Cake In 15

In Which Your Correspondent Gets Free Lunch or The Best of the Disaster Principle

You know you’re at South By Southwest when breakfast is lunch and you know you’re in Texas when that breakfast is beef brisket. It’s kind of like the Texan Breakfast of champions, and thanks to the folks at AOL/Spinner, Wednesday got off to a tasty start. Mark one day down for free breakfasts. Today, the Muzzle of Bees day party with Peter Wolf Crier should have free breakfast burritos.

Wednesday during the day was mostly spent at the Paste magazine party. Some old friends and favorites were playing and the new bands did not disappoint either. First up on the bill and with a nice crowd already for a noon slot was Basia Bulat, Canadian songstress who has been through the Twin Cities several times and who Staciaann met in the bathroom at First Avenue while Basia was trying to figure out which dress to wear for her gig. Backed by her brother Bobby on drums and Alison “Wonderland” Stewart on viola, Bulat’s warm and buttery alto filled up the room, even as she closed out her with a solo rendition of “Hush” an old gospel tune, against the noise bleed competition from the outside stage and street. Bulat’s songs, especially when she plays the autoharp, have a swirling old plains feel to them, and they were a beautiful way to kick off the day in Texas.

One of things you do need to do if you want to get the free swag/drinks/food is show up early. After Basia’s set, so by 1pm, one of the bars had already tapped out their reserves of free Sierra Nevada and the Izzie sodas were gone by 2. Still, while waiting in line for such things on the outdoor patio, Louisiana’s Givers were putting on a terrific little set. With a sort of noodling psychedelic guitar sound grounded in some deep bass and fuzz pedals, they came across like a more Jefferson Airplane influenced Dirty Projectors and were really fun to watch live, especially as the female lead switched between acoustic guitar and stand-up toms in front of her. I can only imagine that with their multiple guitar lines and percussive punches that they are a band that could fall dangerously flat on record, but on stage the mix was hot and they should definitely be on the Twin Cities tour watch list.

Back inside, Free Energy came onstage to play their first show of the day. Since Paul Sprangers used to front Hockey Night in the Twin Cities there is obviously a desire to call Free Energy a “local” band, in the same vein as the Hold Steady. In the debate posed on Twitter by @gimme_noise, @Staciaann and @doubleasterisk took the side of claiming but @solace put some distance between the band and Minneaolis, saying that the Hold Steady made it easy to claim them with their references to Twin Cities landmarks in their early records. Here’s a Mid-western passive-aggressive stand for you; we’ll claim the roots if they really truly blow up, and if not, Philly can have them. Still, with the crowd they packed in at the 7th Street Entry a couple weeks ago, and their totally infectious mix of T. Rex and J. Geils Band (which is really easy to get into if you happened to be a Hockey Night Fan) is definitely ascendant.

Free Energy from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

After an amiable set from New Yorkers Freelance Whales, whose sprinkling can used for percussion had a warning label posted on it that any use other the recommended was not advisable, Carolina Chocolate Drops came on and did something amazing. Two men and a woman, from North Carolina, they get down deep into American music. When I interviewed Ben Knox Miller of the Low Anthem and asked him about the current popularity of roots music, he responded, “Hey, I don’t know if there’s any one reason, but music that comes from the old traditions will always be around. It’s real, it’s simple.” The Chocolate Drops embody and vivify that Faulkenerian chestnut that the past isn’t even past, because through their fiddles, banjos, guitars, kazoos, jugs, bones, breath, hands, feet, their very bodies, it lives in them and on stage, music specific to time and place and yet transcendent of it. Old blues tunes, drum-and-fife, Dixie jigs, plus a cover of Blu Cantrell’s 2001 revenge belter “Hit ‘Em Up Style”, everything comes full circle and anyone who cares about American music has no excuse to miss them when they come in to town this summer, or to pick up Genuine Negro Jig, out now on Nonesuch Records.

