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Monday, October 27, 2008

Pittsburgh (Part 1): The End of the Road?

by Nicole Skeltys

Pittsburgh: Je T'aime!

As I write this, we have been living in Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, for almost 3 weeks. Lawrenceville is an inner working class Pittsburgh suburb which is in transition to becoming a funkier neighborhood. You can tell its 'up and coming' because there are little designer clothes shop down on Butler St (the main drag) and several quirky art galleries. You can tell it has not yet 'up and come' because the eateries are still dominated by low rent diners offering hoagies with 6 kinds of meat and plenty of cheese, and you can't buy soy milk or sourdough rye bread anywhere.

Lawrenceville, like other similar inner Pittsburgh areas, features steep, narrow streets, zig-zagged with rows and rows of semi-detached houses. These are wooden, thin, multi-storied turn of last century structures with peaked attics, many of them seemingly drawn crookedly by children, then painted in all colors of the rainbow. Most houses have cute little yards and gardens (including ours). Architecturally, sometimes you could be in Amsterdam, sometimes northern England. The air is fresh, the streets are clean. Now, as fall fades the days in earnest, there are psychedelic shocks of colour everywhere, as the maples and other desiduous trees burn themselves up in explosions of orange, scarlet and yellow. Combine this with sweeping views from every corner, and you've got one hell of a picturesque town.

In Lawrenceville and the nearby Strip district, the landscape near the river is dominated by shambling old warehouses from Pittsburgh's former days of steel mill prosperity. At night, freight trains pass by somewhere near here and are heralded by their long lonely piping. I'm hearing it now as I type. Truly one of the loveliest melancholy sounds you can ever hear.

Before we came here, when we announced we were going to spend fall in Pittsburgh, many people looked at us incredulously: "why on earth are you going to that stinking cesspool of a town?" they asked. The answer then was because we wanted to see our poet buddy Scott again, and because he and his roommate were generously offering us a free place to stay for 3 weeks (in their basement). Our fully funded residency with the Blue Ridge colony in Georgia had fallen through at the last minute, and we really needed somewhere to go after New York that cost little, or no money for accommodation.

Pittsburgh in the '60s was described by Frank Lloyd Wright as "hell with the lid off" : a polluted, grimy, rough steel town. Then in the '70s and '80s, the economic basis of the town steadily collapsed as the US became a net importer of steel, and several other iconic companies (such as Heinz) moved many of their jobs elsewhere including overseas. Pittsburgh lost about a quarter of a million jobs throughout the '80s, earning a reputation then as being being one of America's dying, crime riddled "rust belt" towns. But since then, the town has reinvented itself remarkably: its economic base is no longer resource based, but high tech (robotics, biotechnology, medical research and healthcare), academic (the town boasts 8 universities) and (most encouraging for T and I) the arts, supported by numerous foundations and private philanthropists. Boosterish Pittsburgh bank advertisements now quote Forbes.com: "Top 10 world's cleanest and greenest cities", and Places Rated Almanac: "No 1 most livable city in America".

The more we saw of Pittsburgh in the days following our arrival, the more we thought we might have found our new home at long last.

On our first Saturday here, there was an open day where punters could wander into the various local Lawrenceville studios and see artists standing proudly by their creations. T and I spent a glorious sun drenched afternoon wandering from site to site, pouring over paintings, photos, hand-made graphic novellas and encyclopedias, 'found objects', all the while chomping on corn chips and chugging down wines. Everyone we met was happy and relaxed. They told us how cheap it was to live, which meant it was possible to live as an artist and not starve. One woman, a photographer, had moved here from California and her business was now booming - so much so that she had recently purchased a beautiful old former 19th working man's singing school for $80'000 and was fitting it out into a photographic studio, artist rooms, performance space and multimedia complex.

Most people we met expressed amazement at meeting real live Australians - their first reaction also was "Why on earth are you in Pittsburgh?" It appeared Pittsburghers, like most Americans, think of Australia as an impossibly distant sun drenched utopia which no-one in their right minds would ever want to leave. But when we explained that we were artists looking for a new home, everyone quickly told us how great Pittsburgh was for artists, how happy they were living here, and they urged us to stay with great warmth - they really meant it. Local artists liked new artists to move to Pittsburgh, so the community gets bigger, and there is a richer social and creative life for everyone. Everyone gave us their emails, one artist even gave us a free copy of his book of full color prints. And without us having to wheedle at all, people plied us with the names of people in funding bodies that could help us out.

At the end of the day, we walked home, a bit sozzled and on a huge high. "That was one of the most magical days we've had on our trip" Tanya said. I agreed. I felt somewhat overwhelmed, like I'd just been to a love-in and licked everywhere. T said: "My dream has always been to set up my own photographic studio, specialize in portraits. Rents are so cheap, warehouses are so plentiful, you know I think I could actually do it here" I agreed again. Someone with T's extraordinary talent would shine here, and the infrastructure was affordable, it could be done. In Sydney, rents were the same level as New York. In Melbourne, all the old warehouse spaces had been snapped up by developers and turned into 'yuppie dog-box' apartments a decade ago. And when we boarded the plane for North America in May, 1500 people were moving into Melbourne every week, the rental vacancy rate was less than 1% and rents were skyrocketing.

But no matter how cheap it was to live here, would we be able to make a living? It seemed that one person might actually know the answer to that question. As we had wandered around around the Lawrenceville artist studios, the person most artists urged us to meet was a guy called Charlie Humphrey. He is the head of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Society, the Pittsburgh Arts Center, and the Glassworks Center. He is "the man" they said, the guy who knows everyone in Pittsburgh, he is the philanthropic sluicegate that directs trickles of funding into the quivering outstretched hands of artists. We decided it would be a good idea to see if we could meet with Charlie - very soon.

Charlie: Patron Saint of The Jilted Brides

Sure enough, after we sent Charlie an email outlining our improbably large span of artistic projects (filmmaking, musical performance, video clip production, book writing, travel blogging, photography) he got back to us straight away, saying he was keen to meet us - that day. That was Monday.

