Marker - issue 6

REGGIE WATTS What it’s Like to Own a Muisc Venue | Jill Stanton FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

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CONTENTS fall 2014/winter 2015

Photo credit: GIRL NAMED SHIRL Photography

“I don’t understand the constant pissing on the floor.

It’s baffling to me.”

- Craig Martell

04

Editor’s Letter, Contributors

06

A Shortness of Breath

08

Food & Exorcise

12

Artist Profile - Jill Stanton

18

Reggie Watts

24

Crazy Passion: What it’s Like to Own a Muisc Venue

32

Checking Out

EDITOR’S LETTER

CONTRIBUTORS Marker wouldn’t be possible without the awesome people who contribute to each issue. Here’s a few of them:

So, back when I was still in the early planning stages of the first issue of Marker, I was contemplating whom I wanted for my “big get”. It didn’t take long for me to decide on Reggie Watts, so I went about trying to set up a phone interview with him. It was looking promising at first, but in the end my contact said no. Bummer. I guess it didn’t help that I had yet to release a single issue.

Kody Thompson maintains ignorance when he needs to and takes credit where he can. He is an Edmontonian. He hates shoes and drives a Honda Fit. He is currently finishing an after-degree in Education at the University of Alberta because inspiring young minds is secondary only to quality @kodykthompson pipe fitting... actually, he failed at pipe fitting (don’t bring it up).

Based in Edmonton, Becky Hagan-Egyir enjoys writing about people and movements that push the boundaries of status quos and redefine cultures. She also fancies all things art related and is eager to travel the world someday.

I wonder if I had even come up with a name yet…

Anyway, cut to over two years later and Mr. Watts is finally on the cover! And yes, I’m beyond excited about this and thankful for how gracious Reggie was with his time.

I’m very proud of this issue and everybody who took part in putting this together. Now, go ahead and enjoy the shit out if it.

@biteoutoflife01

Spencer Smith is an illustrator and designer from Edmonton, Alberta with a diploma in design from Grant MacEwan University.

He likes beer, music and good jokes.

Brnesh Berhe

@risecreative

spencersmith.ca

Special thanks to: Umar Akbar, Kathryn Musilek (Shark Party Media)

For questions, comments, or advertising inquiries: info@markermagazine.com

I s s u e 6 | Fa l l 2 0 1 4 / W i n t e r 2 0 1 5

Publisher / Art & Editorial Director Brnesh Berhe Copy Editor Jessica Bateman Ad Sales Simon Gorsak Contributing Writers cbwcaswell, Becky Hagan-Egyir, Matthew Stepanic, Rae Schuller, Kody Thompson

4

Contributing Photographers and Illustrators Molly Little, Vicky Mittal (VSM Photo), Spencer Smith, Shirley Tse (GIRL NAMED SHIRL Photography)

Cover photo credit: Noah Kalina

MARKER IS PROUDLY INDEPENDENT AND MADE IN EDMONTON, ALBERTA.

/markermagazine @markermagazine @markermagazine

This issue was published in October 2014 The views expressed in print and online are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Marker. The magazine will often present views that the publisher may not entirely agree with, because it may still contain information of value to readers.

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S H O R T N E S S

O F

B R E AT H

By Matthew Stepanic | Photos by VSM Photo 6

I’ve never been good at saying “no”. You’d think it’d be an easy word to utter: only two letters, one syllable. But its nasally start and long vowel sit too far back on my tongue, which isn’t strong enough to push the sound out. I’d need to stick my fingers in my mouth, tie the word around the thread of an excuse, and then I could drag that “no” out.

All of my excuses are tangled up in my pocket and I’m hesitant to say the word. But “yes” — “yes” is a slippery devil of a word. It’s slick and slides right off the tongue; rides on the hiss of air at the word’s end. You barely even noticed you’ve started saying it before it has snuck out from between your teeth. “Yes” attaches itself to every idea and wants to be at every party.

I learned from my father that long hours of hard work and dedication lead to success. I watched him do it throughout my childhood: going back to school to learn new skills; expanding on hobbies to bring in extra income; bringing home work to be further ahead the next day. So I followed in his footsteps. I have a degree, take on freelance editing and writing jobs as they come up, volunteer for different literary events. I toss my “yeses” at every exciting opportunity that pops up.

If you always say “yes”, you become the person who does everything and never misses

out. But that doesn’t last. Just like your lungs, life has a capacity. You don’t notice the stress right away; it builds-up in you as unused breath and fills your lungs. Your chest becomes tight and the air can’t escape to say “no” even if you beg it to. Breathing becomes a challenge, sleep less frequent. You’re kept awake with the idea that it can’t all fit, and you’re haunted by the thought that you aren’t breathing.

The only way to empty my lungs of all these “nos” is to use them. A “no” may feel like phlegm I’m coughing up from the back of my throat, but it’s healthy to clear out what makes you sick.

You only have so much breath for all of the experiences in your life — for all the words you can say. It’s important to find a healthy balance between the heavy, short breaths and the deep, calm ones.

Try it now: form and feel the “no” resting at the back of your mouth. Feel the force of hot breath along your cheeks as you shove it out past your lips. And then imagine the calm that follows. The tightness in your chest slackens and you can feel new, fresh air rush in.