Carolina Chocolate Drops from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

Frightened Rabbit provided the first real exposition of the disaster principle of rock and roll, that everything will go wrong, we want to watch it happen and we want even more to watch a band pull though, the thrill of riding along the edge of chaos into the light. As they came into the Galaxy Room, the Glaswegians were already looking harried. Although this band of Scotsmen is rarely sunny by disposition, their dourness and desperation can be incredibly forceful and compelling, sounding like a thunderstorm across the glen. Still, they did not look like happy campers and as frontman Scott Hutchison tried different variations of UK-US converter plugs it became clear that his guitar pedals and their keyboards would not be willing to cooperate. As they became more wild-eyed and with time running out, they signaled back to their sound man, who came through the monitors saying, “Fuck it, this is the most rock and roll thing I’ve ever done.” So, making do with an acoustic guitar hooked into a direct input and some of their backing instruments, they tore into a shortened, sweaty and impassioned set. As born out by their excellent albums Sing The Greys, The Midnight Organ Fight and the recently released The Winter of Mixed Drinks, Frightened Rabbit play their hearts out. They did it in the face of adversity on a hot day in Texas and will surely do it again in more amiable circumstances at the Varsity Theatre on May 10th.

Later on in the day, Minneapolis locals and CakeIn15 faves City on the Make faced their own difficulties while playing a show on the swank stage at the Belmont. On the way down to Austin, singer Mike Massey lost his voice, and so when he took the stage, his blues rasp was deeper and rougher than usual. The band adjusted well, so that Peter Blomgren’s guitar and Stephen Rowe’s bass had extended playing time against Colin Stumbras’ drums and Massey’s upper registers were unaffected, leading to a fierce mix of high and low dynamics that made tunes like the soulful “Ships Across the Ocean” and Minneapolis summer classic “Chicks on Bikes” grind and pop. Later on at the Green Room Booking gig at Lambert’s, Ruby Isle was doing their thing with the lights on, which is not as dirty as it sounds and had the diminishing effect of stage wildness. Still, I really can’t wait for their new-wave cover album of Appetite for Destruction comes out this summer.

I’m going to try and catch as little Minneapolis music as possible whilst here, it seems like going on a package tour to Italy or Egypt and only eating turkey-mayo sandwiches. Speaking of food, and I am going to belabor this point, Austin’s street vendors put Minneapolis to shame. Where is our street food? We got these goddamn cupcakes from a truck! You can’t tell me that winter makes it impossible, there is so much we do only in summer that street food should be one of them. City Council member Gary Schiff, I am going to tag you in this note when it imports to Facebook, and I want you to get on it, mmkay? Because this is a travesty. Imagine if Rotisserie Brasa had a pulled pork sandwich stand on Nicollet. Let’s get on this.

Here’s where the Hipster Heirarchy comes in- Staciaann with her badge got into the NPR Showcase at Stubb’s with the Walkmen, Spoon, a very dimly lit Broken Bells show and an outrageously phenomenal Sharon Jones fronting her Dap-Kings. I, however, with my limited access wristband did not get in for any of that, but I did get to meet up with my best friend from college who I had not seen in far too long. She has become a dubstep DJ, and so we packed in underground at Barcelona to dance like crazy to some of the best current dubstep DJs, DreadBass Soundsystem and Eprom, both from San Francisco and Manchester, England pioneer MRK1. After mostly standing in crowds during the day, letting loose and dancing with friends to people doing what they love, that’s some beautiful freedom, and you couldn’t really ask for more.

Actually, you might ask for more linking, video and photo. We’re working on it. With limited bandwidth and capacity, uploading video is not the easiest. We will do a recap when we get back and clean everything up then. Love you all.

I have admired the Four Humors Theater company since they blew me away with their Fringe show Bards at the Southern in 2007. Seriously, a noir gutterpunk Shakespearean spy thriller with the music of Wu Tang sung in English madrigal harmony? Ridiculous, and awesome. Their work doesn’t disappoint and Lamb Lays with Lion shared the bill with them earlier this year at the Guthrie’s Singled Out Festival, so we’re all good there. I have also long admired director Sam Johns, from her work on Maria Irene Fornes’ dark tale of Southern squalor Mud to this winter’s The Thing with a detour in between for the M A R S P RO J E C T, which I was lucky enough to be a part of.

So take these best-of Twin Cities things, mix in the Bedlam Theatre, add a dose of Orwell, hysterical humor, paranoia and love and what do you get? Welcome To Dystopia, opening tonight. I can’t review it, because they asked me to do the video design and I am very proud of that work, especially how it plays in the space, so all I can say is, if you are looking for love in all the future places, get thee to the Bedlam. Get your tickets here, and come this weekend, because Jon Davis of Ghostband (who is part of the sound design team) has planned a whole mad Dystopia Days party. Do it, thank the Person In Charge.

Welcome to Dystopia Trailer from Carl Atiya Swanson on Vimeo.