However, Monday was the day I had planned to henna my increasingly rat-like hair (I had not had any hair grooming since leaving Australia, except for a $3 bangs trim by a Mexican barber in Austin, who left me with a marked diagonal slope up my forehead). We delayed the meeting until 4 pm so Tanya could slap the muddy slime all over my head at midday, and I could sit there for a few hours, my head incubated in a garbage bag while underneath my follicles changed color as quickly and remarkably as the autumn foliage. When I rinsed all the muck off, I blow-dried my locks and stood back and admired how new I looked. I was more confident now, I could meet the chief executive officer of a prestigious art institution, assured that my radiant mane would speak volumes about my creative skills.

Finally, it was time to set off for our important appointment. We slammed the door behind us at 3 pm, an hour ahead, because we didn't have a car, couldn't afford a taxi and the glory days of Pittsburgh public transport had long passed: we had to walk there. Up the cardiac conditioning hills of Lawrenceville, along the 'Little Italy' stretch of Bloomsfield (which T and I joked should be called 'micro-Italy' due to its barely noticeable Mediterranean character), then over onto Shadyside, along traffic choked Baum Avenue, left into Melwood Avenue, up to the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Institute. As the droll receptionist paged Charlie and said "There are two Aussies here to meet you", I realised that, although I had no expectations whatsoever, I was nervous.

We were greeted enthusiastically by a tall slender man with a mop of greying hair, boyish face, curious kindly eyes and quick movements. As he spoke to us, he oscillated ever so slightly with nervous energy. Within minutes, I could tell this person was not cut in the senior arts bureaucrat mould that I was used to jousting with - he was not the kind of person that "had tickets on themselves" as my mother used to say (Australian slang for a self-important person). Far from that, Charlie was like everyone else we had met so far in Pittsburgh - down to earth, warm and friendly. As the conversation progressed, he too made it clear that he wanted us to stay. "You women have media coming out of your pores. I would consider it a moral victory if I could help you stay in Pittsburgh". He said he would send any work he could our way, and he would introduce us to "everyone we needed to know" in the film and post-production community.

Sure enough, the next day Charlie set the ball rolling for what turned into a week of frenzied networking and socialising. Within a few days, Tanya was being asked if she would like to apply for a job as video projection mistress with a cool multi-media troupe called Squonk Opera. A few days after that, Point Park University asked if she was interested in applying for a position in the film school there, teaching camera and lighting, something she knew lots about due to her training as a cinematographer. Off her own initiative, T got work as a camera operator to film a motivational 'wealth creation' seminar, and was following up a number of other leads on the ever bountiful Craigslist.

Charlie's most spectacular act of generosity, however, happened when I showed him my last two CDs - the Dust album 'Songs', and the as yet unreleased Jilted Brides album 'Larceny of Love'. I had hoped that a US label would want to release 'Larceny' (we certainly couldn't afford to manufacture any), but I had low expectations. In the face of world wide plummeting CD sales, these were very grim times for independent labels, most labels were cutting their roster, not looking for new bands. But it turned out Charlie's hands weren't full enough being the CEO of three major artist institutions, he also played in a band and ran a small music label (no wonder he oscillated!).

At the end of last week, Charlie asked us if we would we like him to manufacture 1000 'Larceny of Love' CDs for us courtesy of his label "Uh Oh Music"?. He loved the music and wanted to be part of the project. We were over the moon. At last, someone was taking a punt on our music, someone thought we were truly destined for a brighter future. And we would have something to sell at gigs, just like any other 'normal' band.

That's it, we agreed, we are staying here. We also agreed that Charlie should henceforth be known as "The Patron Saint of the Jilted Brides", and was clearly in cahoots with the rock and roll angels who had guided our journey thus far.

Jean Luc Godard and kidney beans

The apartment just above Scott and Dan's had become vacant just before we came to Pittsburgh. We decided to rent it out, from the first of November. It was only $600 a month, for a spacious bi-level two bedroom place, renovated kitchen, polished wood floors, garden, and a large balcony with (of course) spectacular views. Our neighbors would be a Veterans hall with fairly mysterious goings on on one side, and a gay couple, Timmy and Jimmy in a little bungalow on the other. When Timmy and Jimmy found out we were moving in, they were delighted. Scott and Dan were excited. Rosy pictures of neighborly pot lucks, swopping garden cuttings and sharing wireless internet access appeared in everyone's minds.

But the strangest thing about the course of events of the last 3 weeks was that is has been like a Godard film. On the one hand, the visuals are all pointing in one direction - happiness, Anna Karina smiling seductively to the camera, beautiful Paris streets, Hollywood musical poses, bonhomie! But underneath, the soundtrack is subtly telling a different story - dialogue out of place, inappropriate music coming in and suddenly stopping, strange sound effects hinting at another world behind what is displayed on the screen. Something is wrong.

That something hit Tanya first. As we started to talk about the costs of setting up the flat (bond, furniture, utilities) she became more agitated. "I'm really going to have to budget" she said, as she had often stated over the course of our journey. But then this became "Actually, I don't know how I can do this". T was about to slip into the shark infested waters of credit card debt. The sea of red was already lapping at her bank statements. I said, "Well, I've still got cash, we'll get by". I had been managing my cash stash like a life support drip, carefully restricting money flow to essential homeopathic droplets.

But over the last few weeks, the financial market Frankenstein had kicked its way into the US/Australian dollar exchange rate and strangled the value out of our pathetic currency. When we arrived in May, the OZ dollar was equivalent to the US dollar. Almost overnight, it lost 40% of its value. I was hemorraging cash, faster and faster.

