Dumpstaphunk & Chaka Khan in a Funky Groove at PGW’s BEA Party

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Each year during BEA book distributor Publishers Group West (PGW), and a number of their client publishers,* throw one of the book convention’s best parties, with a tradition of live music over the years (John Wesley Harding for one) and good venues (Chicago’s Green Dolphin, for instance). Last year they booked the superb soul singer Lee Fields, and this year longtime PGWers Elise Cannon–and I learned during this year’s party, Sean Shoemaker–really outdid themselves. The party was at the Highline Ballroom, a new state-of-the-art club with great sound and a terrific lighting system in Chelsea on 16th Street near Tenth Avenue. The acts they booked this time occupied a solid groove in funk and R&B, just right for a dance-ready crowd that’d been working the Javits convention floor for two days and craving some serious fun.

The opener was a Brooklyn outfit called The Pimps of Joytime, a five-piece that featured three percussionists–a conga player, a drummer seated not behind his bandmates, but right amid them, and a woman who played wood blocks and all manner of solid sounding and scarped objects, and sang too–along with a bassist who doubled on keyboards and synths, and guitarist and lead vocalist/front-man Brian J. Though Brooklyn-based, they plowed a very New Orleans-Little Feat-Caribbean groove and were a terrific warm-up for the evening, really enjoyable enough to be a headliner on another bill, duties they were scheduled to handle Saturday night June 9 at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom.

After a brief intermission that saw the stage get made over for a different sort of ensemble, the headliners hit the boards. This was Dumpstaphunk, also a five-piece, one that includes two nephews of R&B royalty–Ivan Neville on organ and vocals, whose uncle is Aaron Neville, and Ian Neville on lead guitar, whose uncle is Art Neville. In addition, they uniquely feature a two-bass attack with Nick Daniels and Tony Hall. On drums is Nikkie Glaspie, a powerful young woman who also sang from behind her kit.

Their repertoire’s solidly rooted in the delta and New Orleans, spiced with an edgy social conscience and song titles like “Turn This Thing Around,” Everybody Wants Some,” and “Livin’ Ina World Gone Mad.” They exhibited great stage presence, with Tony Hall, who also played a Fender Stratocaster on some songs, regularly engaging the audience, while Ivan also introduced some songs from behind his wide keyboard. I was fascinated that the pairing of Hall and Daniels, already unique for comprising a two-bass section, featured five-string instruments, rather than the standard four-string basses. In this band, it’s clear that the bass is very much of a lead instrument.

A highlight arrived with word from the stage that a special guest was in the house, and I heard murmurs among fellow audience members as to who it might be. Soon we heard an invitation shouted out to “Miss Chaka Khan” to come take the stage. The audience response was a huge rush of enthusiasm for “the queen of funk.” She instantly showed herself to be an incredibly dynamic performer, as Dumpstaphunk, which had already been playing at a high level, raised their performance to a pinnacle for the rest of the night. The crowd on the dance floor, eager all night to work out, was going like blazes now. Chaka Khan played the most believable and scintillating air guitar I’ve ever seen, or “heard,” as I hope the photos with this post will attest.

After one song with Chaka Khan, Dumpstaphunk played a couple more numbers, and left the stage full of thanks and bows to the audience, while the crowd gave the love right back. In fact, this seemed to be one night when an encore was really not in the cards, as several minutes of hooting and foot-stomping had not produced a return of the band. Finally, they re-emerged from backstage, playing one more song to close out the evening, with Tony Hall gesturing to us and raising his hands high in calling forth participation from the exhausted and still dancing crowd. When I saw friends on the floor at Javits the next morning, we all agreed it had been one of the best PGW parties ever.   // more . . . Please click through to complete post see all photos.

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Sunset Singing Circle in Battery Park with Terre Roche, June 8

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Last evening Kyle and Ewan and I took part in a New York summer ritual, the Sunset Singing Circle led by Terre Roche, one of the three singing Roche sisters, from longtime fave group, The Roches, whose “Hammond Song” I am listening to right now, with its lovely theremin-like sounding lead instrument, joined to the trio’s arcing harmonies. I recently read and enjoyed sister Suzzy’s splendid novel of music and redemption, Wayward Saints, and it’s been great being in touch with her and Terre on Facebook and through this blog.

