice or my spirit Any $6 Beer, Select Sandwich in it, in a way,” Del & Chips says. “Sometimes I go, MONDAY TO FRIDAY S E E W HAT ’S ‘Well maybe it’s too HAPPY HOUR PLAYING NOW! 1/2 Off Small Plates Philly-centric, or too me-centric.’ But people kinda love that. So, 1114 FRANKFORD AVE luckily, I'm blessed. It's PHILLY | BROOKLYN | NEW YORK | ST. MARK’S | JERSEY CITY been happening."

BARCADE .COM - Ebonee Johnson JUMPphilly.com

Photo by Cassi Segulin.

The JUMP Off

Not So Loud!

The bandmates from Captain, We're Sinking made music louder and louder. Until, that is, they ran into producer Matt Schimelfenig, who forced the guys to sing and be melodic.

If you ask Captain, We’re Sinking, an emo/ punk four-piece, why they’re still around, they’ll tell you they were just too lazy to break up. Since its beginning, the band of Scranton transplants has operated primarily by flying by the seat of its collective pants and hoping for the best. And it’s worked. But now, they’re feeling like things are more in their control than ever.

“We never had a clear cut path of what we were doing in the first place,” says guitarist/vocalist Bobby Barnett.

And to make an absolute decision about the band, either positive or negative, didn’t feel right.

“If we hadn’t done anything for, like, a year, it’s not like we would talk to each other and be like, ‘Now we have to make this fateful decision that we’re no longer going to do this,’” says Barnett.

Instead, the band would just stay silent for a period of time. Then, when they were ready, they'd come back with a vengeance.

“I don’t think it has to be one way or the other,” he says.

Barnett is joined by drummer Bill Orender at the Penrose Diner in South Philly. Captain, We’re Sinking, rounded out with bassist Zack Charette and guitarist/vocalist Leo Vergnetti, is two albums deep, and they just finished recording their upcoming third album, The King of No Man, at Miner Street Recordings with Three Man Cannon’s Matt Schimelfenig.

The conversation about their band dynamic and history keeps coming back to one word: chaos.

The band barely found time to practice and, when they did, they’d lose momentum fast. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Geography, school and jobs just tend to get in the way.

For their last album, The Future Is Cancelled, they had four days to record. For three of those days, Orender had to leave at night to play shows for his side project, Philly hardcore band KIDS. “My hands were really red all the time,” Orender says, laughing. “But it was great.”

For The King of No Man, which is due out this summer, Orender and Barnett say Schimelfenig’s low-key approach helped them do something they always had trouble doing. He reined them in, forcing them to take breaths and look at everything as a bigger picture.

“Recording with him was great because he’s so

24

laid back,” Orender says. “But he’s also not afraid to be like, ‘Eh, that kind of sucked. How about we try it like this?’”

Barnett says that Schimelfenig specifically forced them out of their loud comfort zone.

“Our band has operated, at least on my part and Leo’s part, where we both play guitar and sing [and] our ideas are always, ‘Well, we have to be loud all the time,’” Barnett says. “It’s always just, like, loud vocals, loud vocals, loud guitars, loud vocals, loud, loud, loud.’”

Barnett’s typically calm, restrained voice gets more intense. The server asks if everyone is doing OK, and if anyone needs more water.

“And he’d come in like, ‘Why don’t we tone it back and sing low?’” Barnett continues back down at his normal tone. “Now a bunch of the songs on there, for the first time in our band, we’re not yelling or screaming but actually singing pretty low and maybe more melodic.”

“The dynamics of these new songs, I think we nailed it,” Orender adds.

The difference was that Schimelfenig, who has also worked with the likes of Cayetana, The Menzingers, The War on Drugs and Modern

Baseball, forced them to listen back to what they had made and not settle for what they had made while sprinting to a finish line.

“I’ve known them for a while and know how they operate,” Schimelfenig says, referencing the band’s short studio stay for the last album.

“We had more time than that this time around, thankfully, but it was less time than I usually have to record a record. So, it was a little stressful but they went in and kind of knocked it out of the park, really.”

Through this creative process, which seemed short for Schimelfenig but like a vacation for the band, the four guys felt something they hadn’t since their high school beginnings: being a band that actually writes practices and then records the music.

“This time, it’s like being kids again,” Barnett says, “writing your first record, bouncing ideas off of each other, because that’s just what you do.”

“For me, with this record, I’m just glad I can play with these guys,” Orender adds. “These three guys are some of my best friends. And if I’m playing music with my best friends, I’m happy.”

- Brendan Menapace facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Medha Sengupta wanted to improve mental health support for college students, so she came to Penn’s Master of Liberal Arts. With our customizable curriculum, the possibilities are yours to create.

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The JUMP Off

Actually Talented?

Shy Boyz put on a pretty amazing, entertaining live show. But they are also pretty good musicians. Photo by Charles Wrzesniewski.

Shy Boyz finish their set at Ortlieb’s and lead singer King SoloMon returns from the back room wearing only an adult diaper.

“I just have to clean some stuff on the stage,” King SoloMon says as fake blood rolls down his chin. “Then, can we talk in the bar?”

The Shy Boyz — which includes Coke Shoulderz on bass, guitarist Airyon Love, saxophonist RamaDom, Jimi Moon on drums, Chef Dulce Vino on keyboard and the group’s “poet laureate” Bryan, who sometimes performs as the dancing girl Anna — are a band known for bizarre live shows and music videos. They all hail from East Falls, a sleepy neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia that probably has little idea the sorts of mayhem its sons are committing in the name of music.

This may be why band members insist on going by stage names.

The group’s founding members, singer King SoloMon and Airyon Love, return to the bar still in diapers but also in scraps of their typically strange stage outfits as a small nod to decency and staying warm. Animal prints are a common feature of their costumes. So are bright colors and fake furs. Often, it’s a combination of the three. Tonight, Airyon Love wears what looks like the old Members Only jackets popular among suburban dads in the 1980s, except his jacket is hot pink.

Love says Shy Boyz were always in the ether but if you have to put a date on it, they started playing under that name in 2014, showing up at local open mics and building a following. Open mic nights can be a tough way to break through in music but this band had an ability to make lasting impressions.

Vocalist Ali Wadsworth was working the bar at Fergie’s on one of these occasions when she first encountered Shy Boyz. She remembers that they seemed normal when they signed up, except for some off-beat fashion choices. But by the end of their performance, they had stripped down to diapers.

Wadsworth was hooked.

“I just thought it was just such a good performance,” Wadsworth says. “You end up seeing the same people week after week, playing the same songs, and a lot of them I really love. But the Shy Boyz blew my fucking mind.”

Of the five friends she invited to the bar that night, one other friend liked the band. The other four were annoyed that Wadsworth tagged them in the videos of the show she shared online.

Wadsworth got to know the band over time and is contributing background vocals on two tracks for the band’s upcoming debut album. She says their antics may have gotten her attention but it’s the music that keeps her coming back.

Despite the wild stage shows, the Shy Boyz bristle at the suggestion that they are poking fun at anyone or that they are anything less genuine in their music than sad breakup ballads.

“We like to have fun,” King SoloMon says. “It's all about pure entertainment.

We put some humor in our music. People always say, 'Your show was amazing, and you guys were actually good.’”

“Why can't you be good and funny at the same time?” Airyon Love asks.

“Why is that like breaking the rule?”

