JUMP Summer 2016

ISSUE #21

SUMMER 2016

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THE SUCCESS ISSUE: COUNTRY MUSIC NIGHT, JUNE DIVIDED, CONNOR BARWIN, AGENT ZERO, FAKE BOYFRIEND & MUCH MORE!

CONTENTS | Issue #21

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SUMMER 2016

THE JUMP OFF Iris Barbee Bonner (right), Curtis Cooper, Michael the Lion (middle image), Fake Boyfriend, A Day Without Love, Anomie Fatale, Lily Maopolski, The Moon and the Tiger, Josh Lawrence, Agent Zero, Cape of Bats, ROCKERS! and Drum Like a Lady.

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THIS PLACE ROCKS W/N W/N is an inviting place for musicians and artists, as well as staffers, who become part owners. Voltage Lounge is finding its niche in the local scene.

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MUSIC & POLITICS Marc Brownstein from The Disco Biscuits is using music to get people engaged in politics through HeadCount.

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MUSIC & EDUCATION The Dancing Classrooms program does more than teach kids how to dance. It gives them social skills.

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COVER stories There is a growing community of people in Philadelphia who make gear for musicians.

June Divided reached great success very early. And then the band took some time off. They're back!

Connor Barwin from the Philadelphia Eagles loves music and he loves our city. He's harnessing those passions to make better park spaces in Philly neighborhoods.

Country music has found a home in the city, at Bob and Barbara's, and things can get kind of wild there, partner.

The open mic scene in Philly has long been a place where rising talent can get stage time, feedback and friendship.

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FOOD THAT ROCKS The Bynum brothers bring Southern sights, sounds and tastes up North Broad Street to South.

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INSIDE VOICE PJ Bond toured the world as a solo artist and with

various projects for many years. And then he gave all that up. Now, he works at American Sardine Bar. And he couldn't be happier.

FRONT COVER: The country music scenesters, by Charles Shan Cerrone with Polaroids by Kara Khan and assistance from Mike Colosimo.

BACK COVER: Pedals, by Charles Shan Cerrone. CONTENTS PAGE: (top to bottom) Iris Barbee Bonner, by Ben Wong; Michael the Lion, by Charles Shan Cerrone; Spinbal , 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 JESSICA FLYNN, TYLER HORST, BRIANNA SPAUSE contributors LISSA ALICIA, KYLE BAGENSTOSE, GABRIELA BARRANTES, VINCE BELLINO, CHRIS BROWN, MICHAEL BUCHER, JUMAH CHAGUAN, ASHLEY COLEMAN, KEVIN COOK, DARRAGH DANDURAND, CHESNEY DAVIS, MATT DEIFER, RACHEL DEL SORDO, GRACE DICKINSON, EMILY DUBIN, BRANDEN EASTWOOD, MEREDITH EDLOW, LAURA FANCIULLACCI, CHRIS FASCENELLI, DUSTIN FENSTERMACHER, ERIC FITZSIMMONS, CHIP FRENETTE, JEFF FUSCO, JENNIFER GRANATO, JESSICA GRIFFIN, JARED GRUENWALD, DAN HALMA, BRAE HOWARD, MORGAN JAMES, JENELLE JANCI, SEAN KANE, EVAN KAUCHER, RICK KAUFFMAN, JOSEPH JUHASE, KARA KHAN, DONTE KIRBY, HANNAH KUBIK, MINA LEE, MATTHEW LEISTER, ERIN MARHEFKA, MEGAN MATUZAK, TERESA McCULLOUGH, JASON MELCHER, NIESHA MILLER, TIESHA MILLER, DAVE MINIACI, BRENDAN MENAPACE, ELIAS MORRIS, SAMANTHA MOSS, TIM MULHERN, BRIAN MYSZKOWSKI, TIM O'DONNELL, SHRUTI PAL, MAGDALENA PAPAIOANNOU, NATALIE PISERCHIO, ANDY POLHAMUS, CAMERON ROBINSON, BONNIE SAPORETTI, EMILY SCOTT, ROSIE SIMMONS, CHAD SIMS, MORGAN SMITH, KEVIN STAIRIKER, xST / SHAWN THEODORE, 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. The company is named after the publisher's dog, Mookie, so you know we take this shit seriously. Because Mookie is the greatest dog to ever live.

But please don't sue us. We have no money.

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

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

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

Publisher's Note

What Can You Do? These are strange days that we live in, what with violence in our streets, political turmoil, bizarre turns in globalization, persisting racial issues, culture wars dividing people and everyone freely belting out their opinions.

The fabric of our country is being torn apart - and maybe that needs to happen, but there's so much going on that it can make an indivdual feel small, almost helpless.

Will protesting make a difference? Will voting have any impact?

What can I do to make the world a better place? Or is it a lost cause?

It all gets compounded when you see your friends performing thier hashtag activism online. They condemn this person, that organization and whatever behavior they see unfit. They are resolute in their beliefs and they are not to be challenged because we are, after all, the protaganists in this cyber reality that we build around ourselves.

Instead, they confront you by posting: "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

As if I didn't already feel conflicted enough about what to do. Thanks.

We, the staff at JUMP, are journalists. We have an audience, which means we have some influence - albeit very limited. We should, in theory, wield our power to do good, right? Even so-called "objective" journalists recognize that we should be public advocates and we should decry fundamental injustices like racism, violence and general intolerance.

Here's the thing: this whole magazine project is an exercise in community-building. We are do-gooders who exist solely to support an idea, that music makes the world - and specifically Philadelphia - a better place. In a rust belt city like we live in, where middle class jobs become more and more scarce and the two sides of the city - the haves and the have-nots - walk amongst each other in a tense and suspicious way, an appreciation for the arts is essential.

The creative economy is our last great industry, one whose products we've been exporting to the world for decades now.

So, we go to a ton of shows and listen to talented performers do amazing things. We interview people over drinks and we laugh and we enjoy our jobs. Occasionally, we get deep, like in the Q&A about politics with Marc Brownstein from The Disco Biscuits on page 26.

But occasionally, we partake a bit too much and wind up splashing drinks while blissfully dancing and then stay up all night waiting to watch the sun rise.

Every once in a while, there's a pang of guilt - while innocent people are losing their lives, we're partying and experiencing this vibrant culture that is bursting at the seams. Shouldn't we be doing more?

I don't know. But we do what we can, like presenting the great diversity of talent that lives and works here. We try to create a magazine that represents the city. And we try to bring people together.

At minimum, we can all lead by positive, peaceful example, whether your sphere of influence is your friends and family, your online followers or your magazine readers.

- G.W. Miller III JUMPphilly.com

Photo by Ben Wong.

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facebook.com/JUMPphilly

The JUMP Off

INSIDE: IRIS BARBEE BONNER p. 8 / CURTIS COOPER p. 10 / MICHAEL THE LION p. 11 / FAKE BOYFRIEND p. 12 / A DAY WITHOUT LOVE p. 14 / ANOMIE FATALE p. 15 / LILY MAOPOLSKI p. 16 / THE MOON AND THE TIGER p. 18 / JOSH LAWRENCE p. 19 / AGENT ZERO p. 20 / CAPE OF BATS p. 21 / ROCKERS! p. 22 / DRUM LIKE A LADY p. 23 /

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Photo by Ben Wong.

The JUMP Off

The Clothing Is The Canvas Fashion designer and artist Iris Barbee Bonner finds inspiration in music videos.

Imagine turning on a nationally broadcasted award show and seeing a celebrity pose for pictures dressed in something you made. For aspiring designers, this sight could be validation, signifying success of their artistry.

Mount Airy native Iris Barbee Bonner, the fashion mastermind behind These Pink Lips clothing line, has made this dream a reality. For the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, singer/actress Amber Rose wore a jumpsuit designed by Bonner with words and phrases like “gold digger,” “slut” and “bitch” painted in bright pinks and greens.

Vivid colors are a key element to Bonner’s artistic style, representative of her readiness to come out of the shadows and showcase her work.

“You have to be confident to wear some of the things I make because people will stare,” Bonner states. “I went to the post office and wore a shirt of mine that says ‘Pussy Not War’ and the lady asked me who would wear that? I said, ‘You have one between your legs, what’s the big difference if it’s on your shirt?’”

To draw inspiration, Bonner will listen and watch the visuals in music videos and start painting.

“One day my little sister asked me to come watch Beyoncé’s music video [for] Lemonade and I got so inspired by the music and visuals that I just started painting whatever came to my head,” says Bonner.

Her “Queen Bitch” collection, which Bonner explains is for strong females who do not concern themselves with what others think, was inspired by a Lil’ Kim song with the same title.

“She is a music artist I truly love,” Bonner says. “In college I did a project on her for graphic design, and that was the first time I really felt like I did something cool. I’ve even made some pieces for Lil’ Kim and I keep emailing her, trying to find a way to get her to wear them.”

Walking into Bonner’s Mount Airy studio, it is clear why Bonner is drawn to the bold music icons like Lil’ Kim and Beyoncé. Immediately noticeable are big pink and red lips on the floor with exposed teeth, a silhouette painting of a bare chested woman hanging on the wall, a rack of hand-painted, neon leather jackets and threeinch lace-up boots ready for purchase.

“I still don’t see myself as a fashion designer,” Bonner says. “I see myself as an artist and the

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clothing is my canvas.”

Starting at a young age, Bonner, now 31, explains she always had a love for drawing and wanted to be a fashion designer but never thought she could do it. Instead, when it was time for her to go to college, she used her artistic talent and interest in graphics as a graphic design major.

The first steps toward recognition as a designer were unanticipated. They were the result of using her graphic design skills to begin painting images and phrases on clothing.

“I was making T-shirts and sweatshirts for me and my friends, and people would see us and ask me to make them one,” Bonner says. “I never thought it would become my way of living.”

Seeing the public’s response to her clothing, Bonner’s friends convinced her to have an art show that featured some paintings she had been working on.

“I didn’t want it to be the traditional white walls with hanging paintings because that’s just not me,” Bonner says. “My paintings at the time were very provocative with naked women, and I wanted it to have a brothel feel under black lights.”

The show was called Black Light District and was showcased in March 2012. Her friends helped with money, supplies, food, music and even lent her the space. To make some extra cash, Bonner brought some of her clothing to sell also.

“Iris is actually very shy and introverted, which is funny because, based on her art, you would think she was bold and aggressive,” says Angelique Hunter, a close friend of Bonner’s. “She must create her art to express all the things in her head.”

Black Light District sold out before the doors even opened and people left with her handpainted clothing. Shortly after, Bonner made an Instagram account for her wearable art pieces that drew the attention of fashion guru Patricia Fields, who styled for Sex and the City.

“What makes her clothes unique for me is the female expression that we are experiencing,” says Fields. “I call it feminist hip-hop, with a great sense of humor.”

Fields also sold Bonner’s clothes in the Philadelphia store bearing her name, in addition to the New York location, before it closed. Such exposure proved worthy for Bonner, as celebrities like Missy Elliot bought Bonner’s items.

“Her clothing empowers women in several ways,” says Hunter. “I think it’s a way for women to express their sexuality and feminism. The message is something that everyone thinks but won't say.”

Today, Bonner’s clothes are featured on Fields’s website along with seven other hand-picked artists. In the meantime, she is hopeful overcome her fear of leaving her comfort zone and support system in Philadelphia to travel abroad to Tokyo, where her out-of-the-ordinary clothing can meet a new market.

“I love Philly but I feel like you have to leave your city to be appreciated by your city. I’m seeing I have a lot of customers out of state and I plan to travel to those places to do pop up shows. I’ve already made steps to do so and I won’t let fear hold me back any longer,” Bonner states with confidence.

- Hannah Kubik facebook.com/JUMPphilly

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An Original Philadelphian Once a punk, Curtis Cooper is exploring different instruments and finding new sounds with the help of Philly's DIY scene.

Curtis Cooper is working on learning to strike a balance. The multiinstrumentalist played almost every instrument on his self-titled record, an album that is much different than anything he played before.

“I never really listened to punk as music, so this was the first time I wrote music that I thought would suit me more,” he says.

Before the release of the album in January, Cooper played guitar and sang in the punk band Community Service. The band was fast and played exciting live shows but Cooper says the music he plays now — rock music that has included acoustic guitar, banjo, saxophone and a slew of other instruments — is more reflective of what he listens to on a daily basis.

Attaching his name to the project has also afforded Cooper the opportunity to steer his music in the direction he desires. As he works on his second record, which he says will not be released for a while, he has learned to relinquish a level of creative control as he works with members of his live band in the studio, which in turn has allowed his songs to flourish even more.

“These songs are a lot heavier,” Cooper says. “I kinda found the mix between punk and what I just did.”

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Cooper has lived in the city his entire life, save for a few years in Boston. Though he has lived in neighborhoods all over

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Philadelphia, he recently moved to West Philly for the first time earlier this year.

He now lives in the show house All Night Diner, which he believes has had a positive impact on him as a musician. There is no TV in the house and every resident is a musician or artist. The constant playing and creativity inspires Cooper to play and write music more.

“The priority is music in this house,” he says. “So it makes everyone want to pitch in.”

The DIY community in Philadelphia has helped Cooper grow as a musician, and he has helped introduce others, like Emmett Dreuding, to the same scene. As a musician and friend of Cooper’s, Dreuding’s basement was the place in which the two used to jam to Nirvana covers. Dreuding has also seen Cooper evolve as a musician over the years, becoming an honest and original songwriter. “ I think Curtis plays the music that he hears in his head, and I think that's the best way to be original,” Dreuding says. “You see a lot of bands, even good ones, regurgitating sounds or saying, ‘We want to make music like so and so.’

There's nothing wrong with that but I don't think Curt's approach is like that at all.”

Cooper finds a lot to love about Philadelphia. Being here makes it possible to tour up the Northeast corridor, as well as head South, without much difficulty.

And he has found what he believes is a very special, inclusive and supportive music community, especially what is based in West Philly.

“That’s the best thing about West Philly. It’s an open scene,” Cooper says.

“We’re in a very safe scene out here. I’m very fortunate to be playing out here.”

`- Vincent Bellino facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Natalie Piserchio.

The JUMP Off

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

Hooked On The City's Soul Michael the Lion found the original music sampled in hip-hop and started spinning that at parties.

There is barely enough room for Michael Fichman to sit down in the recording studio he built in his West Philly home. He slides between two guitar stands and sits down in front of his desk, atop which sits a computer and huge speakers pointing back toward shelves upon shelves of his dense record collection. Then he queues up a track off his upcoming album.

“Generally speaking, this is not what’s popping in the club scene,” Fichman says with a laugh.

While that may be true of the club scene in general, here in Philly, people get it.

That’s because Fichman, who goes by the stage name Michael the Lion, samples heavily from the types of disco, funk and soul music that have deep roots in this city. It’s also got him huge recognition at clubs like Franky Bradley’s, where people are looking to get down to something a little funkier.

When Fichman started DJing at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh (the same school as Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller), the now 33-yearold DJ went by the name DJ Apt One. “That name meant I could play anything at any time,” he says.