The make matters worse, the sleeping arrangements in our basement camp were terrible. My blow up mattress regularly lost its air during the night, and as we had no pump in the house with which to blow it back up (we relied on a car pump), I lay for hours awake, twisted on the slowly but insistently deflating lumps of my alleged bed. I tried sleeping on a makeshift arrangement of cushions for a few nights, but this was scarcely any better than lying with my spine crimped into the floor. The floors were paper thin, and Dan's every animal-like movement, along with his sub-woofered I-Tunes playlist, echoed down hour upon hour into our airless, dark living quarters, further disrupting sleep. Each day, I was running on the adrenaline of being in a sensual new place with wonderful people who instantly called me "friend", a place that was seemingly the answer to both T and my longings for a new home. But as the days progressed, my sleep deprived mind started to feel more and more unhinged. I found it harder to concentrate. I felt physically weaker, frightening memories of radiotherapy fatigue started to come back. My emotional stability started to slip.

T and I ran out of food and went for a grocery shop at the local Shop and Save. We found ourselves trying to get enough food for both of us for a week on $40. This isn't actually possible, notwithstanding the appealing giant tins of kidney beans for $1.69 that we purchased. I sat on the bench outside the supermarket as T passed the supermarket chain's discount card back to Scott so he could use it for his own purchases too. I put my head in my hands and noticed all the spittle from previous bench occupiers next to my feet. When T came out, I said, "I can't take anymore of this. I feel completely bleak about my future."

When we got home, Scott went to work at his $5.00 an hour job at the local coffee shop, and I tried to get some daytime sleep on his free bed. Later in the afternoon, I heard a knock on the bedroom door. T came in, tears in her eyes. She had called her father, a man who had separated from her mother when the family was quite young, a man with whom she had a complex and often difficult relationship. She summoned up enough courage to ask for help, and she expected rejection. But he had come through. He even sounded proud at what she had managed to pull off in our crazy American adventures so far. He gave just enough ("no more!") to help her get on her feet and start the new life that was clearly just about to happen.

T was overjoyed: "We are going to be ok! We are not going to freeze and starve through the winter!!" she said. We hugged and I was overjoyed too. A great weight was lifted from my heart. I had never ceased to worry about T's financial situation, which had been more precarious than mine since the beginning of our journey. T's bravery was paying off, long deserved opportunities were opening up for her here. She deserved a break, she deserved the opportunity to establish herself as a formidable photographer, videographer and artistic force to be reckoned with in Pittsburgh and indeed the whole Goddamn US of A! And I was very moved that she was saying "we" would not starve, that we were indeed a team, we would sink or swim together.

Warhol, mattresses and rude awakenings

When T's money came through a couple of days later, at my insistence, we headed off to buy two new mattresses. I explained that I couldn't bear another night without a full sleep, I would literally start to crack up. I was already starting to lose it.

Scott kindly agreed to drive us out to the Northside to forage for mattresses, despite the fact that time would be tight - he had to be back at his coffee shop to work at 3 pm. To our enormous delight, we found two Queen mattresses worth over $1300 in the clearance section of the store for only $300 US (make that $515 in Australian pesos). Giddy with our purchasing good luck, and euphoric at the idea of a good nights sleep at last, we tied the mattresses awkwardly onto the Scott's Chevvy pick-up and took off home with our booty.

Half way there, Scott started to accelerate faster down the highway, anxious to get to work in time. What followed next happened extremely fast and was very shocking. I looked out the rear window to see one of the mattresses rear up with the windforce factor and fly off the truck, off into the face of 3 lanes of busy traffic.

I screamed at Scott to pull over. T and I stared horrified as cars started to veer around the huge obstacle that was half flying, half bouncing across the lanes. A pile up was surely imminent. We somehow got into the emergency lane and pulled up. As the car skidded to a halt, I wondered with terror if a serious accident had occurred yet, and if not, how on earth we were going to get the mattress off the highway before one did. But as I turned to look out the rear window again, what I saw was a surreal divine intervention worthy of a Spinal Tap tour tale- the mattress was being safely dragged towards us under the chasis of a 4 wheel drive under which it had become stuck.

The SUV stopped behind us. T, Scott and I piled out, shaking. I was sure the driver was going to go nuts at us. But instead, a friendly middle aged woman got out and was far more concerned about the (now completely ruined) state of our mattress than the fact that we had almost caused her to have a major accident. She explained apologetically that she had no choice but to try and drive over the mattress because there were cars on either side and behind her who would have collided with her had she attempted evasive action. She waited patiently with us while we struggled and heaved to try and remove the mattress from under the car body, into which it had become wedged. She was on her way to the airport, but was seemed completely unphased and joked that "it was lucky she set off early".

Finally, after much struggle, we got the smouldering, tattered remains of the mattress out and had no choice but to pitch it into a trench by the side of the road. As the woman turned to go back into her SUV and resume a (hopefully completely uneventful) trip to the airport, she dug into her wallet and stuffed something into Scott's hands. Scott, who was (like the rest of us) still in a state of shock, stared in disbelief at his hands - she had given him $25. He started to protest, but she just hopped airily back into her truck wishing us the best of luck and took off.

If you are going to have a highway accident with someone, that woman is the one to do it with.

On the way home, we hardly said a word. My dreams of a good nights sleep lay crumpled off a Pittsburgh highway (we got to see all its lovely layers that would have made it so comfy because they were all now shredded and exposed, like a filleted and smoked fish). We did note that we were very, very lucky that potential catastrophe was averted, that angels had most certainly been at work here to save lives. But the mood in the Chevvy was as dark as the looming thunder clouds.

That night, we tried to cheer ourselves up by attending two Pittsburgh arts events that sounded promising. At the Pittsburgh Fim Institute, there was the opening of an installation by Bill Daniel, an artist who claimed he led a hobo life in a vegetable oil powered truck and made films about his experiences. Sounded like our kind of guy. Then after that, at the Wexner Center, there was a screening of Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" with live soundtrack performances by super-stylish mood-meisters Britta and Dean, formerly of lauded US indie band Luna.