Not that Shy Boyz seem to have a problem breaking rules. Their show culminates with “Big Boy,” as it has since the open mic days. It’s a boastful rap that repeats, “I’m a big boy,” and it could easily have stopped at casual

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mockery. But Shy Boyz throw themselves into the performance (this is the point in their show when they strip down). It’s silly and fun and completely unexpected even if you know it’s coming. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

For Love, performing the song is freeing. It’s a license to break the rules in a way that would probably get you arrested any other time, as he realized during one performance.

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“I was on the floor in a pizza shop in Doylestown for an open mic night, screaming at the top of my lungs,” Love recalls, “and in my mind I was thinking, ‘This is the happiest I've ever been.’”

- Eric Fitzsimmons

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Local Legend Silk City has been home to good times for decades, and is still going strong.

It’s a typical, sleepy Wednesday in Philly, but not at Silk City Diner, Bar & Lounge. On first impression, it is already clear that Silk City, located on the corner of 5th and Spring Garden streets, is a hotspot within the Northern Liberties community.

A crowd of people are congregated outside of the lounge illuminated by the neon pink sign above, waiting to see experimental electronic rock outfit Grimace Federation. This particular night is an Altered States party, a recurring event at the venue, typically featuring EDM and house-inspired acts.

Justin Berger, owner of Deathwaltz Media Group and the mastermind behind nights like Altered States, has worked as an outside booker with Silk City for more than six years.

“This is where everyone in the northern section of Philadelphia finds themselves going to party,” Berger boasts. “People will walk right in and that’s

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their watering hole, but it’s also where everyone loves to go see music.”

Berger’s own relationship with Silk City started years before, when he would drive to the city in the late ’90s as a teenager to watch his favorite hip-hop and electronic artists. Berger immediately recalls seeing rapper Spank Rock with Philadelphia’s own Santigold and Plastic Little as memorable performances at the venue.

The lounge and diner’s history spans back

decades, starting in 1954, when the dining car was moved to Philadelphia and placed next to an established lounge. However, it wasn’t until 1995 that the two spaces were joined together and

it grew as a hub in the city for up-and-coming artists.

Legendary artists have visited Silk City. The iconic cover to G. Love & Special Sauce’s 1994 selftitled album was shot at the counter. Philadelphia hip-hop alum Questlove has manned the turntables on more than one occasion and even indie-rock royalty Neutral Milk Hotel stopped by in 1997.

In 2006, the original owners closed down and the space was purchased by Mark Bee. After 12 months, it reopened with the addition of a 3,000 square foot beer garden. Silk City’s slogan, “Everything old is new again,” sums up the modern-day version of the space. It is not only aware of its past, but it embraces it. Jesse Andreozzi, manager at Silk City, explains that Bee paid homage to the old space during the remodel.

“He could have easily gutted Silk City and changed it completely,” Andreozzi explains while seated at the retro, chrome diner counter.

Instead, Bee refined what was there, making it better than ever.

After its reopening, the lounge began hosting throwback nights as a nod to its past. Back 2 Basics drew old and new patrons alike, with artists ranging from King Britt, who had previously held a DJ residency there in 1990, to Chuck Treece. Rahzel, a former member of The Roots, performed in the space this past April. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Rachel Del Sordo.

This Place Rocks

Photo by Sydney Schaefer.

Grimace Federation guitarist and DJ Wes Schwartz plays Silk City regularly.

“Silk City is one of the staple spots in Philly,” he explains, believing the venue’s longevity alone makes it stand out. “It’s been around forever.”

Nowadays, Silk City hosts shows nonstop, with a mix of live bands and visiting DJs on the weekdays, and DJ residencies on the weekends.

DJ DeeJay can be found spinning contagious dance tracks in the lounge every Saturday.

The residencies have grown so popular that DJ DeeJay’s New Year’s Eve show resulted in a line down the block.

Dennis Mink, who manages Silk City alongside Andreozzi, never knows what to expect.

“I come to work and every day is different, ” Mink says. “Every single night is a different night, a different monster.”

Berger is quick to add that one constant is the energy in the lounge.

“The vibe in there has never really changed,” he says. “The vibe is always a dance party.”

A Landmark In The Making Gary Viteri created The Pharmacy as a community-building project in Point Breeze.

Silk City’s lounge is a unique space not often found in your typical large Philadelphia venue.

Despite the small size of the venue, it still packs a punch.

“It even contends with some of the bigger clubs,” Berger adds about the sound quality of a smallroom venue.

Silk City offers not only a space to see live music and dance, it also has a striking outdoor space. Its beer garden with its painted adobe walls, beer keg bar stools and decorative iron gates looks like a folk artist’s dream come true. Meanwhile, the diner offers elevated versions of classic diner comfort food until 1 a.m., like tomato soup and fried chicken. The crowd favorite? That’s their baked macaroni and cheese topped with a garlic bread crust. One could argue it’s the adjoining diner that makes Silk City stand out. Even the artists that visit Silk City can’t help but grab a bite to eat.

“The food is something you can’t even compete with,” Berger proclaims. “There’s no venue in Philly that has awesome food, so that’s a huge thing. The artists get so amped up for the food. They just drop off their equipment, and go in for the kill.”

The patrons at Silk City are a testament to its universal appeal. While a crowd dances along to the hypnotizing guitar and electronic beats of Grimace Federation, a quick walk to the dining car reveals families grabbing a satisfying dinner with the beer garden only a few steps further. The three separate atmospheres at Silk City offer a varied and unique experience.

Silk City may have remained true to its roots but it only gets better with age.

- Jennifer Costo

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Upon entering The Pharmacy, a coffee shop and DIY music space in South Philly’s Point Breeze neighborhood, one might find a room full of warm, smiling local music scene supporters hanging out on a show night.

Or one could see shop owner Gary Viteri behind the counter, making locals their morning cup of coffee.

And of course one would find the shop pup, Sharky.

Viteri, who lives upstairs, has been running the coffee shop/art gallery/live music space at 18th and Wharton streets since 2014. He turned the then run-down building into what it is today: an established part of the Philly community.

“We think of the place as more of a landmark in the way that, even if you only come through here one time, or you come every other day, it’s a place where new neighbors check it out at least once,” says Viteri.

In addition to the space playing a role in the neighborhood, it’s also a part of the DIY music scene at-large. Local and touring bands alike have come through Philly to play The Pharmacy.

Devon Ray, front-man of Morning Dew from Fallston, Maryland, says playing The Pharmacy was one of the most intimidating shows the band has played due to the enormous amount of respect the band has for the space and all that happens there.

“Playing there was one of those sort of lightbulb moments, when you feel as though you’ve made it to the top,” says Ray. “I think it was our proper introduction as a band to Philly and the hardest goodbye at the end of the night.”

Prior to Viteri acquiring the space, it had been abandoned for almost 10 years. The coffee shop part of the space was originally a doctor’s office, with exam rooms. The back space was a pharmacy.

“That’s kind of the ironic name of it,” says Viteri, noting how most people in the neighborhood

knew the space for what it previously was, so the name was unavoidable.

Viteri has been living in Point Breeze since 2009, before the wave of gentrification transformed the longtime African American community, for better and worse.

Purchasing a property in Point Breeze during that era was a decision some people didn’t understand.

Many of the houses in the neighborhood at that time had boards on the windows. It was not the ideal place to live, Viteri notes. But he was living just two blocks away, so he saw the potential.

When Viteri got the keys to the vacant property on May 6, 2011, the place looked like a bomb had gone off inside of it.

“Most of our group thought we were crazy just for living in Point Breeze at all,” says Viteri. “I just knew it was a good idea because nobody wanted it. They pretty much almost gave it to me.”

The space has undergone some major renovations since Viteri’s acquisition.

The back area has been made into a second show space and they built an upstairs apartment, which is where Viteri and his girlfriend now live.

