Mourning punk scene ‘den mother’
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a small, tight, scrappy punk scene took hold on Albany’s Lark Street. At the center of it — offering warmth and food, applause and advice — was Dana Rudolph, a fashion-and-jewelry shop owner just a few years older than most of them.
She counseled people. She supported their bands, even if they weren’t very good. For a few years she even cooked Thanksgiving meals for them, a tradition recollected by many reflecting on their departed materfamilias, who died on Nov. 13 at age 67 in Port Charlotte, Fla., after a year’s battle with pancreatic cancer.
Rudolph never married or had kids, but she left a crowd of people behind her — in the punk scene, in the Center Square neighborhood, in her efforts launching Larkfest and Troy River Fest, in her years running shops in Albany and Troy, in the beading community, in the arts community, in the community at large.
She was a creative soul, they said. She was welcoming. She took people under her wing, guiding them, even hiring them.
“Dana — she was like the welcome wagon,” said Michael Corcoran, an author and longtime music writer for various
Texas publications. In those days he ran the Albany Lark — one of the small alternative ’zines that once papered the scene, among them the nascent Metroland.
Back then, he said, hipsters had started invading the neighborhood and “discombobulating it. And it was kind of Albany’s version of Greenwich Village.” But Rudolph was a centering influence. “She was very supportive. Every scene needs a person like that — you can’t just have a bunch of people in leather jackets . ... She brought people together and made it more safe and wholesome.”
“She was just a huge force. And she was going 18 out of 24 hours a day,” said Rudolph’s sister, Beth Rudolph Keller, of Annville, Pa. On Nov. 14, Keller memorialized her sister in a Facebook post that now boasts 276 comments — from people recalling a “mentor,” a “spiritual leader,” a “bright, articulate and passionate artist,” an “example of strength and courage” and “the coolest lady on Lark Street.”
Take those Thanksgiving meals. “All the punk rockers were there, and they ate their best meal of the year,” Corcoran said. Paul Rapp — now an entertainment attorney, then the drummer for Blotto — described the “rock and roll orphans” who congregated for turkey and fixings, wine and cigarettes at Rudolph’s apartment upstairs from Waldorf Tuxedo. Rapp’s bandmate Greg Haymes — now editor of Nippertown, formerly a Times Union music writer — said that one year, “We all heard something that sounded like a gunshot. One of the potatoes had exploded in the oven.” After that, “It was a running joke among those of us who were there. We were going to form a band called the Giant Potato Explosion.”
That never came to be, but there were plenty of other groups. The Morons. The Young Reptiles. The Crude. The Dialtones — with Haymes’ future wife, Sara Ayers. Bands played at 288 Lark, Justin’s, Lark Tavern. Rudolph was often there, cheering them on.
“Dana was just — she was always smiling, always supportive,” said musician Jack Fris, then a vocalist for the Crude, who called her “the den mother of the Albany punk rock scene” in a comment on Keller’s Facebook post.
“I didn’t have very much talent,” he said on the phone from Los Angeles. “And that was another wonderful thing — she just didn’t let you I’m certain that mine was not her favorite band, but it didn’t matter . ... You could be a toddler with her. You could toddle away and have your little rock-and-roll band, and she’d clap and say, ‘Yay!’”
He remembered her 50sstyle cat-eye glasses, which “made her more approachable to me, because she looked like a younger version of my aunt or my mother.” Many noted her monkey-fur coat.
Rudolph’s first store, After the Gold Rush, at 247 Lark, sold clothes and jewelry in a space shared with Mary Miller’s Lark Beat Records. Her second store, Rocket Rocket, was just up the street. “They were places where you could just walk in anytime during the day, and there’s usually people hanging out, you know. They just became gathering spots,” Rapp said.
Years later, running the Dana Rudolph & Co. bead shop in Troy, Rudolph had the same centering inf luence on the beading community. “A lot of beaders and craft people are competitive, and they really don’t want to share their tricks,” said Cole Godfrey, who helped out on Sundays at Rudolph’s business. “But Dana always wanted to show people how to do things so you could do something yourself. It wasn’t all about her — and that was a big deal. She would sit with you for hours.”
“She touched a lot of people,” said artist Colleen Skiff, who met her at a 1994 meeting of the Lark Street Business Improvement District and started collaborating almost immediately. Rudolph was “honest, direct,” she said, and “definitely warm, but she’d tell it how it was — which was nice. I liked that.” Agreed Dennis Herbert, a good friend from the early days: “She was strong, and she would correct you in a second . ... But she was very sweet.”
“She was tough,” said Keller. “Yes, she was personable, but she knew her business.”
Survived by Keller, two other sisters and a 99-year-old mother, Rudolph graduated from Albany High School and ultimately turned toward art, studying at Sage Junior College of Albany, Bard College and the State University of New York at Purchase, where she earned her master’s. She taught at Sage before opening her bead shop in the early 2000s — until 2008, when she sold her store, picked up and moved to Florida “lock stock and barrel ... her dog, her beads, her household,” Keller said.
It was hardly prime time to start a business — “because the economy just sucked. But she persevered.” Her art evolved into a type of fine beading called bead-weaving.
About a year ago, Rudolph was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and eventually developed neuropathy caused by chemo. “Her beading, her craft, was everything to her — and towards the end, when she didn’t have any feelings in her fingers, that was devastating to her. Very devastating.” About two months ago, she picked up her beadwork once more. “She had to get her fingers in it . ... She had to do it.”
A memorial service will likely be held mid-january in Florida.
When Rudolph moved down to Port Charlotte and opened a shop in nearby Englewood, she asked Skiff to store some of her recycled-fashion outfits — including “a Wonder Bread dress, which was very iconic, and one with Styrofoam balls.”
Skiff still has them. Many still have Rudolph’s beadwork, her artworks, her jewelry. “She made our wedding rings,” said Haymes of the double-wide, wave-patterned bands crafted for him and Ayers. Herbert, looking out the window at his yard in Hudson, sees the abstract metal sculptures she made for a class and left there. He recalls her vividly.
So do the artists, beaders and former punk rockers she left behind. “There’s just certain people that you really miss,” said Skiff. “I really miss her.”
“I miss her life. Her joy,” Keller said. Her sister greeted life as an adventure, taking her family on trips to Europe. “And she made us more adventurous in ourselves . ... She was a great woman,” she said, “and we’ll miss her.”