A Year’s Worth of Memories | Heartbreaking Bravery

February 18, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Lily Mastrodimos)

Jawbreaker Reunion II

At some point in 2015, I got to know the core members of Jawbreaker Reunion, a band I’ve adored since first coming across their debut shortly after its release, as people. Bella Mazzetti contributed a piece to the 2015 edition of A Year’s Worth of Memories earlier this month and now Lily Mastrodimos is following suit. While Mastrodimos’ contributions to Jawbreaker Reunion have left me reeling, in 2015 the songwriter’s focus expanded to include Long Neck, a hushed solo project. Heights, the project’s first full-length, was one of 2015’s great unexpected highlights. Trading in Jawbreaker Reunion’s confrontational celebrations into something much more quietly introspective is something Mastrodimos expands on in the included piece. Mastrodimos’ contribution here is an unfettered look at the machinations of artistic process; how people learn to cope with the most difficult of impulses. Read it below and remember that even feeling invaluable can be a valuable experience when it’s approached from the right angle.

I Swear It’s Enough: Learning Self Care Through Long Neck

I should preface this piece by saying that, in writing and sharing all of this, I am terrified. I am sitting at my desk and my heart is pounding. This is a lot for me to say and even more to admit. But I have spent years invalidating myself, and for the sake of my health it needs to stop.

2015 was the year I really started paying attention to my mental health. For so long, I had situated myself into a comfortable routine of repressing, repressing, repressing. I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to my friends, to call and ask for help, to really be honest about how I was doing and the thoughts that were racing through my head at breakneck speeds. 2015 was the year I started to work on breaking that cycle. It’s been slow progress, and with 2016 already creeping along I’ve found that I have more to work on. But throughout the previous year, one of the major things that allowed me to explore my mental health and find some calm was music, specifically, with Long Neck.

Long Neck began in my senior year at Bard, with small GarageBand recordings of songs I had written in the months or years before the semester started. I had started recognizing my depression towards the end of my sophomore year, recognizing it as something real and with teeth. My whole body would ache, like it was cringing. My stomach and chest would constantly feel like a squirming ball python. I hated my body, I hated every word that came out of my mouth, I felt lonelier than I could put into words. I believed I was unlovable.

I was scared shitless to open my mouth and tell anyone anything; I had convinced myself that if I did so no one would want to be my friend because I was too much of a “bummer”. So instead of talking, instead of reaching out, instead of calling, I wrote songs about it.

The songs I wrote as Long Neck held two purposes. The first was to have an outlet for everything I was feeling. The second was to let my friends know that something was up. I am lucky to have some of the most supportive and loving friends I could ever ask for, they have been there for me at my worst and I am so grateful for them. When writing these songs I wasn’t doing so because they didn’t care; I was finding it physically difficult to tell my friends I was in a bad place, and in writing these songs I realized I was far more at ease and comfortable to open up about my depression in verse.

At the start of 2015, I set a goal for myself. I acquired some recording tools and software, and I set out to record all the songs I had been playing in secret for months (though I had played my first Long Neck show in December ’14). I had no idea what I was going to do with any of the finished products, but I was excited to work them into new forms. My dorm room was my studio. My second-floor window overlooked an open field and the forests beyond, and rising high above those trees were the Catskills that stood across the Hudson.

I could hear songbirds when they came back in spring, I heard coyotes crying at the moon, I heard spring peepers and the nasal “meeps” of American Woodcocks and trains rolling by late at night. I felt so much peace there, and when I started recording everything I found that I wasn’t afraid of holding back. On days when I’d get snowed in I would spend the whole day recording, snuggled in my favorite sweaters, watching the snow phase out the mountains and the forests until it settled in one uninterrupted sea of white, my Christmas lights reflecting off of the surface.

This environment, with its serenity and warmth, was the perfect place for me to sit and explore and sift through everything that had been filling my body with the weight that made it so difficult for me to move. I could dig into myself and how I was feeling and why and examine everything I pulled from that. When I put my findings to words, I could feel myself breathing again.

Where before I had been content with ignoring my depression, now I was staying active—I was glaring at it in the face, I was playing keys and guitar and bass and banjo and singing and tracking it all. The music was on my terms, I had control over everything I was recording through mixing and retracking and doubling and what-have-you. Nothing was whispering to me “you’re not worth it” or “why do you even think this matters?” or “you should probably just stop trying.” Something was nudging me and saying “look what you’re creating.”

Long Neck became a form a self-care. I realized, halfway through recording the album that would become Heights, that I was becoming more comfortable being alone and keeping myself company than I had ever been. Before, I had dreaded returning to an empty room, or looking at a blank phone screen. Suddenly, I was able to relish the quiet nights that were all mine. They belonged to me, and I claimed ownership of myself.

This isn’t to say that my depression was completely cured. Not at all. I still had my rough days and weeks, still had to force myself to talk to people, still got panic attacks at parties and still felt a blazing pit in my stomach when I thought about how lonely I was. But something was different. It didn’t consume me anymore.

It didn’t feel like I was stagnating, because I could write about it. I could go back to my dorm and sing the lyrics over and over and put it to music and think about ways to make it better, and in doing so, could feel like I was helping myself feel better. I could feel like healing was possible. I was teaching myself how to be the maker of my own salvation; therapy helped too, but in between sessions I had to be the motor for my own growth.

Being more honest through Long Neck allowed me to become more honest with myself. When I started playing shows, I realized that people are willing to listen, people can connect, people want to hear you. Even when it’s not a song. Long Neck let me be heard when I thought my voice meant absolutely nothing, when I couldn’t express myself truthfully to the people I loved the most. I learned to be bolder. I started being more open with my friends, and was overjoyed when I realized that no one would let me go because I was depressed—I wasn’t a “bummer”, I was someone struggling with something real and valid.

When I released Heights in June, a few weeks after graduating from the place I called home for four years and leaving my beloved dorm room, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. There was everything I had been working through for almost three years, there was something I created all on my own, out in the open. I felt proud, prouder than I’d been in so long, and happy. I felt taller, I felt solid, I felt OK.