With all that extra space in your lungs, you can fit more in. But don’t forget to vary the pace of your breathing and let all of your words out.

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

F O O D 8 UTILITY

&

E X O R C I S E

A friend told me recently how he observed his six-year-old son playing “grocery store” with another boy. After his son pretended to bag some items, he heard the other boy interrupting with the suggestion: “Let’s play farmers market instead because it’s healthier.” For some, this encounter might be hopeful evidence of a positive cultural shift towards a better understanding of eating habits rooted in a new generation. However, for me it’s about as dark in nature as the time I learned the truth behind the cancellation of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Somewhere in the pan-dimensional ether, the prunefaced poet W.H. Auden is performing a celebratory airguitar, because nothing makes sentiments concerning The Age of Anxiety more relevant in this present milieu than two six-year-olds disagreeing over what imaginary foods will provide the best source of carb-cutting nutrients. Whereas in the past children may have played out more conventional and culturally divisive tropes like say…

Cowboys and Indians, this new mindfulness towards food is instead the epitome of a radically new worldview previously inaccessible to human condition. Every culture has its symptom of a tipping point marking a transitory step into decline. For ancient Rome it was lead pipes, for the Aztecs it was small pox, and for western culture it might just be the popular persona of food as a lifestyle aesthetic. **** Right around the time long-since defeated diseases like measles and mumps started making a comeback because armies of soccer moms believed former MTV host Jenny McCarthy when she said inoculating them would result in autism (my thoughts are that the main problem was that, although she had great cleavage, she wasn’t very objective), another ‘90s celebrity, Alicia Silverstone, taught us how to feed our children via mouth-to-mouth regurgitation – an action as equally harmonious with nature as it is revolting. By now, instances like these are just a staple of the present social climate. Health-conscious living has managed to secure a permanent spot within popular culture as a medium transmuting health into fashionable DIY practice.

By Kody Thompson

Although it’s difficult to pinpoint when this phenomenon took shape, it’s no secret that the growing food revolution has been on a roll in the last decade. At present, the slow food movement has taken root in most urban centres, Michael Pollan’s books can be purchased at Walmart, and food trucks have become popular pretty much everywhere NASCAR hasn’t. And although the shift towards healthy eating is, for the most part, a change in the right direction, one crucial problem is that, in many cases, FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

these changes may have only served to exacerbate western self-absorption.

Somewhere along the line our preoccupation with food has become more than just a source of vitality. It has become a means of alleviating most of the problems you never knew you had, made the transition from something you eat to something you do, and has influenced other relationships that might define you culturally, politically or spiritually. I’m not talking about simply being a “foodie” or an advocate for healthy living. Instead, if you look carefully the next time you walk through the health food aisle at any grocery store you’ll notice displays with sunrises, golden rings of illumination, mehndi designs and Jungian mandalas on the packaging of your favourite of lentils, coffee and chickpeas. Products not only come in free-range and organic options, but often with historical information engaging consumer awareness in a manner that allows each ethically-conscious transaction to be as nourishing as it is self-absolving. So, while purchasing hand-picked rutabagas bought at fair wages might help us sleep better, the heart of the matter is that the western connection to food is presently about much more than food — it’s about unconscious power and the luxury of western affluence; it’s beyond health; it’s about the ability to symbolically create meaning and self-define.

Make no mistake — it’s not that there isn’t a tremendous amount of value concerning awareness towards overarching evils like GMOs, industrial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and the hegemonic might of what Kentuckyfarmer-cum-writer-activist Wendell Berry defines the “industrial-agricultural complex.” But often one of the greater difficulties associated with opposing these aforementioned evils and many popular ethical endeavours, are instead a facelift for the western ego; a culture that has the power to have a gross moral obsession with food.

The emergence of food as a lifestyle aesthetic makes what we eat arguably one of the most curious of all litmus tests indicating a society on the brink of its spiritual demise. Unlike other coping mechanisms such as anti-depressants, porn, alcohol or workaholism, food is a fundamental necessity for human survival that has historically revolved around the idea of fellowship and community. And this is where North American’s differ from much of the world.

While many cultures associate food with symbolic meaning, the western world has commoditized it. It is one among many amenities of lifestyle choice in the promotion of the individual: carb-cutting, calorie-counting, or the miraculous properties of some new antioxidant featured on an internet ad claiming the “grocery store doesn’t want you to know”. What better signpost to highlight the so10 F O O D & E X O R C I S E

lipsism of the present age than the distortion of the most vital and utilitarian component for human survival? Out of all things that could become obliterated in the atomizing, anti-future of the digital age, food would have been the last on my list. But now with the “foodporn” hashtags, freegan blogs and the choice between a myriad of lifestyle and dietary options endorsed by celebrities, what and how we eat have become powerful adjuncts of the self-identity tool kit as much as fixed gear biking or the car you drive; proving that even the most irreducible component necessary for human survival can be digitized and reduced to an idea.

demonstrated by a mastery of all domains of life. We exert control through yoga and dietary habits which function to exorcize present-day demons like sickness, obesity and, worst of all, cancer (the modern bogeyman lurking in background of everyone’s mind); awaiting those who dare allow their bodily pH to displace the alkaline base level that nature intended. Fortunately, being born in North America means that the power is in our hands. At the tip of a fork lies a gateway to a myriad of typologies allowing the individual status as a soothsayer of affluence: freegan, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and, of course, the much chagrined meat-a-tarian, all of which are vying for their seat of primacy in a modern alchemy grasping for immortality… one purposefully selected caloric unit at a time.