The Sunset Singing Circle is held at the tip of lower Manhattan, facing New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. It is a grand place to listen to music as evening falls. Notebooks, including lyrics to more than 100 songs, are shared among folks sitting on the grass, with guitar players and people like the three of us offering up requests from among these selections. Last night we sang “The Weight,” in honor of a memorial Ramble being held tonight in memory of Levon Helm; “Happy Trails;” “The Times They are a Changin’;” “Bird on a Wire;” “The City of New Orleans,” among many others, and following a brief but heavy downpour, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “You Are My Sunshine.” Wet as it was for a while, everyone was stalwart, even the guitar players whose instruments were being rained upon. After the sun shower ended, a real rainbow emerged out of the eastern sky and a considerate Parks Dept. staffer offered towels for people to dry their instruments and seat cushions. It was a special New York night. Click through for all photos.

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The NY Times on Bushwick Open Studios

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Following on the shared post that Kyle and I published after Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) last weekend, Holland Cotter of the New York Times has today filed a report on his foray through the Brooklyn art event. Considering there were more than 500 open studios and galleries, he got to many venues we did not (and a few we did). The article is well worth reading, for his coverage, and his perspective on the work.

Late Update: On her blog Two Coats of of Paint, Sharon Butler has kindly linked to our original BOS post, Holland Cotter’s Times article, and a number of other BOS round-ups.

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Bushwick Open Studios, June 2—Shared Blog Post by Kyle Gallup & Philip Turner

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Saturday was a perfect day for me and Kyle to go to Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) in Brooklyn. Our plan was to meet up with Kyle’s friend, painter Louisa Waber, and see as much as we could over the course of the afternoon. Before leaving we checked the BOS online catalog and jotted down several art venues that we knew we to wanted to hit, while still leaving opportunity for serendipitous discoveries. This year, the sixth annual BOS, there were more than 525 studios and galleries open to the public—so much to see and not enough time to see it all. What struck us immediately, and held true throughout the day, was the fresh, open, and unselfconscious quality of the artists and the work they were showing.

Our first stop was Norte Maar on Wyckoff St., where we’d read that we could pick up a printed catalog including helpful maps of the six zones where BOS was happening. After viewing the show of paper and film collages by Oliver Ralli and a video by his music group PassKontrol, we headed over to the exhibition AllTogetherNow organized by Julie Torres at The Coin Locker on Starr Street. The group of eleven artists in this show came from Australia, Europe, and across North America, having first been drawn to each other’s work on Facebook. Torres organized the exhibit and invited them to Brooklyn to show their paintings and spend time working together on collaborative pieces. All of them had met in person only for the first time in the past week. Hanging the show, she gave the artist the opportunity to step back from their work while she made connections among individual pieces that might not otherwise have emerged. The artists told us that Julie instructed them to place their works on the floor in front of the wall it would hang on and then “go get a cup of coffee.” Julie then translated the art on to the walls.

A sentiment expressed by several of the artists we spoke with, including Brian Cypher, Peter Shear, Vincent Hawkins, Inga Dalrymple, and Ian White Williams, was how they appreciated the chance to better understand each other’s creative process by collaborating on small works on paper. An artist would begin a piece and then another artist would choose to respond to the last artist’s drawn marks, shapes or color. The piece would be passed around and worked on until they felt that it was ready to put on the “finished pile.” The exhibition included works by the individual artists and the collaborative pieces they’d completed together.

Back out on Jefferson Street, we stopped for a free hot dog and iced tea outside the newly opening Cobra Club. A word to culinary carnivores: the hot dogs were from the cool Brooklyn butcher Meathook.

The next stop we made had not been on our list but the door was open and so we walked in, meeting two young female artists sharing a space on industrial Johnson Street, Alison Kizu-Blair and Sophie Stone. They told us that they’d been working in their apartments on very small-scale pieces until they decided to rent this space together. Close friends—Alison a painter and Sophie working more sculpturally—both are finding a new kind of freedom sharing the Bushwick studio. Alison said that earlier she’d only been able to work on small collages, while the studio space now allowed her to work larger and in oil paint, while her friend Sophie is able to create free-standing sculptural tiles and works in paper pulp and corrugated cardboard which she could not do in her apartment.

Next we continued on foot down desolate Johnson Street which was lined with idling trucks emitting odors and parked cement-mixing trucks until we reached The Active Space on Stewart Street to view Deborah Brown’s exhibition “Freewheeling.” The large space showed off Brown’s vibrantly painted canvases in hot saturated color that contrasted the junk cars and derelict junkyard landscapes.