I’m still learning. I’m still growing. I’m still taking steps forward and steps back and forward again. Long Neck has been one of the most positive musical experiences I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. I’ve started playing with a full band of some of my oldest and best friends, and our practices and last performance have left me feeling so much love and pure joy. I’ve come to better understand my downs and how to endure, knowing that there are better things ahead.

Depression is a wild animal. It bends to no one, and can be so difficult to lasso that it burns your palms against the rope. But you can ease its temper, even if its just for a little bit. You can be lonely but you are never alone. You can feel unlovable but know that there are scores of people to whom you are the world. You are stronger than you know or believe, and the feelings that prick your brain are just as valid for you to have as the peace and love you so rightly deserve. I promise you.

-Lily Mastrodimos

4 Comments

February 17, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Nicholas Cummins)

Fern Mayo II

One of the many people I was very fortunate to get to know during my time in Brooklyn was Nicholas Cummins, who was playing bass in Fern Mayo when we were first introduced. They always treated me with a kindness that registered as both empathetic and tender; someone that genuinely cared not just about people but the state of their world. At some point last summer, they also began covering the low-end in PWR BTTM, allowing them to be more outwardly vocal about gender politics. Here, they offer up an exceptionally moving piece about returning to a home that was nearly forgotten thanks, in large part, to traumatic past events. I’m genuinely honored to be running it as a part of the 2015 edition of A Year’s Worth of Memories and am increasingly thankful for all of the interactions I had with Cummins over the course of last year. A brilliant musician and a gifted writer, their piece can be read below.

I clicked the left blinker and we merged onto the Rock Creek Parkway, finally on the way out of DC’s clusterfuckingly labyrinthine street grid and heading to our next show in New Freedom, Pennyslvania. It was early October and not cold yet. The forest on either side of the small highway was still lush and growing over, but the smell of drying leaves was fully in the air now and, like every year, that smell told me that the past was on it’s way back.

It’s a haunting cliché, but I really do spend every summer running carefree into the sun and every fall retracting into a dried leaf. In August, the long days and hot sun eek sweat from everything and all the colors of my friends and loved ones run together. The first week of September hits, though, and suddenly I can smell it.

New Freedom is actually a borough, not a town, in York County, Pennsylvania. It has a population of about 4,400 people and the center of commerce there is a Rutters gas station where I used to ask strangers to buy me cigarettes when I was 15. The post office is unintentionally modern, architecturally, for a one story building, and since I moved away they added a train museum called Steam into History. My old friend Cain is one of the last people I know there, and he’s starting a music venue in an old barn called The Hart.

It was the fifth stop on Fern Mayo’s album release tour for our first release, Happy Forever.

I was irritated because we had gotten a late start that day but to be real I am almost always irritated because we almost always get a late start every day (working on this). Holding the steering wheel steady with my right hand, I used the pair of locking pliers permanently locked into place to roll down the manual window in our 1997 Honda Accord. When we bought it for $500 from a family in central New Jersey in March that year, every surface of the car was covered in cigarette ash. I quit cigarettes in May.

With my knee holding the wheel, I cupped my hands and lit a joint. Weed makes me stupid, but New Freedom makes me sad. Choosing to play there as our stop between DC and Philly was as much an act of rebellion against myself as a way to bring two parts of my world together, the person I was growing up and the person I am now. That person was brash, insecure, and had a mother who suffered greatly from schizophrenia.

This one was quieter, more sure of themselves, still grieving her death, but getting better. Passing familiar landmarks, I noticed how much time had passed while I’d been on autopilot. We pulled off the highway and into the woods. We crossed an old one-lane stone bridge and I began to feel nauseous. “Where is the house you grew up in?” asked Charlie, then our drummer.

“Don’t worry about it,” I grumbled. It’s too easy to pass a wave of pain off onto the closest person. He didn’t reply. “Sorry, it’s not a big deal.” That house had been foreclosed on and taken by the bank a few years ago. Clearing my childhood boxes out of the dusty basement was a memory I didn’t want to revisit, but one that took any opportunity to muscle its way back into my thoughts. What was I supposed to have kept that I didn’t? Did I hold on to my mom’s old watercolors? Were they somewhere or did they get swept into the trash in the rush of it all? I can’t remember.

We rumbled through the forest. The Honda creaked as its wheels bounced into the potholes. Grass grew through the rocky pavement in the center of the road. Off to the left was a dirt path flanked by two golden-orange long-haired cats. The Hart.

Cain Kline is the first person who I saw perform music that really hit me in the gut. His first band, Paroxysm, played at Mr. Bob’s Skate Park when I was 14 and it utterly blew me away. 14 years later, we pulled our overheating Honda up the grassy hill to his barn to load in. He popped through the very tiny blue door and gave me a huge bear hug, shining black hair flowing down past his skinny ass.

The opening act was my close friend and former Paroxysm bassist Nate Borek, who came all the way from Philly to read poetry. During his set he spoke softly with a subtle and occasionally surging ebullience underneath his voice, like he was fighting to restrain his excitement. So many people I hadn’t seen in years surrounded me, sitting in a semi circle in the center of the barn as the light outside faded to the pitch black of the forest. Some I hadn’t seen since high school, some since my mother’s funeral. Nate smiled and glanced at me before reading his last poem.

“For Nicholas Cummins,” he said.

“Oh fuck,” I said.

My favorite bassist
of the band
Has a day job

They don’t do cartwheels
They do handstands

My favorite bassist
of the band
Has a day job

Somewhere in between him getting my pronouns right and calling me his favorite bassist, a tear rolled down my cheek, burning red from all of the eyes in the room pointing my way. I thought he may have known that I can’t do cartwheels, but have had vivid dreams about them. As I found out later, he meant that I was an active musician who maintained a 9-5, bouncing from New York out to DC or Pittsburgh or Boston and pulling together tri-state weekend tours, but always snapping back to my desk on time for work the next day. Handstands, not cartwheels. He was the same.