The elevation of food into an ideal is just one connecting point among many on a common thread binding contemporary issues into a cannon of pop culture.

When Friedrich Nietzsche pronounced the death of God, he failed to mention how this absence would help transcend the void of meaning, or resolve the gnawing awareness of one’s own mortality. If we peel back the layers, this food-induced cult of personality has become, at its heart, a new form of religion for the irreligious. It’s on-par with energy crystals and the same bargain bin self-help books found in the hands of used car salesmen everywhere. And this should really be no surprise, because the same culture with its origins founded in the agrarian boom and religious fervour of the protestant work ethic has ironically over-developed into a secular collective where the same zealousness of the past has now been converted into the mantras of progress, abundance and security. With the discovery of cheap energy, the development of irrigation and even the ability to manipulate the genetic structure of the biosphere, we have become gods in our own right. As such, the way we have come to identify with food seems to indicate that the timeline of western culture has hit a critical mass where egocentrism and affluence have converged at a crucial apex.

If you follow the unconscious narratives of popular culture, the real message is that our affinity with food represents a socio-culinary evolution where the most privileged classes have achieved the ability to ignore death at every juncture. On television, Dr. Oz tells us that happiness, bliss, and even faux approximations of immortality can be grasped through the correct dosage of kale, green tea and the much-coveted goji berry, making the western conception of health food a fountain of youth for the postmodern age. The key message is not the knowledge about how to eat healthy, but an unspoken fear of death

It’s not that a genuine love of food should be shameful — blogging about it, or even receiving praise for the risqué modern rebelliousness of rescuing it from a dumpster. At this point we’re all dialledin in some manner or another. Whether it’s a well-timed Instagram pic capturing the angle of light bouncing off a crisp risotto, or a fun new recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, the elevation of food into an ideal is just one connecting point among many on a common thread binding contemporary issues into a cannon of pop culture. And on this thread are innumerable solutions concerning the ideal future that shines off of the adjacent bank of every new movement promising some great secret. However, as all great promises of the 21st century have come to a close, leaving behind only the same dullness we began with, the only great secret we’ve learned has been…well, that shit-kicker book called The Secret.

In the end, Food Inc. goes on the same shelf as The Inconvenient Truth, the Occupy Movements, the Kony 2012 campaign, Obama as the harbinger of Black Jesus, and the documentary about Walmart that I’ve long forgotten the name of. But luckily every year brings a revolving door of new lifestyle fads — as healthful as they are polarizing into extremes of success and failure — not unlike the cyclical dying of the sun mirrored through the rebirth of the moon goddess I learned from that Zeitgeist documentary. Unfortunately I think this is where the developing world and its people have us beat. Their proximity to death is undisputed so they willingly give-in, unable to exercise such vanities. Although we abhor the understanding that that brevity of life is unfortunate, they know that, better yet, knowledge of brevity of life is a gift.

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

12

According to the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) your exhibit, Strange Dream, “inspires questions about how we look at our environment and how our environment can affect one’s subconscious”. How did the idea for Strange Dream come about?

My work is very detail-oriented. As a kid, I’d spend hours reproducing Where’s Waldo drawings, fascinated by how a single twopage illustration spread could command a viewer’s attention for so long. These drawings — made with the tiniest, thinnest black pens I could get my hands on — certainly formed the basis of how I approach my work today.

I make extremely detailed drawings with an element of narrative in them, whether that exists in actual, text-based narrative (in my comics), or implied narrative within a drawing that has several characters and secret pockets that viewers notice as they stare at it for a period of time. I want to hold viewers’ attention; I want them to weave a narrative out of the visual clues I leave in the drawing.

I only recently started to work large-scale.

Historically, my drawings have been the size of a single sheet of paper, the largest being around 22”x30”. In the past couple of years I’ve had the opportunity to work on a larger scale for other pieces and freelance jobs, and it sparked a bit of an epiphany; the larger the work, the more detail I could include, and the more the viewer will be sucked into the drawing.

Jil Stanton ARTIST PROFILE

Interview by Becky Hagan-Egyir

Strange Dream was a culmination of my mural projects and my comic projects. I wanted to create a very large-scale environment that featured several hidden characters and suggested narratives. Creatures and questions pop out the more you stare. After a minute or two, secret eyeballs are suddenly noticeable; they’ve been staring at you the whole time.

Where is this place? Who is the girl in the colour nest? Why is she there?

What environment has the most impact on how you’re inspired to make art?

Jill Stanton: I’m a bit of a plant nut, thanks to my mom’s early greenhouse and gardening brainwashing techniques (I love you, Mom!).