After moving to Philadelphia in 2001, Fichman’s first claim to fame was a party he dubbed Philadelphyinz to connect his new home to the “yinzers” of his birthplace. It was an exciting time to be a DJ, Fichman says. Especially in Philadelphia.

“You could play anything at any time and mix broad styles together. And Philly was exporting it,” Fichman explains. “Cosmo Baker, Rich Medina, Diplo—these guys were taking this around the world and I was fortunate to kind of get in under the bar when people in other cities wanted to hear what people in Philly were doing.”

Fichman had monthly gigs at Medusa Lounge and Silk City, where he’d mix Baltimore club music with Chicago juke and everything in between. In his private studio time though, Fichman was becoming increasingly interested in the sounds of yore.

“I started playing hip-hop, so I learned about music in reverse by finding the samples in the songs that I liked,” Fichman says of his gravitation toward funk, soul and disco.

As Fichman’s secret catalog grew, it was his friend and fellow DJ Cosmo Baker who gave him the push to pursue production.

“Cosmo Baker, who’s a friend of mine and one of the people whose opinions I respect the most, said, ‘This is really amazing. You need to create a new side project for this, or change the name,’” says Fichman.

“There’s a certain soulfulness that has been lost in dance music,” says Baker, who recently opened the Philly branch of Scratch Academy. “I JUMPphilly.com

appreciate the way he pays homage to what came before without sounding cheesy or retro.”

With encouragement from Baker, Fichman set about devising a new alias and ended up going with his own name. Aryeh, Fichman’s middle name, is Hebrew for lion.

“I had been trying for years to access a new level,” Fichman says.

With the new direction, he was able to get there. Music that he had been working on in private suddenly found new life. Soul Clap Records ended up putting out Fichman’s new music on vinyl in 2014.

“What was old to me became new to everyone else,” he says about bringing out his Michael the Lion music for the first time.

Fichman’s first set as Michael the Lion was at the first installment of his Hooked party at Franky Bradley’s in March of 2015 and it set the bar record for total profit from sales in one night.

Seeing how pleased the packed crowd was with

Fichman’s music, Franky Bradley’s insisted he bring the Hooked party back to the venue every month.

“I looked around and said, ‘I think we’ll do it every quarter. We don’t want to wear this out,’” Fichman says.

Fichman’s proudest moment was when a DJ from New York contacted him on Soundcloud about a 40th Anniversary box set for Philadelphia International Records. To his starstruck bewilderment, Fichman learned that the legendary Kenny Gamble wanted to buy his Teddy Pendergrass remix for the record.

He was the only Philadelphia artist to do a remix for the box set.

It’s no surprise Fichman has found success with the sounds of funk and disco because really, he says, they’re Philadelphia’s sounds.

“People in Philadelphia fundamentally appreciate it,” he says. “It’s a part of our culture.”

- Tyler Horst

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The JUMP Off

Pretty, Gritty, Angry and Weird It’s an uncharacteristically cool summer evening but the energy inside of Milkboy Philly is kinetic.

The ladies of Fake Boyfriend are hurriedly arriving to soundcheck before their show. Cars are double parked out front. Everyone is frazzled. Everything is fun.

Ashley Tryba, 24, Sarah Myers, 23, and Abi Reimold, 24, are all huddled in the back service stairwell of the upstairs chuckling at the absurdity of their current state and location whilst completely comfortable existing in that space.

When asked what excites them about this summer, Myers exclaims, “I’m fucking stoked to move into our new house together.”

“We’re moving into a bigger, better, more awesome house just further west of where we live now,” Tryba continues. “We live in West Philly.”

“Does it explain a lot?” Reimold chimes in and laughs. “It explains us.”

It does. Though these Temple grads are all from the suburbs of Philadelphia, everything about these three emanates an inviting, quirky, punky and vulnerable realness – the same kind of realness one finds in abundance on any stroll down Baltimore Avenue.

Fake Boyfriend’s debut EP, Mercy, is a 4-track manifestation of their convivial duality.

The project begins with “Ship,” a writhing and aggressive ode to new wave. It’s in-your-face.

You can’t help but join their charge even if you’re unsure of the feelings percolating within.

“I think the rawness of the instruments and the punkiness of the instruments largely stems from the fact that we’ve never played instruments before,” says Myers. “And for me personally, I’ve always drawn a lot of power from punk music.”

Jake Ewald, of Modern Baseball fame who also produced Mercy, lauds the band's rawness along with its versatility.

“There was no stiffness in regard to making a certain song sound like a punk song, or making a certain song sound like a Sharon Van Etten song, or anything like that,” he says. “Everything they wrote was super organic, and their group writing dynamic was really helpful.”

Punk à la Hole and Glenn Danzig circa The Misfits are inspirations of Tryba as well.

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Amazingly, Reimold is the only longtime instrumentalist, having played guitar and writing songs since she was 12. She learned how to play the drums for this band.

Both Tryba and Myers learned guitar and bass, respectively, within the past several years, though Tryba’s foray into music took some sisterly encouragement from Reimold.

“I was hesitant to start the music project because I didn’t have confidence that I could learn how to play guitar,” Tryba says. “I just saw it as a big hurdle. And Abi lent me her guitar and amp and basically threw it in my hands.”

Tryba, ostensibly the biggest personality of the three, has few inhibitions about expressing her insecurities, though that wasn’t always the case.

“One of the reasons I was really insecure about

playing music and didn’t have confidence in myself enough to start was because an exboyfriend of mine had told me he wouldn’t want to make music with me,” she reminisces, “even though he liked my voice and thought that I had a good opinion about music, because ‘girls being in bands was gimmicky.’”

Ewald notes Fake Boyfriend’s nascent musical beginnings but views it as a positive quality more than anything.

“Ashley, Sarah and Abi created a really cool musical aesthetic for the EP,” he says. “Since they were all working with instruments they hadn't spent too much time with, the parts they wrote were entirely uninhibited and they came out super cool.”

This rawness can be felt heavily in that snarling 27-second demo dubbed “Gimmick” on their facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Rachel Del Sordo.

Fake Boyfriend channels their experiences and emotions into their music without taking it all too seriously.

Bandcamp. Its inspiration? One can thank the misguided perceptions of an ex-boyfriend for that.

The cheeky band name? Fans can also thank an ex-SortaBoyfriendButNotReally for that.

“It’s just kind of playful,” Tryba explains. “It also describes someone who you’d be dating for three months. And you maybe met their parents and they met yours. And you’re making dinner together and then all of sudden they just like… ghost.”

But the reality is that Mercy is not about significant others, nor relationships. It’s about navigating the crosshairs of who you want to be.

“A lot of times the relationship lens is really just a lens into the turmoil of growing up,” Myers expounds. “When you’re in a relationship you learn a lot about yourself. You process a lot of your huge life jumps like how you empathize with JUMPphilly.com

people, your emotional intelligence…. learning how to be someone who is kind and good to other people, but also having to unlearn a lot of the bullshit people have put inside and taught me and told me to hate about myself.”

“And a lot of it for me,” says Tryba, “Mercy was dealing with this paradox that was me coming into myself as a person. Since I was young I was kind of confused about my identity – whether I wanted to be scary or pretty? One year I was a scary princess for Halloween. And I feel like that’s how I describe our sound too. We don’t have to pick being femme or butch or tough or soft. We can be whatever we need to be to process our emotions in this way… to voice ourselves in this way.”

“Gritty and pretty,” Reimold chimes in.

Tryba describes the angriness in the sound as a

response to the violence against women, against underprivileged populations and the frustration of self-perceived limitations as a result of what other people have said or done to you.

“And then the pretty or sad parts are kind of the sounds of young adult depression,” she laughs.

Mercy takes listeners on a journey that is their journey but also the journey of many 20-somethings coming of age in this world. A world that Fake Boyfriend, despite the gravity of their music, tries not to take too seriously.

“It’s just such a dark world,” says Reimold. “It’s sad. You can focus on that or you can make your friends laugh. We’re just here to celebrate each other’s weirdnesses and enjoy them and take pleasure in them.”

- Morgan James

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Photo by Ryan Gheraty.

Open For Interpretation Anomie Fatale hasn't let her disability slow her down. In fact, she uses her music to deal with the pain and to help others deal with their own.

Finding Peace in Suffering Brian Walker's project A Day Without Love released its debut album, which features music that deals with anger, and music that says it's okay to be angry.

Brian Walker’s debut A Day Without Love LP, Solace, is a very personal project that deals with the West Oak Lane native’s experiences with depression, addiction and past relationships.

The album has two big halves, Walker states as he sits in an Old City coffee shop sipping an iced, black coffee and wearing a Kississippi shirt. The first half is about all the things that make him mad.

“I was pissed off at the punk scene,” he says. “I had lost friends. I lost my job and was unemployed, gigging to get by and doing freelance work. I was also in debt.”

He leans in before going on to describe the second half.

“I want people to know that it’s okay to be angry,” he continues. “You can find peace in the suffering that you have.”

A Day Without Love references a poem Walker wrote for a class after witnessing an incident of spousal abuse. Since 2012, A Day Without Love has been releasing content at a healthy pace, with multiple collaborators. Now, Walker is ready to take the next step with the release of the new LP. “With the exception of one song, Solace was written in 2015,” he says. “It’s the culmination of feelings and thoughts that were buried deep inside of me.”

Jake Detwiler, who mixed and produced Solace at the now defunct Fresh Produce Studios, met Walker in the Keswick area during an open mic night. He describes Walker as a prolific writer, and Detwiler’s enthusiasm for A Day Without Love is palpable.

“I want to help people bring good records into the world,” Detwiler says of the process.

Even with Detwiler in his corner, Walker admits that recording Solace, which took place over the

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course of a week, was both smooth and stressful.

“People would come into the studio and say, ‘It smells like a man cave in here,’” he says. “We had been living off Chinese food and lettuce.”

Walker wrote 60 songs for the record but only 15 were ultimately chosen. Walker’s own grandmother appears on the album in a segment where she offers her view on racism.

“I was cleaning the room with my grandmother.”

Walker shares. “We had talked for about 12 to 16 minutes. She started going on about different things in her life and I just turned on the recorder.

If you listen, you can hear the air conditioning in the background.”

Bringing people together through music has always fascinated Walker. When A Day Without Love played SXSW, things began to fall into place.

“I went in expecting barbeque and rock and roll and instead had a rebirth,” Walker recalls. “It didn’t feel like a competition between musicians.

I really felt the camaraderie from other artists of different genres.”

Walker is no stranger to camaraderie, as he frequently interacts with fans on social media. He often shares his own experiences - the good, the bad, the difficult. Living with depression, Walker is very vocal about sharing his experiences with others. He frequently hands out information about Erika’s Lighthouse, an organization that aims to educate communities about teen depression, at his shows.

And with the new LP, Walker aims to speak about himself while talking to others.

“I wanted people to act on treating each other better,” Walker explains. “I want Solace to be selfless, keep pain alive and give more than take.”

- Joseph Juhase

Anomie Fatale knows that in Blondie’s “Sound Asleep,” when Debbie Harry sings “heart beat too fast for sleep,” she’s not singing about tachycardia — the condition of having a faster than normal heart rate at rest. She also knows that “Fade Away and Radiate,” with its lyrics “vibrate soft in brainwave time,” isn’t about dealing with brain surgery issues.

But like what many do with music, she ascribed her own interpretation and meaning to her favorite Blondie songs as they relate to her life - in Fatale’s case, a life of becoming disabled in her early 20s due to complications of brain herniation that was a symptom of her EhlersDanlos Syndrome.

“Music for me, I guess throughout most of my life, was just a fun, freeing escape from all the non-fun, non-free stuff,” she says. “Now, it’s not only become an escape but also an expression of the things that were going on which were things you can’t really talk about to most people.”

Originally from New Hope, Pennsylvania, Fatale now resides in a comfortable, first-floor apartment off Shunk Street in South Philly. The walls are painted a happy pumpkin orange and her cat happily slinks around the apartment, jumping up on the sunny sill of the living room’s main window.

What allows Fatale to have a cat and her own clean apartment are attendant care services — the people she relies on to help her complete tasks like cleaning and shopping. Fatale has come a long way since her first independent housing in North Philadelphia - a sixth floor apartment that was regularly on fire, where she would have to rely on the help of her neighbors to get out of the smoky building because the elevators would turn off.

It’s experiences like these that were the inspiration for I AM Great Neck, Fatale’s first solo album, released earlier this year. From “Angels in the Ghetto,” about those neighbors who would never hesitate to carry her down six flights of stairs to safety, to “Prison of Care,” about her trials and tribulations gaining attendant care and the institutional hardships many with disabilities face, Fatale uses music to both express herself individually, but also to bring awareness to these issues as a whole.

“If I had to put everything [about my life] to music, that would be a really annoying thing to listen to,” she says with a laugh. “But I think that by having a song, it being catchy and getting into someone’s head, they want to know what that’s about and it makes them ask questions. If you can plant that kind of seed, then that is doing advocacy because it’s like, ‘OK, you can come to me and then I’ll talk to you about it.’ So then they actually know what it’s about and feel even more facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Gabriela Barrantes.

The JUMP Off

connected to the song itself.”

Born Kelianne Murray, Fatale relates her medical history to Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” As a college student studying for a biochemistry degree and with a very active lifestyle, her first warning that something was wrong with her health was headaches and visual disturbances. She had not yet been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos - a genetic connective tissue disorder that usually exhibits itself later in life.

“For me, growing up, I dislocated my arms a lot.

I had [other] problems and we just thought, ‘Oh, I’m just fragile,’” Fatale says as she pushes her thumb down to meet her wrist and twists her arm one and a half times around, showcasing the signs of the syndrome.

Ehlers-Danlos caused her brain to herniate, and Fatale still remembers that day quite clearly.

She was in a Walmart in South Jersey when, all of a sudden, her vision went dark and she felt like her heart was about to leap out of her throat. After this, she was bedridden with tachycardia and other problems until doctors finally found that pressure on her brain stem was what was making her heart rhythm go out of whack. They planned to stabilize her spine by fusing it, explaining that she would only lose slight side-to-side head motion.

When she woke up, she couldn’t move her head JUMPphilly.com

at all. It was also fixed downward with her mouth shut — a nightmarish scenario for anyone but especially for Fatale who had been a musician and singer since high school.

She then went around the country to try to get doctors to fix the fusion. After finally finding someone to do the procedure, the complications from that surgery are what made her a quadriplegic due to a wire that came out of place and lodged into her brain stem. Fatale also has a slipped vertebrae which leads to varying degrees of arm weakness and nerve pain. To fix that, doctors would have to fuse her more, and would have to go in through the front with the vocal chords.

“That’s just where I’m at right now,” Fatale says. “It’s like a statement to me to be like, ‘This is how stupid fusion is.’ I’d rather be completely paralyzed then let them fuse me more because I hate it. There’s not a single day that I don’t feel weird. I feel like a mannequin.