Later, at The Active Space we walked in and out of studios where artists were working and meeting people. We met painter and fiber artist Emily Auchincloss who draws inspiration from weavers in Morocco who make boucherouite rugs. Another studio we visited was that of Jen Hitchings, who makes paintings related to her emotional connection with photography.

On 117 Grattan Street we were welcomed by artist Sharon Butler of the blog Two Coats of Paint where we viewed a group show curated by Austin Thomas, mounted in Sharon’s studio. This was a selection of four artists’ work that quietly related to one another. We noticed an old Royal portable typewriter that Sharon said she uses when she’s working in her studio. She does not have a computer in the studio and prefers staying offline while there. She uses the typewriter to make lists of different ideas and thoughts that come into her mind. Her views of Brooklyn rooftops and buildings provide an inspiration for her own paintings.

As the afternoon waned and we began to tire, we just had time for a visit to StorefrontBushwick on Wilson Street to see another group show. This was a collection of pieces by artists Abdolreza Aminari, Drew Shiflett, Paula Overbay, Lauren Seiden. Matthew Mahler, and Nancy Bowen. Aminari, from Iran, had delicate gold thread sewn through paper pieces, a nice contrast to Shiflett’s “Easel Sculpture #2” made from paper, fabric, glue, cardboard, wood polyester stuffing, Styrofoam and wire. In Seiden’s work, the layering of graphite on paper had a dense materiality.

Though there was much more we wanted to see, we stopped for a cold drink and a Mexican snack and the three of us shared our impressions of our afternoon’s long ramble through what amounted to only a mere sliver of BOS. We hope this report and the photos below give our readers a sense of how working artists have come together to forge a strong creative community in Bushwick, while it continues to evolve in new ways. / / more. . . click through to see all 50 + photos

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Danger from NYC Trees, Part III

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Following three articles on this topic earlier in May, which I blogged about here, and an earlier piece I wrote after seeing tree pruners at work in Riverside Park, the NY Times has published another revealing article about tree care in New York City, or more accurately the decline of tree care in the city. While the Bloomberg administration has commendably pledged to plant one million trees before it leaves office at the end of 2013–and it claims to be halfway to that goal–the budget for maintaining and pruning the city’s existing trees has fallen drastically. Reporter Lisa W. Foderaro writes that the city’s tree-tending

“work force has shrunk, however, to 92 pruners and climbers today from 112 five years ago. The budget for street-tree care has fallen more sharply. The 600,000 trees on the city’s streets are largely maintained by outside tree-service contractors. Because of budget cuts, the pruning rotation has been stretched, to every 15 years from once every 7 years in 2008. During that time, the budget for street-tree pruning contracts fell to $1.4 million from $4.7 million.”

In the city’s parks, where hazards posed by untended trees often go undetected, she reports that

“Arborists and tree-care experts say that New York City could significantly improve public safety by ensuring that the workers who evaluate trees understand the warning signs of decay and failure.”

Despite the promise of greater safety such training offers, she reports on the decline of the tree care budget even while multi-million dollar damage awards continue to be paid to civil litigants, after fatalities and serious injuries occur. The city has a legal and moral responsibility to keep its inhabitants and visitors safe, within reasonable limits. While all urban hazard cannot be eliminated from our urban midst, the ones that are avoidable should be prevented to the maximum extent possible; when New York City fails to do so–even as reasonable safeguards are within reach–it is a moral and ethical failing. I cannot understand how the Mayor’s office allows this to continue. I will call my city councilperson to request that they restore the budget for tree care. Any other course is just stupid and negligent.

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Ruth Gruber’s Photojournalism at Soho Photography

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To mark Jewish American Heritage Month, Open Road Media–which has recently brought out five ebooks by my longtime author Ruth Gruber–has published a celebratory post on the Open Road Blog. In addition, Ruth’s photojournalism, for which she’s received the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, is on exhibit through June 2 at the gallery Soho Photography on White Street in Tribeca. Among Ruth’s mentors was Edward Steichen, who exhorted her to “Take pictures with your heart.” I recommend you read Ruth’s inspiring books and go see her photographs, including the two accompanying this post. The image above was taken when Ruth was sent to Alaska in 1940 by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, her boss in the FDR administration; the one below was taken aboard the prison ship Runnymede Park, on which the refugees from the Exodus were forcibly sequestered during the summer of 1947, a chronicle that Ruth tells in her book Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation, which is illustrated with more than 100 of her photographs. I published it with Ruth in hardcover in 1999, and in trade paperback in 2008. It is still only available in hard copy, and is not yet among the ebooks from Open Road. For the record, the titles available as ebooks are Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America; Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel; Raquela: A Woman of Israel; Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman; and Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent (also the title of an excellent documentary covering mostly the first four decades of Ruth’s life). For readers’ handy reference, I’ve previously blogged about Ruth Gruber, here and here.