In 2011, I travelled to Vancouver Island for an Interview by Becky Hagan-Egyir apprenticeship to learn how to start and operate a 10-acre market organic farm; I was there FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

for the entire nine-month growing season, building crude greenhouses and cabins, seeding, transplanting, weeding, driving the tractor, harvesting and farming. It was initially supposed to be a break from art in general, but the natural environment and the experience of real, solid hard work was rewarding and stirring. I ended up making a small series of comics about life on the farm, and worked on advertisements, newsletters and posters for the farm and other businesses in the small town close by. [I also] painted several crude farm signs with latex paint advertising our produce. Those comics were pretty dumb and not very well drawn, but they were the impetus for all my recent graphic narrative projects, including the subscription-based comic book, Headspaces. Even now, in my tiny downtown apartment, I’ve got a small jungle of over 50 houseplants. They just make me feel better about living back in the city.

Your artwork shows a true appreciation for comics and their alternative, dream-like worlds. Often the real world can seem dream-like too — especially when you turn on the news and see all the transformative and heart14 J I L L S T A N T O N

wrenching things happening out there in the world. Do political and social events ever play a role in how you approach your work?

The first major works I completed after finishing my BFA were pieces that responded to injustices related to food, food security and food politics. These issues were part of the reason why I moved to the farm in the first place — to learn how “sustainable” food production works firsthand.

Food and its surrounding issues have always been a focal point for me; I’ve struggled with it on a personal and political level for many years.

I was a vegetarian for much of my adult life (farm life has since changed my relationship with animals, their environment and meat). I drew a lot of hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza and melted cheese because I was fascinated with the seductive quality of these foods even though they were inherently disgusting, awful and immoral. I was drawing my way through thinking about these issues. First: Why do people want to eat these things? Why did I want to eat these things, even though I “knew better”? Did it make me a fundamentally better person because I didn’t eat fac-

tory meat or even meat in general? And then, later, on the farm, surrounded by ethically-raised meat and dairy: Is a “vegan” salad made from a head of lettuce and cucumbers produced on a poorly managed farm in China or California with migrant, underpaid workers any better than a steak sandwich made from locally produced, grass-fed beef? Worse?

Three times a day (ideally, for us lucky and privileged people), we navigate through the ethics of food politics.

With each ingredient in a single meal, we have the potential to either harm ourselves (the health value of the food in question, or our financial position to choose a better option, or not), harm an animal (through animal welfare questions related to meat, dairy, eggs, etc.), harm the environment (pesticides, clear-cutting, fish farms, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, etc.), or harm someone else we are peripherally unaware of (where the food was produced, by whom, and under what variables and terms of employment). What used to be a fairly straightforward thing, even 100 years ago before such rampant globalization, has turned into a real minefield.

We all have to eat, that’s what makes food questions so all-encompassing and awful. …I still refer to these ideas from time to time in my work, though less lately since I’m feeling increasingly as though I have less of the answers I once thought I held so firmly.

I still think hot dogs and cheeseburgers are incredibly interesting and powerful tropes in society, but I like them more as ways to introduce a kind of cognitive dissonance into a narrative or drawing rather than a guilt trip. It’s a constantly evolving relationship.

One of your recent works was creating the cover design for local rapper and performer Mitchmatic’s new album.

Do you often support Edmonton artists with their own creative projects?

Working with musicians and local venues has been a real cornerstone in my practice. Gig posters in particular are among some of my favourite projects; Craig at Wunderbar has let me make dozens for him over the years for various shows, and I’m forever grateful. Posters give me a public platform and a low-stakes deadline that I can use FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

16 J I L L S T A N T O N

to experiment with different imagery, compositions and techniques. Drawing a little bit every day and throwing in challenging variables for myself is so important for how I work out future ideas.

What are some of the most memorable times this has happened for you?

Some of my favourite drawings are still some of those Wunderbar posters. Especially the ones where I liked the poster I made and the show was even better. I have also done a handful of improvised, live-drawing sessions for a variety show hosted by comedian Jon Mick. I bring ink and pens to the bar and whip up drawings on the spot based on a topic that Jon picks. Generally the drawings are making fun of Jon. It’s weird for me because I’m not a performer but I enjoy it! I like thinking and drawing quick on my feet. Most of them turn out pretty alright, though some of the results of these shows are pretty awful!

118th avenue has been an excellent experience for me personally and artistically.

If you could collaborate with one artist right now, who would that be and why?

Josh Holinaty, local illustrator extraordinaire. We’ve been meaning to collaborate for a few years now. He’s moving to Toronto, but I think we’ll finally get a chance to doodle a bit together while I’m out there this fall for a residency I’m doing at Artscape Gibraltar Point.

Growing up, did you ever imagine that you would be a different type of artist? A singer or comedian maybe?

No, strangely, I never even wanted to be a marine biologist or doctor or dinosaur or whatever kids traditionally think they want to be when they grow up. Just ask my mom. I just [wanted] to draw things.

[Edmonton is] a cocoon in a way. It also means you have to be very conscious of what other artists within the city are doing, and make sure that your work stands on its own.

How has the Edmonton artistic community influenced your own work?

Edmonton is home to a big batch of really talented artists and musicians. It’s a pretty tight, small-ish community, considering the population size of the city in general. The closeness of this community is interesting because it creates an environment where everyone is pretty open and supportive of one another. But it’s also competitive, since there are only so many real opportunities available in a city where arts is maybe not quite as important or revered as say, hockey. It’s a cocoon in a way. It also means you have to be very conscious of what other artists within the city are doing, and make sure that your work stands on its own.