You’re not comfortable in your own body and skin because you can feel all that metal. You’re not free to move and express yourself.”

Despite her disability, Fatale does a lot of moving around and expressing herself. She brings her music and her message to people by playing various shows and open mic nights around the city, her

favorite being Connie’s Ric Rac because it’s easily accessible through the front. Scooting her power chair just in front of the stage and strumming her acoustic guitar as the house DJ plays the backing tracks she created in GarageBand, it’s clear Fatale doesn’t need to be on stage to command the stage.

Katie Feeney, a monthly open mic night host at Connie’s, says she’s always excited to see Fatale perform. Though she says Amanda Palmer is an obvious comparison, Feeney also says that Fatale is definitely her own unique artist.

“Anomie has a really powerful voice both in terms of what she is choosing to say with her music, but also her actual vocal ability,” Feeney says. “She has this deep, booming, lower register that's really gorgeous to listen to, like honey or molasses pouring slowly out of a pitcher, if that makes sense. I'm always excited to see her at my monthly open mic at Connie's Ric Rac because she's so genuine and what she chooses to do musically always excites and interests me.”

This opportunity to invite others into her experience isn’t lost on Fatale. She injects advocacy into her art but does not aim to jam her views down the throats of her audience. Much like her love of those Blondie songs, Fatale invites anyone willing to listen to interpret their own meaning.

“Maybe somebody else had an experience that didn’t exactly fit into what I intended for the song,” she explains, “but if they feel it, and they’re connected to the song, that song is now theirs.

“That’s how songs should be, I think. They shouldn’t just be straight forward.”

- Beth Ann Downey

15

Freedom of the Streets Lily Maopolski tried playing in the house scene but she finds greater satisfaction being a busker around town.

“Student loans suck.”

Written on a humble cardboard sign, the overwhelmingly relatable notion of crushing debt is her hook as Lily Maopolski, 21, performs on the corner of 13th and Walnut streets.

As herds of people pound the pavement through Center City, Maopolski greets the rush hour crowd with nothing but her warm, raspy vocals and acoustic guitar.

When Maopolski puts her talents out on display to the thousands of eyes that sweep the crowded streets, she gives a piece of herself to the city and finds a little bit of magic in human interaction in return.

Some stop and listen, others sing and dance along in stride and sometimes the stars align.

A cab driver stops in the middle of the street and leans admiringly out his window for a listen as Maopolski sings “Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé in the afternoon sun.

With a wink she sings the verse, “Baby drop them keys/ you better hurry up before your taxi leaves.” Letting out a deep chuckle, the driver pulls off down 13th Street and on with his day.

Music has the ability to freeze a moment and, as her songs echo down crowded streets, Maopolski brings her constantly shifting audience into the present.

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Not everyone passing the performance on the corner pays any mind. But presented with an unexpected excuse to connect with art, street performance allows people to stop and exist, even if only for a moment.

A year ago, Maopolski didn’t even know what busking meant. Now, it encompasses her lifestyle.

She says busking has changed her life both personally and artistically, as she feels more confident when she connects with people through music.

“I put 100 percent of myself out there when I busk and I get that in return from the people passing me on the street, whether it be a smile, a quick compliment or a 15-minute conversation,” Maopolski says. “Playing guitar and singing in the street alone in the city can be a vulnerable thing but I’ve received nothing but love.”

It’s been a whirlwind year for the young artist who plays cover songs on the streets of Philadelphia several times a week.

Maopolski leaves her originals at home.

She says people don’t pay attention if they don’t know the tune.

Maopolski started busking in earnest after quitting her job at Café Crema, a little cannoli shop next door to Geno’s Steaks, where she had been reserved to busking on her lunch break.

“I was making more money in 15 minutes than in a seven-hour shift,” Maopolski says.

Quickly, her passion turned into a nontraditional way to keep the lights on and those pesky student loans at bay.

“But it’s not even about the money,” Maopolski says as she starts packing up her guitar after about an hour playing in Center City.

She pushes aside today’s haul to carefully make room - some singles, an overripe banana, two mixtapes and a business card for the Ritz Carlton Hotel with scrawled handwriting that reads, “We do live music in the lobby.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Brianna Spause.

The JUMP Off

“I just want to perform, all the time,” Maopolski says. “There’s no rules to busking, which is the best part. Sometimes I’ll get that pit in my stomach before I play. But then I’ll think, why am I fucking stressed? I’m just going to have fun. Who cares?”

The freedom of the streets is appealing to Maopolski. She tried out the house show scene for a while with her indie rock band, Space Boner. But that was short-lived and more just about people coming together to jam.

When busking, Maopolski can show up where she wants, when she wants and without any expectations. She says it just jives better with her lifestyle.

Sophiya Sydoryak brought Maopolski out for her first busking experience.

With Sydoryak on the hula hoop and Maopolski on the guitar, the pair made a dynamic busking duo.

Maopolski was hooked, and began going solo. Sydoryak says Maopolski's demeanor and laid-back attitude is what draws people in.

“She just busks because she wants to share art with the world,” Sydoryak says. “There’s something simple and untouched about that. I find that if you share your passion aimlessly, just because this is what you love to do, success finds you.”

And for Maopolski, that seems to be a trend.

She was once belting the chorus to Radiohead’s “Creep” outside of Café Crema and caught the attention of an American Idol producer.

“He was getting a cheesesteak from Geno’s because he’s a fucking tourist,” Maopolski says, noting that the producer said he liked her style.

He invited her to film a brief appearance for the opening credits of Idol’s final season. The next day, Maopolski was riding her skateboard and playing the guitar for a professional film crew.

Without ever auditioning for the show, Maopolski was featured performing for more than 10 million people who watched the season 15 premiere.

Then there was the time the Pope was in town and, while busking, she landed herself a part-time gig selling merchandise and recording parody videos like “Cray Cray for Tay Tay (Girl Craze)” with The Swiftees.

“They think I’m funny and energetic,” Maopolski says. “If my dumb videos go viral, I can get some attention in the media and further my career in doing so.”

It was fitting for the girl voted class clown in high school.

Whether it’s on film or on the streets, Maopolski’s energy is contagious.

Especially when she’s busking. Her sense of openness is key, Sydoryak says.

“Lily is light-hearted and never judgemental. That really shines through in her personality,” she says. “People are drawn to her.”

By sunset, Maopolski has made her way to Rittenhouse Square for a second session. Upon arrival, she finds her typical spot has already been taken by two young kids playing the cello.

Out of respect for the kids, Lily plays quietly. A thin, middle-aged man hops off his bike and onto the wall next to Lily for a listen, handing her a dollar folded into a paper airplane after listening intently to her rendition of Christina Perry’s “Jar of Hearts.”

Maopolski says donations could be as small as a smile or as large as the time in Old City, when a mysterious guy stopped his car, gave her a vintage guitar and drove away.

“People are so cool. That’s what you learn out here,” Maopolski says.

“You don’t see it every day. You just have to put yourself out there and good things come.”

Those small interactions add up to a massive stage when Maopolski performs on the streets of Philadelphia. That’s what really matters to her.

With no ticket sales, no tours and no rules, Maopolski says busking is special. No matter the street or the stage, it feels like where she belongs.

“It’s a little piece of magic I found,” she says.

- Brianna Spause JUMPphilly.com

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Photo by Ben Brother.

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Long-Distance Music-Making The Moon and the Tiger brings together Dwight Dunston's poetry and Brian Miller's soundscapes to create inspirational music.

Like playing a video game, Dwight Dunston says he enters new worlds when creating music with Brian Miller.

Dunston, also known as Sterling Duns on the microphone, along with Miller make up The Moon and the Tiger: a cohesive fusion of indie rock, soundscapes and hip-hop.

The 28-year-old Dunston says he has always had a “hip-hop sense.”

“I was always making up songs, writing lyrics,” he says. “My dad would always walk around the house and make up songs and I think he was pivotal [to] me as a lyricist.”

These sensibilities attracted Miller to Dunston the first time listening to him perform, which he says was like seeing an attractive person at a party.

“I was like, ‘His voice is so good, his lyrics are so good and just the spiritual presence of his voice.’”

Miller says of Dunston. “I was immediately very moved and awakened.”

About two years ago, Miller saw Dunston rap in Hardwork Movement, another musical project he’s involved with, at a house show in West Philly.

After witnessing the performance, he went home and emailed Dunston, who didn’t reply until an additional email was sent.

Shortly after their correspondence, they began collaborating on music together and discovered the worlds they could create via music, whether it was Miller’s soundscapes or Dunston’s poetry.

“I would just live in them,” says Dunston, who is originally from West Philly. “Listening back to our first EP, I couldn’t tell you where the words came from. When I had to learn the words for the live show, I was in such a trance and daze because of these worlds he creates with sound.”

Dunston, who has both an undergraduate and master’s degree in poetry, says this art form had a strong effect on his lyric writing.

“I feel like studying poetry taught me how to be critical of my own work,” says Dunston. “I got a message, I got 16 bars to do it and do I really need that word?”

Miller adds that learning more about hip-hop is like learning a new language, which he also

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experienced while playing guitar in a country band.

“I had to learn a new way of music and also a way of how I can have a conversation with what I’m not an expert on, and that’s similar to what we do, I think,” he says.

The 41-year-old also describes his music as having soundscape and movie soundtrack aspects.

“I feel like movie music has the ability to make a mood and I feel like that’s what I try to do,” says Miller, who also noted Peter Gabriel’s “funky beats and introspective quality” as an influence.

Dunston and Miller lead busy lives. Dunston works in education, makes music in both Future Mama and Hardwork Movement. He also does social justice work through City Love, an acoustic duo that assists with workshops in schools and communities in Philadelphia.

Miller is married, works as a psychotherapist and homeschools his children. The two consider their music collaboration like a long-distance relationship, Dunston says.

“We know we love each other and we trust one another to know that we will give everything we got for when a track comes out,” Dunston says.

In March 2016, The Moon and the Tiger released their first self-titled EP. The four-track record was a two-year-long project.

Miller notes Hans Zimmer, a composer for Christopher Nolan films like “Batman” and “Interstellar” as an influence for the record.

During his writing process, Dunston listened to a lot of Kendrick Lamar, who he says “paints great stories.”

In the song “Freedom” from the EP, Dunston

paints an image of a hip-hop artist who becomes engulfed in the materialistic world and loses himself.

“It is all my fears of what would happen to me,” Dunston says. “He loses touch with family and friends but [gains] all this power and notoriety and at the end the last line is, ‘It’s never too late to look in the mirror and start again.’ It is this idea of starting over and there’s always a second chance to be renewed.”

During their first house show at Silverton band member Julie Beth’s house, the duo were able to recreate their complex sound by having musician friends like Hardwork Movement members Jeremy Keys on cello, Dani Gershkoff on flute and Beth on vocals, percussion and flute, along with Miller’s guitar loops.

“Dwight and Brian just have these beautiful messages they get across so joyfully,” Beth says.

“It was one of the most meaningful projects I have worked in and I think they are doing something that is meaningful to them personally, but also on a larger level.”

Although their schedules are conflicting, they hope to put out more music and play more shows in the future.

Miller added that their music combines the rigid rules of hip-hop and indie rock, bleeding together indie rock’s sincere, homemade multiinstrumentation with hip-hop’s simple beatand-chorus composition.

“It is kind of neat to have these two rigid rule structures come together,” Miller says.

- Emily Scott facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The Go-to Horn Player Trumpet player Josh Lawrence is a staple of the jazz scene in Philadelphia and beyond.

The inside of Morningstar Studios provides a rich contrast to the sweltering mid-afternoon heat baking the pavement outside. Behind the studio’s doorway lies a small hallway lined with framed records and a small selection of gear braced against one side. Intermittently, a mixture of saxophone, upright bass, electric piano and drums funnel through the open door to the live room. Up a flight of stairs, Josh Lawrence is anxious to spend the day recording yet another album.

A month prior, the Rittenhouse-based performer and educator was interested in creating something different from his other albums, which have always had a narrative focus. At the suggestion of his wife, Ola Baldych, who works as a graphic designer, Lawrence set out to write music with a more malleable theme in mind – colors.

So began the start of Color Theory.

“I knew who I wanted to be in the band and I knew what sound I wanted, but I didn’t have any music written for them yet,” says the trumpeter as he’s seated on a black leather couch in Morningstar’s lounge area. He’s wearing a deep purple buttondown and black slacks rounded out with a pair of black Chuck Taylor’s.

“So I put the band together, booked a bunch of gigs and started writing music for each one of the shows,” he continues.

The quick turnaround from concept to execution comes as no surprise to someone of Lawrence’s heavy work schedule. Since moving from Cranberry, New Jersey to Philadelphia in the late ’90s to pursue an undergraduate degree from the University of the Arts, Lawrence has become entrenched in the jazz scene here and beyond.

“I did my undergrad, just working as a musician around [the city], but I really wanted to play jazz,” he says. “So, I used to hang out at Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus back in the day when it was still the fulltime jazz club and Northern Liberties was kind of a rough neighborhood.”

After cutting his teeth locally, Lawrence decided to move to New York City in 2005 to further explore the jazz scene. He gigged with everyone he could and taught his craft to others. He then moved to Poland and spent time touring Europe with his trio and various other projects before ending up back in Philadelphia for the last five JUMPphilly.com

years. His schedule has remained packed.

When he isn’t teaching at University of the Arts, Drexel University or the Kimmel Center’s Creative Music Program, Lawrence is constantly doing sessions and gigging – performing with acts including Captain Black Big Band, PACT, Bobby Zankel & the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound and Aerial Photograph.

Alumni from Lawrence’s other projects are joining him on Color Theory’s recording session. In addition to having Caleb Curtis on alto saxophone and flute, Brent White on trombone, Adam Faulk on Fender Rhodes and Madison Rast on bass, Lawrence is being joined by Captain Black Big Band bandleader Orrin Evans on piano and Anwar Marshall on drums.

Marshall is one of Lawrence’s bandmates in Fresh Cut Orchestra, one of his larger projects.

Recording with Fresh Cut Orchestra is how Lawrence learned of Morningstar Studios.

“As a horn player you get called to do a lot of session work for whoever, basically,” he says. “I came into a session and said, ‘Man, this is where I’m going to do whatever I’m gonna do next.’ And once it was time to do it, I just made the call.”

Since then, Lawrence has used the studio space

as his base of operations for most of his recorded work. In a manner of happenstance, engineer Dave Schonauer, who engineered Lawrence’s first session at the studio, mans today’s studio session.

“My job’s easy,” Schonauer says as the band readies themselves in-between takes. “I just get to sit back and listen to great music.”

While the 12-hour session ahead of them may seem grueling to many people, it’s just another day for Lawrence, who in between relentless gigging and sessions is looking forward to the release of Fresh Cut Orchestra’s second album, Mind Behind Closed Eyes, set for release on Aug. 26 on Ropeadope Records.

In Fresh Cut Orchestra, Lawrence splits writing duties with Marshall and bassist Jason Fraticelli for the 10-piece orchestra, including four horns, two guitars, percussion and laptop electronics.