The basement is now home to Alex Ciambriello’s business, Ace Face Design and Print.

Ciambriello screen prints full time in this new space, making merchandise for bands, for The Pharmacy and for other clients. Ciambriello himself lives just a couple blocks away from The Pharmacy.

“Being able to stay in the neighborhood and be involved with a place that’s invested in the community just seemed like win-win,” says Ciambriello.

“The fact that the neighborhood came up so fast, that was the part we could’ve never planned,” says Viteri.

Shows now happen several nights per week, with different genres of music, spoken word poetry and other performances. Artists and bands have come from all over the country to experience Philly’s booming music scene through The Pharmacy.

For Viteri, watching The Pharmacy evolve has been like watching a child grow up.

“Once I saw this place, even though I didn’t necessarily know how I was going to do it at the time,” he remembers, “I said, ‘Sign me up.’”

- Sydney Schaefer

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Music & Education

The Business of Music Project 440 teaches high school students how to make it in the classical music industry, even if they're not going to be on stage.

Thanks to a multi-million dollar grant for the expansion of the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth (PMAY), Project 440 is widening its reach.

The nonprofit student enrichment program has been working exclusively with the School District of Philadelphia’s All-City Music Program since Project 440’s origins in 2012. These advanced high school students receive seminars and workshops to help guide them as they dive into the reality of becoming a musician in the 21st century.

This funding for the PMAY Artist Initiative will now expand Project 440’s reach from just the advanced All-City kids to serve all types of student musicians, from the beginners to the allstars.

The initiative, in its recruiting stage until the end of spring, will bring together a cohort of 75 middle and high school students from the PMAY partner organizations who will benefit from the counselling services at Project 440.

“The kids in Philadelphia need this,” says Julie Flower, Project 440 managing director. “They don't have enough guidance counselors or resources in the

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school district to educate kids in this way.”

Audition skills are one thing, Flower says, but there is a big world waiting out there when the kids learn to look past their sheet music. Alternative careers are also explored, from music therapy to sound engineering, music journalism to entertainment law.

Project 440 provides a dose of reality to kids and helps to build a framework on how to make it as a musician if they don’t end up on a stage.

“Many of them won’t,” Flower says. “They will have to be portfolio musicians, and learn how to market themselves. Other organizations aren't teaching that.

We are teaching these kids how to do it because they are the future of classical music.”

There are three different prongs to Project 440’s tune fork.

In “Leadership and Entrepreneurship” seminars, the students learn to be dynamic and stand out by marketing themselves and building a brand early on. “College and Career Preparedness” workshops get down to business with life skills, like how to really nail that foreboding college essay and advice on how to survive when the culture shock of college wears off and the going gets tough.

The last pillar, “Community Engagement and Interactive Performance,” is a core focus of Project 440. The young musicians learn analytical skills to break down pieces of classical music and make it facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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Photos by Brianna Spause.

accessible to their audiences. Whether it’s in a park, a retirement home, a school or even a children’s hospital, Project 440 facilitates small performances to engage any audience with the art of classical music.

Program director Susanna Lowey likens interactive performances to breaking the fourth wall on stage, which she says greatly increases the impact of the music.

“I think both the performers and the audience members appreciate being able to see each other as human beings,” Lowey says.

The musical and storytelling analysis that goes into planning one of these performances allows the fellows to find a new appreciation for the pieces they are playing, Lowey explains.

“When you are forced to look at the music how an outsider would hear it and what you want an audience member to get from your performance, then you start to understand the music on a whole new level,” she says.

Raymond Zheng, 18, a senior at Girard Academic Music Program, is one of 12 fellows in Project 440 Presents!, a chamber ensemble which puts on interactive performances throughout the city. He also plays the double bass in the AllCity orchestra and has been participating in the fellowship for the past two years.

Zheng says the intimate space created through interactive performances was scary for him at first. In his orchestral training, he has been used to taking his place on stage behind the conductor and blending in smoothly with the team.

“When you play in an orchestra, you need to be very focused on your musicality,” Zheng says.

“When you do an interactive performance, a lot of times you can exaggerate what you’re doing.”

Zheng was one of four fellows to perform in the lobby at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia last year, where patients and their families were invited to watch in person, or stay tuned from their rooms where the performance was broadcasted throughout the hospital’s in-house TV network.

The group played a simple piece, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Mozart, making loud interruptions and grand gestures throughout to engage the CHOP kids with the dynamics and mood of the piece in a fun, age-appropriate fashion.

“Basically, we used the piece to show different topics in music and what they could listen for,” Zheng says of the CHOP performance. “I think it’s more worth it because of how close you are, because you can speak with them and really show them what you can do with music.”

Flower says the ultimate goal of the program is to make classical music accessible not only to audiences, but to the young people with dreams of pursuing it. As technology, music consumption and digital media continue to transform, Project 440 is determined to keep its students active in its pursuit.

“If you're going to be a musician in the 21st century - and even if you're not, you can use what we teach you in these seminars in your future, to help get into college, guide you into your career, and create your own if you want to,” Flower says.

“You have a gift, you have a talent, and we believe that anyone with that type of thing should give - Brianna Spause back to their community.”

Investing in Music Education In February, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded an unprecedented $2.53 million grant to the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth (PMAY) to provide increased access to music for students from underrepresented communities.

PMAY is a nonprofit collective started in 2012 to increase collaboration amongst the organizations offering classical music education to young people in Philadelphia.

The Mellon grant will introduce the PMAY Artists Initiative, which will further allow and encourage the young musicians from each of the PMAY partner organizations to graduate their programs and move on to the next. The emphasis in these programs is the students, working to meet them where they are.

The beginners programs are through the School District of Philadelphia, Musicopia, Play On, Philly!, Settlement Music School and the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.

The advanced students work with Philadelphia Sinfonia, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Temple University Music Preparatory Division.

The Primavera Fund is an on-the-ground organization promoting diversity in classical music, which represents the ultimate goal of the Mellon Foundation Grant.

For skills beyond the sheet music, students can work with Project 440, a nonprofit organization that provides workshops and seminars about making it as a 21st century musician. Previously only accessible to students in the Philadelphia School District’s All-City Music Program, Project 440’s supportive services will now be extended to youths in all of the PMAY partner organizations.

Our Brianna Spause chatted with Susan Feder, a program officer with the Mellon Foundation, to discuss the motivations behind this funding.

The $2.53 million grant from Mellon Foundation is an unprecedented gift to Philadelphia’s music education programs. Why was PMAY chosen?

We were very impressed by this collaboration.

They were aligned with our goals for improving pathways for students from underrepresented communities. Our theory is that no one institution could do this alone. PMAY has shown a willingness to put the student first, which would sometimes mean letting the student leave their own organization and progress to the next one.

These are helpful determinants of success.

Why tailor this grant to underrepresented youths?

I think that there is a moral obligation to provide access to music education to anyone that is interested. If you look at the youngest students in the community schools it is a much more diverse population than you see in the youth orchestras and certainly at the college and professional level.

Our feeling is that we have to make a strategic investment early enough on to make a difference.

What age group is the target demographic?

We will be focusing on middle and high school students in order to receive some demonstration of success. We will probably have a leaning toward high school students, though it is late in the game for many of them to start.

How early is early enough?

With music, you can't decide your sophomore year of college that you want to be a violist.

There has to be an earlier investment. Ideally, I think this would start when students are in preschool. This is not the sweet spot for the Mellon Foundation. Through the PMAY partnership, we want to recognize high promise, high potential students at a point in their lives where they say, “I want to be a violinist.” That's pretty early for a lot of kids.