It’s nice to feel like if you work hard and place value [on] your peers and connections, you can do great creative things within the city. Edmonton has a weird small town vibe for a relatively large city, which makes it feel as though you can tackle things that you might not feel you could in Vancouver or Toronto, for example. I’m impressed and inspired by start-up creative initiatives like Chelsea Boos’s Drawing Room space downtown, and Brittney Roy and Connor Buchanan’s Creative Practices Institute in the 124th street area. Also, running the printmaking program and working with clients at the Nina Haggerty Centre [an art centre for adults with developmental disabilities] on

Where do you do you see yourself heading with your work five years from now?

I don’t like to think too far into the future with my work. I think making five or 10 year goals is a little dangerous because it often puts a specific idea of yourself up on a pedestal that you continually strive for — under the impression that if you don’t reach it, you’ve somehow failed. This mindset doesn’t allow for natural creativity or allow you to follow tributaries and branches from ideas and projects you work on in the present.

If I had a five year plan for myself five years ago, I might have been a successful illustrator living in some large city, but then again, maybe not. In the process of working towards that goal, I might not have followed the stream of ideas in directions other than exclusively illustrating for widespread publications, and likely never would have made the work I’ve made thus far. I probably wouldn’t have gone to the farm. Maybe I wouldn’t have been drawing comics. I certainly wouldn’t be making 1,800 square foot ink drawings.

I think it’s more interesting not to plan too closely and to let things happen and opportunities present themselves.

Work and art gets stale and boring if you don’t let yourself mess around in hopes of accomplishing some pie-in-thesky goals. The most important thing to remember is to just keep working. Relentlessly.

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

reggie fuckin’ watts

By Brnesh Berhe | Illustrations by Spencer Smith | Photos by VSM Photo

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

20 R E G G I E W A T T S

It’s a couple hours before Reggie Watts opens for Nick Cave at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium, and there’s a lot going on backstage. Gear and chords everywhere with crew guys yelling up and down the halls trying to get everything in place for the big show. Watts seems a bit tired, only arriving in Edmonton shortly before getting to the auditorium, but is still somehow full of energy. He’s about to open for one of his musical heroes, but internalizes any nerves he may have and proceeds to happily discuss how he prepares for a show like this.

“The sets are really dictated by the surroundings and what’s happening that day. Opening up for Nick Cave is definitely part of the whole equation; of course there are going to be moments where I talk about Australia, his career longevity, and whatever comes into play that I’m influenced by. Generally though, I just allow for the day to kind of speak for itself.”

Watts’s popularity as a unique voice in comedy has grown tremendously over the past few years. He’s played impromptu sets with MCs like Childish Gambino in L.A. and gone on tour with the Oddball Festival alongside some of the biggest names in comedy like Sarah Silverman, Hannibal Buress and Louis CK (who personally chose Watts to compose the music for his Emmy-award winning show Louie).

Before design was constructed we had the Mesopotamian era… and well, we all know how that was.”

While his stage rants may come off as a bit bizarre, Watts himself is an intelligent, down-to-earth man who is very aware of what he’s doing. Less combative than Andy Kauffman, and more bizarre than Weird Al, the only thing better than discovering Reggie Watts for the first time is witnessing someone else discover him. It’s not something you can pinpoint, as he can come off as both completely random and completely genius at the same time. The best parts of his performances are the in-between moments. They’re the moments where you wait to hear how the audience is going to react; when you listen for the laughter to start growing gradually as they start to “get it”, only to have Watts suddenly pull them in an entirely different direction.

“...if it feels fresh, then I’m doing a good job; and by ‘good job’ I mean being very confusing.”

He’s had frequent guest spots on Conan, his own show, Comedy Bang Bang, and countless popular Internet videos. All of his appearances highlight his absurdist dialogue about consciousness, complete with gloriously improvised musical breaks… Or gloriously improvised music sets with breaks of absurdist dialogue, depending on how you look at it.

If you’ve never heard of Reggie Watts before, confused is the thing you’d feel watching him perform right off the bat.

He has an ability to articulate the grandest of thoughts from the most haphazard mish-mash of ideas.

Take his appearance at Pop Tech in 2011. He puts on a distinguished English accent and proceeds to school the audience like an Oxford professor, satirizing the many Ted Talkesque presenters who came on before him: “We talk about design. Often. At some point during any human’s lifetime, they will use the word ‘design’…and that’s a big deal. Aside from ‘the’ and ‘a’ and ‘and’ in various languages, ‘design’ is the fourth most popular word used.

“I like it when people don’t know anything about me; when I kind of come out of nowhere. Then I can really start talking about stuff and get them to really listen, but have them quickly realize, ‘Oh wait, something’s wrong’. I love that feeling.”

Born in Germany and the only child of his French mother and African-American father — an officer in the U.S. military — Watts’s family finally settled in Great Falls, Montana. Being one of a few visible minorities in his neighborhood, Watts never felt the stigma to fit into whatever mold his suburban counterparts may have thought a black kid was supposed to at the time.

“There are like nine black people in Montana and the rest are all whiteys… those damn whiteys [laughs]. There weren’t a lot of archetypes there either; like a group of people who were like, ‘We hang out over here and they hang out over there’. I didn’t have a crew to hang out with, so when I would do whatever I did people were just like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s just Reggie’.

