Music, arts venues closing throughout CT
As the state’s largest and best known music clubs struggle for survival during the coronavirus crisis, a whole stratum of smaller clubs have already called it quits.
For some club owners and hosts of “house shows,” closing up shop could be as casual as not renewing a lease, or cleaning out a basement. But these tiny venues are an essential part of the local music ecosystem. Losing them is a blow to the culture scenes they have helped foster as well as the musicians and young people who inhabit them.
Among the departed gathering spaces: the New Haven rehearsal room-turned-performance space Never Get to Be Cool (aka NG2BC, headquarters of the bands Spit-Take and Jenny Genius); the gallery/performance space Mac 650 in Middletown; the covert punk domain The Church in Hamden (which you basically needed an invitation or a password to visit); The Wherehouse in Hartford (which had branched out into local comedy); the venue/home studio/media collective One56 in West Haven; and Bebbs in Ashford, described on its Facebook page as “a house venue in a basement in the middle of the woods near UConn.”
One56 in West Haven was started by four seniors in the Music and Sound Recording program at the University of New Haven. Live shows were held at the space, but the students also brought in recording equipment. “It turned into a space where bands could come and make demos — not the most professional recordings, but enough to play for clubs and get shows,” says
One56 co-founder Ryan Lindskog, who booked the shows there.
“This was not just about having a party,” Lindskog says. “Everyone understood what it meant.”
The space’s founders all graduated in the spring, and Lindskog lives in Texas now, which makes One56 seem like a fleeting fancy, but in fact there was a plan in place to pass on the venue to other students. “This was a temporary thing that hopefully was going to carry on,” Lindskog says.
One56 hosted multi-band shows every three weeks or so, trying not to repeat bands and “give as many people a platform
as possible.” Lindskog would go see other shows in the area on a regular basis. “There were three places in New Haven, and two in West Haven that I went to most often. It was almost always college students, or college-age kids from the music scene.” Those spaces are gone now.
The diverse Wherehouse in Hartford left a farewell Instagram message that captured what is being lost by all the small venue closures: “The amount of music and art that was created, experienced and
almost meditative instrumental music that also makes you want to move and smile. A real stress-reliever. Even the tune titled “Insomnia” feels restful.
“Niamh” (nine songs, funnybonerecords. com/niamh/) Cool, calming, flowing yet beat-heavy music from an artist who announces at the outset that “I was raised next to the water.” “1812” is a brilliant encapsulation of a fraught relationship, with Tchaikovsky’s cannon-fire “1812 Overture” as a metaphor, but delivered as a meditative ballad. Intriguingly, this self-titled album ends in a self-titled song, which begins “I want to sing the heart of everyone, but I’ll keep this one for me.”
“Black Diamond” (five songs, stefanieclarkharrisandthefeverfew.bandcamp. com). Both in style and cover art, a sweet throwback to ’70s-era country pop, but with an empowered feminist edge and righteous vocals. Harris has a remarkable knack for playing out key words with a winsome drawl that adds whole new meaning to her songs of disillusionment, despair and rebirth.
The Right Offs, “Bardo” (10 songs, therightoffsband.com). As direct and propulsive as ever, this industrious band (who’ve released two albums and two EPs since 2016) sounds like many great acts mashed together (from Cheap Trick to Johnny Cash), yet utterly original at the same time. A lot of that singular urgency and emotional force comes from the expressive vocals of Maxwell Omer, who can make a broken relationship sound like a political upheaval.
“Greed,” “Fire Stories” and “Long Way Home” (singles, shadystreetallstars.bandcamp.com). Only formed this year, Shady Street Allstars released three singles in short order this past fall. The “Allstar” tag is deserved, since the members hail from The Screw-Ups, The Redactions, The Hempsteadys, iViva Mayhem! and other vital bands. They’re a New Have ska-punk band in a grand tradition of such acts that dates back to the 1990s. This is ska as the British punk bands of the ’70s and ’80s practiced it, with shouted political rants accented by horns, heavy bass and a lot of jumping up and down. Authoritative, outspoken (“There’s so much greed in the world!”) and hugely entertaining.
(30 songs total, freeasbirdsrecords.bandcamp.com) A massive dose of local music wonderment. Each 10-song volume is a benefit for a different organization, including the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the Connecticut Bail Fund and the Martha P. Johnson Institute. Styles, voices and sentiments vary wildly, but there are common bonds — the taste of Alex Burnet, who curated the project, and the production values of S.G. Carlson. Both Burnet and Carlson have solo tracks on volume 3. There are numerous standouts among these 30 tracks, including the alwaysgreat pop/folk fusion of
Lys Guillorn (“Dolores & I”), the fun-in-isolation dance track “Lockdown” by Mooncha, the concise cream-of-Velvet-Underground breakdown of Dan Greene’s “Is It Just in My Head?” and Steve Hartlett’s scruffy “Loneyphonyface,” which segues neatly into Scincera’s smoother yet equally inventive “Circus.” This is how one passes a quarantine.
Youth XL, “Text Your Friends” (four songs). A delightful debut disk of beautifully produced upbeat old-school pop.
The bouncy yet surefooted title song evokes Sam Cooke’s “Cupid,” but with a teenybopper bubblegum cuteness. “At Some Restaurant” is about the joy of “swiping right again” on a dating app. Ah, the soaring harmonies! Youth XL is the after dinner mint that clears your palate after some of the more pretentious and messy bands out there.