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PUTTING EVERYTHING LINE ON THE

An Albatross has been making music since Clinton was the president.

They put on an energetic performance back then. And even today, they go all out whenever they hit a stage.

Story by Brendan Menapace.

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone.

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Cover Story

F T

here’s an old saying that less is more.

The members of An Albatross have seemingly never heard it or have made it their mission to live the exact opposite way. Everything is more. There’s never enough. More notes per measure. More volume. More noise. More members in the band. More shots of whiskey before you have to get on a plane to Chicago in the morning.

An Albatross ruthlessly hits you over the head with blast beats, tremolopicked riffs, slides all over an organ and throat-splitting vocals.

Sometimes they calm down, and sometimes they pick it back up.

You can’t pinpoint one genre because they don’t give you the time to do so, like when you get knocked down by a wave and get hit by another before you can take a breath.

And that’s exactly what they want.

“Truthfully, I think that, in many ways, we’re always going to be the black sheep in so many ways,” says bassist and founding member Jay Hudak, 39.

“And that’s only because we have so many ideas of genre, of influences, of music and culture and art that seep in because we allow it to seep in. Because it’s not really a concern to be a part of a certain genre. Where we fit in is always forward-thinking and always moving forward.”

A

s they’ve moved forward throughout their nearly 20-year lifespan as a band, they’ve seen the musical landscape around them change. The Internet changed the way bands market themselves, as well as how people stay in contact with their friends and connections from the past.

Hudak, vocalist Eddie Gieda and keyboard/organist Phill Price started the band in 1999. At the time, they were balancing between Philadelphia and their native Wilkes-Barre, with some members based out of Brooklyn. While there has been a bit of a rotating cast over the years, the band is currently made up of Gieda, Hudak, Price, drummer Steve Vaiani, keyboard/synth player Kat Paffett and guitarist Daniel Schlett. They include extended members Edward Klinger on percussion and Carl Golembeski on synth and programming.

Gieda, 39, of Fishtown, is a frontman whose onstage persona straddles the line between Mick Jagger and GG Allin. He sees what they’re doing as a necessary form of art for the people. He says the people who hit the road in shitty vans and work themselves physically and emotionally on stage, night after night, driving all over the country with no money, are what keeps that pirate spirit of rock alive.

“Every day, these people are literally putting it out on the line,” he says. “They are gladiators. They are total gladiators. When you load a van, some cargo van or conversion van that is equipped to take the kids to a soccer game, and you load 3,000 lbs. of gear in a trailer and have seven people in there, you go 70 mph down a highway, you haven’t changed the oil in 5,000 miles, bald tires, you’re putting everything on the line. That is fucking beautiful, man. That is why Vincent Van Gogh cut his ear off. That’s why Jackson Pollock decided to keep drinking. That’s why Patti Smith kept living with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Burroughs was sleeping on their couch. Burroughs! He was published! Beat life. Bohemian shit.”

It’s that genuine love of their craft and idiosyncratic identity that attracted Scott Beibin, who ran Bloodlink Records and put out An Albatross’ 2001 debut LP, Eat Lightning, Shit Thunder.

“All of the people in the band are kind of larger than life,” says Beibin.

“They’re all incredibly distinct human beings. They’re all just heart. And they’re all super sincere and dedicated to their craft and community. And it’s not just about the music for them. That’s one of the reasons I really gravitated toward it.”

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or the bandmates, it really isn’t just about the music in the sense that they need to make a product. Quite the opposite. They’ll tell you that they aren’t stressed about releasing a follow-up to 2009’s London: Live release, because any music is current if you hear it now. Commercial entities can’t create emotional best-by dates for music.

They’ll tell you they’re having the time of their lives touring the world, sleeping in German punk squats and blasting MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” in an old station wagon in the Florida heat.

“I give thanks every morning for y’all,” says Paffett, 39, of South Philly. “I do.

I think a lot about stuff like that.”

“I feel like a rich person,” says Vaiani, 32, who lives next to the Druid’s Keep.

“Money doesn’t make you rich. It’s the life experience. I could die tomorrow a happy man. I could die ten years ago and be a happy man. I got to join this band. Now they’re my best friends and my family. And I fucking love that.”

Gieda recalls a time in the band’s infancy when he and Hudak took a pilgrimage to Gainesville, Florida and befriended who the musicians who would eventually form celebrated punk band Against Me! “At the time, it was really DIY,” says Gieda, sitting at a table full of empty shot glasses and beers at Druid’s Keep. “I’m sure it is in so many ways still, but it was super anarchist, food not bombs, free radio—crazy. That was the real pinnacle of that era.”

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ow, Gieda believes that the scene has been diluted by people trying to make a buck by hitching their wagons onto artists. While the band doesn’t subscribe to the “less is more” philosophy in their music, they do when it comes to the business. The consumer aspect of the music industry shifted as the ability to share music in new ways developed.

“What happened was a ton of middle men got involved in the industry,” he says. “There were bands like An Albatross, just, like, weirdo bands that were playing some basement shows here and there and playing storefront venues and DIY places. But once records weren’t selling anymore and labels weren’t able to capitalize on the recordings, the industry sort of fragmented and became this thing where people were like, ‘OK, now I’m a manager,’ or ‘now I’m a booking agent for a band that gets like 100 people out to a show,’ when that shit didn’t really need to happen. If you’re pulling 100 people a night on a tour, you don’t need a manager. You don’t need an agent. You just need to be connected with your fans and just, like, sending out emails and asking your friends to set up shows for you.”

He describes the scene at South by Southwest as nothing but those opportunistic middle man characters.

“I think the scene completely changed,” he says. “The crazy, radical approach to underground rock‘n’roll, and noise rock and art rock, kind of changed because of that, you know, man?”

So while the bandmates believe the anarchy and danger that was once the cornerstone of the scene has faded a bit, they’ve made up for it by creating their own in their live shows and touring lifestyle.

T

he band has been around long enough to recognize a dynamic shift when they see it, but they’re hardly the veteran rock band bitching about kids on their metaphorical lawn. In fact, they kind of seem ageless. There’s that energy and enthusiasm that comes with their 18 years of experience as a band. Or maybe it’s the multiple citywide specials they've drunk. The band is, however, keenly aware of what people - especially younger listeners, are looking for today: stimulation and instant gratification.

Thankfully, their dense and intricate music provides that.

“Ultimately, I think that people’s attention spans are asking for that in our society,” Hudak says. “They want the chorus immediately. They want the payoff immediately. You get a tweet, five seconds to read something. You want that time to be worth it. You want the payoff. That’s where we’re headed.

In the form of writing songs, every section of music could be its own song within its own song. That’s how I approach it. That’s how I hope it comes across. If someone is giving you their time, make the payoff for that time.”

Hudak, the band’s lone member remaining in Wilkes-Barre, gets intense but not in a threatening way at all. If you’re the one talking, hangs on every word you say, fascinated and excited. He’s quick to flash a big grin and say something like, “Hell yes” after you make your point.

“We’re not a punk rock band or a hardcore band or a grindcore band,” adds Vaiani. “We all come from different backgrounds. We like everything from hiphop to grindcore to, you know, Philip Glass. Anything. And it comes out.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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THE

EXUBERANCE YOUTH OF

It is said that all good things must come to an end. But when the Ground Up guys decided to go their separate ways, it didn’t mean the music would stop.

Even in the Facebook post announcing the disbanding, the group said, “This is not the end or goodbye. This is a new beginning for us all.”

Less than a year later, Alexander Charles (who previously went by Azar) landed a record deal with a major label and continues to work with Bij Lincs.