Photo by Eric Melzer

Opening tonight, step right up, step right up! At the fabulous Southern Theatre, The Minneapolis New Breed, wonder of all wonders, three young companies, three provocative and sexy groups all on one joint bill for the first time ever! Not to be missed! SuperGroup will live up to their name! Mad King Thomas will issue dance edicts from fringes of taste! And Lamb Lays with Lion? Well, leave it to Lightsey Darst at mnartists.org to give an outsiders view of that: “I can’t tell whether Lamb Lays with Lion vs. Katie Mitchell’s The Seagull is a train wreck or a stroke of genius; I can’t even tell where the performances stop or start.” Which, ladies and gentlemen, is your life in motion! Opens tonight and runs through Sunday, $18 cheap!

***UPDATE 2/26***
Jay Gabler over at TC Daily Planet takes a look at all the action and proclaims himself right, and Staciaann shoots it all for Vita.mn. Three more shows, so take it all in with a tank full of gas and a head full of weird.

Leah Redding and Meredith Cain-Nielsen, photo by Ty Sassaman

Some nights just line up really nicely to stay pretty much in a two-block radius and tonight has that on the West Bank. El Perro Del Mar at the Cedar Cultural Center is a great place to be, chased down with Alec Ounsworth at the 400 Bar to slake your musical thirst. But before any of that goes down, get over to the Bedlam Theatre at 6:30 to catch Tonya and Nancy: The Opera. You read it right, and if you think that the ice dancing costumes on NBC are are good as it ridiculously gets, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. This 2006 chamber opera has been getting some under-the-radar traction in art galleries and now Scotty Reynolds of of the Mixed Precipitation company is giving it a twirl, or a triple salchow or a lead pipe special, or what have you. Any which way, it promises to be a well sung spectacle full of intrigue and drama and is a great way to follow up on Mixed Precitpitation’s summer project, Orpheus & Euridyce: A Picnic Operetta. You can read a great interview about that project via the Heavy Table blog here, and unlike Orpheus’s multi-show run, Tonya and Nancy is only being performed tonight at Bedlam and Thursday at Camp Bar in St. Paul, so skate hard. and get down get a front-row seat of the action.

Also going on tonight, at the 501 Club not too far down from the road from the West Bank is the l’etoile-sponsored celebration New Kidney On The Block, the re-emergence party for Chris Strouth and his new kidney, “William the Conqueror”, selflessly donated by theatre-staple and good-guy-par-excellence Scott Pakudaitis. It’s a feel-good story for the ages, at least for our age, with the two men connecting over Twitter when Strouth posted that he needed a new kidney and it is good to see humanity winning out over mass distraction and apathy. We’re just waiting for the movie with Billy Bob Thornton as Strouth and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Pakudaitis. With a raft of great DJs at the event, a good time for a good reason should be had by all.

Yes, it’s that time of year already.  For the fourth year in a row Staciaann will be booking the stages at the Stone Arch Festival of the Arts!  Past bands include Romantica, Roma di Luna, Spaghetti Western String Co., The Alarmists, The Idle Hands, Brad Senne, Chris Koza, Caroline Smith & the Good Night Sleeps, Jeremy Messersmith & many more.

The Stone Arch Festival attracts around 100,000 people each year & takes place June 19 – 20 along the Minneapolis Riverfront (by St. Anthony Main).  It runs 10am – 6pm both days, so there’s plenty of time to book yourselves a night gig elsewhere if you so desire.  It’s a great opportunity to showcase your band or other performance group and get your name out there.

In order to apply, go here to download & fill out the application.  Then send in the necessary items by April 1, 2010 & away we go!

If you have any questions, Staciaann can be reached at stonearchperformance@gmail.com.

This has been popping up on the various social networking sites and is probably only intended for University of Minnesota students, but this is not something to be kept in an institution. In fact, The Yes Men would demand that you crash Mike Bonanno’s lecture, its just in the spirit of things. Since 1999, The Yes Men, fronted by Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, have been unleashing their disruptive and subversive agit-prop performance art against instruments of world finance and corporations like the World Trade Organization and Halliburton, setting up mirror websites, infiltrating newscasts and crashing conferences like Merry Pranksters with a grudge against corporate malfeasance. These are guys who knocked 3% of of Dow Chemical’s share price by insinuating their way into a newscast pretending to be a spokesperson for the company and claimed full responsibility for the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, 1984. The absurdity of their tactics (the picture above is a “Management Leisure Suit” that they unveiled at a textiles conference for managers to better monitor their workers) belie the absurdity of institutions that fail, for the most part, to address or alleviate human suffering. They have a film out now, The Yes Men Fix The World and although film exposure might blow the lid off their cover, corporations generally remain so oblivious that it won’t stop them, nor would they let it. To hear Bonanno speak, head on down to Room 1-115-3M Auditorium, at the Carlson School of Management on the U of M campus Wednesday, February 10th at 7pm (as if the irony of speaking at a business school wasn’t reason enough to go.)