We arrived at the Institute early. Our new landlord Jim, a lonely middle aged guy who was spending most of his afternoons lavishing attention on fixing up our apartment, kindly offered to drive us to the Institute (after T dropped a few heavy hints), thus saving us another hour's walk. When we got there, we made a beeline for the bar to try and calm our nerves and temporarily blot out the loss of money which we couldn't afford. Later, the artistic irony struck me; two of the biggest and most prestigous contemporary art museums in Pittsburgh are The Mattress Factory and The Andy Warhol Museum. The image of our mattress flying freakily down the highway would have made for perfect Warhol footage, slowed down infinitely and looped. If only I had had the presence of mind to whip out the handycam instead of hyperventilating in horror!

Half way gulping down a wine, I turned around to find to Charlie in the foyer with his beautiful wife and one of his college student daughters. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits and looking forward to the night's entertainment. I realised with growing alarm that I was ill-equiped to deal out conversational niceties, and slunk off to look at Daniel's installation. He had a lot of 'road memorablia' stuck here and there on the wall, plus a scrapbook of 'hobo' musings and doodlings that he was trying to sell. In his bio, Daniel lists a prestigious string of awards, including a Rockefeller nominee and current Guggenheim fellow. I should have felt excited at the idea that in America someone could call themselves an itinerant while still receiving lots of money. But instead I felt nothing.

We got a lift to the Warhol/ Britta and Dean concert with Charlie and his wife, in their BMW. Once there, I ordered a whisky for myself and T which turned out to be almost pint-sized. I watched the performance in an alcoholic daze. Some of the staring, tear streaked faces of Warhol's screen test victims mirrored my own bleak soul-state too well. After a while, I realised I couldn't take anymore and suddenly got up. I stumbled past the rows of Pittsburgh's glitterati, mumbled my apologies to a startled T, and fled. I found myself outside in the pouring rain. Next thing I know I was in a stretch limousine with a chubby guy who liked '80s music. Luckily, I could still remember where I lived, or rather subsisted, although everything else in my consciousness was fading from view. The limo driver and I finally got home, after singing together many '80s hits playing on the local hits and memories stations. I groped my way up the stairs to sleep on the remaining, surviving mattress in the freezing cold in our new apartment, which had yet to be connected to heating or electricity.

As I lay there, the reality of my financial situation hit me with complete clarity, a rude awakening. I was going to run out of money very soon. And, unlike T, I was not a dual citizen, I did not have an American passport. I only had a tourist visa, that, like my money, would run out in a few weeks. I couldn't work here. I couldn't stay here. What had I been thinking all this time? Why on earth did I think I could make a new life here? For the first time in many weeks, I was in a bedroom by myself. And for the first time since I had left Australia, I cried all night.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

New York to Pittsburgh in October - Philly and the Soul Train

by Nicole Skeltys

A week and a half ago, we caught a bus from NYC Chinatown to Philadelphia. What happens is you buy your ticket from hawkers off East Broadway, then a person waving a flag yells something incomprehensible at you and you run after them down the street, looking for the right bus. The Chinese bus company operators don't seem to follow any schedule in particular, and they don't bother with niceties like having the name of the destination in the bus window. With luck, you mount the right coach, then after the bus driver ejects the people who are on the wrong coach, you are on your way. After 2 hours of driving through drab New Jersey semi-industrial ruralscapes and stopping at several truck-stops with the occasional 'Haulin' for Jesus' stickered semi pulled into the corner, the Philadelphia skyline comes majestically into view. All this for only $10, the cheapest way to get to Philly by far.

Although New York was crammed, sweating, frantic, with all aspects of life being conducted at high speed and high volume, we never once felt threatened there. My sub-let was in the hispanic and black suburb of Bushwick, Brooklyn, which not so long ago had a reputation for "graffiti and burned cars". But I got on and off the subway alone at night and felt safe. Up at the local laundromat, where T and I were the only white people sitting around watching our undies flip, we felt conspicuous but not ill at ease. (T speculated that the chilled atmosphere could have something to do with the pervasive smell of weed, which sometimes blew like a furnace up from the apartments below my sub-let, often accompanied by bellowing booty rap).

For sure, there are still terrible ghettos in NY, no-go zones. And we were told about roaming Dominican machete gangs who engage in random, psycho displays of macho violence. That was in groovy, increasingly gentrified Williamsburg, where Tanya was staying illegally in the 6th floor of a warehouse, in her ex-fiance's writing studio. One of our fellow Byrdcliffe artist colonists told us how she had been mugged last year in Willamsburg, late at night.

But the most exotic displays of masculinity we saw in Williamsburg were the harmless Hassidic jews, who were everywhere walking at a smartish clip, dressed identically in their black overcoats, stiff white shirts and fuzzy top hats from under which flopped their cute religious ringlets. As we made our way down Diagonal Avenue, the sheer volume of these 19th century figures often made us feel like we had stumbled into a large movie set - a strange Dickension period drama, however, not a blood soaked reenactment of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. We wandered all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens because Tanya got a sub-contracted job photographing suburbs for a guidebook designed for people who were considering moving to the Big Apple. We spent long days navigating subways, sometimes popping up in the middle of projects neighborhoods, then tramping up and down strange streets with all kinds of languages, smells and looks issuing from every open doorway. We often ended up feeling frazzled, slightly deafened, and plain exhausted. But we never felt scared.

But as soon as we stepped off the bus in Philly, we felt calculating eyes upon us. A guy rushed up, pulled our suitcases out from the bottom of the bus, then immediately hassled us for money. We staggered down the street with our suitcases, looking for the right subway entrance. Cars slowed, looked at us. When we asked a young woman for directions, she helped us out, but as she was walking away, she looked over her shoulder and said "Be careful. Particularly at night." We finally got to the right train platform, walking past homeless people slumped against the escalators.