Our Tyler Horst caught up with the guys to talk about their new beginning. Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

Congratulations on the partnership with Warner Bros. Records. How does it feel?

was just simply getting in front of enough people. It’s very hard to do that without someone giving you a push, particularly in 2017.

Alexander Charles: Thank you. We have a good platform right now. We have a good opportunity. We just really gotta take advantage of it, so we’re gearing up. We don’t know what to expect. I made it public on my Instagram but we never really had an outward celebration for it. It’s something that I’ve been hoping for for a long time and just got in the right place at the right time. The stars lined up.

Last time we checked in with you, you were rapping under the name Azar.

What inspired you to go by Alexander Charles instead?

Bij Lincs: It’s just kind of like a building block. It’s taking us and putting us in positions that we wouldn’t have been in.

AC: It’s kind of like a Catch-22 in a sense because everybody around me is very excited, as am I, but that being said, it never felt truly appropriate to be celebrating, per se, because it’s just the next step. We haven’t accomplished anything, really. We got a deal, and that’s all well and good, but the deal isn’t the end-all be-all. It’s not something to write home about yet.

How did the partnership come together?

AC: We were doing Ground Up and then we went our separate ways, per se, because me and Bij still work together. I started putting out singles on my own, just trying to gain some buzz and at the same time connect with the fans that I already had from Ground Up. In that process, I put out a song called “Silly Me.” A few weeks later, I got a call from somebody up in Los Angeles who knew somebody up at Warner Brothers and a few weeks after that, we were in the offices at Warner.

It’s always been our priority to put out as much music as possible and that’s something that they stressed that they never want to take away from me that ability to just release what I want, when I want to - because that’s what got us here.

AC: Growth. I went under the name Azar, which is my last name. Now I’m going under Alexander Charles which is my first and middle name. As cliché as it sounds, it felt like a real rebirth to me. I had to start over to a certain extent. Shout out to all the Ground Up fans who are still following and riding with us but I wasn’t naïve to the fact that when we stepped away from things, shit was going to change and we had to start over. I felt like giving myself a different name was part of the process.

What else has changed? Are you trying to explore any new ideas musically?

AC: For me, as well as Bij, we’re just really taking risks and stepping outside of what normally made us comfortable. I don’t usually use a lot of melodies in my music personally. Usually Bij would be the only one singing on a track.

That’s not the case anymore. I’m just trying to step out of my box and do things that people wouldn’t expect out of me and I wouldn’t expect out of myself.

BL: We have a song called “Go Get That Money,” and the concept started out in one of the most organic ways ever. I’m a very sample-based artist when it comes to producing. I used to sample a lot, especially on my old work. Going through this new wave of music that we’ve been making lately I’ve been able to kind of work with Al and both help each other out melodically [and] instrumentally.

I always played instruments but now I’m incorporating them into this new style that’s more like rock and roll hip-hop. It’s fun and I’m having a good time doing it.

How has stepping away from sampling influenced your songwriting?

It’s something that I didn’t see coming but at the same time, something that I think we always expected and hoped for. It’s another building block.

Hopefully this puts us in front of some eyes that we normally wouldn’t have been in front of. When we were with Ground Up, one of the biggest obstacles

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BL: It’s easier for us to make music in our spare time. Our formula to making songs is way more relaxed. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

AC: It’s cool making songs, really, from scratch.

BL: “Go Get That Money” is a ukulele song that we started off just jamming in the corner playing ukulele and we thought of this song. And it ended up becoming something that proved to us that we had so much more capability than we used to.

AC: The song is a double entendre too. It’s called “Go Get That Money” but it’s about how money can really change your perspective and how having that “Go Get That Money” attitude is sometimes not a good thing.

Where can we hear the song?

AC: The mixtape we’re coming out with is called Coconut Grove, and it’s going to be released in the summertime. It’s a real city that I spent a lot of my childhood in but aside from that, it kind of has a utopic sound, in my opinion.

I hope that the songs have that yearning for something and that the tone of the content has a lot of aspirational thinking. There’s a certain uneasiness and a certain exuberance about being young and going after what you want, and I think that the title and the music itself conveys that.

What sets Coconut Grove apart from your previous work?

honest. There are a lot of times when I think we’ve all woken up and thought, “Did we make the right call doing this shit?” But at the end of the day, the growth that I - as a person and an artist - have done in the last year, making decisions on my own and being able to step outside of the comfort zone of making songs that were 16 bars of rap and an 8 bar chorus, just stepping away from that and making shit that I want to hear. It’s been a real liberating process. It’s so important and I think we’re all growing every day. If you’re not, you gotta check something.

BL: We’ve always created together since the jump. That’s why it’s always been so easy for us to make what we do happen. We’re very fortunate to have such a good chemistry, because we’ve worked on it for so long. We’re definitely in a good position.

What are you most excited about with this new release?

BL: I feel like I’ve always wanted to make the music that we’re making right now. I’ve been waiting for this moment to feel this good about making what we’re making.

AC: For me, it’s my first collection of music where it’s my first solo project since I started rapping, when I was, like, 16 or 17-years old. I’ve never carried a project by myself, so I’m looking forward to putting my thoughts out there.

AC: I think the underlying theme of the project is growth overall. So much has changed in all of our lives since we decided to go our separate ways from Ground Up. Some in great ways, some in less great ways, to be perfectly JUMPphilly.com

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A

HOUSE A

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THAT

FEELS LIKE HOME

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E

nter JJ’s Diner, a house venue on Haverford Avenue in the Mantua section of West Philadelphia, and you’ll be welcomed by a number of sights and sounds.

On a show night, you’ll likely be greeted by JJ’s Diner resident Amanda Schwarz taking donations at the door, stowing the money away neatly in a green fanny pack. Next, you’ll enter the living room and, amongst the people milling about, find someone who presents you an opportunity to grab a print specially designed for tonight’s show.

Through the din of upstairs conversations, you’ll then hear the faint sound of live music coming from below. Make a beeline for the basement door and that emo or indie rock or whatever is on tap for tonight engulfs you as you make your way down the stairs into the dark.

It’s not until you turn the corner from the landing that the full scene comes into view. Several strands of Christmas lights mark off the stage, illuminating 30 to 40 people captivated by what’s going on in front of them.

There’s a certain feeling you’re welcomed by when entering JJ’s Diner.

Whereas some house venues may get a reputation for being too rowdy, too impersonal or having an overly cliquey patronage, you’ll notice JJ’s Diner just feels like the meeting place of a welcoming community. It feels like a home.

“I’ve been to a million other houses in Philly, almost all of them that are regularly putting on shows,” says Sean Kelley, a JJ’s regular. “I’ve never felt just so welcomed in a house without ever being there before. That’s why I come here every single time they have a show, no matter when it is.”

You’ll also notice that everything at JJ’s Diner - from the door to the sound to the show itself - is all run by women.

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The women of JJ’s Diner make the West Philly house venue a welcoming place for everyone.

Story by Beth Ann Downey.

Photos by Ashley Gellman.

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ousemates Schwarz, Ashley Gellman, Shawna Smith and Jaymie Lunt are all students at Drexel University, studying entertainment & arts management. They’re picking up where past tenants left off when the Haverford Street abode was once known as the Michael Jordan House, a venue that at one time or another hosted all four members of Modern Baseball as tenants.

“It’s super sick, especially that it’s four young women. That’s so cool,” says Jake Ewald, vocalist and guitarist for Modern Baseball and the headliner of this night’s show with his side project, Slaughter Beach, Dog. “We were just like four gross guys,” he adds with a laugh, having just come downstairs from the bathroom that is now much cleaner than he remembers.