Sometimes a place you’ve left in ruins is unthinkable to return to. Sometimes you have to steel yourself to even consider feeling comfortable going back to the site of an old wound. You think it’ll still be there, open, stinging, evident in the time-imprinted sights of old street signs and buildings. And for the first couple of times, it probably will be.

But maybe over time some weeds will grow up through the ground and swallow what used to stand there. If you’re lucky someone with a kind heart will stay behind and tend to them, even start building a garden. I’m not really sure but I think next time I make it, some will have bloomed.

-Nicholas Cummins

4 Comments

February 16, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Kelly Johnson)

Geronimo!

As I’ve previously stated in the introductory paragraph for Ben Grigg’s entry into this year’s edition of A Year’s Worth of Memories, Geronimo! meant a lot to me. They played the first showcase I ever threw for this site and they’ve been unbelievably kind to me through the time I’ve known them. It was incredibly difficult to see them go but it’s been comforting to watch their other projects develop in the aftermath of their dissolution. Guitarist/vocalist Kelly Johnson’s release as Hung Toys, Lurid, was an unexpected 2015 highlight and saw Johnson embrace his fieriest sensibilities. Here, he takes a look at the history of Geronimo!, what that time meant to him, and what he learned about himself through their existence. It’s an oddly moving piece that gives me hope for what Johnson’s future has in store. Read it below and remember that if you surround yourself with the right people, you’ve already managed to succeed more than most people will ever realize.

I Ate the Best Burger of My Life

I was reticent to write a piece for Steven’s blog because I was worried it would come off as too self-involved. Or that I’d force a misguided, self-righteous message into my story in an effort to offer some sage advice to his readers. It’s hard to say if these fears came from my disenchantment of social media and its “I’m-eating-the-best-burger-of-my-life-right-now” types of oversharing, or if they came out of a genuine place of insecurity about my personal views in this enormous world.

Last year saw countless important issues come to a head: violence against blacks, women’s rights, transgender rights, Trump politics, Pizza Rat. I recognize my position as a white-privileged male and a lot of my experiences are trivial when compared to all of the people on this planet less fortunate than me.

But Steven is a person whose enthusiasm and passion for music I admire. He’s on the good side of things in the fight of life. He’s a sincere and thoughtful person, and I was flattered that he wanted to include me in this collection of personal anecdotes. Also, I remembered how rewarded I was the last time that I stepped out of my comfort zone: I got to play loud rock music in a band called Geronimo!

Geronimo! (yes, we made the unsound decision early on to stay devoted to the exclamation point) was a band that Ben Grigg (keyboard/bass), Matt Schwerin (drums) and I (guitar/vocals) started way back at the end of 2007. Last year, we played our final show on Saturday, March 28.

Geronimo! was not a big band. We didn’t make money or sell albums. Ben and I worked for months and months trying to book a solid 2-3 weeks of tour per year. We worked really hard to make records that we were proud of, but realistically, weren’t breaking any new ground. I am an OK singer at best and understand just about zero music theory. For the first five years of the band, we struggled to find an identity within our sound and to have the confidence to perform the songs we composed. So once it ended, what had we accomplished? 2015 was a year for me to reflect on that.

In hindsight, I moved to Chicago in the summer of 2007 to become a successful rock musician. Quit my job as a proofreader at the local phone book company (seriously look up how many companies called ‘A+ Plumbing’ there are trying to get that primo first spot in the phone book) and moved to the big city. It wasn’t an overtly conscious decision to “be a rock star.” But looking back, yeah. That’s kinda the reason I did it. My subconscious plan to stardom didn’t extend beyond “form a band, start touring, make money, and repeat.” But I had moved to Chicago to try and play music, and that was a success for me.

Inherent in that plan is the idea that, yeah, I’m going to work towards becoming a musician in a rock band and that will sustain me for the rest of my life. My job as a dog walker was utilitarian for taking time off to tour. It’s difficult to tour much more than a couple of weeks out of the year when you aren’t a band drawing crowds in other cities, but we still did it.

We recorded our first couple of EPs ourselves with the help of a couple of generous friends. We burned CDs and hand-made artwork to try and make a few bucks on tour and get our van to the next show. At best we would break even, but we were doing it. We were playing shows out of town, meeting new people and seeing new places. That was a success for me.

After 4 years or so, we were able to make friends with some folks out east in Exploding in Sound Records. Musicians and fans making, what we felt, music that was similar in scope and approach. Dan and Dave were amazing enough to give us a chance and put out our last 3 releases. We got to meet and play with bands we were genuinely fans of (and are still fans of to this day). We still weren’t making money, but this too was a success for me.

After it all ended, we didn’t become rock stars. I didn’t get remotely close to quitting my job in order to become a rock musician. I think we all ended up with about 300 bucks after splitting our “band fund” when all was said and done. I’m guessing we were the least (if not THE least) lucrative band for EIS records.

But it was the best time of my life. The one thing I absolutely learned is that, in the end, YOU get to define your own fucking success. There are no standards in life but the ones that you create. I want to stress this point because I know there are a lot of musicians who were like me in the various circles I met over the years. Dissatisfied with where there musical vision was taking them. Disillusioned after not receiving the positive feedback you’d imagined for something that you’ve worked so hard to create.

In my mind, if you’ve started a band, you’re a success. If you write a song, you’re a success. If you play your songs in front of people that are willing to listen, you’re a success. If you record your own music and another person hears your creation, you’re a success. The fact that you’ve made the decision to try; to construct something that didn’t exist before, means you’ve succeeded in some capacity.

There’s a pure gratification in that if you don’t let arbitrary, outside standards get in the way.

I look back on my years in a touring rock band with great satisfaction. I’m a fortunate person to exist in this world and play rock music. Through that experience, I also learned a million ways to be dissatisfied with your life. But there are also a million ways to be satisfied if you take the time and look. I got to play in a loud rock band called Geronimo! and it was definitely the best burger of my life.