Hours later, we were sitting at a train platform in in the central suburb of Wissahickon, waiting for our couchsurfing host to pick us up as we had arranged before we left NY. The early afternoon light fell over the pleasant, slightly shabby Philly neighborhood. It was very, very quiet. The stillness more noticeable, perhaps, after our ears had spent several weeks blasted by the relentless, amplified cacophany of NYC. Still, it was a little on the eerie side. On the way to Wissahickon, we noticed that there were slow, empty streets, vacant lots. Very, very skinny multistory houses which had once been part of terrace rows, but which for some reason now stood alone, the houses on either side torn down, banks of grass now writhed between dwellings. As the train rattled past, it was like looking at multiple gap-toothed smiles.

Every 20 minutes or so, Tanya made a call to our would-be host, each one ringing out.

Eventually, in a Dr Livingstone spirit, I boldly set off up and around the hill to the left of the station, not quite sure what I was doing. There I found a small bar crammed with drunk men all craning at the TV screen. I walked in and asked the bartender for directions to the street where we were supposed to be staying. After a pause, he twisted his neck away from the TV, glared at me, told me he had no idea where Bourke St was, then turned back to the TV. I looked up at the screen. The Philadelphia Eagles were playing the San Francisco '49ers.

Then it dawned on me. The whole of Philadelphia had stopped. Everyone, everywhere, was sitting around in bars, in their homes or in their buddy's homes, glued to the TV, gunning for the Eagles. Imbibing vast quantities of the local Yuengling ale. There was no way our host, who was a self-professed sports nut, would tear himself away from this momentous event to pick us up. I trudged back down the hill to tell T the bad news. We swore quite a bit, then waited for another 40 minutes for the next train going back to downtown Philly.

But bad news turned into good news again. That night we fell asleep just north of the University district, in the cheapest non-hostel accommodation we could find, a bed and breakfast which called itself The Castle, for the good reason that the old stone building looked exactly like a kitsch version of medieval England, complete with turrets, bay windows and a '70s Lowrey organ in the parlor. On the way there, we were conscious of being the only white people in the public trolley. This time, we felt on edge.

The next day, we wandered around downtown Philly, and the Northern Liberties 'artists reclaiming a slum' neighborhood. After a while, I said to T "This is a great town if you are black or gay, but we are neither". It felt bad saying that, given I knew I owed Philadelphia a lot - after all, it had produced and named the super-lush, super-fly '60s/ '70s funk soul movement, which had provided the soundtrack to my dreamy hours spent as a small child rollerskating around suburban rinks. TSOP's "The Sound of Philadelphia" had actually been the early sound of sub-tropical Brisbane for me. And later in life, I had, like thousands of other remixers, sampled string stabs and sweeps from disco hits like "The Hustle" which, although recorded by the Soul City Symphony in New York, was saturated in the satiny Philly sound. I used Philly-type samples to add retro, loungy, funky character to my electro doofs which would have been as pale and straight as I was without those stolen grooves.

Before I left Melbourne, I was told that Philly was now a hotspot for psychedelic folk, the subgenre that The Jilted Brides occupies. But we didn't have enough time to do research into venues that might host our kinds of bands, and, after spending the next afternoon resting in a park by the Schuylkill river and lazily watching a drug deal take place in the bushes behind us, we were ready to leave. Our last night ended up being a very positive black experience, hanging out in the local African bar, talking to the bemused locals and stuffing ourselves with delicious, cheap Ethiopian stew wrapped in pancakes. But we still felt that Philly was not our town, despite the enormous attractiveness of its proximity to New York. I was pretty sure Philly wouldn't miss us either.

The 5 hour train ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh through gentle Pennsylvania farm and woodlands was as pretty as we had been told to expect. Not long after we wobbled up from the passenger car into the bar/diner carriage for a round of beers, one of the Amtrak conductors plomped down firmly in the seat opposite ours and without any introductions whatsoever, started to tell us the history of Pennsylvania railways and the differences between the various contemporary trains that ran on the Philly/Pitt route. The latter points he illustrated by reaching into his uniform pocket and producing numerous scuffed photos of trains which he spread out over the table. T and I lent politely over the images and tried to follow what he was saying. In the opposite booth, an older black guy, spectacularly rigged out in linen kaftan and super-stylish rivulets of gold bling, grinned at our predicament. He later introduced himself as a Pittsburgh-based fashion designer. "Oh, you're gonna love Pittsburgh" he said. "Its a great place to live. Believe me."

We arrived In Pittsburgh late on a hazy Tuesday night. Scott picked us up in his parent's Chevvy pick-up. He and Tanya had really hit it off when we first met at the Montana Artists' Refuge in June. I filmed him striding towards T down the dimly lit platform, then the welcomes, the giggles and hugs. I kept filming as I crouched with the luggage in the back of the pick-up, on our way to Scott's flat, moving the camera from the silhouettes of excited chatter, out the window to Pittsburgh flashing past. Even at night, I could tell the city was one of the most picturesque I had ever seen. We drove through a quilt of rolling hills, historic housing, lonely industrial spaces, all stitched through with parks and wooded areas. My view was often framed by moonlight glinting off the three rivers (the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Monongahela) that triangulated the heart of the city. Scott and T talked non-stop.

We arrived at Scott's 2 bedroom apartment in the old inner working class suburb of Lawrenceville, and shook hands with Dan, his James Dean look-alike flatmate. We were bustled down the stairs. Our accommodation was a couple of camp beds in their basement. A week later, I was bordering on psychosis from lack of sleep, lack of light and cramped living conditions. But that first night felt like luxury, because the air was fresh, the neighborhood was quiet, and we didn't feel scared or out of place at all. I slept soundly because I had a feeling I was going to like Pittsburgh, a lot. In fact I had a feeling, completely irrational given it was based on only an hours' observation late a night, that I might just have found a new home.

Friday, October 10, 2008

New York gigs - September - Part 1: The Lit Lounge

by Nicole Skeltys

When we introduced ourselves, the large black doorman broke into a big sly grin, showing a gold capped tooth. "The Jilted Brides, huh? Ha ha ha. Thats a great name". A couple of babes dressed in uptown fashions for their night out in the East Village, teetered past us on spiky heels into the club. The doorman nodded after them, still grinning "Hey, they ain't jilted brides. They ain't cooool enough to be jilted brides!".

