Howdy,
If you wanna hear some of this now-done 10-year Odyssey of a recording (a not-pun that’ll be more clear when the record comes out), I’m gonna be doing a solo set of some of the songs (accompanied by my usual hide-me veil of loop pedal shenanigans), this Wed., January 8th around 6:30pm.
What makes this esp. nifty is that it’s for the closing party for the artist Beth Campbell's (an actual genius and just my favorite) own solo show, How Do You Know I Am Not A Liar, at the Kate Werble Gallery (83 Vandam St., NYC (Beth’s show runs through this Friday, 1/10/20).
That’s the short of it: Album 4.5 songs, this Wed., 1/8/20, 6:30 at the Kate Werble Gallery.
Swing on by after work, Manhattan professionals.
The longer of it, where I first saw Beth’s work, and later how I got to know her and our still coming-together plan to collaborate re: this next record, is one of those fireside chats I roll out at these ‘come hear the record in our house’ things and even ties into to why I do them to begin with (which speaking of, one last round of those too starting Sunday, 3/1/20. But more on that later)….
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20 years ago, I was dating an artist (also very awesome) that showed at this now-gone gallery, Roebling Hall, in the hip new neighborhood and arts magnet that was Williamsburg then. Beth was showing at the same gallery, and we went to her show there, maybe her first..? Anyway, as I remember it, there was some smaller work around the perimeter of the large standard sort of industrial high-ceiling gallery space (by this time no longer on Roebling but on Wythe & S. 3rd, maybe..?). And in the center of the gallery space you could see a separate room had been built there - studs supporting sheet rock (that you were seeing from the ‘outside’) but that didn’t go anywhere near the gallery ceiling giving it sort of a "movie set on a soundstage” vibe, and there was a doorway opening into the built-in room.
Walking over you looked in - it was a bedroom, pretty standard, rumpled bed, trashcan, dresser, maybe a desk etc. - and of course you already start doing that thing that it’s easy to slip into, of trying to ‘solve’ the art piece you’re looking at, if only so you can ‘get’ it, or feel like you do, or depending on mood/self-regard, be SEEN as getting it (ha). But there wasn’t a clear interpretation to latch onto on the initial viewing. Maybe it was a commentary on our dumb ordinary lives..? domestic routine? maybe there’s something more sinister I missed, or maybe it’s just about the mundane & everyday? etc…
Anyway, you walked out of the room, back into the main gallery space, and walked around the construction (I think following the other work that was there on the perimeter of the gallery walls although I can’t quite remember) and getting to the other side of the installed bedroom, you realized there was another door, here on the far side, and poking a look in, you saw that it was another bedroom….actually another bedroom but laid out & furnished the similarly…no wait, exactly the same!
So you walk back around to the front of the ‘other’ first room to check and looking in, confirm to yourself that yep, it’s exactly the same. Then to sorta double-check, you go back to the 2nd bedroom, the copy, and double-confirm, holy crap, it’s really EXACTLY the same - same furniture, same layout, same colors etc. Then you think, “ok, I’ll catch her, I’ll see how far down the duplication goes..” and you pick something, some detail, that wouldn’t be exactly the same, like the way the sweater is thrown over the chair or whatever. So you go back to Room 1, and realize that holy moly, the sweater in that room’s “casually” tossed the same way, it really IS the same. So you pick an even more minute detail, say, the crumpled papers in the trash can or the number & spacing of “arbitrary” folds in the bedding, walk back to Room 2, and…sweet holy fuck they’re exact duplicates.
And THEN you - ok, me, it’s all me - I had this notion that while I was arrogantly trying find some telling detail too minute for her to have bothered with, that she already knew that you (ok, back to ‘you’) she already knew you were gonna do that...and you suddenly get this feeling like she’s watching you, she’s predicted and known you were gonna do this, to go back & forth and try to find a difference b/n the two rooms, and in fact that she’s made you do it, you feel like she’s observing it all, prob. from above, as a scientist observes mice in a maze.
It was awesome and I thought about this piece often over the years. After that show, Beth has continued to do really really cool stuff and you can see some of that on her site here: http://bethcampbellstudio.com
Come on by after work Wednesday, see Beth’s work, meet the artist, hear some new songs, have something to drink. It’d be nice to see you.
(Next: how I got to know Beth and our still coming-together plan to collaborate re: this next record…)