The ensemble, which began as a commission from the Painted Bride Art Center, is one of Lawrence’s mainstays.

“The idea of that record was, what do you see when you close your eyes when you listen to music? That was really the focus of that record,” Lawrence says. “It’s like an electronic jazz project.”

- Dan Halma

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Honoring a Fallen Agent Agent Zero adopted his moniker from the first music connection he made in Philadelphia, Agent Mo3, who passed away in 2011. He now creates electronic music steeped in other influences.

For Noah Selwyn, life in 2016 shows no signs of slowing down.

Since celebrating the release of his latest EP, Mechanisms, with a release show at Silk City, Selwyn, who produces under the alias Agent Zero, has had a heavy roster of Pennsylvania festival dates including slots at Gala in the Grove in Jonestown and Freeform Arts Festival in Honesdale.

When he isn’t performing live, one can find him scoring plays like “Head of Medusa,” engineering at Fishtown’s Boom Room studios or meticulously crafting and experimenting with the sounds that will eventually become his next release.

This weekend was spent playing early morning sets at Mysteryland, but in spite of performing only hours before in upstate New York, Selwyn isn’t phased. Since moving from Connecticut to Philadelphia in the fall of 2008 to work for the nonprofit City Year, Selwyn’s had his sights set on the music scene.

“I came to Philly because of the music,” he says. MIDI controllers and studio monitors flank him as he’s seated in front of the home studio in his Fishtown house. “I was really into bands like The Disco Biscuits, Lotus, STS9… so I knew that the Biscuits were from Philly so I’m gonna pick Philly because I like this band a lot and I’m sure there’s gonna be some cool things there.”

As part of working for City Year, Selwyn received aid for college and had originally wanted to pursue a degree in jazz drumming but didn’t get into any program.

With community college as a back-up, he enrolled at Community College of Philadelphia, originally for social work before discovering its music production program.

“It turned out to be a really big blessing in disguise,” he’s quick to point out.

At CCP Selwyn met his mentor, professor Paul Geissinger, better known as Starky, one of the earliest U.S. adopters of U.K. Grime. Geissinger inspired

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Selwyn to start experimenting with electronic music production in addition to playing in other musical projects. Geissinger’s guidance proved valuable to the budding music producer’s career.

“I gotta give him endless props for not only showing me what the buttons do,” Selwyn says of Geissinger while turning a knob on the keyboard next to him, “but just the drive that it takes to be fast and be precise. How to work on a mix to make it sound as good as it can be with the tools that I have.”

But it wasn’t until the passing of Moses Malloy Jiggets, Selwyn’s close friend and first musical connection in the city, that he found his identity. The two met at an outdoor party during Selwyn’s time at City Year and shortly thereafter Jiggets, who performed under the name Agent M03, and Selwyn played several house shows together and became close friends. When he passed in the fall of 2011, Selwyn knew he needed to honor his friend’s memory. “[He] was my first musician friend in Philadelphia so I was like, ‘Alright, I need to name my project in this guy’s name,’” he explains. “I came here for the music and this guy was my good friend and his music lives on through the name with me. I took the zero out of ‘M03’ and that’s where the name comes from.”

On New Years Eve of 2011, Agent Zero was born. Over the course of the next year the producer would begin writing and recording what would become his debut album, Sound Sorcery Vol.1, released on Funkadelphia in November of 2013. It was around this time that he met Jason Luber, his long-term guitarist and collaborator.

“I’ve been there every step of the way for the last three or four years,” says Luber over a phone call. The two met when Selwyn joined Luber’s electronic jam band Eudemon, and behind the drum kit proved to be exactly what the band needed. Luber and Selwyn bonded quickly on the way to band practice over their similar taste in music, and soon Selwyn would hit up the guitarist to come over and write with him. Shared musical interests weren’t the only thing that drew him to the budding producer.

“I admire his hard work ethic,” Luber says. “He’s really dedicated and in-it-to-win-it — grinding and grinding every day.

We also get along well creatively and there’s very little clashing when it comes to ideas.”

Following the release of Sound Sorcery Vol. 1, the two expanded the live line-up to include Rob “Potter” Green on saxophone, and for the second Agent Zero album, Sound Sorcery Vol. 2, added drummer Ryan “DJ Ha” Aloisi. At the release party for Mechanisms, the Agent Zero lineup grew once more to include vocalist Spenser Michaels.

Considering bands that blend electronic production and more traditional musical performances shaped Selwyn’s aesthetic, it’s a natural progression for him to expand the Agent Zero live show out into a full band.

“It really makes it come alive,” Selwyn says, smiling while pressing play on the live recording from the show. “The fusion of analog and digital is where shit gets real interesting. DJs are cool, bands are cool, but when it’s both, it’s - Dan Halma crazy. It’s what I need to listen to.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Charles Shan Cerrone.

The JUMP Off

Dark but Catchy

Photo by Samantha Moss.

Steeped in the occult, Cape of Bats creates a blend of hardcore punk and black metal.

Cape of Bats have been in the shadows of the Philadelphia music scene for years, staying lowkey while still pulling off national tours, metal festivals and an array of obscure, limited tape releases on top of their first full-length vinyl LP. Late-2015’s Violent Occultism was released on Unholy Anarchy and Grim Winds Records, the latter being the band's own label. Francis Kano, the band's main songwriter and rhythm guitarist, also played most of the instruments during the recording process. Originally from Ireland, Kano moved to the United States at 14. That was when he picked up his first guitar. "I didn’t have any friends, so I taught myself," he says.

Drummer Cassidy McGinley, who records and produces the band and often shares songwriting duties, is the band's other mainstay. The two started writing together soon after Kano moved to America. Dating back to 2006, one of the earliest recordings the duo made was the spooky kid anthem "To Transylvania,” later re-recorded as the title track for an EP. That duo would go on to become Cape of Bats, whose current incarnation also includes longtime friend of the band Kyle Armine on bass and Matthew Geary, the band’s lead guitarist who also writes songs. It's not common for an artist’s first band to be their main project for such a long time but with passion and their deep love for JUMPphilly.com

their subject matter, it keeps the project fresh and forward-moving. Never has Cape of Bats been a stagnant band. Every album propels them into a new foray of darkness and aural desperation.

Cape of Bats’ style is unique unto itself, drawing mostly from black metal, deathrock, hardcore punk and even surf rock. They blend the most essential dark genres together to create an overtly bleak yet somehow still catchy sound.

"The style was a weird but natural mix of hardcore punk and black metal,” says Kano. “It was so natural to me as that's all I listened to, first finding black metal when I was 13 and punk not until the next year which seems reverse for most people."

The most interesting aspect of Cape of Bat goes beyond the music, into Kano's love for the occult.

"Since I could read, I have been obsessed by the occult and everything 'evil,” he says. “So when I found black metal, it really spoke to me.

But something about it did not match my sense of urgency and action. This void was filled by hardcore punk but I still yearned for the dark side of things. So, I had to write my own."

James McCrea, a longtime fan of the band, says it’s clear that Cape of Bats’ love for the occult goes beyond just its appealing use of imagery in music.

"As punk and metal bands become even more commonplace, Cape of Bats casts an unmistakable shadow wherever they stand,” he says. “Exceedingly few bands can compete with how they approach various musical, visual and esoteric influences to create music that's wholly unique, powerful and destructive."

The band's newest album captures these ideals and interests best.

"Violent Occultism really defines our mix of the violent urges of hardcore punk with the most brooding occultism of black metal," Kano says.

The album took almost four years to complete because of Kano's regular visits to Ireland to attend school. Ireland has affected the band in more ways than one, including the band’s name.

"Even before I moved to Ireland, I was obsessed with Satan,” Kano says. “So, imagine at age 8, moving to Glenullin and living on a hill named after a buried vampire, Abhartach, who it turns out my ancestors slayed and whose grave is still there today, being a large field stone next to a fairy tree, solidifying my vampiric devotion."

- Elias Morris

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The JUMP Off

Platform For All ROCKERS! was created because there was a lack of diversity in the music scene, making it difficult for some people to get involved.

When Camae Ayewa and the other members of the Mighty Paradocs couldn’t get a show in the early-2000s, they took the initiative into their own hands.

With a lack of diversity in the scene and feeling as though they didn’t fit into any of its “cliques,” along with being under 21, the Mighty Paradocs had a lot of trouble finding shows.

“It was my own life,” Ayewa says. “When I was doing shows, there was no diversity because all these types of bands looked alike, were from the same class and if you didn’t know someone in that circle, there was no connection.”

So Ayewa founded ROCKERS!, a monthly music showcase in Philadelphia for bands and musicians marginalized due to race, gender, sexual preference and everything in between from throughout the country. After a steadfast, decade-long career, she plans to host her final showcase this month.

In the early stages of the showcase, Ayewa, the Mighty Paradocs and others called the event The Mash Up and handed out flyers as the method for getting the word out.

“We were trying to figure out how we can say there are all these kids from all these different backgrounds making music that is speaking about their community,” Ayewa says.

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The first shows were held at the now defunct Aqua Lounge on Girard Avenue. Shortly after, former South Street venue Tritone found interest in the Mighty Paradocs. Even though not every band member was of age at the 21-and-over venue, the owner asked them to come back, which led to the first seven years of ROCKERS! as a monthly showcase on Wednesday nights.

Ayewa says there is an “ebb and flow” to local promoters’ interest in diversifying the Philadelphia music scene. She adds that last year she received many more emails about what bands should be booked locally to make them more diverse and inclusive.

She says it is mostly about the “philosophy” behind the show, which differentiates a ROCKERS! show from other DIY-booked shows.

“There’s no crowd control and you just have people doing whatever they want,” Ayewa says.

“With ROCKERS!, you are going to get respected.

People are going to respect your space and not just think about themselves.”

Ayewa knows that challenging people within the show experience this way goes hand-inhand with the fact that ROCKERS! never became well-known or popular in the Philadelphia music scene.

“Why would people need to know about ROCKERS! if they aren’t having a hard time getting a show?” Ayewa says. “If you’re not a person of color struggling, if you’re not a woman saying something political, if you’re not nongender conforming, you don’t need it and it is reflected in the world.”

Skribbly LaCroix, who assisted Ayewa in hosting and documenting ROCKERS!, says it means a lot

to him to have many bands play their first shows at ROCKERS! “We are giving people a platform,” LaCroix says.

“I think the most important thing was having a space for people of color who didn’t know if they had a platform, didn’t know if people would like it, didn’t know if there was an audience and there was.”

After the last show in July, Ayewa plans to still host the ROCKERS! BBQ weekend annually, which takes place for two to four days in August.

She plans to continue that in the future as a family reunion of sorts, to check in on artists that can often be forgotten.

After ROCKERS!, Ayewa plans to continue her activism, but focus more on community-based events and assisting individuals that are not online through the opening of the Community Futures Lab in the Sharswood neighborhood of Philadelphia.

For one year, Ayewa and other members of the Black Quantum Futurism community will be studying and preserving the oral histories of this neighborhood through a grant received from A Blade of Grass, a New York-based nonprofit organization that supports socially engaged artwork.

Ayewa hopes to also host shows at the space in the future.

No longer hosting ROCKERS! shows will take a lot of pressure off of her, but she will still be around to support any artists in need.

“If a band from Africa or something wanted to come, I would set up the show in the tradition of ROCKERS!,” Ayewa says. “I’m still here. The - Emily Scott music scene will be all right.” facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Branden Eastwood.

The Musical Therapy Jam LaTreice Branson started Drum Like a Lady as a form of therapy for the difficulties she was dealing with. Now, the event has grown into a giant jam session.

When entering Dahlak Paradise bar in West Philly, the first thing you notice are the walls decorated with traditional Eritrean pieces of art from the east African country. From masks to pottery, the art stands out under dim lighting and the smoke from the hookah that fills the bar. It’s ambiance that can speak to the soul.

As the musicians set up for the Drum Like a Lady sister event Jam Jawn, in the center stands the talented mastermind behind this gathering, LaTreice Branson.

While joking with the other musicians, Branson begins to organize everyone by placing a conga here and setting up a keyboard there.

On every third Friday of the month, Branson gathers musicians, women and men, here for a jam session. Little known, yet swiftly growing, is this musical collective Branson has been expanding called Drum Like a Lady.

Branson, 32, first decided to create Drum Like a Lady as a form of therapy for both physical and mental health issues. In 2013, one year from tenure at Cheyney University as an assistant professor of graphic design, doctors diagnosed Branson with borderline personality disorder, PTSD and depression among other disorders.

Not helping matters, she received a letter from the PA State System of Higher Education appointed psychologist stating that she was unfit for duty.

“Realizing that I was unfit really took a toll on my depression,” says Branson. “I didn't leave the house much. Still it's a struggle.”

While looking for an outlet to express herself, Branson recalls her friend saying, "Why don't you drum it out?"

At the time, she felt that playing drums wasn't the outlet she needed. But she tried it anyway and people began to notice her gift. People’s repetitive question of where she learned - to which she explained that her mother was a drummer and taught her - led her to come up with the idea for Drum Like a Lady.

"I was trying to figure out, ‘Where's my place now,’ coming from academia and now mourning my career,” Branson recalls. “Realizing what to do next or how do I teach when there's no university JUMPphilly.com

to hire me. Drum Like a Lady was something that was important. It was something that could resurrect me from this despair that I was in. But in order to do it I needed other people’s help.”

Branson decided that if she was going to organize this, it wouldn't be only to help her, but also to aid others like her.

One of the musicians who got involved, Barbera Duncan, currently plays for the band JJX and has been a part of the collection from early on, once she met Branson at one of her shows. “[JJX] performed every third Thursday. That's how I met LaTreice,” Duncan says. “Eventually, she asked me if I wanted be a part of Drum Like a Lady. I've been coming ever since.”

A young up-and-coming saxophone player, Art Crichlow III, is the featured conductor for this night's event. As the conductor, Crichlow leads the jam session with Branson's guidance.

After set-up, Branson introduces herself to the crowd and includes information about Drum Like A Lady, openly inviting anyone to join, with one rule: Ask her or Crichlow first.

As soon as her intro is done, a low rumble escapes from the drums.

The session includes a bassist, a keyboard player, Crichlow on the sax, three congas and a drummer on a kit. The synchronized music make it feel like they have been playing together for years. Not a single beat is missed and smooth transitions are commonplace but most of the people playing together have never met.

After leading most of the night's session with his stylish and funky notes on the saxophone, Crichlow takes a moment to explain the open environment of jam sessions held by Drum Like a Lady.

"You just walk up and play, man,” Crichlow explains of the relaxed vibe (as long as you ask, of course). “It's not really that deep!”

People switch out to let someone new step in or borrow one another's instruments, letting the music slip out of them, while consistently adding to the organic mixture of sounds.

It’s no wonder that Bernie Sanders once recruited them to play for his presidential campaign visit to Philadelphia.