-Kelly Johnson

2 Comments

February 16, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Julia Leiby)

I first came across Julia Leiby’s writing thanks to their contributions over at Post-Trash, where they continuously demonstrated a keen grasp of music and excellent taste. Over the past few months, we’ve had some light interactions across various social media platforms. Usually, it’s something simple- but close to every single time, it’s connected back to music. Another photographer/music writer who also writes music, Leiby constantly endorses the artists she loves and frequently acts as a voice of support. I’m excited to be welcoming them to the A Year’s Worth of Memories series and am excited to be hosting their piece, a lovely look at four songs that defined each season of their 2015. Find out what those songs are below and never hesitate to reach out to the people who are positively impacting your life.

Winter

Tiny Planets – Sports – from the album Sunchokes

I started booking house shows in the spring of 2014, with one show in April and then more once my junior year of college was underway. Together, my friend Mitch and I would put together a bill and run things, asking for donations, setting up, and hosting the bands. Winter of 2015 was a particularly brutal winter with temperatures in the low teens and seemingly never-ending blankets of snow. I was dealing with the end of something I wouldn’t really call a ‘relationship’ but it was important to me nonetheless.

I was sleeping in until almost noon every day, and I skipped a 9:20 AM class I had so often that the times I did go, we were covering material that was completely foreign to me. But, the shows were really what I looked forward to, and they were so stellar that winter. People came out in droves to see bands like The Obsessives, Sports, Eskimeaux, and Adult Mom play in houses. The shows were packed and went off with a hitch every time, save for when a moshing crowd broke the wobbly floor of the Pink Mistress show house. One of my favorite shows of that winter was when Sports played at Wolf Haus. Carmen, Jack, Benji, and James play emotional, catchy power pop, and they went to Kenyon College which is about two hours outside of Athens.

The song “Tiny Planets” is my favorite on their record that was out at the time, an ode to the joy, nervousness and confusion that comes with new love, as Carmen belts out triumphantly, “you’re the reason why/ I can never hide / lying side by side / this is worth a try.” That winter was a golden age for shows and being excited about live music in Athens.

Spring

Yowler – Yowler – from the album The Offer

When I was 18 years old, I went to my first house show ever at a place called The Dollhouse. There was no AC in the house, it had pink walls, and I was feeling so undone and out of place around punks much older than me. I can’t remember who else played the show, but Saintseneca headlined. I remember there was no actual drummer, just a man stomping on a wooden box, as Zac Little feverishly played guitar and Maryn Jones provided gorgeous harmonies. After this show, I was so excited to go to college in Ohio and experience the music scene there. Saintseneca was the only band I knew who were from there, and their existence validated my choice to leave my home state of Maryland.

I have been following Maryn Jones’ music virtually since then.

Three days before my birthday in February 2015 Maryn released The Offer, a beautiful, intimate record made of two elements, just Maryn’s sweet voice and quiet guitar. I would walk around in the late spring, when it was getting warmer, listening to this record and feeling so at peace. As the weather thawed, so did my mind. This record helped me pull out of a deep sadness I had felt for months and months, and probably was part of the reason why I decided to do a girls rock camp and started to play guitar in March of 2015.

Summer

Yolanda – Doubles (formerly O-FACE) – from the EP Mint

Summer of 2015 was, in a word, wild. I expected a quiet summer at home, working retail, going to shows, hanging out with my friend Sarah from high school, sleeping in as late as I could and letting the time pass like the breeze. Instead, I started a band, played two shows with bands that I deeply admired, went to New York for almost a week, and recorded a 5-track EP in a studio, all while meeting a lot of new people who left lasting impressions on me.

At the time, I was listening to the Mint EP by the Philly-by-way-of-Bard band O-FACE, who are now called Doubles. They have a song called “Yolanda” which is an upbeat song addressed to a partner or friend about not doubting yourself, and the chorus is exuberant; singer Preston practically yells “You’re the one for me”. I had so many crushes that summer, and I would listen to this song and melt into my feelings, all while feeling motivated and confident to make music for the first time ever.

Fall/Winter

Plant Boy – Brittle Brian – from the album Verisune

Although Verisune by Brittle Brian came out in July of 2015, I didn’t really delve deep into it until the fall when I was back at school in Athens. Continuing to run shows, I was invested in difficult classes and feeling really disheartened about my major/chosen profession of photoj. I felt a pit of dread in my stomach when I went to my once most anticipated class, my capstone class for photojournalism. I was also talking to someone who lived very far away and hanging onto the last strands and memories of what I had with them.

My friend Adam, who has his own project called Lemon Meringue Die, told me about Brittle Brian and I just keep coming back to this record. Victoria Rose writes sparse, experimental pop songs about Daniel Johnston, touching, and love in a creaky, high voice and though her subjects are heavy, the record is soothing and perfect for winding down after a tough or disappointing day. I would basically listen to this record constantly from September to December and I still throw it on these days too. I remember playing a pretty terrifying solo show (my first ever solo show) and then crying during the next band’s set because my friends didn’t come to see me play.

They went to a party instead.

I hit up my friend Evan to try to feel better and he said ‘just put on Brittle Brian and chill out’ and once I got home I did just that. Songs like “Plant Boy” are reminiscent of Alex G in their ability to take you to a place that is reflective, honest, and cathartic. We listened to this record when my band went on our first tour because my drummer loves her stuff too. Looking back on 2015, I can’t wait to see what records will define my 2016. I’m really excited about the music coming out this year and what the future will hold for me.

-Julia Leiby

3 Comments

February 15, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Sam Clark)

sam clark

No contributor has collaborated with me on as many projects, both in terms of writing about music and writing music, than Sam Clark. We’ve played together in at least three bands and we’ve written together for at least three different publications. We continue to make music and we continue to write about music on our own terms but jump at collaborating any time we’re presented with the chance. For the past few years, he’s been running the outstanding dimestore saints and last year he released two EP’s of deeply compelling ambient music under the Ancient Mariners moniker. I’m very fortunate to be able to call him a close friend and to have found someone in such an isolated town that shared in some incredibly niche interests. I’m also very lucky to have him back as a returning contributor to the A Year’s Worth of Memories series. Here, he turns his attention to the difficulties of living in an area that severely restricts access to good shows, finding solace in Washington through visiting Wisconsin artists, and learning that isolation isn’t always because of physical surroundings. Read the piece below, keep both eyes on dimestore saints, and remember that you can always build new homes.

