Announcement
Wednesday 6/9/04, FREE: Drywall XXI: The Man from Nyayzar

What happens when an entity from another dimension is stranded here with his accordion? He puts on a free performance event and participatory ritual at the Arts Festival tomorrow night at 10:30, at 937 Liberty, is what.

Pittsburgh's alpha-accordionist and avant-gardiste-about-town Steve Pellegrino invites you to this free late evening event of monologues, call and response, PowerBook sample and guitar manipulations (from your humble correspondent), odd-meter drumming, evocations of jazz greats, mysterious staging, and more.

Patti Smith's playing at 8 at Point State Park, so you can check out her show and then come on over to ours. If you can't make it Wednesday, we're doing it again on Saturday the 12th--same time (10:30), same location (937 Liberty). Steve's drywall technique is unstoppable.

It's all paid for by your tax dollars, so you're just throwing your money away if you don't check it out. See you there.

Report
Not bad for a first night, if a bit wobbly in places. We'd done a rehearsal the previous week, so I wasn't going in completely cold, but even during the rehearsal I had a faint feeling of not knowing whether the things I was doing worked or not. The evening found me in something of an odd mental state--it was extremely hot and humid all day; I was juggling four different work-related projects; and we were hosting an out-of-town guest. Steve had specified a white shirt with a collar and black pants for me, and Patricia found a great white linen shirt for me, so my costume was taken care of. Happily this was a later show, so I was able to get everything done I needed to do, and get some dinner before Patricia dropped me off at the gig.

The show was in the back room of a gallery space downtown, at street level. Steve wanted us all there around 7, even though the show wasn't until 10:30, so we'd have adequate time to set up and rehearse again. When I got there, the previous act (a Spanish music and dance troupe) was still going on, and Steve was sitting in with them. It sounded quite nice, but I didn't want to walk in with gear and break the mood, so I ducked around the corner to the backstage entrance hallway and worked a bit on percussion for my upcoming gig doing music for a belly dance. One significant bonus: the place was air-conditioned, so I wouldn't be sweating all the way through the shirt before the show.

Eventually I realized that the show had ended and the audience had filed out, so I went to the stage and started setting up. Other members of the group and entourage showed up; I tweaked the settings in G and Live for the different parts of the show, and then we rehearsed again and did a sound check. I got a little work in on the dance piece, trying to follow some traditional rhythms, but I wasn't going to be making vast amounts of progress this evening. After a point, all we could do was wait, and repaired to the backstage area so as to be able to make a theatrical entrance.

As we got closer to 10:30, Steve decided to lock the front door at showtime, to prevent disruption from latecomers. If it were me, I wouldn't have, as I know some people just tend to be late, but it's his show. When we peeked out of at the audience, we didn't have a full house, but there were a respectable number of people--according to the sound guy, the largest audience any of these events had had so far. And there were some familiar faces there, too, like Mr. Funky, but for the most part they were people who'd been invited by masterminds Steve and Frank Ferraro. Steve had hoped that perhaps we'd get some foot traffic from the national performing arts conference that was having its kick-off concert this evening, but I'm not sure to what extent that was the case. Anyway, we began.

The first part was a ritual Steve had written, a Pataphysical investigation of the culture of another planet/dimension related to and commenting on our own. Steve explained the ritual, and then drummer Mike Yaklich and I provided atmosphere (mine in the form of processed samples, one of radio interference from Frank, one of pulling drywall tape from Steve, and my own consisting of a processed match strike and some guitar drones) for the dropcloth-unfolding portion thereof. Afterwards, we sat quietly while Steve told a number of stories. These were quite interesting, but I could also see where the first night adrenaline was working against us--there were several points where it would have been ideal to let the audience absorb a given line or observation, but by the time they'd absorbed it, Steve was well into the next thing. Much of my time was spent sitting at the side of the stage, trying to be inconspicuous, although I got back up for the Ritual of Folding.

Next up was a long block of tunes Steve had been working on with Mike for two years, and they really had it down. The playing was at an extremely high level, a truly amazing accordion and drums duo. Toward the end of the set, I joined back in for "Equinox," for which...I blew the first cue. I'd muted all the channels in G, so as to avoid inadvertently tripping a long string of tones, and I forgot to unmute them. Damn. Still, the tune went reasonably well, though, and as ever it was great to play with such amazing musicians. People seemed to dig it, and afterwards I was able to snag a bottle of a Pennsylvania-produced white wine left over from an earlier opening. Steve dropped me off at home, and on the way we discussed some changes he was thinking of making to the show. I unwound a bit--the next day was going to be interesting, as we'd be getting up early, catching a ride downtown with our guest, and then volunteering all day at the arts conference. The wine turned out to be just fine, though not brilliant. Admittedly I'm not much of a white wine fan.

Overall, a promising start, with some pointers toward a better second show.