For two hours, they play with unimaginable vigor. Yet in this moment, sitting off to the right, playing her conga decorated with the Puerto Rican flag, Branson looks at peace.

"It's led by women,” says Branson with a sly smile as she grips her instrument and explains Drum Like A Lady, “and governed by percussion."

- Cameron Robinson

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Photos by Grace Dickinson.

This Place Rocks

A Victory For All W/N W/N is an inviting place for musicians and artists, as well as staffers, who become part owners.

Many restaurants have adopted the language of the socially conscious. W/N W/N Coffee Bar was born in it.

Since late 2014, W/N W/N has been slinging quality roasts and teas alongside beer and cocktails at its chrome-and-glass storefront at 931 Spring Garden St. In a time when it seems every place with a food menu makes some claim to organically-grown, sustainable, grass-fed, free-range, artisanal fare, W/N W/N takes the ethical angle a step further in its community involvement and worker-cooperative ownership structure. W/N W/N is owned by the very people who work there.

Tony Montagnaro, one of the owner-workers who coordinates outreach and events, says W/N W/N came out of a group of people who had been working in hospitality jobs around Philadelphia and were tired of the way most places run.

“It’s a really exploitative industry, and most of the profits made in food and bev are due to low wage labor,” says Montagnaro, 26 , of Kensington.

“Basically, those who are making all the money for the business and working the hardest have the least amount to gain, whether it be financially or in terms of equity in the business.”

W/N W/N flips that structure on its head. If you work there, you can become an owner and share in the profits and, conversely, everyone who profits is putting their time in at the bar.

Inside, W/N W/N aims more for a Europeanstyle cafe than your dimly-lit American tavern.

During the summer, the sun is still up when W/N W/N opens at five on weeknights – with daytime hours on the weekend – and the place fills with light from the large front window. The tap tower shares space on the counter with the espresso machine. Display shelves behind the bar are split: liquor bottles sit on one side, mason jars of houseblend herbal teas take up the other. Art adorns the back walls and music hums along below the level of conversation. There is not a television in sight.

Behind the bar, Reddy Cyprus, 22, of South Kensington, is pulling handles. It might be the early hour or a well-cultivated persona but Cyprus comes across as the kind of guy who is psyched that you stopped in today.

Cyprus has been there since the place first opened

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for business and likes the open environment and having a say in the operations. Like any democratic system, it can get messy. But when everyone comes together, great things happen. Right from the start, Cyprus had a voice in how things got done.

“All of a sudden I could talk about what I wanted to see on the menu, I could talk about how a business should be run,” Cyprus says. “I’ve worked all over Philadelphia and I just feel like I’m treated like a human here, which is pretty nice.”

That openness and collaborative spirit extends to the shows W/N W/N hosts several nights each week, running from Thursday through Sunday.

Montagnaro curates the events and says he is willing to work with almost anybody who writes to suggest an event. Live, acoustic music? They do that. Push the tables aside for a dance floor and bring in local DJs? They do that, too.

Austin Edward has performed at W/N W/N three times and what has set it apart, for him, is how much freedom artists are given to own the performance space. Edward, 26, of East Passyunk, most recently brought his emotional, U.K. club scene-inspired electronic music to W/N W/N, a collaboration with visuals by Hueman Garbij that he says could not have come about in other venues.

“For a place to allow myself and my friends

coming in the way they have and this frequently, I don’t know any other place like that, any space where you can experiment,” Edward says. “It’s an extremely welcoming place to be as anyone — as a performer, as a patron. They extend a very warm welcome to everyone.”

W/N W/N attracts an eclectic crowd, from stragglers getting out of the big concert venues nearby to local artists brought in by the unique mix of performances and arts the bar has been highlighting through events like the monthly First Friday party, which kicks off the month-long exhibit of a local artists in the back of the cafe.

As the name suggests, W/N W/N works best when everyone benefits. Montagnaro knows nobody really thinks they will get rich off the project but the people involved hope what they do here serves as an example that other places try in Philadelphia.

“That’s been the last year and a half, just trying to figure out what works for us, what works for this neighborhood and the community,” Montagnaro says, “and how to just be a community-minded business that is actually going to affect the things that are making change in the community, as opposed to just making money and getting out.”

- Eric Fitzsimmons

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Top and bottom photos by Rachel Del Sordo. Middle images of Palace Burns by G.W. Miller III.

The Intimate Showcase After fits and starts, Voltage Lounge, located adjacent to the Electric Factory, is finally finding its niche in the local music scene.

Some people stand back as some of the crazier people mosh around, spread out in a circle. Rings of Saturn, a heavy metal band and headliner of the night, scream hoarse lyrics. A big guy with a thick black beard marches towards the bathroom yelling, “Bleeding!” while holding out his elbow with a gash in it.

Voltage Lounge, located at 421 N. Seventh St., wasn’t always like this. It started as a hookah bar and nightclub with a few showcases.

Those days are in the past.

Now, it is no stranger to sold-out shows, having hosted everyone from Black Dahlia Murder, a popular Michigan-based death metal act, last March to Mobb Deep, a classic New York hip-hop duo, in April.

“Those shows have definitely helped, you know, and they were great memories,” says Sean Salm, the booking manager,. “It’s crazy to see the room filled like that… and to have them in an intimate JUMPphilly.com

setting with Voltage.”

Things started to change once Salm started working there.

“I saw it had more potential as a music venue,” he says.

“We have a really dynamic show that’s energetic and Voltage was one of the first places to really cater more to our sound,” says Ray Lewis, lead singer of Last Minute Hero, a local five-piece alternative rock band who have been performing for a couple years now. “We truly stand behind the venue and its growth.”

That growth included a vision to show-off the up-and-coming acts and the legends who have been around. The space inside Voltage has less capacity than places like its neighbor, the Electric Factory, or the TLA. This makes them suitable to showcase acts that are on the cusp of the mainstream.

Salm’s experience with booking shows began at Rio, a bar in his hometown of Levittown, Pennsylvania. There, he booked Dice Raw, a songwriter and collaborator with The Roots.

“Dice played our showcase,” Salm says. “He loved it. He loved the organization behind it.”

From this, Salm was given the chance to work with Dice Raw again, organizing an after-party at Voltage for the annual Roots Picnic.

The big guy who cut himself shows up with a bag of ice taped around his elbow. He gets back into the pit, unafraid. It doesn’t look like anyone at Voltage Lounge is letting anything slow them - Matthew Hulmes down.

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Photo by Chip Frenette.

Music & Politics

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

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

How did you start HeadCount?

It really just started out of a series of conversations that were a result of feelings of frustration about the lack of engagement and the apathy that we would experience in the music world. And we felt like the power of music, and the power of the fan bases that we had in front of us, and the enormous reach that my band – and a couple of the bands that we were friends with, we felt like we could potentially reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of kids with a simple message, which was to let their voice be heard.

Were there other people doing similar things at the time?

There were all these protest movements of the 60s that were very closely tied with the musical world, the world of artists and entertainers. John Lennon is a perfect example of a protest artist and there were so many others.

Through the 80s and 90s, there was complacency or general apathy. People used the musical events they were going to as an escape from the real world.

That’s the way it was for me when I was going to see music in the90s. There wasn’t really a political tie-in. We thought to ourselves: What can we do?

How can we engage people? How can we do it in a nonpartisan way that is not going to be divisive and rather, inclusive?

What does this look like at shows?

It looks amazing. It’s such a source of pride for me.

We’re at thousands and thousands of events, regular rock concerts and festivals, all over the country.

We have days when 1,000 people are registered in

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Tennessee and 1,000 people are registered in New York. You start to see the aggregate of the work of actual people with clipboards in the field. It’s incredible.

The volunteers are the backbone of this organization. We’ve had 15,000 different people volunteer for us over the years.

Are you talking about people going to certain shows, which means you’d likely get people registering a certain way?

We are operating throughout all the different genres of music. We’re targeting music fans.

The Disco Biscuits are a jam band. We started with The Disco Biscuits and Moe. and the Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews Band. Theses were our first bands.

But we grew out of the jam band scene. Eddie Vedder has been a huge supporter. He’s gotten on stage and talked specifically about HeadCount and how important it is to vote and get involved.

If you go onto HeadCount.org, you’ll see how diverse the list of artists is that we’re working with at this point, from Pearl Jam to the Dead to Jay Z and Beyonce.

Do you think people are more politically aware or active, or more engaged in what’s happening in the public space?

Right now is a particularly trying time politically.

You have more people engaged in the process because this election has become somewhat of a circus, especially this primary season. People are keenly aware of what’s going on but that doesn’t always necessarily translate into people voting.

At the same time as people are engaged, there’s an incredible amount of apathy.

You believe in the system but you think we need people who are more engaged in the actual practices of the system? The system doesn’t need to be thrown out all together?

I mean, 72.6 percent of all people who are eligible to vote in this country did not vote in the primaries.

People feel disenfranchised from the system.

They feel like they are not represented. But then they agree that pot should be recreationally legal everywhere, as it is in Oregon, Washington state and Colorado. That was voted as ballot initiatives in those states.

People say the system is rigged and that nobody represents their interests. Ok, that may actually even be true. But there are valuable social issues that are on down ballots, like same-sex marriage, things that people legitimately care about. They just haven’t realized that these are things they could go and vote on.

Voting does matter. You do get to shape the world around you in a lot of states.

Do you see a future in politics? Or is this your way of making change and getting involved?

I don’t think that I have the stomach for politics. The bottom line is that I think that I have my voice here.

What we have done has made enough progress in the 12 years that we’ve been doing it that if we stick with it and really put our noses to the grindstone, hopefully, we’ll be able to engage millions of people into the political process. That’s the ultimate goal. facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Music & Education

Learning Through Dance

Photos by Brianna Spause.

The Dancing Classrooms program instills confidence in young people and fosters social skills, like how to trust and respect each other.

A flurry of color twirls around the gymnasium at Our Lady of Hope Regional School as the smooth vocals of Ray Charles ring out over the speakers.

For more than 200 students dressed to impress, it all comes down to this.

Dancing Classrooms is changing lives, one step at a time. With a global network, the Philadelphia branch has brought ballroom dance into the classrooms of more than 16,000 students across the city since its start in 2007.

In an effort to foster self-esteem and social awareness, Dancing Classrooms Philly offers 10-week, in-school residencies to public, private and charter schools who wish to participate.

Artistic director Kate Rast says there is a strong diversity of students and schools involved in the program, though they share one common goal.

“The only tangible similarity between our participating schools is that the principals and classroom teachers really see the benefit of having students interact socially,” Rast says.

In the 2015-16 school year, the program reached 40 schools in Philadelphia, as well as eight additional schools in Bucks and Chester County. The program began with fifth grade students, a prime age in social development.

In 2013, the program expanded to include eighth grade students and special needs schools, in total serving more than 1,500 kids per year.

“Ballroom dance is the vehicle that we’re using - a funny, silly vehicle - to help them build confidence in themselves, as well as to build respect and trust in others,” Rast says.

The impact is evident. At the fifth grade Colors of the Rainbow semi-final event, pairs of young ladies and gentlemen proudly don their colors as they compete for gold. Dancers swing and twirl to Peggy Lee’s 1958 recording of “Fever,” and move elegantly in calculated rhythm as they dance the waltz.

Scored by a panel of judges in categories of character, form, rhythm, sportsmanship and eye contact, the students end each dance with a courteous bow and contain glee as they calmly make their way back to their seats to celebrate. Their poise and elegance, however, was a process.

In ballroom dance, students don’t have the option to dance on their own, which Rast says is the first major hurdle in the learning process for fifth graders, who don’t want to put their hands near anyone else’s.

“I’ve seen kids grow and transform,” teaching artist Rhonda Moore says. “In the first lesson, they’re looking at the floor. They’re not touching, they’re not doing anything. By the fifth or sixth lesson, they’re really invested and able to JUMPphilly.com

make their partners do what they want them to.”

Moore has been with the program since 2008. In her role as a teaching artist, she gives instruction on social dances like the merengue, foxtrot, swing, waltz, rumba and the tango to her students two times per week.

Ballroom dances are by nature partner dances. Throughout the program, each student will dance with everyone in their grade. This aspect of social dance breaks the uncomfortable nature of interacting with unfamiliar peers.

Dancing Classrooms teaches its dancers to develop relationships in a crucial development period of the young student’s lives.

Moore says the concept at first is scary to young people but it is her goal to show students that, “the group is more important and not the individual.”

For 11-year-old Vienna D’Aponte of St. Monica School, the connections she made with her classmates was her favorite part of the Dancing Classrooms program. Dressed in an elegant lavender dress and a wide grin, Vienna exclaims, “I love to dance!” while swinging her feet under her chair, still reeling from the excitement of the Colors of the Rainbow event where her team took the silver.

“I’ve made friends from dancing that I never talked to before,” Vienna says. “And the music is really cool!”

“Hit The Road Jack,” by Ray Charles seems like an ancient song to Vienna, who is personally a big fan of Katy Perry, but she was excited to dance the foxtrot to it in class nonetheless.

The joy of discovery is one of the many components Rast says contributes to the growth of students in the Dancing Classrooms program.

Exploring music and dance cultures from around the world through ballroom dance opens students’ minds, and reflects positively on their work in the classroom.

“For a lot of the students, they might not necessarily excel in a lot of things,” Rast says. “They might have trouble in school. They might not be good at sports. There’s lot of different ways you can have your challenges throughout the school day and throughout life.”

In a city where sports and arts programs are disappearing, Rast says the spark that Dancing Classrooms creates is a clear example that arts education works.

The driving force? Confidence.

“In an arts program like this, where they find something they’re really good at and they actually want to put effort into, it encourages them to put effort into the other parts of their school day,” Rast says. “It gives them something to look forward to and work through their day to get to that maybe they never had before.”

Moore believes there’s more to an education than memorizing to pass an exam. With that in mind, she uses ballroom dance to teach students to embrace life and tries to expose them to a “microcosm of the world.”

“The exam here is being in the game,” Moore says. “Movement has to do with mathematics and geometry, the shapes of the steps that they do, the timing, the styling, the emotion. Ballroom dance is about all things that we do within life, not just in the classroom.”

- Brianna Spause

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Cover Story

NEED GEAR? YOU CAN FIND STUFF

MADE IN

[ PHILADELPHIA ] We don't just make music anymore.

We make the gear that makes the music.

Story by Dan Halma and Brendan Menapace.

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone.

O

ver the last two decades, the DIY community of gear designers and builders has grown exponentially. This is due to the endless resources made available by the boom of the Internet, which have allowed many boutique manufacturers - like DiPinto Guitars - to eventually see their wares grace the stages of touring bands, or featured in magazines and sold in large retail outlets.

Philadelphia is home to several of these builders. The city’s music community and affordable space allows for anyone with an idea and the initiative to get started building and experimenting with their musical creations, whether they’re from pre-packaged kits or original designs

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She moved from job to job in search of better hours and better pay, selling everything from shoes to videocassettes and framed pictures. Eventually, she ended up working for a rental business, which required her to repair different machines, like popcorn machines and chainsaws.