2015 is already a flickering memory, and I’m fine with that. This past year was one of my darkest and most disorienting on record – save for perhaps 1992, which was half-spent in utero. I was out of school for the first time in seventeen years with little to show for all of my academic work, and spent most of it in the midst of a year-long lease on an apartment in the northwestern-most tip of the Pacific Northwest, two thousand miles away from all of my close friends and family; I was listless and sometimes lonely, and things generally felt stagnant.

A burgeoning homesickness for western Wisconsin was partially alleviated by an intimate S. Carey living room show in late February. I feel somewhat like a fraud in admitting this, but I go to relatively few live shows a year in comparison to some of my fellow writers. Part of this shortcoming is probably derived from social anxiety, sure, but another key factor has always been proximity; local music scene aside, the nearest concert venue was often an hour or more away from where I lived, and travel time frequently became an issue.

Bellingham is a bit different – it occupies a sweet spot on I-5 almost halfway between Vancouver and Seattle that’s often attractive to bands in the middle of West Coast stretches – so I jumped at the chance to see a homegrown artist whose national tour happened to bring him within a half-mile of my apartment.

The ensuing performance was beautiful; fifty people crammed into a pristine turn-of-the-century home with vaulted ceilings to hear sprawling ambient soundscapes culled from little more than a Fender Rhodes, pedal steel, and heavily-textured electric guitar. That brief respite was then extended into the following month, thanks to a stellar Field Report solo set at a bar around the corner from my apartment; together, these events served as a reminder that salient musical traits of home were, miraculously, much closer than I believed.

Coincidental Wisconsin-related things continued throughout the spring, from a co-worker whose improv trio had performed with one from Eau Claire that I know well, to a random stranger stopping me on a footpath for a conversation because he too had graduated from the alma mater embroidered on my sweatshirt nearly forty years prior, to Sylvan Esso stopping in at the bagel shop I managed the morning after their Vancouver show. A strange conglomerate of events, to be sure, but they were absolutely intrinsic to my growing level of comfort in an unfamiliar place.

I’m back home in central Wisconsin now, and will be for awhile, but it was reassuring to watch all of those connections fall into place so organically, and to learn that I’m never quite as isolated as I feel.

-Sam Clark

3 Comments

February 14, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Miranda Fisher)

miranda
Photograph by Ángel Delgado-Reyes

Miranda Fisher was instrumental in developing my taste in music and introducing me to what can be accomplished on a DIY level. She played in one of the first bands I can ever remember seeing, Nobody’s Housewife, and her parents’ garage was where I wound up playing my first show. In the 10+ years that have followed, she’s remained a constant voice of reason as she’s moved across the country, written and edited for several excellent zines, and played in a number of great bands. She’s currently spearheading the Casting Couch zine, playing bass in The Zoltars, and helps shape some of the younger minds in her community. It’s a very distinct privilege to have her both as a returning contributor to the A Year’s Worth of Memories series and as a part of my life. Here, she focuses on Casting Couch, implementing a more overtly feminist approach to her writing while maintaining its balance, and being moved by the efforts of a student who shares some of her interests. Read it below and remember to do what you can to ensure equal platforms.

2015 was the year I really took a long, hard look at what it means to be a feminist in relation to rock music. I don’t mean, of course, that it was the first time I’d considered this: women involved in music are constantly forced to confront the ways that their experiences are much different from those of men. And I have identified as a feminist for as long as I can remember, for reasons I hope don’t need explaining. So it’s not like I had a sudden epiphany that hey, it sucks to be a woman in music.

I get a reminder of that every time somebody reposts a review I’ve written in my zine, Casting Couch, along with a caption saying “this guy’s review…” even though my name is ALL OVER my zine. I get a reminder of that every time a blogger (a female blogger!) uses the needlessly gendered phrase “these boys” to talk about my band, even though I’m right there on the album cover with everybody else. And you can be goddamn sure I get a reminder of that every time I walk into a show and see the guy who sexually assaulted me a few years ago, who many people know sexually assaulted me, but not many people seem to care sexually assaulted me.

So yes, these are things that I have to think about pretty much constantly, and I’ve always been aware of them and tried to be conscious of how I can combat these things. But I guess this was the year that I started to think more about what I can do for other women.

Part 1 of what I’m trying to do is to stand as a visible example for other women. That feels HORRIBLY self-important to type out. I’m not trying to imply that anyone looks up to me at all; that seems absurd. I don’t even feel comfortable saying that other people listen to what I have to say. (That is a strange attitude to have for someone who regularly publishes a zine full of her opinions, but there it is.) Anyway, I eventually decided that visibility in itself is just really important.

Maybe some woman will read my zine and get mad and think “This is a piece of shit! If this lady can do it, then literally anyone can!” That’s a heartening thought, to me, so I’m trying to be a little louder about my womanhood — not interjecting it into the writing that I do where it wouldn’t be appropriate or relevant, but making it clear that the person who writes this zine is a woman, which was something I’d kind of actively tried to avoid before.

Part 2 is that I want to bring attention to more female musicians. To be clear, I don’t want to highlight women in music just because they’re women. I think most bands with women in them are not good. Because I think that most bands in general are not good. But I want to make more of an effort to talk about bands that I think are good that have women in them. Interviewing Frau, the fantastic all-female British hardcore band, was a big deal to me. The way that they talked about making a conscious effort to play music with other women was something I hadn’t really considered before.

That was still echoing in my mind when I interviewed Negative Scanner. The interview itself was a normal, fun interview, but afterwards, I had a more intense, I guess, conversation with Rebecca. I’ve known her for a fairly long time, but not well enough to have this type of conversation. Listening to her ideas about how to make sure that we’re not just promoting more and more white guys and ignoring the people who are constantly ignored was eye-opening in a sense, especially put into the context of the scene in Chicago, a place that was once my home.

Part 3 of my renewed efforts to be more conscious about the way I relate to other women in music is about the actual young women in my life. I work with teenagers. While they know I play music, and once a year or so someone looks up a Zoltars song and plays it for the class during a break, most teenagers just are not interested in rock music. But this year I had a student who’s trying to get a band together, and who works on a community radio show run by teenagers.