Even before finding this spot, the four girls decided they were going to have house shows. Despite its legacy, they didn’t want to like the former Michael Jordan House when the landlord they were working with mentioned it was vacant.

“We wanted to start our own thing, kind of,” Schwarz says, “but then we saw this house and we were like, ‘Ugh, it’s such a good house to do this in.’”

And do this, they have done. They moved in in September, 2016 and had their first show on October 21, featuring a slew of friends including Blue Room, Better Days, Grayling and Harmony Woods.

“Not to toot our own horn but for our first show, we had a really good turn out,” says Gellman.

It’s definitely been all positives from there, from welcoming esteemed traveling bands to hosting benefit shows to helping friends in local bands get discovered, get a fanbase and even make enough money to further what they’re able to do with their music.

“Being in a very new band that just started in September, we were able to get, like, six shows before we released any music,” says Kelley, who also plays guitar in Whine Moms. “Philly’s scene is so open to everyone being a part of it. The only way that works is for everybody to be a community, and help each other out.”

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Photo by Kara Khan.

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n a non-show day at JJ’s Diner, the sights are mostly normal.

The sound is mostly silence, aside from the banter of the four housemates and the rare meow from their gray house cat, who’s now free to roam, unlike on a show night when he gets locked away in an upstairs bathroom.

The house is completely put back together despite a show having occurred the night before.

“You don’t have to live in filth!” exclaims Gellman, flicking her wrists wildly as the other three housemates laugh. All are curled up under blankets on the couches in the living room.

Cleanliness is just one of the many factors important to the inhabitants of JJ’s in how they want their house venue to be perceived.

“We wanted it to be clean, we wanted to be respected and we wanted people to feel comfortable here,” Gellman says.

Gellman is originally from Goshen, New York, by way of The Bronx. She met Smith, from the Poconos, at freshman orientation and the two became fast friends.

“She had a Jonas Brothers pin and a Front Bottoms shirt on and I was like, ‘Wow, we need to be friends,’” recalls Smith.

The two work together on Smith’s music promotion site, Hit The Stage, and share many of the same career goals. They eventually realized that running a house venue would not only affirm their love of live music but would also be beneficial to their futures.

“I was like, ‘We’re going to do shows. I don’t care if we have to do them in an apartment, we’re doing it,’” Gellman says of their decision to live together for junior year.

Schwarz, of central Jersey, and Lunt, of Long Island, met freshman year on Facebook and were folded into the mix when neither pair could find an affordable two-person apartment. The four ladies then started looking for a

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house together.

“I didn’t really know what I was getting into because I didn’t really go to house shows before this,” Schwarz says. “But it’s definitely been really fun and I really like having them because I don’t even have to leave my house to have fun.”

“I’m also new to this DIY scene,” adds Lunt as the others around her react with a laugh. “They all introduced me to it. I honestly didn’t know it existed.

I’m so glad I got to know it. It’s so cool. It’s definitely something that’s in my career path and career goals, so I’m happy to be here doing it.”

Each of the girls has a different explanation why live music is important to them. For Schwarz, it was a way to escape in high school from the town she grew up in, driving miles away to see her favorite bands play 20-minute bar sets. For Smith, who started attending house shows in her early teens but says she also struggled making friends, it was a place to belong.

“I can’t describe the feeling when you get to see a band that means a lot to you,” Smith says. “Everyone should experience that at least once, like, going to a house and being with a group of people where you all relate in some shape or form. It’s indescribable.”

For Gellman it was a special treat, having grown up in a family which was not in the best financial standing.

“You don’t know who is going to be next to you, whether they’re a survivor, or they’re really wealthy or they just went through the worst day of their life,” she says of the crowd experience at a live show. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone is just going to see who they want to see.”

It’s that same type of diversity unified by music that the inhabitants of JJ’s Diner strive to accomplish at their shows. They embrace everyone who comes through the door, no matter if they’re already regulars or if they’ve never been to a house show before.

“When we have new people, we always just make sure they know who we are so if anything happens, they know they’re welcome,” Gellman says. “If we facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Cover Story

present ourselves in a respectable, kind way, we’ll receive the same respect.”

They all agree they have had far more good shows than bad, though there have been a few anomalies. At one of their first shows, a touring band, obviously not used to playing house shows, brought way too much equipment to ensure the quick changeovers needed, including their own lighting system.

More recently, a promoter who booked a show ghosted on them, and no one came to the show because it was not properly promoted.

“It was just the bands, and it was not a good time,” says Smith. “It was very awkward.”

“It was the first time that I felt uncomfortable in my own house,” adds Gellman.

Despite these flukes, the ladies agree it’s rare anyone, including them, has a bad time at a JJ’s show. Schwarz says that people might even respect them and their house more because it’s run by women.

“No one is going to want to come at you and be aggressive,” she says. “People are very respectful of us, and they do understand that we’re new at doing this thing, but they all respect it and I guess appreciate that we put this stuff on.

“We have girls doing it all, like, running things, which people might not be used to. But because we’re very confidently doing it all, I feel like people respect that.

We’re here. We want to do this and we want to be a part of it all. I think that helps with people knowing that this is our house, this is what we do and we do it well.”

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here are also some other broad misconceptions about house shows that JJ’s Diner has managed to steer clear of.

Number one: these are shows, not parties.

“Like, straight up, there’s kegs and, ‘Oh let’s get blacked out and talk over the bands playing,’” Smith says of other house shows she’s been to. “I hate that so much.”

Though they allow people to bring their own alcohol, Gellman says they prevent the party atmosphere by not providing drinks to attendees or bands.

“That’s not what we’re doing this for. We’re doing it for the music,” she says. “I guess it’s an expectation built with our house. People know if they’re coming here, they’re not coming for that atmosphere. They’re coming to talk with people and listen to good music in a more casual setting.”

Number two: they’re not making money by putting on shows.

“You’re creating something, you’re coming out, you should get paid for doing this,” Schwarz says of her reaction when the bands that play JJ’s are surprised to be paid what they’re paid - or even to be paid at all. “It’s a good feeling knowing we can help them do stuff, to know you can give back a little bit.”

Gellman says she’s heard that other DIY venues require to be part of the split of the profits, even if an outside promoter has booked the show. She’s also heard of instances where touring bands aren’t paid despite the gas and effort it takes to get to the show.

“You should be paying people for their time, regardless if they’re your friends JUMPphilly.com

or not,” she says. “They could get a show somewhere else but they’re playing your place.”

Greg Campion, who books shows at JJ’s with Banshee Productions as well as plays at the house regularly with the band Grayling, says he’s never come across a house venue that takes money from the door or that makes you pay money to put on the show.

“I think that’s what makes the house shows special,” he says.

Campion has, however, heard of other types of DIY spaces (he declined naming names) that either make the people who are booking the show pay a deposit in order to have their show there, or they’ll take a large percentage at the door.

“That’s doing nothing but taking money away from the bands, which is kind of counterintuitive because it is the DIY scene,” he adds.

The money it takes to supply cups, toilet paper, electrical cords and other necessities to JJ’s patrons usually comes out of the inhabitants’ pockets, they say. If there’s an instance they have a great show and can take $10 from the earnings, it always goes right back into what it takes to put on the next one.

“We did treat ourselves one time,” Schwarz shares hesitantly. “We got a pizza.”

Number three: the DIY scene should not be cliquey. All are welcome at JJ’s Diner.

The girls feel the house show scene has shifted in recent years from the time when spaces like Golden Tea House reigned and were more notable and accessible to a diverse crowd.