We'd been booked to play at the Lit Lounge in East Village since April 2008, since before we had left Australia. I'd had an image in my head of New York band venues all looking like photos I'd seen of CBGBs in the late '70s. Dimly lit, low ceilings, dungeon-cool aesthetic, heroin-chic clientele sprawling on crumbling torn black vinyl lounges, decadence. I wasn't disappointed. As Tanya and I made our way down the steep narrow stairs into the band room, I saw with satisfaction that the Lit Lounge was, "a charming cellar hole" (as a delightful elderly lady who came to the show later described it). The venue fitted my NY stereotype perfectly.

Well, almost perfectly. The decor and feel was smouldering and edgy but the audience for the first band (a duo that looked and sounded just like The Dresden Dolls) were a handful of neatly dressed people in middle age. They were the proud parents, uncles and aunts of the band, who politely clapped after every tortured ballad.

Our brand new band arrived, one at a time. First, Stu - our doe-eyed, mild-mannered guitarist, who had been playing in bands ever since he'd been a kid in the late '60s. Then Brian our bassist, the youngest member of the band, who turned up sporting a fedora and spats, looking impossibly dashing. Finally, Garry, our black drummer arrived at the last minute and shook his head in good humored disgust at the tiny crack at the back of the cramped stage that was where he was supposed to set up his kit.

Before we left for the Byrdcliffe art colony in Woodstock in late August, we'd put ads up on Craigslist asking if any NY musicians wanted to join us for our two NY shows. We explained that there was no payment involved, they would be joining us just for the fun of it. I expected to get no response, due to the obvious lack of financial incentive. But I was wrong. A number of musicians responded straight away. One guy described himself as "your jilted guitarist", explaining he'd like to play with us because he "sure knew what it was like to be jilted". One bassist called Gio, a large hispanic guy covered in tattoos (he sent us photos) who seemed to specialize in metal and funk, boasted he could "do slap real well". A "romantic violinist" offered to join us: due to the lack of a Myspace page where we could hear his stuff, he suggested we call him so he could play some soulful strains to us down the phone.

Eventually, we settled on Stu, Brian and Garry because they seemed the most professional and suited temperamentally to our folky/psychedelic/ atmospheric sound. I was both grateful and amazed that musicians of their calibre wanted to help out an obscure Australian duo, purely because they loved our music. But I was very unconvinced that they could master a set list comprising a mixture of tracks from The Jilted Brides and Dust (my previous Melbourne band) in only a couple of rehearsals. For two reasons: most of the tracks were not simple, they had fairly complicated arrangements and chord structures. And it takes a long time for a band to get tight - Dust rehearsed for 9 months before we felt we were good enough to play our first gig.

For the weeks we were in Woodstock, I got a knot in my stomache everytime I thought about our gigs in the Big Apple and our as yet unseen band. Every day, Tanya and I would tramp down the upper Byrdcliffe Road to the Icehouse (a small barn which was our rehearsal space) and we'd sing to the backing tracks which I'd loaded up into I-Tunes on my laptop. As I stared out the window at the light falling through the woods, serenading the unseen bears that everyone told us were out there, I thought: "How are we going to master all these tunes live with only a few hours rehearsal? We are going to sound like a sloppy teenage garage band. We are going to make goofballs of ourselves".

But at our first rehearsal in Brooklyn, on the Monday before our Saturday night gig, I felt the rock and roll angels had once again been pulling cosmic strings on our behalf. Our Craigslist band had not only flawlessly worked out their parts, but they had memorized them already. They knew the songs like they'd been playing them for years. And they were charming, funny, easy to get along with, on our wavelength. They were very enthusiastic about the songs which they told us they loved playing. They were, in fact, a dream band.

On the L-train home to our sub-let in Bushwick that night, I repeated the phrase "dream band" to Tanya many times, who agreed with me. I alternated that phrase with shaking my head and stating. "We are going to pull it off. We are actually going to pull it off!". Tanya confirmed that we had indeed just witnessed another miracle and yes, we were going to pull it off. I scarcely noticed the grimy Brooklyn subway stations as they flashed past. I was not just feeling less terrified about the gig, I was now positively champing at the bit to perform- I knew we were going to sound great.

Sure enough, right from the first few bars of Set Apart, our alt.country opening number, the band kicked in with a vigor, confidence and panache that impressed the audience and resulted in wild cheering after every song. Tanya also looked jaw-droppingly good in her Brigid Bardot look-alike hotpants, fishnets and booties rig-out. Even the harmonium was a hit, with at least one member of the audience pleading for "more harmonium!" when our exotic, much traveled instrument was apparently not loud enough.

After the show, the boys had to split for various reasons, and Tanya and I had to wait around until the other bands on the bill finished playing so we could get paid our cut from the door takings. We didn't mind at all, as it gave us the opportunity to be repeatedly congratulated on our performance and to take liberal advantage of our bar tab. We wandered into the upstairs bar and then down again, pushing past many people dressed in new New Wave couture, drinking and jiggling and (sometimes) shouting compliments at us. The soundtrack to the evening - the house music between bands - could have been the house music at CBGBs in the late '70s/ early '80s: Iggy Pop, Blondie, Bowie, Lou Reed, My Bloody Valentine, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ramones. As we eventually degenerated into a slumped giggling clump in the backstage bandroom, I had (not for the first time on this trip) a sense of having returned to my adolescent years.

Finally Max, the venue manager, appeared Dr Who-like from (literally) a tiny hole in the wall. And, just like an episode from the iconic BBC sci-fi series, members of each of the bands that had played that night moved slowly, awkwardly towards him, the tentative way you would if you were an alien and you saw Dr Who land on your planet. Max clutched a fistful of dollars, and doled out measley sums to each band, followed by what looked like pep talks of some kind. When our turn came, Max at first looked a bit startled to see that we were filming the whole procedure, but then cheerfully informed us that we had pulled more customers than any other band and gave us the remainder of the takings - $80 (after the venue had taken its cut).