Talking to her (even briefly) about music (even though her taste differs wildly from mine) was really exciting for me. But that couldn’t compare to how great it was to play and be interviewed on the radio show she does with other teenagers. My former student kept telling me how excited and how nervous she was to have us on, and I could see her hands shaking as she asked us questions. That was, by far, the coolest thing I did this year. I want to continue to do as much as I can for other women in music on an individual level.

I don’t generally feel comfortable aligning myself with movements of any sort, but as an individual, as a woman, as a musician, as a feminist, and as a writer, these are things I can do, and I’m going to try my best to do them going forward.

-Miranda Fisher

3 Comments

February 14, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Katie Bennett)

i tried to run away when i was 6

I first came across Katie Bennett a few years back thanks to her work as Free Cake for Every Creature. Since then, we’ve met in passing on a few different occasions at shows, usually stopping to make small talk. I’ve also been fortunate enough to see Bennett play in a separate project, i tried to run away when i was 6. Through everything I’ve seen, she’s displayed a quiet tenacity in the pursuit of simply making (and performing) music. An inspirational artist and an important voice in today’s musical landscape, Bennett turns her attention here to CE Schneider Topical’s “Dreams”, moving to Philadelphia, and more. Read the piece below and remember that there’s an untold level of value in the most common of struggles.

Dreamin’ With CE Schneider Topical

For two weeks in June, I got up early and walked a mile and a half to the University of Pennsylvania medical center, where I participated in a pretty embarrassing study related to me being vegan. The study, along with money I’d saved substitute teaching throughout the school year, would help me finance the recording of my band’s first record and a two-week west coast tour.

By 7:30 on those June mornings, it was already eighty degrees and so muggy I sometimes felt like I was gasping for air. My ears sweat beneath my big headphones, and the sweat dripped down my neck and back. My thighs rubbed together below my black jean shorts and burned slightly from the friction. I was usually rushing, stinking, hungry, and, yep, carrying a small cooler containing a fresh stool sample.

Some of those morning walks, I thought of my partner, who had done the study a few months earlier. I thought of us: what were we doing? Maybe I’d let out a quick laugh, or imagine we were the stars of some crappy indie rom-com: “20-somethings doing weird things for money but happy and in love anyway.” Most of the time though, I felt kind of stupid about the whole thing, like maybe I should have just sucked it up and gotten a job, let go of my DIY pop dreams, and penguin-dived into suit-and-tie adulthood.

Halfway through the study, I downloaded CE Schneider Topical’s Look Who Showed Up Out Here and popped it on my iPod for my morning trek. I didn’t know what to expect, but, in continuing with the my-life-as-a-movie idea, everything seemed to stop around me as I listened to the first track “Dreams”, and a sparkling ray of hope, in the form of Christina Schneider’s lovely voice saturated in tape hiss, reached down from the bandcamp heavens to fill my spirit. I’d hadn’t realized how much I needed the song until I heard it.

If nobody wants to hear about your dreams
Just make sure they hear about them
You’re a lot of things,
“Worthless” isn’t one of them

-CE Schneider Topical, “Dreams”

My dream: to play music. “Dreams” helped me realize I was more than my empty pockets and sweaty pits; my music dreams were real and important, and I wouldn’t back down from them. Walking home from the medical center that morning, I blasted the song, already singing along to every word. I looked around the city, my new city of Philadelphia, and I felt like a champion, my future shining and expansive before me. I punched and kicked the air a couple times, nominating myself as the Rocky of DIY pop music.

-Katie Bennett

3 Comments

February 13, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Amelia Pitcherella)

Photograph by Aubrey Richey

Over the past few years, I’ve run into the name Amelia Pitcherella dozens of times. At some point in 2015, it was a name that started appearing with greater velocity, at greater volume. Whether it was in bylines, comments left on mutual friends’ social media accounts, or just heard in passing, it became abundantly clear that we existed in the same niche corner of our own little musical world. We now write together at AdHoc and Pitcherella continues to freelance for publications like Impose. Lately, she’s also been creating some very striking music as Most Selfless Cheerleader, embracing an uncanny intimacy that will likely pay dividends as the project moves forward. I’m very excited to be welcoming her to the A Year’s Worth of Memories series and very pleased to see she’s turned her attention to one of last year’s finest records: All Dogs’ Kicking Every Day. Read about what the record meant to her below and remember to hold onto the records you love.

Kicking Every Day

I was on a Megabus when an editor sent me the advance of All Dogs’ debut LP. On the cusp of a breakup, I hadn’t talked to my partner in a week and I had gone to my hometown of Philadelphia to see some friends because I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was on my way back to Manhattan and feeling particularly unanchored. During my visit I had had trouble talking to people. I felt absent from myself.

My body responded to the record before I had the chance to process it intellectually. By the seventh track I was choking back tears. A few lines on “Leading Me Back to You” chilled me: “I can try not to think about you / but when I’m in my room / you are the light coming through the window / whether or not I want you to.” It wasn’t that they were particularly complex, just that they described honestly exactly what I’d been feeling, the pathetic omnipresence of a person who had made their complete physical exit from my life.

It was the simple candor of the lines that made them so affecting. And then Maryn Jones’ rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs” in the outro shocked me, wrenched me apart—it was like hearing that song for the first time. Jones’ voice on those lines is desperate and yet there’s this strain of pure unmistakable power in it. I watched the turnpike and started crying. Not a conservative cry—it was a full-blown, snotty bawl.

I was feeling totally humiliated by my own involuntary display, and then “Skin” came on. The lyrics are brash: “Don’t you ever say that I’m wrong ’cause I won’t take it / I will find a way to justify my pain.” Jones is self-deprecating, and she’s also aggressively unapologetic. She turns frustration into pure power. I sat on the bus and calmed myself with the thought that my crying a moment ago was all right, it was justified, and even if it wasn’t, I didn’t need justification. I was going through a lot. It was OK.

