Musicians hold virtual benefit for Cafe Nine
One of the friendliest, goofiest annual gathering of musicians in Connecticut has not been cowed by COVID. Known for over a quarter century as “The Vomitorium” and usually held around Thanksgiving, this year the event has morphed into a Christmastime “Covidtorium” consisting of somewhere between 40 and 50 different performances.
Instead of a disparate group of rockers amiably jamming on unpredictable cover songs (often unified by themes such as “1979” or “Fictional Bands”), this year’s “-torium” asked its regulars, plus some special guests, to submit videos of themselves playing Christmas songs. The results have been edited into an evening of seasonal cheer, and will be screened alongside the documentary film “North Pole NY,” about the Santa’s Workshop theme park in Wilmington, New York. The film was selected by NH Docs: The New Haven Documentary Film Festival, which is co-sponsoring the event.
The mover and shaker behind the Covidtorium is Dean Falcone, who created the event casually in 1990 and has run it ever since. “I don’t like streaming shows, honestly,” he says. But when friends started pestering him about the Vomitorium in November, he dutifully figured out how he could make it fun online, keeping the sense of community the event had always thrived on.
Falcone also saw how it could be of benefit to the place where the concert is usually held. All ticket sales and donations will go directly to Cafe Nine, which has hosted the Vomitorium every year since 2006. “The
staff at Cafe Nine are really like family,” Falcone says.
The club, revered since its opening in 1991 as “The Musician’s Living Room,” garners such respect that Falcone was able to reach out to some national artists who’ve played at the club. Some of those non-Connecticut types who took part include
Juliana Hatfield, doing her new single “Christmas Cactus,” Wesley Stace (who’s better known under his old performing moniker John Wesley Harding) tackling Neil Young’s “Rebel Jesus”), singer/songwriter Sarah Borges, Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer (performing separately), Mike Gent of The Figgs, Adam Gardner of
Guster and Peter Holsapple of the dB’s.
As for the locals, the Covidtorium line-up includes some musicians who’ve been active for half a century or more. Christine Ohlman, the legendary “Beehive Queen,” leader of Rebel Montez and
longtime vocalist for the Saturday Night Live house band, croons Elvis’ “Blue Christmas.” The late George Baker, the great guitarist who toured with Marvin Gaye and many other Soul/R&B acts of the ‘70s and ‘80s and was a New Haven institution for 30 years until his death last year, is represented by a video that harmonica player Mark Zaretsky of Cobalt Rhythm Kings had of the two of them playing “Merry Christmas Baby” at a kitchen table.
The song choices are just as varied. The Shelton-based singer/songwriter Lys Guillorn covers Yoko Ono’s “Listen, the Snow is Falling.” Patrick Dalton does the Tom Waits opus “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.” Brendan Toller and Dan Soto revive the R&B obscurity “Fat Daddy is Santa Claus.”
One of Falcone’s favorites is a cover of “Little Drummer Boy” by Brian Samuel Robinson who, as Brian Embers, fronts the classical grunge ensemble Tet Offensive and whose day job is managing director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra. Robinson evokes one of the great pop culture-clash duets of all time, when Bing Crosby and David Bowie did a duet on that carol on a Crosby TV special in 1977.
There are even some Hanukkah songs, courtesy of Dave Schneider of the Zambonis and Adam Gardner of Guster, who have recorded Jewish holiday songs as The Maccabees and (for children) as The
Macaroons. The songs? “Goyim Friends” and “Gelt Melts.”
Falcone tried to make sure that no song would be performed by more than one artist, and almost succeeded until one of his co-organizers, filmmaker Gorman Bechard, invited a couple of bands with mentioning the caveat. Suddenly there were three versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” by Jed Parish, Aubrey DeLane and Matt Ryan. When it was suggested that Falcone space them out throughout the other 40+ songs, Falcone instead opted to run them back-toback-to-back because they were so “crazily different”
from each other.
The event that led to the Vomitorium tradition was happenstance. Falcone had a contract to play every weekend at the Black Seal Seafood Grille in Essex. In 1990, Christmas Eve fell on a Friday and Christmas Day on a Saturday, and since the bar was staying open Falcone was obligated to play. He mentioned his reluctance to his old friend Jon Brion, (now a noted film composer and record producer known for his work with Kanye West, Fiona Apple, Mac Miller and others), who happened to visiting New Haven for the holidays with his then-bandmate Aimee Mann of ‘Til Tuesday. “Jon
said, ‘We’ll come play,’ and we had the best time. Aimee sang ‘Voices Carry’ and this woman told her ‘You sound just like Aimee Mann.’ ”
That cameraderie fueled future gatherings of far-flung musician pals, especially when those who still had families in Connecticut that they visited during holidays. There were a few scattered shows during the early ‘90s. It became an annual tradition in1996, moving from Rudy’s to Cafe Nine in 2006.
The bedrock foundation of the nights became Falcone on guitar and two of his bandmates from the late lamented local band 100 Faces, bassist Ed Valauskas (who now manages a recording studio in Boston) and Jim Balga (who works for an architectural firm in New Jersey). But dozens, if not hundreds, of musicians have shared Vomitorium stages over the years. Falcone, Valauskas and Balga all contribute to this year’s video version, but nixed the idea of synchronized playing over Zoom, or other awkward fixes for not being able to play together live.
Falcone sees the homevideo concept as a great way to shift the Vomitorium online. “Usually, this is about friends getting together and playing songs they like, which are not really rehearsed. That’s fun in a club when you’re just hanging out and not caring about the mistakes. But online, to someone who’s watching from Colorado, it kind of sucks.” He and NH Docs’ Bechard were able to test the video concept earlier this year when the film festival ran a documentary about Johnny Cash and a bunch of covers of his songs were gathered from locals.
Falcone appreciates that the artists made special efforts to make their contributions special for this event. Juliana Hatfield, for instance, could have sent in the new professional video she’d just made for her song “Christmas Cactus,” but instead sent a unique new homespun version just for the Covidtorium. “She understood,” Falcone says.
The Covidtorium broadcast, including “North
Pole, NY,” is available on demand from Dec. 18-26. Tickets are $10 through eventive.org. Details at cafenine.com.