Tanya said "Look at this, musicians get treated like shit, its a dogs life!". I whole-heartedly agreed. We fell back into the sticky couch again and laughed and laughed. A silver skull graffitied on the black wall opposite grinned back at us through the gloom. One of my favorite shoegazing anthems of all time, one I had not heard for a very long time - Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" kicked in at full volume. We finally rallied ourselves and with the help of some fellow Byrdcliffe colony artists who had come to see us, we grabbed the harmonium and keyboard, and staggered out into the early morning ruckus playing out on 2nd Avenue. Our first gig on the Eastern seaboard had turned into the quintessential New York underground rock experience and as we hailed down a cab, we felt invincible.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Woodstock Part 2: art colonies and recording studios

By Nicole Skeltys

Back to the garden


"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devils bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden".
“Woodstock”, Joni Mitchell, 1969.

Whitehead's autocratic personality jarred with his espoused libertarian views and alienated many of the artists that initially gathered to live and work in Byrdcliffe’s 30 dark stained hemlock chalets. Several key figures left early on, including poet and author Hervey White who established his own Maverick artists’ colony off Maverick road in Woodstock in 1904. By the '20s, wild Maverick balls were being held which attracted artists, outsiders and hedonists from the Hudson valley and New York. They featured long days and nights of masquerades, cross-dressing, nudity, illegal alcohol, illegal sex, and jazz. In the decades that followed, Woodstock continued to attract and provide a refuge to artists, activists, free spirits and the sexually adventurous. Outdoor musical celebrations continued to be held, and in this sense the iconic Woodstock festival of 1969 was more the culmination of a long bacchanalian tradition associated with the area, rather than the new explosion of hippy consciousness that the media has subsequently portrayed.

On our first day wandering around the village on a bright September morning, it was the legacy of the 1960s and early 70s counterculture, rather than the preceding decades, that was most evident. Shops left you in no doubt that ’69 was a momentous year for Woodstock, and the major source of all tourist commerce ever since. Tie-dyed T-shirts emblazoned with ‘3 Days of Peace and Music’ flapped in windows. Signs in cafes said “Hippies welcome!”. The rainbow colored peace sign served as Woodstock’s local flag, and was stuck, hammered, or hung on most doors and windows. One cramped, dusty boutique specialized in rock legend memorabilia and stocked an impressive array of psych-rock T-shirts (including many alluring Grateful Dead designs which I hovered over for some time), dozens of portraits of Bob Dylan, caches of records with faded covers showing a lot of young men with beards, country frock coats and hats posing in rustic settings. In the town square (more properly described as a small rectangle of grass which served as a local meeting point and hanging out space), a couple of men with long grey hair sat cross-legged on the grass and smoked a joint. The square was surrounded by spiritual shops: a Tibetan arts and crafts shop, a New Age shop offering ‘Spiritual gifts of Light and Love’, a Sufi mystics centre. Incense and wind chimes flowed out.

But there was nothing ‘fringe’ about this place anymore. All the whitewashed New England clapboard houses and shop fronts were immaculately maintained, numerous art galleries discretely offered glossy bland photographic ‘art’ for very high prices. All the comfortable parked cars and SUVs gleamed with newness. Despite the occasional obvious aged acid-casualty mumbling to themselves and shuffling down the street in badly soiled fisherman’s wraparound pants, Woodstock it seemed had, since 1969, been gradually handed over from those who had been expelled from the garden of Eden, but still searched for it, to those who had always lived in paradise, but were quite prepared to buy more of it. Woodstock was now the preferred location for the second or even third home of wealthy, arty New Yorkers who needed a place to unwind for weekends; it was, after all, less than 2 hours commute from the Big Apple, and it offered trees, cafes, watering holes and the still lingering aura of bohemian stylishness. Many celebrities and wealthy rock musicians owned homes in the area.

Still, there was definitely a magic and energy in the air that we had not felt in any of the towns or cities we had visited so far on our US trip. Everyone seemed to be smiling, like they all shared a very cool secret. It was the kind of place where you felt you could just walk up to a stranger’s house and expect to be let in and just given stuff.

Which is exactly what happened, several times.

The first time was when I spotted a sign which said “Jefferson Starship” hanging over the entrance to double story house with a glass frontage in a recess off Mill Hill Road. I wandered over, half-hoping that a member of one of my favorite ‘60s psychedelic bands was actually in there. Tanya joined me and we pressed our noses against the windows. An older, thin man with long bedraggled hair was leaning over a guitar. When he saw us, he jumped up and opened the door: “Come in, come in!” he said, with a giggle.

We entered a ‘70s pine wood studio, CDs piled up, old keyboards racked one top of the other, audio leads and recording gear scattered around. The walls were covered in faded old progressive rock and psychedelic album posters: Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and (very prominently) Jefferson Starship. Rick (our host’s) role on the Starship turned out to be the webmaster: he hosted and maintained the band’s website. In addition to that, he ran a small, low budget recording operation, laying down tracks mostly for visiting musicians – the town attracted quite a number of musical pilgrims every summer, some of whom walked into his studio on impulse, wanting to take a Woodstock recording session away with them as a souvenir. Within a few minutes, Rick was offering to lend me one of his old synthesizers to rehearse on and even to jam with us. By the time we left, he was even offering to record us for free.

A few days later, the temperature soared. Our little nunnery-like rooms in the creaking old Villetta Inn (the main structure in which all the artists in residence stayed at Byrdcliffe) were cooking us like hibachis. It was impossible to work. Tanya grabbed her swimsuit and towel and took off down Lower Byrdcliffe road, which was dotted with large, tasteful expensive houses in the woods, on landscaped acreage. Having selected one with an appropriately large swimming pool, she knocked on the door. When it was apparent no one was home, T changed and dived in the pool, did a few laps then sunbathed.