A week later, in July, I moved to Philly for the remainder of the summer. I was jobless but rent was absurdly cheap and I resolved to only write and make music for my two months there before finishing up my last semester of school. I was fighting depression and coping with the new loss of someone I’d spent close to two years with, and I figured this would be the last opportunity I had to get a feel for a place without having to worry too much about making ends meet. I was fortunate. That summer was a terrific fever dream. Every morning following my breakup, up until my last day in Philadelphia, I woke up with a new song in my head. When I tell people this, even I can’t wrap my head around it, but strange things happen when you’re left to yourself for weeks on end.

I got into the habit of going to shows and dance parties alone, and I met dozens of people who would come to influence me in the span of a few weeks. I was listening to my friends’ bands on rotation. The summer of 2015 was definitively the first time in my life that I felt like I belonged somewhere. As is the case anywhere, there are issues with the Philly music scene—still in large part a boys’ club, cliquey, no shortage of apologists—but it’s also growing into something really special. There are people who are working so hard to make Philadelphia shows and venues inclusive. Until this point, for whatever reason most of my friends making music happened to be men, and I was so pleased to see that finally change.

I went to All Dogs’ show at PhilaMOCA in August, where they were playing with The Sidekicks and Lithuania (who had just released one of my favorite albums of the year, Hardcore Friends), and talked with Nick and Maryn beforehand for a feature for Impose. I think for some time I had convinced myself that all the people doing good work lived on some other plane, as socially accessible as they may have still been to me. I’d only been interviewing for eight months or so, and each time I interviewed an artist up until then I’d been completely knotted up. But talking to the two of them, I felt comfortable interviewing for what might have been the first time. I was so appreciative of their total warmth and openness.

When they took the stage, they were electric. It was one of the most moving performances I’ve seen—maybe in part because Amanda, Jesse, Maryn, and Nick all have rather understated stage presences. They’re not there to create any kind of spectacle, but it’s so evident that they all care deeply for each other and for the music they’re making. I got chills during “Say”, when Maryn sang tenderly, “When you are not around / I am not alone.” Watching All Dogs play on my own that night, I realized—or, maybe more aptly, I decided—that this was why I had thrown myself into working in music. I wanted to write about moments like this, when an act has the power to completely overwhelm; and I wanted to write about people who weren’t men making music. All Dogs made me want to do music more than I wanted to do anything else.

I had been thinking a lot that summer about Leslie Jamison’s essay “The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain”, in which she notes that people are too often revolted by displays of pain by women. By no fault of our own it too often comes off as a show, and we ourselves can come to doubt our own experiences. But Jamison ultimately believes it is crucial, or at the very least possible, to bear witness to pain and growing “a larger self around that pain—a self that grows larger than its scars without disowning them, that is neither wound-dwelling nor jaded, that is actually healing.”

All Dogs’ music strikes me as realizing that larger self. It doesn’t shy away from pathos—but the pure strength in it makes it bigger than the pain it addresses. After having listened to Kicking Every Day dozens of times over, I was confident now that it was possible to give the pain I was undergoing a place in my music and in my writing without bathing in it or stamping it out. Jones had mastered this.

When Stevie Nicks wrote the line, “You will never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,” I wonder if some kind of doubt cropped up in her head. Did she question whether others would take her seriously? Regardless, she went ahead and wrote it anyway, and Jones took it 40 years later and made it her own, and her rendition gave me access to my own feelings, validated them. I’m endlessly grateful.

-Amelia Pitcherella

3 Comments

February 13, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (100%)

elaiza

The May 5-12 series served as my introduction to the music of 100%, a project intentionally cloaked in mystique. Ever since then, I’ve become increasingly absorbed in the frequently haunting worlds that 100% conjures into existence. The music the project creates tends to carry an undercurrent that not only begs but rewards return visits, even when it never fully answers some of the questions it presents. Deeply alluring and endlessly fascinating, it remains a project that feels inherently distinctive. With the guarded lengths the project’s gone to maintain some semblance of anonymity, it’s a privilege to get a glimpse into some of the more acute machinations that drive 100% via its influences. Find out what some of those influences are below.

Album: Sloppy Music to Feel Dreamy to (2003)
Artist: Wizard Apprentice
Track: Polyamory Anthem (Worthless)

If you slow this down and change the pitch lower by a hair on QuickTime, you can open a portal into your own heart. untouched, it still sounds pretty devotional. What a cool sonic/visual artist with lyrics that get right to my gut.

Although i can’t be yooourss alone, that doooesnn’t maaaake it worthless.

Album: Small Wind Power (2015)
Artist: Fraternal Twin
Track: The Loud Word

I slept on this album, maybe out of a subconscious effort to save it for when i needed it most. And then a night came when I wanted to vanish and track two was all I could listen to on loop. Don’t mean to be corny or dramatic, but it’s true. Saved m’dang life!

Album: Official Waste (2013)
Artist: Ancestral Diet
Track: Water Buries

Soundtrack to my eerie spring night bike rides home from the devilish depths of the library. Clare’s arrangements, subject matter, and overall demeanor were a huge influence on the music I made earlier in the year. Shrouds of mystery and images of water. Danger! I was looking for this album since winter of 2013(?) and it came back to me years later in the company of the person from whom i’d heard it the first time without getting a chance to ask who we were listening to then. I ended up telling her this story in person and it spooked us both. This stuff makes me tongue tied. approach with caution.

-Elaiza

2 Comments

February 12, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Toby Reif)

toby reif

When I first found out about Toby Reif, it was through a staggering 2014 EP that blew me out of the water. I would quickly come to find that we had a handful of mutual friends and shared a similar musical perspective. In December of 2014, Reif quietly joined The Sidekicks- an event I’d only discover after being surprised by Reif’s appearance with them at the Silent Barn in August. What I didn’t know was that the events leading up to Reif becoming a full-fledged member of the band were fraught with a tumultuous uncertainty, even landing him in the hospital at one point. Here, Reif covers all that went into that part of his life and, now that things are on a more stable path, looks towards what might lie ahead. It’s an extraordinary story and a rousing look at personal perseverance, dumb luck, and an amount of sheer will and determination that’s nothing short of inspiring. Read it below and never stop fighting for the things you deserve.