Knowing that walking into a stranger’s house can be awkward, they try their best to make every single person who walks through their door feel the exact opposite.

“You want to make it comfortable so that people can walk through that door confidently because there’s so many times that we’ve gone to shows and we’ve had our friends go in first so that we can follow,” Gellman says.

For Mary Cosentini, a JJ’s regular who has only been attending DIY shows for the last 6 months, the house venue has opened her up to a brand new world, both musically and socially.

“I’ve never met people who I meshed with so well, and felt like they were my people,” she says. “It’s crazy to me. Bands that I never thought I would get into, I’m getting into. It’s really crazy, but it’s just like family.”

The ladies of JJ’s Diner plan to stay in the house and continue hosting shows through the next year, until they graduate. They’re still in awe that they’ve been able to establish a house venue that feels like a home to them and to so many others.

“I suck at making friends, so the fact that I live with three of my best friends and I get to make friends going to shows and meeting people who live in other states, it kind of completes me,” Smith says. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it without sounding really fucking cliche.”

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THE

ACCIDENTAL PHILADELPHIAN Sadie Dupuis, who performs with Speedy Ortiz, came to Philadelphia for some rest.

Within a few weeks, she had completed her debut solo project. And she decided to move here.

Story by Dave Miniaci.

Photos by Rachel Del Sordo.

I

t was just two weeks in Fishtown.

A tiny apartment, a keyboard, endless notes and her thoughts.

After several years living in Massachusetts, singer Sadie Dupuis, who performs with Speedy Ortiz, needed a change.

“I was just kind of getting tired of living there,” recalls Dupuis, sitting at a wobbly table in West Philly’s Satellite Cafe, escaping the chilly day with some tea and a bagel (mostly for the cream cheese). “We had just gotten off a tour and I was having some troubles with a relationship and I just thought, ‘Hey, I’ll go to Philly for two weeks and see if I feel better.’”

She lived in a friend’s apartment in Fishtown and left with a solo pop album.

Her debut solo record, Slugger, was released under the pseudonym Sad13 in November 2016. Slugger was a departure from the work of Speedy Ortiz, the indie rock stalwarts who most recently released the critically acclaimed Foil Deer in 2015.

So she decided to move to Philadelphia.

I

t’s not necessarily starting over for Dupuis. She still has Speedy Ortiz.

They’re currently getting in early work on their next album.

But the move to Philly marks a new chapter in her already interesting life.

“I sort of outlived my purpose there,” Dupuis says of Massachusetts. “A lot of friends moved away. I was really inspired by the music and arts scene here and I figure, if I’m gonna be home two months out of the year, I might as well be in a place where I’m really excited by shows I can see. This is a very supportive community. Every time we came through Philly on tour, it reminded me of when I was first hanging out in Boston.”

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riginally from New York, Dupuis moved to Massachusetts and later earned a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the University of Massachusetts. She then began to teach writing while balancing her work as a musician. Eventually, touring for Speedy Ortiz took over her time and she became a full-time musician.

“I had been working on some home recording stuff after I moved to Massachusetts and I missed playing in bands and missed my friends’ bands,” she says. “I got together some people to form a band and, at some point, I was making as much from playing shows as I was teaching. And was just burning myself out, playing a show in Cleveland on a Monday and then have to teach at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.”

The insanity of her schedule as she tried to balance parts of her life is not lost on her.

“That was a good use of time,” she jokes.

Despite trying to simplify or streamline, things only got busier. The band’s 2013 album, Major Arcana, garnered attention and thrust them into the indie rock spotlight. A couple years of touring and the Real Hair EP led to festival

42

performances.

And after touring for Foil Deer wrapped up, Dupuis felt the need for change.

“I just kinda decided I’m gonna go to Philly for a couple weeks, see what happens and the work I do is going to be my solo album,” she says.

S

o Dupuis found herself writing and recording in that apartment, which she jokingly describes as not much bigger than the two-foot-wide table at which she is currently seated. She had laid a lot of the groundwork through the years, collecting several notes, recordings and samples she made that didn’t quite fit Speedy Ortiz’s sound.

That band’s frantic guitar rock is not found on this record, which is a bubbly and catchy pop record with plenty of synth.

“I had all these notes and voice recordings I made over the years when I had spare moments,” she recalls. “We’d maybe be at a rest stop and something would come to me and I’d record it on my phone while trying not to be so loud that the family of nine in the next stall over would hear me singing.”

Dupuis spent those two weeks piecing these bits and fragments together and honing her talents as a producer. Or at least having some fun with it.

“At some point, Speedy kinda outgrew my skills as a producer,” she jokes.

“But with an electronic pop record, it was kinda easy to fumble through it.”

The album is different than the intricate and sometimes vicious guitar rock on Speedy Ortiz records. Slugger is full of poppy, synth-laden tracks that are atmospheric but still noisy.

“I think I got a little carried away with the synth,” she jokes.

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arl Ferm, bassist for Speedy Ortiz, praises his bandmate on what he says is an amazing record.

“It’s really catchy and well-written,” says Ferm, a Boston resident,.

“It's been cool to see Sadie perform with a different band since I haven't gotten to be an audience member since her Quilty days."

The album earned praise, not just for the musical style but also the lyrics.

Lead single “Get a Yes” garnered attention especially for its sing-songy lyrics about consent.

“It is an important subject and I haven’t heard it represented in a pop music format, much less in much pop culture,” she says. “It was wanting the representation of something that is special to any person’s sex or romantic life into pop music, which is so often concerned with sex and romance. It’s been cool to get emails from people who have heard the songs on the album and said how they made them feel some way.”

The solo effort and accompanying tour have been unfamiliar territory for Dupuis, who is used to sharing the stage with her bandmates in Speedy Ortiz.

“I just played a few shows solo for the first time since high school, and now facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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I’m 28,” Dupuis says. “I don’t know that I’ve ever played by myself before. It’s really stressful and I don’t know why. I can play these big festivals and be fine but up there but by myself, without a band? I played my first show in Boston and the room was like half full and I had just hoped to embarrass myself in front of fewer people.”

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upuis left that tiny Fishtown apartment and moved to West Philly, where she resides when not on the road. Those times at home are brief. She jokes about the messy state of her house. She had been hurried earlier today by having to pick up a new shipment of records for her tour and a cheap bass amp on Craigslist for her bassist.

Ferm says Dupuis move to Philly makes sense.

“Philly has always had a great music scene and it's only growing,” he says.

“The rent is cheap and it's a great location for touring.”

Dupuis recently helped kick off Philly’s first Indie Pop Prom, which took place at First Unitarian Church. It had been held every year in New York City for the last five years. This year it took place in both cities. The original Indie Pop Prom began as a birthday party for freelance writer Maria Sherman and has become an annual gathering of friends and bands, all of whom come dressed up for a fun dance party/concert.

“It was my 21st birthday and I had never booked a show before,” says Sherman, who also moved to Philly recently. “I decided I wanted to figure out how to book a show. Also, it was my birthday, so great excuse. Now people had to hang out with me.”

Sherman had been a fan of Speedy Ortiz for a number of years and attended many shows. She and Dupuis quickly became friends, and Sherman jokes Dupuis was the reason she moved here from New York.

“I don’t know if I asked her questions about Philly but we definitely talked about venues and stuff,” Sherman says of the time when she was planning to move to Philly. “When I first moved here, I didn’t really know anyone, so we went to shows together. I hope she was prepared for that, being my only friend for awhile.”

So, obviously, when Sherman was planning the first Philly Indie Pop Prom,

JUMPphilly.com

she went to Dupuis to ask about playing.