It was through her exposure to different jobs and affinity toward tinkering that Blanche landed where she is now. She took the time to immerse herself in the practice of creating guitar pedals by hand, despite having no formal background in electronics. She operated on her own interest and the things she’s learned over the years.

During those years, she went through ups and downs with Frantone. After stepping away in 2007, she brought the business back this year with the knowledge of the industry and how she can navigate it.

While Blanche is a veteran of the business with a down-to-earth (verging on pessimistic) outlook—she sees survival as the mark of success—others are just getting their toes wet in the gearbuilding world.

alking up to the small brick building tucked behind the Piazza in Northern Liberties, you can hear the sax solo from Bowie’s “Young Americans” flowing through the walls. Inside, Fran Blanche has created her home base (and home) for designing and manufacturing guitar pedals as Frantone.

“The jukebox is a little loud,” she says, pointing to the vintage jukebox in the corner. “I like it loud. It goes a lot louder uy Juravich is possibly the polar than that.” opposite of Blanche. While Looking around the space, it’s pretty clear Blanche is soft-spoken, humble that she does, in fact like it loud, or at least and gives the impression that she’s likes a lot of sound. Shelves on every wall content to spend her days tinkering in her Frantone :The self-taught Fran Blanche designs pedals inside her home/ are covered with vintage radios, stereo workshop/home, Juravich has a bounce studio in Northern Liberties. A cymbal on a Spinbal (opposite page). equipment, speakers and amps. Two huge to his walk, a salesman’s projection to tables are covered in pieces of pedals, soldering equipment and general his voice and a lot to say. clutter. She quickly assures that there is, in fact, a bed in the small space that Juravich invented the Spinbal, a device that allows drummers to spin doubles as her living quarters. their cymbals for extended periods of time. That creates longer sustain, Another shelf is lined with electronics manuals and textbooks. That shelf is allows kinetic cymbal designs, increases the lifespan of cymbals and makes probably the most representative of Blanche’s career of making pedals. drummers just look cool. After trying numerous ways to get the cymbals to “I taught myself electronics while I was working retail,” Blanche says. “I spin, he had his “eureka” moment after a literal run-in with a skateboarder. spent a decade in retail management, pretty much right out of my teens.”

“I was walking home from Whole Foods here with my groceries,” he says.

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JUMPphilly.com

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Photos by Rosie Simmons.

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Cover Story

“This skater literally knocks me over. He was on the sidewalk. It literally spread my groceries everywhere, and I looked at him and I had this a-ha moment: The wheel was still spinning.”

After that, he realized that he could fit simple skateboard bearings into a 3-D printed bushing, a small metal tube to reduce friction of an axel, to allow cymbals to spin for a long time. Minutes, even.

He had this idea after playing in a touring burlesque show. One show in Texas, with a world-class lasso artist, particularly impacted his future of invention.

“Packed house, big night,” says Juravich, explaining how on that night, he would spin his cymbals every chance he got. And at the end of that night, as the band was being introduced and receiving the typical polite clapping, something different happened.

“This was a standing ovation,” he remembers. “It was like the end-of-amovie slow clap. Jaws were down. Audience members were, like, screaming about my performance.”

So he got to thinking? What did he do differently at this show that he hadn’t done at previous shows? Was this just a good crowd?

“I spun my cymbals, like, aggressively, the whole time,” he realized. “Thanks to Dr. Lasso. Just a weird fuckin’ experience. So then I started doing it for the rest of the tour and the reaction was the same in every town.”

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manufacturers’ pedals], so I thought that I would try to figure it out myself.”

It was at his time at Berklee College of Music that he started experimenting with electronics—first by circuit-bending following books by bending icon Reed Ghazala, and then by learning how to read schematics and understanding what components do what in a circuit until he felt confident experimenting with his own designs. The first design was the Team Awesome, a bass fuzz with a clean blend designed with the bassist of Hamilton’s first serious touring band, Bon Savants, in mind.

Soon, Hamilton’s products ended up on the pedal boards of nationally recognized artists like Bon Iver, Pretty Lights, Dinosaur Jr., AWOLNATION, The Tallest Man on Earth, Saosin, Modest Mouse, Brand New and Philly’s own Modern Baseball and Mumblr.

“I’ve noticed that I haven’t really burrowed my way into one particular genre or niche,” he says, referring to the variety of genres represented in his clientele. Considering his other job is as a touring musician, he’s happy to point out that the crossover between the two is more than just a practical sense.

“Some people know the band and they’re like, ‘Oh, I really like your band, that’s how I found out about your pedals,’” he says.

“But then it’s really nice when the reverse happens … like you get a tour because someone knows about the pedals.”

With the buzz that’s been building around his company and his band over these years, it’s not surprising that when he opened preorders for Pretty Years, a limited-edition distortion pedal in honor of Cymbals Eat guitars’ upcoming album of the same name.

The first batch sold out in two hours. The second batch followed suit.

But Hamilton doesn’t consider any of these events as defining moments in his career as a builder or musician.

“There’s so many ways of being successful and there’s little levels of success,” he muses.

or Brian Hamilton, paving the path to building his own pedal company was rooted in more practical means: a lifelong journey of not finding the sounds he wanted from other manufacturers’ gear.

“I play keyboards, so right off the bat, I’ve been at a disadvantage for buying pedals, because most pedals are not made for keyboardists in general,” he says, sitting with one leg tucked up under the other, head-to-toe in black clothing contrasting against the bevy of colorful pedals lining a corner of the workspace in front of him. e’s right. Hamilton is happy The office for Hamilton’s company, being able to split his time smallsound/bigsound, is nestled in creating exotic pedals and the third floor of a warehouse space in touring with his band. For some, Olde Kensington – a spot Hamilton, like Blanche, success is keeping the well-known for his keyboard role in lights on so you can see what you’re the band Cymbals Eat Guitars, has constructing in your cozy little space. shared with his partner Gabrielle “That’s what business is: pearls and Silverlight, of ZOLA jewelry, since crap,” Blanche says. “There are those moving to Philadelphia seven years fleeting moments of incredibleness, ago. Oscilloscopes, drills, soldering and then just periods of … shit, you irons and several shelves of electronic know?” parts wrap around the length of One has to learn to take the good and Hamilton’s desk and the shelf above the bad. it. On the floor nearby is a small guitar “And then every now and then you amp, another on top. He plans on just have an awesome day,” Blanche continues, “and then weeks later opening a storefront in his home turf of Fishtown in the future. you’re pulling teeth.”

For Juravich, it’s creating something “I was playing in a band in college, Made in Philadelphia: Brian Hamilton (top) and Guy Juravich are among the that changes the way drummers think and I was super into Boards of Canada growing scene of DIY gear manufacturers. and My Bloody Valentine and bands of creating sounds and protecting their equipment. that had a similar warbly aesthetic,” he says. “And I played mostly electro“The success isn’t how you corner the market,” Juravich says. “It’s how do you mechanical keyboards like Rhodes and Wurlitzers, so I really wanted to get change the market? Change the market. This is why I feel like it’s a success.” that out of those keyboards, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it [with other

H

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THE RETURN

JUNE DIVIDED OF

June Divided went bigtime right out of the gate. But they didn't have time to process what was happening, so they shut down for a while to discover themselves. Now, they're back.

Story by G.W. Miller III. Photos by Charles Wrzesniewski.

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Cover Cover Story Story

M

elissa Menago appears so sweet and tiny, standing on the wide stage in a black dress with her faded fuchsia-colored hair.

There is a drum set behind her and a keyboard to her right, as well as several microphone stands and loads of other gear ready for the evening’s headliner who will follow her performance. But she’s alone up there right now, demurely smiling while holding her little ukulele.

“Are any of you in love?” she asks the crowd of a few hundred people gathered in this secluded dell in suburban New Jersey. “Are you here with your loved ones? Some of us hate you.”

There is an uncertainty to the laughter that momentarily ensues.

“I don’t write happy songs,” Menago continues. “This next one is for anyone who has ever had their heart broken.”

And she breaks into a new song, “Eye to Eye,” which she has slated for a solo album in the future.

"I wanna love you, wanna hate you, I want everything you are,” she croons in a tone that would strike fear into a romantic partner who feels guilty about, well, anything. “And what you are is gasoline when it hits a spark."

As her strumming stops, her passionate performance is rewarded by a burst of applause.

Again, Menago appears small, her head tilted down as she furtively peers up into the crowd. She allows a brief but brilliant smile, and then she plays one last song – a hauntingly slowed-down version of the Kenny Loggins classic “Danger Zone.”

I

t’s strange to see her on stage alone and so calm.

For the past five years or so, Menago has been the front person for the pop rock/alternative band June Divided, for whom she bounces all over the stage, leaps off drums and generally excites the crowd with her energetic stage presence.

They had massive success as soon as the band began releasing music. They performed on the Warped Tour in 2012 and toured extensively on their own afterward. In 2014, they opened for Rise Against in Milwaukee, playing in front of a crowd of 11,000 people.

“We got thrust into it,” Menago says of the band’s early experiences, “and we didn’t really have a lot of time to ask ourselves, ‘What do we want to be as artists?’”

So the bandmates, - including Chris Kissel on guitar, Lenny Sasso on bass and Keith Gill on drums – decided to take some time to slow down and craft new material. They wrote an album’s worth of music and then scrapped it and started all over again. The time away from the stage allowed their style to grow from that alt rock sound into a more mature, Mutemath-inspired, indie rock kind of sound.

“We could lose fans by making music that wasn’t up to our standards or we could lose fans by not putting out new stuff all the time,” says Kissel, who launched the band with Menago while they were both students in the Music Industry Program at Drexel University. “ We decided to slow down and make the music we wanted to make.”

It’s been four years since June Divided’s last album dropped and the band hasn’t had a big Philly show since 2013.

“We kind of took our sweet time,” Menago says with a laugh.

They began recording their third album about one year ago but the process has been long and tortured. They wrapped up recording in February and they’ve been waiting for the process to finish ever since. They expect to

34

release the six-song EP (with a bonus hidden track on the CD) in October.

While they were recording, Chesky Records signed Menago to do a live, solo acoustic record.

“Melissa writes so many songs and some don’t fit June Divided,” says Kissel.

“It’s cool she has another outlet for them.”

The 12-track ukulele album, little crimes, drops in July. Kissel and Gill will take the stage with her for the release show at World Café Live.

“I’m really happy they’ll be with me,” Menago says. “I get lonely on stage by myself.”

“It’s still kind of a June Divided show,” Gill says.

A

fter her solo performance in New Jersey, Menago finds all of her bandmates – including their former bass player, Rich Mancinelli, who have been sitting in the audience, listening with delight.

Menago seems spent but she lights up when she catches up with her colleagues. After a moment of congratulations, the evening’s headliner, Vacationer, takes the stage and the June Divided crew sits down together and starts swaying to the chillwave coming from the stage.

Even after their heavy touring ceased at the end of 2014, the June Divided crew continued spending several days per week together - writing, experimenting, recording, drinking, laughing and supporting one another.

“After a few years of making music,” Kissel says, “and a few years of not making music, we’re all still actually friends.”

While they’ve all settled into jobs, they remain flexible and ready to hit the road if needed. Menago teaches music and does voiceover work. Kissel works at an audio/visual firm. Gill is a plumber in the family business. Sasso does lighting at Union Transfer and the TLA, among other venues. Last year, he spent more than four months on the road doing lighting for Atreyu, a metal band from California.

“I spend almost every day of my life in a music venue,” says Sasso, who also serves as the manager for June Divided.

The time away from tour vans has done them good, Menago believes.

“Had we not taken time for ourselves, we probably wouldn’t be a band right now,” she says. “We would have cracked.”

V

acationer closes out the night and the audience disperses.

The June Divided bandmates wander over to the merch table where Menago has CDs and tickets to her release show. A few new fans come over to say hello but it’s really just the four bandmates – and Mancinelli – standing around, joking with one another.

After Gill, whose handiwork goes beyond plumbing, shows off pictures of his new drum kit with copper accenting, he says, “Now I just need copper drumsticks with lights.”

“If anybody could make them, it’d be you,” says Mancinelli, who booked tonight’s show.

Inevitably, the conversation turns to their new music - or more precisely, the lack thereof.

“Somebody just asked me is June Divided was done,” Mancinelli says.

“I can’t wait for this album to finally come out,” Menago says, followed by a frustrated grunt. “I'll be so happy.”

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MPphilly

CONNOR BARWIN HAS

A

PASSION

FOR

The Eagles' defensive lineman is harnessing his love of music into better park space for Philly neighborhoods.

Story by Brendan Menapace.

Photo by Rachel Del Sordo.

C

onnor Barwin is hard to miss. With his NFL linebacker size, he’s kind of towering over everyone else at the bar at Prohibition Taproom, just a few blocks from Union Transfer.

After introducing himself, one of the bar patrons perks up.

“Oh shit, you are Connor Barwin! Yo, I love you dude!”

He gets that a lot. But by now, he’s pretty used to it. The 29-year-old Barwin who lives in Center City is a far cry from the type of NFL player who keeps to himself. Barwin makes his presence known in Philly. Chances are, if you go to enough shows, you might run into him at the Electric Factory, where he’d just seen Courtney Barnett earlier this night. Or at Union Transfer, where he hosts the annual benefit concert for his Make the World Better foundation, which funds playgrounds and parks in Philadelphia.

“It’s kind of weird,” he says. “Some people are surprised when they see me. But then it’s like, ‘Oh, not really. Like, I’m not really surprised.’”

One might be surprised to learn that the fixture of the Eagles' defensive line and the city’s music scene was born with complete hearing loss.

Clearly, that didn’t sideline him, on any front.

S

ince signing with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013 from the Houston Texans, Barwin has used some of his free time taking in the city’s music scene. After meeting Sean Agnew of R5 Productions, Barwin got the ball rolling on his benefit concert idea.

“I remember I went to an Animal Collective show at Union Transfer and Grantland wrote an article about it,” Barwin says. “After that article came out, Sean Agnew reached out to me. I think that’s how I met him.”

Not that Agnew had not already been in communication or anything prior.

“I tweeted at [Barwin] in 2014 when he batted down a ball that secured the Eagles’ spot in the playoffs,” Agnew remembers. “I jokingly said, ‘Free shows for life for Connor Barwin,’ right after he did.”

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A

ttending shows didn’t only appeal to Barwin’s musical appetite. It fueled his philanthropic desires too.

“After that first season with the Eagles, I was like, ‘Hey, Sean, maybe we can do this benefit thing,’” Barwin recalls. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!

I’ll donate the whole venue, productions, the bar, everything.’ And now we’re going on our third show.”

This show at the beginning of June included a cast of Philly bands, including Hop Along, Waxahatchee and Amos Lee, and benefitted the Waterloo Playground in Kensington.

“It was something special that we just couldn’t say no to,” says Frances Quinlan of Hop Along.

