The West, from Seattle, opened for Liam Finn at The Tractor Tavern this week. And they danced. People in Seattle can dance. If they want to. I’m dancing right this minute. In my mind. I’m always dancing, in my mind. It’s a Northwest thing. Think about it.
Sera Cahoone, a few shots from my archive, for a show at the Croc in Seattle last summer. For a cold rainy day in the Pacific Northwest.
A rare sighting in the Pacific Northwest: Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Will Oldham), playing solo and acoustic in the wicked metropolis, at The Neptune Theatre, in Seattle. This was the first time I had to shoot an entire show sitting down, on a chair, with the stage towering above me, empty except for a bar stool and a microphone, a man and his message. Still, alone on stage with just his guitar and his songs and his biting social commentary, he makes an essential statement in our times. If you get a chance to see Mr. Oldham’s solo acoustic tour, be sure you shout out, between songs of course, something about having hope in dark times. Go ahead, I dare you.
The Vera Project, tucked away on the grounds of the Seattle Center, in the shadow of Key Arena and the Space Needle, must be one of the best kept secrets in the Pacific Northwest music business. I mean, you can see bands like Titus Andronicus with less than a hundred people in the audience. Which leaves lots of floor space for thrashing, and lots of room on stage for photographers like me to perch out of danger and still get some cool shots. The remaining angry young members of Titus Andronicus were at the Vera earlier this week, along with two other bands: And And And, and… Lost Boy.
Everything in life, even the dumb random stuff and mistakes, should be part of the process of getting better, and not be about defeat.
I’m not a great photographer. I’m probably not even a good photographer. I was trained (in college) as a journalist and worked most of my career as an editor and writer. I was drawn back to music a few years ago, both as a fan and as a songwriter myself, and as someone who wanted to create a small record label, because I needed a change and always loved music. The recent vinyl revival just seemed too exciting to let it go by without exploring that space myself. It seemed like something really cool was about to happen, again, in music.
I’m also an oral historian and spent years traveling the world interviewing people about war and peace and their lives. Collecting stories. That’s something I’ve done since I was about ten years old, when I walked up and down my suburban street “visiting” with all the neighbors, asking them to tell me stories about when they were children, or about their jobs, or about why they or their families moved to the Pacific Northwest, about the wars they fought in (all citizen soldiers mostly drafted into World War II or Korea or Vietnam), or not. My most recent oral-history work dealt with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and took me into prisons, into “squats,” into small apartments and farm houses, places where young soldiers escaped, whole or broken, to find new lives. It was work that broke my heart.
Now, with my camera, at live shows like this one, in the darkness and the storms of light and sound, this time with the band Junip playing at Neumos (lead by the extraordinary guitar player José González), I want my pictures to be about the “story” of the show. I want to capture the movement of the musicians, their faces, their bodies in motion, as they sing their amazing lyrics, bring forth whole worlds from the instruments they play, the connection I feel to them simply by being in the room.
At this show, in early June at Neumos in Seattle, I had borrowed a friend’s Olympus camera. He’s an artist. When he uses this camera he finds things I could never find. That night, the camera slipped into a setting that I wasn’t trained to use, and couldn’t figure out how to set it back. As I look over my shots, more than a thousand of them, I can see where I wanted to go, but time after time I missed the shot because I didn’t how the camera worked.
But here’s the thing. I kept hammering away at it, slowly getting closer and closer to understanding the problem as the bands played on. I never fixed the setting back to what I knew, I just kept shooting until I got closer to something I could work with. That’s the coolest part of this portfolio, to me. I didn’t give up. I just kept going, kept searching for the story this band was trying to tell.
It’s why when I write my record reviews I throw in details about Shakespeare’s plays, or the poetry of John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I have friends who read my stuff and they tell me not to do that because no one will care, not in a music review. But for me, I can’t read some of Keats’ poems and not feel the stories still connecting. I can’t read some of his poems without crying, because of the connection I feel, his heart to mine, his humanity to mine, his music to the music inside me. It’s the story of a brilliant, sensitive young artist dying at the age of 26. It’s about a poet writing right up until the day of his death. It’s about a poet dying thinking he was a total failure as a poet. It’s all stories. Everything is connected. Behind every record, behind every live show, there’s a story unfolding there, too.
And I can’t get enough of them. The stories. I want them all because somehow, if I keep at it, if I keep them close, artists and poets and creatives, what I feel and what I write about will help me live a better life. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. I’m not some cool music critic. I’m still that kid walking from house to house in search of the stories of people’s lives. To feel I belong to it all, somehow. It’s my quest.
I’m not a photographer. I’m probably not much of a writer or reviewer. But I am a man in search of stories. And that’s all. That’s enough.
Legendary, longtime (and a little shy) K Records recording artist Karl Blau appeared with his latest band, Lovers Without Borders, at The Business in Anacortes, Karl’s hometown, as part of the shop’s 35th anniversary celebration. In addition to Karl, LWB includes Jessica Bonin on drums, and Alex Parrish on guitar. LWB just released their first 7 inch and will play a few select gigs around the Pacific Northwest. Karl will also appear solo at the Crocodile in Seattle on May 21st. I’ll be there.
My next band encounter will be those Seattle favorites, The Cave Singers (who must live their entire lives on the road, seeing little of their home caves, naturally), this Saturday, 4 May, at the Showbox Market.
Today marks 35 years of the little record shop that could, The Business, in Anacortes, Washington. This is a picture of their little retro building. It might appear to be small and quietly glowing, but it’s history and impact on Indy music in the Pacific Northwest is huge and noisy. This evening there will be a discussion and presentation on the history of The Business, and on the local record label KNW-YR-OWN. I’m reliably informed two bands will also play tonight: Ever Ending Kicks and Lovers Without Borders. Rumor has it there will also be a special guest appearing, but I can’t pry the identity of this mysterious guest out of Nick Rennis and Evie Opp. Man, what do you have to do to get insider treatment in the music business?
The Music of the World Is Never Dead 