“It just seemed so up her alley,” Sherman says. “She loves an excuse to dress up.”

It meant even more to Dupuis, who lost her father to cancer a few years prior, as the show benefited the Pink Fund, an organization that assists those struggling with breast cancer.

“It was a really fun night but also really emotional and moving,” Dupuis says.

“But the Church is so fun because you get people of all ages, so it was great seeing people all decked out. And everyone looked beautiful.”

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upuis is following up her solo debut with her own label. Wax Nine Records, an imprint of Carpark, is off the ground and running with a few secret artists who played SXSW this year and a lineup to be named later. The name comes from the pen name of Dupuis’s mom, Diane Dupuis, who worked for Punk Magazine in the ’70s after entering a trivia contest.

“When Punk Magazine first came out, they had a trivia contest in issue one, the one with Lou Reed on the cover,” Diane Dupuis recalls. “I filled it out and decided to use the pen name Wax (as in records) Nine (because it's a power number). Later I saw an ad in the Village Voice that Punk was looking for help. When I said I had entered the contest, John Holmstrom, the editor, said, ‘You're a girl? You won!’ I also got the job.”

Diane Dupuis helped out during the creation of her daughter's record label.

“I did the logo and birthed the child,” she says with a laugh.

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here’s no doubt it has been an exciting but also challenging year for Dupuis. But it has been a rewarding one.

“Obviously I just wanted to be close to Satellite,” she says, motioning to the cafe after taking a sip of tea and finishing her bagel. “I had a feeling I would like moving here. While I had been here on tour and recorded here, I think you need a few weeks before you can really tell if you like a city or not.

And I did. It’s been about a year now and I still like it here.”

She pauses.

“Though someone stole my trash cans and recycling bins,” she says, smiling and shrugging. “I guess stranger things have happened.”

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The owners of Front Street Cafe created a menu for healthy dining, a space for locals to convene and a venue for musicians to perform.

One block north of Girard Avenue in Fishtown sits Front Street Cafe, a large, three-story building on the southeast corner of Front and Thompson streets.

It’s rather unassuming from the outside but once inside, it is an airy escape filled with green plants, natural light, high ceilings and fresh food and drinks.

Owner and general manager Lee Larkin sits at a reclaimed wood table on the first floor of his restaurant and talks above the ambient sound of cups clinking and faint music playing from overhead speakers.

“I’ve been in this neighborhood on and off since `98,” Larkin says. “I purchased this building in 2003, when it was still a pretty rough neighborhood. As we saw the neighborhood develop, because this is a prime location, we started thinking maybe we should open a cafe here.”

Over the course of the next seven years, Larkin and his partner, Nicole Barclay, worked to develop the concept for the cafe. Inspired by their extensive travels through Europe and South America, as well as their own personal dietary restrictions, they decided to open a European-style cafe that placed a focus on providing healthy, seasonal dining options to patrons who also live with unique dietary needs.

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Interior and food photos by Ryan Geraghty.

Attention to Detail

“Instead of being able to choose from 20 percent of the menu, we wanted people to be able to choose from 80 percent of the menu,” Larkin explains.

The kitchen uses locally-sourced produce, sustainably-harvested fish, grass-fed beef and products from local bakeries to create food for those seeking healthier options, have gluten sensitivities or are vegetarian or vegan.

“People’s tastes have changed,” Larkin notes. “Diners are becoming more intelligent. They are more interested in what they’re putting in their mouth.”

The restaurant is open seven days per week for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

During the day, the space also functions as a laid-back cafe, with a full coffee shop and bar serving coffee and tea, smoothies and juices on one side, and craft cocktails and local draft beer on the other.

It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon and the cafe is buzzing with activity.

People come in and out of the coffee shop, sit downstairs for lunch service or find a quiet table to do work in the garden patio area or upstairs on the second floor.

“Having the coffee shop kind of gives the place some vibrancy,” Larkin says.

“We’re providing a place for people to come and just work, have informal meetings.”

The restaurant is the backbone of Front Street Cafe but it isn’t the only draw for patrons.

“One of the visions we had for here was to make it a community-based space,” Larkin says.

A Maryland native, Larkin moved to Philadelphia in 1991 to attend Drexel University. He started working in nightclubs, putting in time at well-known venues like the TLA and The Trocadero. He began to DJ in the early 2000s and now uses his extensive

Food That Rocks

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

network and experience as a professional sound engineer to coordinate the live music and entertainment at Front Street Cafe.

“We have five DJ nights a month,” Larkin says. “We also have singersongwriters who come in and play as background entertainment on Friday nights for diners.”

One of the more popular events is the Cafe’s monthly live mic night, The Warm Up. Larkin’s friend Geri Vanore produces the event.

Vanore, a Port Richmond resident, attends performances throughout the city to scope out new talent.

“If there are any musicians who stand out to me, or if I can feel the energy in the room change when they’re playing, I invite them to come play as a featured artist,” Vanore says.

Previous featured performers include Elissa Janelle Velveteen, Alexa Gold, Plum Dragoness and Kuf Knotz.

“Very comfortable, very warm, very welcoming,” says Knotz about the event. “The audience is always great, very attentive and interactive. I feel like an event like this was so needed in Philly. Its community feel is so important to the nurturing of the new talent and folks performing for the first time.”

The Warm Up is unique because of the focus that it puts on community and participation.

“The purpose of the event was to bring together established artists and also up-andcoming artists,” Vanore says. “No matter what your expertise is or how far along you are in your career, you can always learn something from someone.”

The event is held upstairs in the cafe. It starts and ends with a community jam session.

“They can sing from their seat or get up on the mic and play with the band,” Vanore says. “For the end jam, everyone gets on a mic. They’re all warmed up.

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Sometimes they’ll sing and jam together.”

The night alternates between sets from the featured artists and blocks of open mic time. Participants are accompanied by the house band, regularly featuring West Philadelphia Orchestra’s Elliot Levin, singer songwriter Sonni Shine and Worldtown Soundsystem’s Gary Dann.

“The Warm Up is one of the most unique events in Philadelphia right now,” says Dann, who feels honored to play drums as the house band.

“It's the perfect balance of open mic night, jam session and a curated musician showcase. Geri, who is incredibly talented and multi-faceted, is incubating a special community.”

The Warm Up deliberately starts and ends early in the evening, running from around 7 to 9 p.m. on the second Monday of every month.

“I did my best to try to figure out a way to keep people sticking around,” Vanore explains. “We want an audience. It’s about community.

People will come out and stay for the whole thing.”

Her attention to detail has not been lost on the crowd or the performers.

“I use to attend a lot of open mics or jams sessions and even hosted one for years at The World Cafe,” says Knotz. “All the best parts of those are what make up this event. Geri did her studying, planning and brought all the pieces together for a phenomenal event.”

Those efforts have been successful, as people continue to show up for each installment of The Warm Up. “It’s been packed pretty much every time,” Vanore says.

In addition to the music at Front Street Cafe, the crew also holds events to support local artists, including monthly First Friday art openings and community trunk shows, called Front Street Fleas, where local artisans showcase their work in the garden or up on the second floor.

Plans are in the works to renovate the top floor of the building into an additional multipurpose entertainment space. Like the rest of Front Street Cafe, this new floor is looking to expand on events that they already host, like poetry readings, live music and DJ nights.

“It’ll be a complement to the rest of the restaurant,” Larkin says. “People can come in and have dinner early, then go upstairs and dance. It will enable us to continue to be creative, too, which will be fun.”

- Jennifer Granato

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ISSUE #24

SPRING 2017

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