Ok. Maybe that counts more as hospitality seized rather than freely given. But when Tanya was sprung by the landscape gardener, all that ensued was a flirty conversation and exchange of numbers.

The most spectacular generosity, however, was extended to me by Levon Helm. Prior to Woodstock, I was traveling through Colorado and Texas, meeting other musicians, commune members, former Deadheads, vision questers. When people found out I was going to Woodstock, many urged me to check out the Midnight Rambles shows. The performances weren’t held in a venue, they were held in Levon’s house and studio, a converted old barn in the woods. Helm started the Rambles in a low key way in 2004; now people from all round the world were coming to be a part of these intimate shows, featuring the best roots musicians from around America.

But when I checked the website, I saw to my dismay that all the Rambles that were happening when I was at Byrdcliffe (and all those listed later in the year as well) had sold out. And the Ramble that was happening the next night, Saturday night, looked like it was going to be a corker. Levon’s guest band was Kinky Friedman and The Texan Jewboys. The country crooning showman, humorist and former gubernatorial candidate for Texas was famous for putting on a great show. I emailed Levon’s manager expressing my disappointment at missing out on the show, but asking if it was possible to visit the studio and perhaps meet Helm later in the week. To my astonishment and delight, I was offered a guest pass to the show.

The night far exceeded even my high expectations and proved to be one of the musical highlights of my life. Because the venue was not a venue but a large studio in a custom designed warm wooden room overlooked by an inner balcony, the live sound was flawless – like listening to your favorite record on a top end stereo. It was not crowded, there would only have been about 150 people there, it felt like being in Levon’s lounge – which it virtually was. Both bands played their hearts out and I swear everyone in the room was beaming from ear to ear.

Including me. Particularly when I found myself in Levon’s kitchen later which served as the location for the after party. A very happy accident, all thanks to my highly decorated Spanish leather cowgirl boots. One of the Texan Jewboys, Ratso, noticed me (or rather my boots) when I first arrived and walked into the merchandise room. We got talking, and later during interval, he kindly said I could hang out with him and the rest of the crew after the show. As the night pushed into the wee hours, and more Coors and spleefs were consumed, the conversation roller coasted around the forthcoming election as Kinky (perversely, or perhaps seriously) yelled out McCains virtues while Helm and just about everyone else in the room argued passionately, if fairly incoherently, for Obama. As the band members and hangers on eventually started to wander off into the night, I thanked Levon profusely for his hospitality and wonderful evening (“Youre welcome, honey!” he said, twinkling with gracious good humor, and giving me a hug) and I made my way back to Byrdcliffe on a high that lasted for days.

Helm’s opening up of his studio as an exclusive performance space has enabled him to remain in the Woodstock musical garden of Eden – ie keep his world class country studio and stay financially solvent. This has not been the fate of the other high end Woodstock studios, most of which have shut down over the last few years. The most famous of these was Bearsville, owned by Albert Grossman, a rock mogul who aggressively managed the careers of many of the greatest artists of the ‘60s: Dylan, Janis Joplin, John Lee Hooker, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez to name but a few. He established his studio in 1969, and throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, the studio attracted roots and rock superstars: The Rolling Stones, Jeff Buckley, Phish, Bonnie Rait, REM, Foreigner, to name but a few. Grossman died in 1986. His widow Sally kept the studio running throughout the ‘90s, promoting Bearsville as “one of the few purely analog recording studios left”.

Ask most musicians who are serious about the sound quality of their recorded music and they will tell you analog recording techniques (tape, valve mixing/compression’ effects, reproduction onto vinyl), in the hands of an expert producer, provide an infinitely better sound quality than digital processes and media. ‘Better’ meaning warmth, nuance, emotional resonance, ‘creaminess’. The ‘90s saw the final mass market triumph of the CD over the vinyl platter, and the increasing power, user friendliness and affordability of computer based digital recording equipment. What was gained in terms of the much-vaunted democratization of the means of album production was lost in the actual sonic beauty of the thing produced. Apparently not enough of today’s commercially successful recording artists or their record companies wanted to pay the premium to recapture that old fashioned loveliness, free of the harsh digital imprisonment of zeros and ones. Or to feel the history in the exposed wooden beams, and see the recording desk that still bore the peeling masking tape with Joplin’s sub-mixes marked out in fading felt pen. Bearsville Studios in its old configuration closed down in 2004.

Road movie endings

As we came to the end of our stay at Byrdsville, we finished off the promo for our documentary. When we were in Portland in July, I had purchased another $300 handycam, which meant we had no less than doubled our film crew. As we reviewed the footage we had taken thus far on our tour we were relieved (and a bit surprised) to see we had a great deal of useable material (interviews, concert footage, travel shots, ‘incidents’). We were hoping to use our promo/teaser to entice a producer on board, particularly as Tanya had completely run out of cash and we were going to have to stay in New York for a while and get some kind of menial work to stay afloat. A producer, we hoped (wildly) might be able to get us some money, help us keep going on our journey.

My final task, craning over my beloved MacBook late into the cicada chorused Catskill evenings, was to organize rehearsals leading up to our NYC gigs at the Lit Lounge and the Trash Bar in the last weekend of September. Thanks to the miracle that is Craigslist, we had found musicians who had agreed to play with us for no other reason that it sounded like fun. A drummer, bassist and guitarist who we had never met in person were even now sitting in their NY apartments listening to the MP3s of our songs and trying to memorize the chord charts I had sent them. What were the odds of a makeshift band who had only played together for a few hours, pulling off an impressive show in front of one of the most sophisticated music audiences in the world? Pretty remote, I thought.

But I also knew that there was a lot riding on our being able to ‘make it’ somehow in New York: impress people, get some kind of fan base. After all we had been through, I didn’t want to have to live through the compulsory tragic endings of American ‘free spirit’ road movies: I didn’t want to have to accelerate off a cliff holding Tanya’s hand; I didn’t want to have to stare grimly into the fire in my Captain America jacket and repeat “We blew it”. I wanted a happy ending.