If art is a public endeavor in a mercantile democracy then it should be open to all comers, but with the institutional controls of taste and a monopoly on the marketplace, that democratic access isn’t always the case. That’s what makes the “Foot In The Door” show, organized by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts so refreshing- anyone can place a work in this show, provided it fits in to a 12″x12″x12″ box. No judge, no jury, and actually no buyers or sellers, making “Foot In The Door” less of an exercise in American mercantile democracy and more of an extension of democratic institutional socialism- everyone is equal and there are no expectations beyond participation.

Needless to say, it is an enormously popular event. Started in 1980, the last iteration of the show was in 2000 and drew 1,700 artists, so look for this time around to be even bigger. Since then, too, the development of online video networks mean that video based works of 80 seconds or less will be accepted at “Foot In The Door”’s Vimeo page, a plus for those of you working in new media. Submissions will be accepted starting Thursday, February 4 at 10:30 a.m. and continue to be accepted through Sunday, February 7 at 4:30 p.m., so if you are just hearing about this now, you still have time to put work together. Click here for registration forms and more info (no bugs!) so that you can be a part of the cacophony of works in this open forum.

Full Disclosure: cas is an employee of the MIA in their Visitor & Member Services Department. He is not involved in the organization of “Foot In The Door” but if you come in to the MIA, he will give you directions to the drop off areas.

Carl Atiya Swanson and Catherine Hansen in No Sugar Cookies For Herbert by Tommy Jamerson, directed by Georgia Leigh Hallman, Bedlam 10Fest 2007. Photo by Brad Dahlgaard.

Three years ago, looking for a challenge and some non-traditional theatre in the Twin Cities, I showed up to the group audition for the Bedlam Theatre Community 10 Minute Play Festival. I remember it being a wild, loosey-goosey affair, with lots of actors and non-actors, games being played, bits of scripts thrown around and presented to the assembled directors and all in all the kind of barely-contained anarchy that I have come to love about Bedlam. I was in three different plays that year, with a cameo in a fourth, in 2008 I came back for four more and in 2009 I only acted in one, but also directed one (which takes the energy of acting in at least two.) 10 Fest has been one of my favorite annual events in the Twin Cities, and this year it is getting a shakeup in the process in order to cast a wider net amongst theatre artists, build increased community relationships and foster new development. The first step in this process is this weekend, Saturday the 23rd and Sunday the 24th with an “IDEATHON” an open forum of workshops lead by local artist (I am leading the first session on Saturday) to get ideas flowing and build a strong 20.10Fest. It is free, you can register here and would be even more fun if you showed up.

Saturday Jan 23rd

1pm: Carl Atiya Swanson: Developing Ideas and Dialogue with techniques from Meisner and Boal

2:30-5:30pm: Lisa Channer: Director as Creator
bring several photos of yourself at various ages and one provocative piece of music that is not pop music.

Sunday Jan 24th

1pm: Jeremey Catterton: Refining the Material

2:30pm: Lelis Brito: Using Compositional Improvisation to expand an Idea

4pm: Jeffrey Lusiak: Intention and Text

I Love You Even Though We Fight or Other Writers Are Better Than Me

Carly Wicks in The Thing. Photo by George McConnell.

There’s a particular moment of realization, no that’s a stupid lede, attempting to link together a personal memory blah blah blah I did this you feel this and we’re all connected. But it’s true. I am sitting in a hotel room in Luxor in the south of Egypt on a family vacation. This is only exotic by a degree of origin- I already lived in Egypt, which meant that a really exotic vacation in my world view at that point would have been Wisconsin Dells. I am sitting in a hotel room in Luxor and taking the most exotic vacation, the most transgressive vacation that I could; MTV. And I am sitting transfixed by helicopters and motorcycles and a fat man in a castle with a beautiful woman and I understand nothing really of this violent silliness I am seeing but I know in that moment, that I, too, would do anything for love.