I’m going to cheat a little bit here and make this more of a two-years-in-review. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the “music scene” always seemed like a far off, unobtainable thing that people who lived in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago got to participate in and people like me watched from afar via YouTube videos and message boards. I had played in small bands in Bellingham, WA for a few years, playing countless local shows to audiences of friends and always dreaming with bandmates about the possibility of touring, but the idea of going anywhere beyond our hometown seemed reserved for people already in those far off places.

January 2014 found me living on the basement floor of a four bedroom house in Seattle with old curtains stapled to the ceiling in place of walls and no furniture beyond a leaky air mattress (I would inflate it every night before going to sleep and wake up on the floor every morning) and a suitcase in place of a dresser. My band — The Palisades — had finally booked our first real tour, a thirty day trip that took us to the east coast and back, and broke up immediately upon returning.

During that month, we played a few good shows, a lot of really bad shows, totaled my parent’s minivan, and lost more money than I’ve had to my name since the tour. The move to Seattle was an attempt to “settle down”. Touring had been a fun little exercise, but at that point it felt like it was time to find one of those real jobs, the kind that provides silly things like a steady schedule, health insurance, and financial stability. As luck would have it, the job hunt went miserably and five months later I was still living in the basement (I did manage to get a good deal on a “scratch-and-dent” Ikea mattress, so I was off the floor).

I held a part-time job hanging posters for a small marketing company and even toured sporadically as a merch-guy/TM. It was around then that a friend of mine named Jason asked if I would be able to host a band from Ohio called The Sidekicks for a week or so while they worked on a new album in Seattle. I tried to play it cool, but I think I did a pretty bad job of hiding my excitement. Awkward Breeds, their third LP, remains one of my all-time favorite records, and the opportunity to be so close to the process of creating a follow up was not something I was going to pass on.

I had hosted a few touring bands over the years and had previously met Steve, lead singer of the Sidekicks, when Saintseneca (which he also plays in) stayed at my house, also arranged by Jason. It didn’t take a huge amount of convincing to get my three roommates, all musicians themselves, to help host the band for that week. Serendipitously, every other house Jason had lined up for the Sidekicks to stay with ended up bailing, leaving the band on our couches and floor for the full five weeks they were in the city. By the time their record was finished and they went back home to Ohio, I considered them all close friends and our four bedroom house felt empty with only four inhabitants.

Through another strange stroke of fortune, a month later my roommates and I were unable to renew the lease on our house. It was around that same time that I was invited to fill in on guitar for a week of shows with another Ohio band called Signals Midwest. I had hosted them on their past two west coast tours and became close friends with them, so it took no convincing at all for me to buy a plane ticket to Cleveland. It didn’t solve the issue of not having a home, but it did manage to put off the need for one by a few weeks.

After the brief trip through the Midwest with them, they extended an invitation for me to come along on a month-long tour with them in Europe a few months later, which I promptly accepted. That whole real-job lifestyle that had brought me to Seattle in the first place was slipping further and further away, and September began with me on a plane to Germany with four friends from Ohio. I was laying on the floor of a cramped apartment in Hamburg, Germany, when I received a message from Matt Climer, drummer of The Sidekicks. Their previous guitarist and vocalist had just quit and they needed someone in Columbus by January to learn three records of material and tour for as much of 2015 as possible.

It only took two days of consideration to agree.

Upon returning to Seattle, I sold most of my belongings and in December I was on a flight to Columbus with a guitar, a suitcase, and a backpack. January 2015 found me living on a couch in Columbus, Ohio as a member of a band I had loved since I was in high school. The beginning of the year was not without it’s hurdles.

On January 10th, less than two weeks before we were due to start six weeks of touring in support of our new record, I collapsed on the floor of my room at 3am.

My roommate drove me to the OSU Medical Center Emergency Room, where six hours later a surgeon chopped my almost-exploded appendix out of my body. It was up in the air whether or not I would be able to go on the tour with the band I had just moved across the country to join. I was released from the hospital the next day, but a week later I was still struggling to hold a guitar.

The band was ready to find a new guitarist for the tour, but I assured them that I would be ready, and on the 23rd, I played my first show with the Sidekicks at a sold-out Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn alongside Cayetana, All Dogs, and Roger Harvey. I kept my guitar against my side for most of the show because it still hurt to have anything resting on my stomach and I was still taking pain meds, but I’ll never forget the feeling of playing some of my favorite songs to an audience I never could have imagined having a year prior.

The night was a blur, and the pace barely slowed for the remainder of the year. In the weeks following that Brooklyn show, we traveled with LVL UP through the Midwest and down the east coast, pursued by a blizzard that would end up chasing us all the way through Texas. When LVL UP finished their leg of the tour, we met up with Cayetana in Nashville and they joined us through the Southwest and up the West Coast.

We returned home from that tour and within two months were headed overseas for a UK tour with Great Cynics. After that, we set out for two weeks on the East Coast with All Dogs, three weeks in Australia supporting The Smith Street Band and Andrew Jackson Jihad, and then returned home to spend two more weeks out with Saintseneca in support of their new record. In what felt like a blink of an eye, that touring-band life that I had wanted for so long and had given up on simply fell into my lap.

January 2016 has found me in a new apartment in Philadelphia, where I’m finally learning how to balance having a life in and out of a band. I just found a steady job that allows for time-off to tour and has even mentioned the possibility of that grown-up touring musician holy grail: health insurance. In six weeks I’m leaving on another five week Sidekicks trip, this time with The World Is A Beautiful Place…, Into It Over It, and Pinegrove, and I am currently finishing up what I hope will become my side project’s first LP.

While I’d like to pretend like I have a firm grasp on my expectations for 2016, the past 24 months have shown me that I have no business pretending to know what will happen next in the next 12. At this risk of sounding exceedingly cheesy, all I can do now is thank the people that have helped me get to where I am now and look forward to whatever happens next.

-Toby Reif

3 Comments

Tag: A Year’s Worth of Memories