“It was a great cause. Parks in Philadelphia are needed and we were really happy to be a part of it. And we love playing hometown shows. We just have such a great time. Our whole families were present. That was really great to see them there and know that they’re a part of it, too.”

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arwin, who was born completely deaf and underwent numerous surgeries through his adolescence to gain any hearing, still lacks the ability to hear in his left ear. But gaining some hearing didn’t give him a newfound appreciation for auditory experiences.

“I wish it did,” he says. “That would be a cool story. Maybe I’d like music even more if I could hear out of both my ears.”

Music was always a passion but he rarely had time to indulge when he was younger, when he was always either practicing football or studying.

“I was in sports all the time,” he says. “It was really when I got to Houston and started playing in the NFL that I had some free time for the first time in my life. And that’s when I started going to shows.”

Agnew says that having the city’s music and sports worlds so close-knit is rare, and the value isn’t lost on him.

“I think it’s super unique and I’m so proud of it,” he says. “I know a bunch of peers who do shows, and they have no athletes coming to their shows.

Love Philly for that.”

“I would say that Connor strikes me as a special kind of person,” Quinlan says. “He doesn’t, by any means, have to do any of the things he’s doing.

While I’m sure there are lots of people in all sorts of fields who love music, he uses his love for music

MUSIC AND THE

CITY

in a way to give back to his community, which I think is such a generous thing to do - obviously in a financial way, but agian, just wanting to enjoy music with other people. He really seems to genuinely want to do that and I really respect that.

I really respect his particular passion for the arts and community.”

A

fter Barwin took some time to also establish himself as a legitimate star in the NFL and watching the veterans’ examples of how to carry themselves on and off the field, he decided to use his position and do some good. He would use his love of live music to do so.

“When I got to Philadelphia, I said, all right.

You’re not 21-years old anymore. It’s time to do this if you’re going to do it,” he says. “You’re going to live in Philadelphia year-round. If you want to make a difference, now is your opportunity.”

Barwin chose playgrounds and parks partially due to his upbringing in Detroit. His father was a city manager and was heavily involved with public spaces.

“There’s a lot of playgrounds in neighborhoods that have fallen on hard times and I think playgrounds had a big effect on my upbringing,” he says, referencing research that shows the importance of safe and fun places for kids to play for their development, as well as a playground’s importance in communities and neighborhoods.

“Every kid deserves that. There’s no reason because of where you’re born, you don’t have a safe place to play.”

For each playground the foundation chooses to work with, the team at Make the World Better goes through a year-long process of assessing what the community wants and needs and how they can make it happen.

“We try to implement what they want,” Barwin says, noting the relationships he and the foundation have built in the public and private sectors. “And I think that’s the biggest reason we did it. I felt like we were capable of doing it. We could make the biggest impact by doing it to make Philadelphia a better place.”

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OUTLAW COUNTRY COMES 38

TO

PHILLY JUMPphilly.com

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I

n a city that wears its indie rock and hip-hop hearts on its sleeve, Country Night at Bob and Barbara’s, hosted by the Wallace Brothers Band, reminds Philadelphia there are other genres that draw a crowd. And with it comes a cowboy swagger, whiskey drinking and screaming guitars.

“We were playing out in Kutztown a lot and moved to Philly for a change of scenery,” says Zach Wallace, of the Wallace Brothers Band.

He makes up one-third of the band’s core, along with twin brother Colby on drums and longtime friend Khoa Pham on steel pedal guitar. The group is rounded out by a revolving door of friends on bass.

“We took this road trip to the South and discovered some really great country that wasn’t being portrayed accurately up here,” he continues. “We were at this bar in Nashville called Robert’s Western World, where it was a different live band every night and everyone was drinking and dancing and we were like, ‘We have to do something like this.’”

His searching brought him to Bob and Barbara’s, which had jazz nights and drag shows, but no country. Though aware of the bar’s history as a black jazz and R&B venue, he attended a jazz night he describes as “whiskey-soaked,” with a lot of dancing. It was the perfect vibe he envisioned.

So Wallace went to the bar and proposed his idea, which was met with hesitance at first because nothing like this had been done there before. Bob Dix, one of the bar managers, didn’t think it would work.

He was proven wrong right off the bat.

“That first night was incredible and we kept bringing them back,” says Dix. “I expected every single time for it to drop off and it never did.”

T

Cowboy hats, steel pedal guitars and twangy music have returned to the city of Philadelphia. You can find the community of country music-loving people every other Wednesday at Bob and Barbara's.

Story by Dave Miniaci.

Photo by G.W. Miller III.

I

t’s around 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night at Bob and Barbara’s on South Street. The crowd at the legendary bar huddles in various groups, downing cans of PBR under dim lighting and PBR memorabilia-lined walls.

The spot claims to be home to the original citywide special, a shot of Jim Beam and a can of PBR for $3.50. But tonight, it’s home to something else.

Anticipation is building. A pounding sound on the back door. An attendee opens it and four men file in with their equipment, beards, plaid, hats and all.

“The cowboys are here!” shouts an excited patron. Within an hour, loud country and bluegrass music blares through the amps and the increasingly growing crowd starts rocking.

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hat first night was just the start. A wide array of bands wanting to play traditional country came calling.

Many local country fans and musicians, such as Mike Clemmer of the Montgomery County-based band the Keystone Breakers, agree that Country Night and Bob and Barbara’s became the hub for area country music. “[The Wallace Brothers] created this outlet, this consistent place to play for country bands,” Clemmer says. “Out in the suburbs, you hear the word ‘country’ and it can take on several meanings and can be traditional or the mainstream you hear on the radio. At Country Night at Bob and Barbara’s, you know what you’re gonna get. It’s gonna be folky and bluegrassy. I don’t know of anyone else doing anything like this. Especially in a city like Philadelphia, country can be few and far between, but they’ve been able to shine a light on it.”

The Wallace Brothers curate the lineup at Country Night, which has been going strong for around two years, usually every other Wednesday night.

Zach Wallace says his band and several others come from a folk or alt-country background and can cater to any fan base, making it easy to create a Country Night lineup for any given night.

“I went one night and I was just floored,” says singer Hannah Taylor, a fan and frequent attendee of country night before finally playing it herself. “I was like, ‘This is fucking great, this is in my wheelhouse,’ and I kept going.”

After attending, she approached the Wallace Brothers Band about performing there too. She joined them onstage, admitting she loves harmonizing with other singers and has performed both solo and with a backing band.

“I kinda weaseled my way into playing,” she says with a laugh. ”I’ve played it like six times but I’m there every time. I’m kinda like the hype-woman. It’s a shit-kicking good time.”

It’s a tight-knit community, one which sees bands helping with each other and performing with each other when possible. Case in point, bands are frequently invited back to play and even play with each other elsewhere.

“Most of the bands we have play are regulars at this point,” joked Zach Wallace.

A

big draw for the genre is honesty in the music. Several artists remarked how they always appreciated the musicianship and sincerity of old country music. And they try to abide by the spirit of the music.

Lance Davis, aka Grady Hoss, singer of Philly-based Grady Hoss and the Sidewinders, played in various bands over the years. When his dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Davis wanted to play country as a way to continue connecting with his father who grew up listening to country. He wrote several songs but never intended to record. At the behest of friends, he got a group together on his birthday weekend.

“I said to these guys, ‘It’s gotta be fun or I’m not going to do it,’ and we got

39

some beer and some Jack Daniels and spent the entire weekend in the studio and it was a lot of fun,” Davis says.

In keeping with the style of old outlaw country, and wanting to have more fun, Davis insisted each band member have a nickname.

His came from his dad’s middle name (Grady) and the Southern term of endearment for friends (Hoss). He also credits his bandmates with keeping things fun and heartfelt.

“In country, you gotta have a steel pedal guitar, and we got one of the best around in Dave Van Allen,” Davis says.

Van Allen has performed solo and in various bands for decades and was recommended to Davis by a mutual friend.

“He actually brought us all to tears in the studio,” says Davis about bringing in Van Allen. “A bunch of grown men crying. That was something.”

Photos by Magdalena Papaioannou.

Cover Cover Story Story

T

he area bands feel the national trend of traditional and outlaw country taking back the genre - with artists like Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell coming into prominence aside artists like Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton - has been felt in Philly, and that has brought some local bands out of the woodwork.

“There’s a lot of pop country out there but now you’ve got stuff making a comeback,” says Jesse Lundy, who in addition to playing guitar in the Rekardo Lee Trio is a Drexel professor and owner of Point Entertainment, a booking agency in charge of the Philadelphia Folk Festival and Ardmore Music Hall. “You have a lot of kids whose parents were listening to Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson and Shania Twain when these kids were little and there’s that nostalgia to it. Now they’re grown up and looking for country.”

Lundy adds there is a lot of good country that hasn’t been fully appreciated up North and country music has earned a certain reputation because of pop country music that dominates the airwaves.

“What’s on the radio is this pop country and no band I know is doing that. Most bands have a background in folk or alternative. What’s up here is something that people won’t think is too hokey or twangy,” Wallace says, adding that the nature of traditional country has an edge to it, as opposed to the clean pop sheen on some mainstream country. “If we came in as just some guys all dressed like cowboys and said, ‘Now we’re gonna play you some Jason Aldean,’ this wouldn’t fly.”

The Philly country artists even acknowledge that nostalgia themselves. Various performers credited hearing their parents and grandparents listening to Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams and other old-school outlaw country when they were growing up.

I

n Bob and Barbara’s sits a sign declaring it the home of the original citywide special, “Often copied, never duplicated.” The slogan rings true for the state of modern country and the Philly-area country acts that serve as a local look into this idea.

“I think Willie Nelson said it best,” says Clemmer. “He had this quote like, ‘Country music is just three chords and honesty.’”

The national trend in country music is felt in Philly. Zach Wallace has noticed a spike in steel pedals around the city and he has received steady interest from bands wanting to play at Bob and Barbara’s.

“This has kind of centralized the Philly country scene,” Zach Wallace says of Country Night. “If there’s a Philly country band, they’ve probably played here or will at some point. We have taken the country scene and put it under one roof.

“It’s a heavy drinking night,” he adds. “It’s not for the amateur partier.”

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Cover Story

OPEN MIC NIGHTS:

SLICE HUMANITY A

OF

Story by Tyler Horst.

Photos by Rachel Del Sordo.

I

t’s 11:48 at night, and there are still about 10 performers left to go at Connie’s Ric Rac in South Philadelphia. Their names are written on an orange list that at this point is covered in spilled beer.

Kelvin Cochrane, the host for the evening, bounds on stage.

“This is where the Connie’s Ric Rac Open Mic gets real,” he says to the assembled crowd of musicians and friends. “Up next is none other than the Reverend TJ McGlinchey, a certified Connie’s Ric Racketeer!”

McGlinchey, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, walks on stage with a guitar. Just before he starts playing, he catches the eye of a tall bald guy in a sleeveless basketball shirt that had played earlier that night. Barry Dwyer— another open mic regular—nods back to McGlinchey and climbs on stage with a harmonica.

“I’m going to play in C. You play something in C.” That’s all the instruction McGlinchey gives before they launch into a version of “Dark Hollow” by the Grateful Dead that feels like it was rehearsed, but wasn’t.

That’s just part of the magic of open mic.

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O

n a different afternoon, during the daylight, McGlinchey sits in the tiny backyard of his South Philly home sipping coffee.

“Open mics are pretty much how I learned to play,” he says.

Though he doesn’t have to grind away at open mics looking for exposure like he did in the past, the 35-year-old singer-songwriter and Philly Folk Festival favorite can’t shake his love for those grab-bag weekday nights that he credits with giving him the confidence to play and bringing him into the city’s music scene.

The democracy of the open sign-up sheet means everybody gets a chance to prove themselves, and through years of seizing that opportunity at open mics across town, McGlinchey was able to build his base amongst the other musicians looking for an open stage or just a place to hang out on a weeknight.

When McGlinchey released his first album, Tell Me To Stay, in 2012, he used the network of the open mic world to get the word out for the release show at World Cafe Live.

“The only promotion I did for that album release was Facebook posts and promoting the show at open mics,” he says. “We had over 200 people downstairs at World Café Live.”

For McGlinchey, and for others, open mics aren’t about sharing a half-assed cover of “Wonderwall.” They’re about building community.

I

t’s a Monday night on the other side of town. The door hangs open at The Fire on 4th and Girard as the sounds of an acoustic guitar float out to mingle with a few scruffy guys taking a smoke break.

Inside, it’s dark and somewhat dingy. The only lights are on the stage. The wooden floor sinks just slightly beneath people’s footsteps. The host throws on some music while Mike James Patrick Robinson, who performs under the name Big Cuz, hands off the beats he’s going to rap over. Robinson takes the mic.

“Welcome to the greatest shitshow on Earth,” Robinson says from the stage.

According to Derek Dorsey, who’s been booking The Fire since 2003, Open Mic Night has been a staple since, well, before he really knows. It started long before his career at the venue and it’s gone through many different stages. If facebook.com/JUMPphilly

someone had come back in the early 2000s for instance, Dorsey says you were almost guaranteed to see someone who was destined to be your favorite artist.

“It was a scene,” he says. “You wanted to be there.”

Dorsey says open mics are integral to providing a space for acts with real talent to first discover themselves as artists, even if they don’t realize it yet.

Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman started performing at Open Mic as a duo that they would later fill out with other members and call Dr. Dog. Kurt Vile used to perform here. John Legend was so popular at Open Mic Night that he got a residency at The Fire. Amos Lee signed his first record contract here.

The list goes on.

When Birdie Busch - who now has five albums to her name and a reputation for a captivating voice - first stepped on to a stage at The Fire’s Open Mic Night, she was noticeably green.

“She was nervous, fragile, her voice was cracking,” Dorsey says. “But even in her imperfection, she was perfection.”

All scenes come and go, and though Dorsey says the halcyon days of the singer-songwriter are over since most of the big names outgrew their need for open mics and The Fire now attracts a more diverse set of genres, Open Mic Night has remained a home for musicians in the city.

“This is our living room,” says Robinson after his set.

The redhead rapper says he has been coming to the open mic since 2002 to try out new material and hang out with other musicians. At this point, he guesses that about 70 percent of the weekly crowd is made up of regulars, some of whom are content not to play anywhere else.

“Open mics are the first frontier and the last frontier,” Dorsey says.

The first, because it introduces serious performers to what may be their first platform. The last, because open mics are the last place casual musicians can be anonymous and as Dorsey explains, “feel special in [their] art.”

Bill “Bongo Billy” Clancy is one of the most beloved regulars on Monday nights.

He doesn’t really play anywhere else.

When he takes the stage, Clancy pounds out a rhythm on a floor tom taken from the drum kit on stage and half-sings, half-recites lyrics that are either full originals or parodies of other songs.

Two out of the three are all about how much the open mic means to him. He closes with these lyrics from a re-imagining of “Chim Chim Cheree” from Mary Poppins: “Here at The Fire, you’re family,” Clancy sings.