No one ever questioned me liking what I liked. Ever. It was really quite amazing that it was such an accepting environment. Maybe people were judging me but I just didn’t pick up on it; I was surrounded by good friends.”

Watts studied Jazz at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts where he honed his now-solid improvisation and multidisciplinary musical talent. He eventually fronted the band Maktub and started experimenting with the effect of multiple people on stage. Along with beat boxing, Watts used FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

his voice to create layered melodies and an arrangement of sound effects. While he’s becoming more and more known for his beat boxing skills, and was influenced by the birth of break dancing as a kid, Watts admits he’s not as knowledgeable on the subject of hip-hop as most might think.

mainstream person to being an eccentric person. Or James Franco suddenly becoming an artist. All these ‘I’m eccentric. I’m strange. I’m into weird things.’ and maybe they were, but the image they projected in the beginning had no evidence of that so it rings disingenuous.

“People often assume that I listen to or know tons about hiphop and R&B because I do some form of beat boxing, but the truth of the matter is that I know very little about it. I know a couple names; like if someone says ‘DMX’, I kind of know one track because my girlfriend played it for me and said, ‘This is DMX’, but I don’t really know a lot about hip-hop.

Like Lady Gaga, I don’t believe her. I don’t believe her as an artist. There’s nothing to buy. Nothing she projects resonates with me. I mean, Missy Elliot back in the ‘90s when she was doing those videos, I was like, ‘She’s a fucking genius! Look at these videos! And these songs are incredible!’”

In high school I discovered Siouxsie and the Banshees and all of this great new wave, punk, industrial and Goth music… that’s what really resonated with me the most; I loved the whole style of it. I like music where people are like, ‘Why does he like that?’ I find it amusing when people are like, ‘I know what this guy’s about’.”

Not wanting to dwell on the negative for too long, Watts quickly points out that there’s always a shift to what people embrace and accept in mainstream culture, and that the pendulum will eventually have to swing back to something completely different.

After years of working as a musician with a diverse group of bands in Seattle, Watts eventually decided to move to Brooklyn where he would be encouraged by his friends, comedians Eugene Mirman and Michael Showalter, to try performing at various comedy clubs around New York.

With his massive afro and beard, long, painted pinky nails, and an assortment of t-shirts reminiscent of Judah Friedlander’s trucker hats, Watts stands out amongst most comics you’d see on an average night out. Every quirk about him, however, never comes off as disingenuous; it’s just a natural extension of his personality among the new “commodification of weird” the mainstream seems to be so in love with at the moment.

“It’s bullshit. You can sense it. Like Mylie Cyrus or these people trying to make transitions from being known as a 22 R E G G I E W A T T S

“The only weapon that can cut through all that is sincerity.

It seems people are tired of being hipsters and co-opting that image of Dylan and the ‘60s. When I see people saying that they’re weird or strange or whatever, it’s just a means for them to gain some sort of legitimacy. It doesn’t work. It works for pop fans cause it feels different for them and it’s different, but it isn’t necessarily genuine.”

Reggie Watts doesn’t seem to be too bothered by what people think of him, or their pre-conceived ideas of what comedy should be. He enjoys challenging his own abilities a musician, storyteller and improviser while challenging his audience to experience it with him.

“I’m just trying to surprise myself; maybe I repeat things and I’m not aware of it, but at least for me if it feels fresh, then I’m doing a good job; and by ‘good job’ I mean being very confusing.”

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CRAZY PASSION What it’s Like to Own a Music Venue

By cbwcaswell | Photos by GIRL NAMED SHIRL Photography | Illustrations by Molly Little

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

26 C R A Z Y P A S S I O N

Being passionate about your job is a great way to not make money. Artists are a great example. I myself am volunteering to write this article, and several magazines like Marker exist just because their editors believe in what they have to say. In Alberta — where we cross ourselves with the trinity of Oil, Gas and the Bottom Dollar — it might even seem insane to put so much effort into something that promises no fiscal return. But there’s a special cell in the asylum reserved for a particular kind of crazy. It’s a mutant blend of passion, arts and business; a job that eats time, resources and fervour until the hand that feeds is gnawed to the bone. It’s home to the music venue owner.

“I don’t understand the constant pissing on the floor,” says Craig Martell of Whyte Avenue’s Wunderbar. “It’s baffling to me. The shitting on the floor has happened three times. I don’t get it.”

Tyson Cale Boyd, exbooker of the Pawn Shop on Whyte, says, “I think most people that work in the music industry are just so passionate that [they] start out with high expectations and just find bitter disappointment when people don’t buy into it as easily as [they] do.”

And James Leder of the former Haven Social Club on Stony Plain Road adds, “You need somebody that plans on having no life, doesn’t mind working all nights and every weekend – pretty much living the job — and [who] hopes to win the lottery because they’ll need to find some way to retire.”

And you can’t forget the little joys like fighting with musicians who feel they weren’t paid enough; stopping fights that break out; replacing musical equipment; wondering what that stain is on the bathroom wall and how you’ll get it out; finding time to keep up with what’s new in the scene; and losing clientele to places that aren’t music venues, but are playing host to pop-up shows. It’s not only a job. It becomes your life, and it frequently spits people out on the other side — exhausted, apathetic and poor.