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Celebrating Woody Guthrie at the Brooklyn Folk Festival

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I was at the opening of the Brooklyn Folk Festival last night when the upcoming 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie was observed. There were a number of great performances and I’ll be heading out there again later today for Day II. If you’re looking for live music tonight this is going to be a great place to hang out. The venue is in downtown Brooklyn, at 345 Jay Street near Metrotech, very close to an A train subway stop. Highlights of Day I included, but by no means were limited to these memorable moments:

  • Hearing Ernie Vega and Samoa Wilson of Four Flowers sing Woody’s “I Ain’t Got No Home,” whose melody seemed a close cousin to the equally classic, “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” also the name of a 30s movie with Al Jolson;
  • listening to John Longhi read from his father’s memoir, Woody, Cisco, and Me, that chronicles the time the three friends shared as merchant seamen during WW II;
  • listening to Greenwich Village 60s era folk stalwart John Cohen read from lists of hundreds of song lists that Woody catalogued alphabetically–all the songs that began with the letter ‘H,’ all that began with the letter, ‘L,’ etc. Woody knew hundreds of songs. It was like one of those extravagant lists that John McPhee is wont to put in his long New Yorker pieces. I met Cohen after his reading and told him that what he read from Woody’s notebook (John brought the original valise and notebook with him) was like a symphony in commas;
  • Finally hearing Peter Stamfels, leader of the psychedelic 60s jug band, The Holy Modal Rounders, who was in the house with his current group Ether Frolic Mob. They’re a boisterous seven-piece outfit full of primal hoots and hollers led by Stamfel on banjo and fiddle and his daughter, Zoë Stampfel, who, seated near her dad, played the djumbe drum and really tore up the tracks. John Cohen also sat in with this assemblage.
  • Dennis Lichtman’s Brain Cloud, who played inspired, hot, western swing, and had an amazing vocalist, Tamara Korn, who threw her voice in all sorts of ways, imitating other instruments in the band–clarinet, fiddle, pedal steel, lead guitar–twinning with them in her sweet, darting voice. It was something special to behold/behear.

As I posted on this blog a couple days ago, Eli Smith directs the festival, now in its fourth year, in coordination with a Brooklyn cultural institution called the Jalopy Theatre. I learned last night that up until a few weeks they believed the festival would be held in the same venue as last year, which included some outdoor space, but it suddenly became unavailable to them; fortunately, they found an alternate venue. It’s a converted hardware store in downtown Brooklyn, which is quite spacious and conveniently located near the Jay St. stop on the A train. Eli and his cohorts did a fabulous job of converting the space and lending to it a theatre-like ambiance with stage lighting, maroon curtains all around the stage, and handsome murals evocative of old Brooklyn and New York harbor. They are to be congratulated for figuring all this out at the veritable last minute. Photographs that I took last night will be found below. It was a great night and I’m headed back later tonight, and possibly Sunday. I urge you to stop by for this fine example of homegrown, acoustic musical entertainment. // more. . . click through to full post for all photos

 

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The Brooklyn Folk Festival, May 18-20

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There’s a terrific music festival coming up in downtown Brooklyn this weekend, the Brooklyn Folk Festival, and I’m planning to take in some of the festivities with my wife and son. Highlights include a special observance on Friday night marking the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie; workshops on singing, banjo and mandolin; and performances by Peter Stampfel (ex- of the Holy Modal Rounders) and the Ether Frolic Mob, and by the Wretched Refuse String Band. It takes place Friday night, and begins at noon on Saturday and Sunday, stretching late into the nights. These two videos, with performances by Jerron Paxton and Clifton Hicks are highlights from last year’s program. This is going to be the fourth rendition of the festival, and every year they’ve had stellar line-ups. This year festival director Eli Smith has arranged for more than thirty acts over the three days, plus film screenings and appearances by authors of such books as Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival. I hope to see you there.

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