Bless you Meat Loaf, and you Sam Johns and George McConnell and all you actors in The Thing who put together a battle royale of awkward dances and side glances and sublimated desires exploding into Carmen-worthy partner switching showdowns of one-upsmanship to that 7 minute epic. Because that contained more life experience to savor than two and a half hours of Shakespeare (depending on the production) and took a hell of a lot more bravura performance. Jay Gabler of ArtsOrbit over at the TC Daily Planet posted a list of things in response to The Thing, and he is far more assiduous and trustworthy reviewer than I. I also have to re-echo his caveat that I am friends with the creators, and so completely biased in this matter. Sorry, I should have said that first. In that list, Gabler very astutely (for he is a better writer than I, too) notes, “The Thing taught me that plot is optional, like cufflinks. Not everyone would agree that cufflinks are optional, and those same people probably don’t think plot is optional either. Jeremey Catterton and Carl Atiya Swanson are the only two guys I can think of offhand who might value cufflinks significantly more than plot.”

My collection of cufflinks aside, here is a reason for that, a reason I think very particular to the creators of The Thing, to myself, to anyone else for whom The Thing resonated, why plot or the lack thereof should be so inconsequential to theater. Unlike the Greek thespians performing for the audiences of Aristotle, who could create a coercive narrative arc wherein the plot would elucidate some greater truth as to the human condition without inordinate competition, we are constantly bombarded by narratives. Everything competes for our attention to their own plot, from Jon and Kate to how many dead in Haiti. We have news as narrative, television melodrama as life-substitute, we have the vast internet of plot at our fingertips. Sometimes we just need to feel. And in those 7 minutes of “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” the non-didactic performance of the cast invites the viewer to bring a lifetime of plot to bear on that moment. Identification on individual terms is the greatest weapon of The Thing.

The Thing comprises a two part pact. The first part, by the creators and performers, that they will fully bring themselves to the performance, both in terms of committing to the performance as it happens on the night but in the full process. The absurdity of the dances, set pieces, short stories, vignettes, sexual proclivities and emotions on display are effective insofar as they are brought about through the lives of the performers and crafted to be presented. This can happen in traditional drama as well, where the performer is so committed to the role that you understand what they are saying simply by what they are doing, the words as printed in the script are a secondary mechanism, a fallback. For ensemble-created non-narrative works like The Thing, there is no such fallback.

The second part is a pact by the audience to allow themselves to be open to it. There is so much there that if you as an audience member are willing to access yourself and bring yourself, and not just your empty husk of a body seeking distracting amusements (which have their own time, place and immeasurable value) then you can have a profound experience at what appears to be nothing. On the night that I went, the audience contained parents and older couples and although I am happy to see parents supporting their offspring, this demanding theatre, especially with The Thing, as created by young people, is a young person’s experience. The hoary old nut goes that history is written by the victors, but The Thing is a challenge to be a part of the battles as they are fought.

So bless, with all the vibrating strangeness, religious tropes and mythical overtones attached to that word, bless. There are so many things I would tell you about the performance. The making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a metaphor for relationships, Billy Mullaney and Tom Lloyd hugging and hitting eachother, coming so close, and not making it, the moment when I heard Mitch Hedberg’s voice in a story about roadside romance novels that made me incredibly sad that he is dead, spitting carbonated water out of my mouth at the declaration that we were good friends with Queen Elizabeth. I would like to tell you about all these things, but you wouldn’t understand. Not here and not now. The Thing is something that happened, and all the seats are sold out, but go down there to try and get on the waitlist, becuase it may happen for you. The Thing supposedly commemorates and event that never happened, but it feels like a continually happening event, one that you bring with you always, if you get back up, when trembling in the dark, and find someone again to love. Meat Loaf sang it, “No one else can save me, no one else but you.”

The Walker Art Center is bringing back The Inquisition, and not the unexpected Spanish variety, nor one centering around the preference for cake or death. This Inquisition is a game show, a quiz forum where experts go up against the audience on matters of art, theory, history and the gossipy tid-bits. The whole point is that “art is fun” and as the Giant Conceptual Art Destroyer Robot Head (approach the Herzog & de Meuron addition from the south and tell me you don’t see it- even they see it) can be imposing, an evening of light-hearted bickering can only be a good thing. Susannah Schouweiler over at the Walker blog has more of the skinny, including probing interviews of the featured experts- MPR’s Marianne Combs and the inescapable Andy Sturdevant. So if you feel your critical theory is up to the task or you just want to get a chuckle taking some potshots at arty eggheads, the Walker Art Center, Thursday at 7pm is the place to be. If only in our wildest dreams it could live up to this episode of What’s My Line? with Salvador Dali…