A

petite singer named Kriss Mincy stands on the stage at Time and belts out “Summertime, and the livin’s easy,” the jazz standard. Whoops and cheers come from the crowd at the bar, made up of men in jackets and loosened ties and women in nice dresses - the after-work crowd in Center City.

It’s open mic at Time but it doesn’t feel that way. A lot of the performances are acts you’d pay to see, and in fact, performers like Mincy are there to promote a show she’s doing later in the week.

Earlier in the night, Drew Breder played looping bass lines in an entrancing solo performance. The trippy style was somewhat of a departure from the heavy jazz and R&B lineup of the night, but no less polished.

Breder works from his home in Center City as a computer programmer, a job which he says pays for his open mic addiction. He’ll take time off and plan road trips with the sole purpose of hitting as many different open mics as possible.

“I’m just playing open mics but I live like a rock star!” he says.

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Many come to Time’s open mic as solo singers, but collaborate with the house band for back-up. You really need to know your stuff musically if you don’t want to completely blow your spot.

“We don’t allow anyone to use backing tracks,” says Anam Owili-Eger, who runs the open mic at Time and plays keys for performers who need it.

Owili-Eger says this is not a limitation, but an intentional choice to make Time’s open mic all about live performance. Nothing pre-recorded or canned.

Owili-Eger accepts submissions from performers who don’t want to go it alone, but would rather send in their track ahead of time so Owili-Eger and the Time band of seasoned musicians can devise a live arrangement.

“It’s an open mic,” he says. "A place where you should try new things, and be willing to step out of your comfort zone from time to time.”

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he line stretches all the way around the lobby of World Cafe Live. Young musicians nervously check and re-check their instrument cases to make sure they have everything they need. Inside, right in front of the red-curtained stage sit rows of chairs like the waiting room in a doctor’s office.

World Cafe Live’s “Philly Rising” event is no ordinary open mic. It’s also a competition, and it certainly plays up the intimidation factor.

“Raise your hand if you’re playing tonight,” says host Boy Wonder after a sound check.

Diligently, the front rows put their hands up.

“I’m going to be doing that a lot tonight, so you better be paying attention,” Boy Wonder continues.

He then rattles off a long list of rules that covers everything from how to hold the microphone to instructions on putting the stage back together after a performance. It feels like a parent giving their children rules to the house before going on vacation.

But the most important rule of all is, “Give yourselves a round of applause.”

First up is Joselito “Lito” Gamalinda, singer-songwriter.

“I play piano by ear, so excuse me if this goes wrong,” Gamalinda says.

Gamalinda sings with a beautiful falsetto, but his hands occasionally falter over the keys. The songs aren’t ready yet. They’re freshly written, being tried on stage for the first time.

After his performance, Gamalinda explains that he’s written more than 180 songs since 2014. It was in that year that he decided he wasn’t fully satisfied by his job as a bartender and wanted another way to express himself.

Gamalinda performs these songs as often as he can, exclusively at open mics.

On a good week, he says he’ll hit seven: three on Monday, two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday.

His reason for putting in all these hours just to perform for free is simple: “It’s my outlet,” he says.

T

he open mic scene is varied, says McGlinchey, but so are the people you see in the same place on one night.

Cochrane agrees.

“I’m never going to leave this place,” he says of his hosting spot at Connie’s.

“It’s like a little slice of humanity.”

Whether it’s an old punk trying new songs or an introverted businessperson playing out for the first time, at an open mic anyone can try, can maybe even fail, and be welcomed into a community of artists.

“Because of open mics,” McGlinchey says, “artists and fans have a home to occupy together.”

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Encompassing The South The Bynum brothers bring Southern sights, sounds and tastes up North Broad Street to South.

The scene behind the front doors of 600 N. Broad St. provides a sharp juxtaposition to the flat gray façade – directly ahead lies a decidedly rustic dining area replete with wooden tables and chairs, accented by foliage and dyed glass bottles hanging from the skylights in the room’s center. By the entranceway, a door leads to a secluded patio area lined with flowers and fresh herbs. Directly ahead of the entrance is the bar, wrapping around the corner of the room, and behind the bar the staff is dressed in uniform button downs, bow ties and aprons.

The atmosphere is Southern without showing allegiance to any one state in particular – fitting for South, the latest restaurant from brothers Rob and Ben Bynum of Warmdaddy’s and Zanzibar Blue fame.

“Encompassing the entire South is a challenge,” says head chef Paul Martin, dressed in a black polo underneath his apron.

In front of him lies the open kitchen area and as

44

he speaks, staff members rotate bread in the oven and prep meats coming off the grill.

“I’m from Louisiana but the entire menu can’t be New Orleans focused,” he continues. “It’s gotta spread out a little bit and open up the borders.

So the idea is to try to represent Southern food as a whole.”

There’s a lot of square mileage to cover in the American South, but Martin’s background in Southern cuisine handles the challenge. Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, Martin got his start cooking in his dad’s restaurant before working in Austin, Texas at a couple of French bistros. Martin moved around the U.S. for a few years before settling in Philadelphia in 2004, when he signed on with Steven Starr at Washington Square (now Talula’s Garden). He left there to work at Catahoula, which is where he met Ben Bynam.

The two hit it off and when Bynam approached him with the idea of a new restaurant, Martin signed on. South opened in September of 2015.

The menu at South is as eclectic as the regions that it embodies. Diners can expect a range of dishes, with starters including chicken fried oysters and smoked tuna rilette and entrees spanning from cornmeal crusted trout and Carolina shrimp and grits to Berkshire pork chops and wood grilled chicken.

Although several mainstays have remained, Martin points out that the menu always changes.

“The menu’s sort of an organic process,” he adds.

“I think it’s more of what people are in the mood to eat right now. Things come on, things come off as they’re relevant – as they’re seasonal or not seasonal.”

“Everything you see here,” he explains, motioning to the shelves that comprise nearly every available inch of wall space, each filled with pickled vegetables and hot sauces, sealed with clear glass cabinet doors, “are all done by my former sous chef, Kieran McSherry. He’s our ‘Pickle Master.’”

In addition to the sauces and vegetables that dress the interior, the herbs and fruit in the garden get used on the menu, including the Summer Berry Cobbler – a cocktail comprised of compote made from the fresh berries in the garden alongside Fishtown’s Stateside Vodka.

“It’s the marriage of the front of the house and the back of the house,” declares Harry Hayman, the director of operations for the restaurant.

Hayman has been with the Bynum’s for 24 years, starting his career with the brothers at Zanzibar Blue and, like Martin, has been at South since day one. Hayman’s duties range from purchasing for the restaurant to marketing, including special facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photos by Charles Shan Cerrone.

Food That Rocks

events and food ideas.

The Southern Regional Series is one of these ideas, inspired by the ROAM (an acronym standing for Regional Original American Menus) dining series at Heirloom, another of the Bynum’s restaurants. The Regionals are a monthly event on the first Wednesday of every month that revolve around crafting a menu that pays homage to one specific region of the American South and the food associated with it. The series kicked off with a Louisiana-focused menu on July 6, with South Carolina and Alabama being the respective features for August and September.

“We’ve already farmed a ‘table on steroids,’ bringing in Anson Mills and trouts right from the Georgia/ South Carolina border,” he says, noting the concern for the highest quality ingredients carries over from their approach to cultivating the restaurant’s regular menu. “We’ve already tasted, like, 10 different trouts until we found this guy who likes to grow the fish out so the 10-ounce filet is on one side of the fish instead of having to butterfly the trout to get a nice filet.”

In addition to the Regionals, South has their classic series every Tuesday, a three-course meal for $25 that changes monthly and pairs well with their “Hours of Happiness” happy hour from 4–7 p.m., featuring both food and drink specials.

South hopes to add brunch as a regular offering beginning in the fall.

Though quality and adventurous Southern food is the backbone of South, the heart of the restaurant lies in the live jazz that happens six nights per week in the intimate venue section of the restaurant, tucked behind a set of glass doors. The restaurant works closely with local jazz musicians, curating special events, including Tuesday’s Open Jazz Jam led by percussionist Leon Jordan, Sr. and pianist Orrin Evan’s What’s Happening Wednesdays. In addition, they will book larger, nationally touring acts looking to pick up dates in between New York or D.C. “Back in the day, Philadelphia was known for JUMPphilly.com

jazz,” says general manager Rian Mitch. “There were so many great artists here in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Philadelphia was a bustling bed of all this jazz energy but it’s been forgotten. The idea of this place is to bring back that culture – the energy and drive that the old jazz heads had.”

A former “hopeless musican in doom metal bands,” Mitch’s interest in jazz was fueled by working the restaurant and running sound at one of the Bynum’s other ventures, Paris Bistro.

“Jazz is like punk rock,” he continues.

“It’s like the underground of music.

It’s where musicians go to be musicians, to break out from tradition and push the envelope.”

The concert programming includes performances by trombonist Robin Eubanks, singer and pianist Freddie Cole, Blue Note recording artist José James and saxophonist Grace Kelly.

In September, South is participating in the 2016 Philadelphia United Jazz Festival, curated by bassist Warren Oree of Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble fame.

“We’re always planning,” says Hayman, regarding future events at South.

“We’re gonna do the ‘Young Lions of Jazz’ series, bringing in some younger up-and-coming stuff.

We’ve also got the ‘Living Legends of Jazz’ series with more mature artists.

“But generally we’re just booking the best goddamn jazz in Philadelphia.”

- Dan Halma

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45

Inside Voice

Redefining Success.

PJ Bond toured the world as a solo artist and with various projects for many years. And then he gave all that up.

Now, he works at American Sardine Bar. And he couldn't be happier.

E

ventually the other boys got tired of sleeping on dirty couches and surviving on cans of beans and Saltines. Considering all three of them had degrees in engineering, I couldn’t blame them. They all got jobs and I felt lost.

Next, Philly-based Marigold asked me to sing for them. We wrote some songs and things started to feel really good. There was a buzz and positive movement. Still, we exhausted every connection we had to try to sign to a good label or get on solid tours and things started to feel stagnant.

After many very fun but poorly attended tours, the band had few options and started to splinter.

As Marigold fell apart, I was offered a position as a hired bass player in The Color Fred, with ex-Taking Back Sunday/ex-Breaking Pangaea member Fred Mascherino. Fred and I knew each other from my Outsmarting Simon days and I liked the idea of joining a band with a guy from my past who’d gone on to do big things. With his talent, experience and connections, it seemed Fred could push the band to a respectable level.

I made it through two East Coast tours and a full U.S. before I got myself fired.

By the next week, I’d secured a position in a backing band for a singer on Geffen/Interscope who was managed by the company that broke Fallout Boy, Gym Class Heroes and Cobra Starship. Nine months of playing music I hated in the backing band bought me the opportunity to get paid well, sleep in hotels, tour on a bus and play to packed houses.

I did not feel successful. I felt cheap.

Every opportunity to move up the ladder felt less good. The band members were all let go that winter and four days later we’d found work with a new singer on Universal/Motown. It quickly became clear that management didn’t want to pay us properly and this fizzled out before it got off the ground.

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fter watching every band I was part of either fall apart, fire me or disband, I decided to try things on my own. I gave up my home and most of my belongings, stored some books and records in my friend’s basement and left.

46 34

The first year I played close to 250 shows in 12 countries, released a full length, EP and wrote part of a book chronicling it all. And it still felt so far from success.

At any point, if you had asked me what would make me feel successful, it would always be some version of “making it,” feeling like I actually had a comfortable career making music, that I was supporting myself doing the thing I loved, that people appreciated my music and wanted to hear it. But, even when I had some semblance of all of those things, it never quite felt like I did.

My older brother once asked me if perhaps my problem was not a lack of success but a misunderstanding or misapprehension of my situation. As a life, an adventure, it was the most wildly successful experience one could imagine. I’d spent the last many years traveling the world, playing music and making friends. He was right, but the problem was that I had not set out to be good at making life an adventure. I had set out to be a full-time musician.

This discord is what created the problem.

I could not see the things I had as amazing because they were not the thing I wanted in the beginning. Shifting views became important and necessary for my survival and happiness.

A

fter about four years of touring solo and still not having a home, I began voicing more often that I may want to find a place, get off the road. I also realized I was spending less and less time working on music and spending more of my free time reading books about food, learning about craft beer.

In the spring of 2014, a great friend offered a room in his house and I decided to take him up on it. For what was supposed to be just a few months, I slept on the floor in a small room in his South Philly rowhome. That summer, I helped open the beer garden at Spruce Street Harbor Park, worked harder than I ever had and, for the first time in a long time, felt satisfied. The milestones were small but they came often and more definitively. The payoffs, literal and figurative, came quickly.

As the summer was coming to a close, I was offered a position as a barback at American Sardine Bar and so started my time behind the bar.

Working as a barback is hard and thankless but if you have a good crew, it can be incredibly rewarding. I’ve been lucky enough to work for some amazing people who have a lot to teach and I’ve tried my best to learn as much as I can from them. In my off time I read books about cocktails, craft beer and food preparation.

Every day I feel like I am progressing and sharing knowledge with others.

In my almost two years with the company, I have worked my way up from daytime barback to managing bartender and floor manager. I have learned so much and each day, I get to take care of people, give them a place to relax and feel comfortable.

I

t is a good feeling knowing my books and records are in one place, that when the seasons change, I don’t have to track down the appropriate clothing in a box in someone’s basement. It is nice to lay my head down on the same pillow each night, feeling like I may have made someone’s day a little better.

At home, if I feel I’ve made some progress, learned something new, then I feel successful.

At work, it doesn’t matter if I am the barback or the manager - if people are happy and if the glasses are clean, I’ve done my job.

facebook.com/JUMPphilly

Photo by Natalie Piserchio.

I

make sure the glasses are clean. At least, that is what I tell people now when they ask what I do. These days, I work behind a bar but that’s fairly new for me. For the better part of 15 years, you’d have had a better chance finding me behind a windshield on tour or on the computer booking tours.

Back then the idea of success was an end goal - these days it is more about progress and comfort.

I signed my first record deal in 2003. Four months later, my buddies and I graduated college and tried to take our scrappy DIY indie band, Outsmarting Simon, from the basements to the big stages like we’d seen so many do before us. The early years, while still in college, started out solely as fun and they were.

We toured the East Coast on breaks and put out a demo that helped us sign with Triple Crown Records. The label gave us a couple thousand bucks and we went straight out and bought a newer van and a trailer. We’d made it!

The van broke down on the way off the lot. A trailer wheel fell off in California. We tried to scratch out a worthy existence everywhere in between.

All told, Outsmarting Simon played close to 500 shows, released an EP and two LPs, were on a decent label yet could never put more than 100 people in a room. Every time we’d get a small step up or feel like we’d reached a milestone, we’d look around and realize that not much had changed.

It always felt like the one thing we needed, the tiny missing part, was just out of our reach.

JUMPphilly.com

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ISSUE #21

SUMMER 2016

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THE SUCCESS ISSUE: W/N W/N, THE DISCO BISCUITS, JOSH LAWRENCE, A DAY WITHOUT LOVE, CURTIS COOPER & MORE!