So why would anyone throw themselves into this spiritual wood chipper?

Craig Martell: “I didn’t want to be the guy responsible for making this successful.”

I sit down with Craig Martell two weeks before he announces on Facebook that he will be leaving indie-musicvenue mainstay, Wunderbar. The post will receive 190 comments, 160 shares, nearly 1,000 likes and dozens of heartfelt remembrances. When I see him after the post has landed, he’s light-hearted, relaxed, and maybe drunk with the amount of brain-space he has reacquired – brain-space that was once devoted to keeping the venue afloat. But at the time of our initial interview he seemed tired and somewhat ambivalent about his feelings for Wunderbar.

He tells me he didn’t initially want to open a music venue. He wanted to open a bar, and when his partners brought Wunderbar to his attention, he realized it could only ever be a venue; a business he knew was one of the hardest to succeed in. He says he doesn’t know how they survived the first eight months financially, and even now, four years later, with an exponential increase in shows, he’s still not sure why they struggle. He tells me stories about cleaning up vomit, late nights babysitting an empty room, and coming out of movie theatres only to spend the next hour answering missed texts, calls and emails. Each story is a note of a life that doesn’t belong to him, and any selfish expenditure of time he makes is taken back two-fold. Martell also questions if Wunderbar lost its crowd some time ago — a common hazard that venues frequently fall into, as all scenes eventually move on.

“It’s trying to walk this line,” says Martell, “between curating and having some sense of exclusivity, while not pigeonholing yourself too much that your scene dies and you’re fucked. And I still, in hindsight, don’t know if I did that right.”

In recent years, Edmonton has lost numerous venues including Jasper Avenue’s Elevation Room and west Edmonton’s Edmonton Event Centre and the Haven Social Club.

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

This is a continuing trend that began in the ‘70s and ‘80s (a period when Jasper Avenue had a dozen venues that hosted live music). The loss of the Event Centre was especially disheartening, being the only room in the city that could fit 300 to 400 people. However, not only did Wunderbar’s 85-person room stay open, it hosted 350 shows a year at its peak, gained national renown and a local reputation as a hub for local music. Some have gone as far to say that it was a spiritual reincarnation of one of Edmonton’s most often-mourned venues, the Sidetrack Cafe.

“I only knew one or two local bands [when we started],” says Martell. “Then they eventually started flocking to us. Watching that transition happen… you get caught up in that.”

Martell tells me of band after band from Edmonton that would tour abroad, and upon returning mention all the bands from Vancouver, Montreal and out east that had played at and loved Wunderbar.

“I wanted it to be a place that’s known nationwide as a place to play,” says Martell. “I wanted it to be a place that was well curated so people knew there was some quality control — a place where you walk in and the band that’s on might not be to your taste, but it’s going to be objectively good. I think I knew pretty early on what it could become, and it became that.” And for someone who never wanted to own a venue, maybe the insanity is that it happened at all.

Tyson Cale Boyd: A lot of people in the music industry will tell you that if you’re interested, don’t get into it… because it can be hellish.

Growing up, Tyson Cale Boyd would take the six months of the year he wasn’t working in isolated oil camps to travel Europe and take-in every music festival he could. He was exposed to music that challenged what he’d grown up with and what he found on the radio, and Boyd wanted to share this music with people who’d never heard it before.

28 C R A Z Y P A S S I O N

The Pawn Shop on Whyte Avenue was the perfect place for Boyd’s taste in extreme music. Working initially as security and moving his way up to bookings, Boyd watched as metal-focused venue lasted beyond the typical five-yearspan of most venues. “Pawn Shop is very lucky to be about seven-years-old now,” says Boyd. “That doesn’t happen often.” Its age is primarily owed to its clientele and their penchant for drinking.

Booze has long served as life-support for music venues. While some take a cut from ticket sales, places like Wunderbar and Pawn Shop will often give the door money to the bands and rely on the bar to pay rent. However, venues rarely make as much money as clubs.

“A person who goes to a club has all his or her money to spend at the bar,” says Boyd, “buy drinks, throw money around. But people who go and take-in music, they spend money on a ticket and a t-shirt. You have half of them who might buy booze, and the other half who aren’t drinkers but want to be there [for the music].”

This leads to some venues catering exclusively to metal music, as the genre’s fans are known for drinking to excess. However, metal music can scare those who aren’t familiar with the genre, and any venue that relies on a single music scene is at risk of dying if the a scene begins to wither and fans disappear. Boyd had to start paying attention to numerous genres to keep Pawn Shop relevant, but his dream was still to bring the excitement and discovery he found in European festivals to Alberta.

Boyd took a chance by planning his own festival. Harvesting Hell was set to be an outdoor festival in Central Alberta featuring the extreme music — the music Boyd had grown up wanting to share. It would be the start of a career in booking festivals, bringing more experimental bands to our province. However, the rural population of Alberta (composed primarily of religious conservatives) would have none of it, and fought tooth and nail to keep it from happening. The outdoor festival would be pushed indoors, becoming a very expensive lesson learned.

FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

30 C R A Z Y P A S S I O N

But for Boyd there’s little bitterness. Like molding his musical tastes in Europe, it’s about exposing yourself to new experiences, good and bad, and continuing to discover and learn.

To finish his initial thought, “A lot of people who are in the music industry will tell you that if you’re interested, don’t get into it… because it can be hellish. But it’s all about the love doing it. I never understood that until I started working in the music industry. It’s a labour of love.”

James Leder: Unless you’re at capacity, there’s no money.

At its peak, James Leder’s Haven Social Club was a diamond in the rough of Stony Plain Road. It brought in local bands, touring acts and music lovers of every genre to Edmonton’s culturally decrepit west end. While the venue was thought to have closed due to flooding in its final spring, Leder had made the decision long before.

“I didn’t expect it to be as hard,” he says, “and not ‘hard’ as in running it, but getting people out to support it. Back when we opened I thought ‘There’s nothing going on’ and ‘This is a great venue’ and ‘We need this’. I thought Edmonton could have been more than where it was ready to be at the time.”

The summers left the Haven bereft of visitors. The street traffic was a mix of drug users and those who visited the pawn shops and erotic massage parlours down the street.

And while MacEwan’s campus for Arts and Communications, located a block away, offered a crowd that led to some of the venue’s finest years, eventually it wasn’t enough to sustain the business. If anything, the flood was a blessing — something to come and wipe the slate clean.

But it doesn’t seem like Leder learned his lesson. He’s opening a new venue.

spin local music throughout the week, feature touring acts over the weekend, and become downtown’s after-work hangout. Essentially, it will perfect the Haven Social Club’s previous atmosphere, but in a downtown setting, something Leder says he never heard the end of while nestled in the west end.

He describes at length all the venues he’s visited across North America — in Vancouver, Austin, Los Angeles and New York — explaining how he’s changing the business model so the venue won’t require grant funding; so it can sustain itself, generate buzz and be something new. In the midst of his excitement, he says, “There’s no reason Edmonton can’t be a renowned music scene.”

Admittedly, it’s a crazy thought. But it’s a crazy thought that’s shared by every venue owner who stays until 4 a.m. cleaning up vomit and empty beer cans. It’s the notion shared by every musician that makes less money than expected, but instead of blaming someone, plans to do better next time. It’s the feeling writers have when talking about their scenes and the magazines that publish their articles; the idea of having inspired readers to be present in the community by supporting inventive bands, and sharing those bands’ music with the world.

In the end, maybe “crazy” isn’t the right word.

EXTENDED INTERVIEW

with Craig Martell

Exclusively on markermagazine.com

The Needle Vinyl Tavern is set to rock Jasper Avenue in the first quarter of 2015. Filling the 300-capacity hole left by the Edmonton Events Centre’s closure, the venue is set to FALL 2014/WINTER 2015

CHECKING OUT

By Rae Schuller

Buying a safety pin in the 1960s was a simple act — perhaps by someone wanting to make a fringed vest last one more tour. In the ‘70s, a safety pin might have been acquired to adorn a leather jacket or an earlobe. Today, buying something so small and seemingly insignificant can be incredibly loaded.

Check out. This is the message sold at the core of every subculture: I will check out of societal obligations and pressures that I feel won’t please me, and I’ll build my own community, even if outsiders don’t understand my motivations.

This philosophy is perfectly illustrated by the counter-culture movement, beginning with the pre-Beat Generation and moving forward into hippie culture in the mid-‘60s and beyond. Hippies may have been all about free love, drugs and enjoying the sensual things in life, but they weren’t in it to harm others or to take down the system from within.

As the world shrinks and the internet expands, we’ve come to realize our actions have unintended global consequences. Perhaps that’s why there isn’t a 21st century movement analogous to the counter-cultural waves of the past. Living in the first world without benefiting from the labour and poverty of the developing and third worlds, let alone the havoc wreaked on the environment, is an almost unattainable concept. Even avowed social anarchists with their D.I.Y. mentality have to buy their wool and wood from somewhere.

Self-sufficient, off-the-grid living, while admi-

rable to strive for, isn’t without its own consequences.

Let’s return to the safety pin. The iconic, anti-accessory of the punk movement. These innocuous little pieces of metal are typically made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. While much of the copper that the world uses is recycled, the rest is sourced from enormous open mines, one of the most notable being Chile’s Chuquicamata. It is a vast, grey pit, 850 meters deep, visually reminiscent (though less legislatedw) of Alberta’s Tar Sands. Copper accounts for one third of Chile’s foreign exports; and millions of families depend on the demand for commodities as simple as safety pins for their economic survival.

Because subcultures carry a price of admission — whether in safety pins, music, clothing or drugs — by becoming members, we would be contributing directly to the maintenance of a world that has unfathomable inequality.

The Millennial Generation, born into an age of awareness and unprecedented access to information, is too savvy to think there’s a way to “check out” into a resurgence of counter-culturalism without causing harm. Instead of following these newly established subcultures of apathy and dissatisfaction, and buying into ideas based on consumption and imitation – hipsters, anybody? – this generation could use its incredible access to information to create a more positive culture. Let’s move away from exploiting the birthplace of the safety pin, and foster a culture that allows us to live without profiting from hunger, strife and war.

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