The Living Rockumentary

It felt like camp (in the best possible way) and all the songs are running endlessly though my head: My week at Mass MoCA

Upon Returning From My Artist in Residency at Mass MoCA

A small team of people accomplished an enormous amount in the past two weeks in North Adams. The seeds of cartoonist (and MacArthur Grant "Genius" Award recipient) Ben Katchor's "The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island" were planted in various comic strips over the past few years. But the idea of blending various aspects into an opera is only about a year old. Mark Mulcahy knew it would be a huge challenge putting music to the text (which wasn't divided into any sections--it was just many pages of text), and in fact almost quit part way through.
It was about two months ago that I first heard about the opera, and that Ken Maiuri would be involved, in effect as musical director. Mark was still selecting musicians, but was not in charge of the actors. Ken suggested me as a drummer, since I'd worked with both Ken and Mark. Mark assumed I'd be too busy, but showed up at a Figments show to ask if I'd be interested. I was. In the end, he told me, I was the perfect choice.

Two weeks ago, on January 5, Mark and Ken departed for North Adams, to begin their residency. Mark had just finished making demo versions of the opera's songs (skeletal). I picked them up at his house the day after he left.
I listened to the tapes several times, absorbing the story, but not trying to think of drum or percussion parts. I thought I'd wait for instruction once I got up to the MoCA. I heard from Ken via telephone the third day they were there: Ken and Mark were working with the actors. One guy (hired for a major part) had to be fired, and his replacement, a Mass MoCA ticket office employee/actor, turned out to be absolutely perfect. North Adams was freezing and it was still snowing. There was a lot of work to be done, but evenings were quiet and he was getting a lot of reading done (he was reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, which I was just about to begin). I said I'd be up there Sunday night, Jan 12.

January 12 I spent all day in Greenfield, MA, at Frank Padellaro's recording drums for Drunk Stuntmen's Scott Hall's solo project. I got out of there at 8:30 pm and just kept going on Rt 2, along the crazy ups and downs, twists and hairpin turns that led Columbus to New York. I mean, that led me to North Adams.
I followed the directions and found the house on River St, which is artist housing. I called Mark to say, I'm here, what next? Mark came out of the house, helped me unload, showed me where to park and gave me the key to my apartment. The house had 4 apartments in it, and each one had 2 or 3 members of cast or crew in it. Really nice old house, the apartments were warm, had lots of shelf space, they were furnished and towels and bedding were provided.
Mark invited me down to his apartment once I settled in and we chatted about the progress. The other two musicians, Dave Dreiwitz on bass (Ween's bass player) and Chris Harford on guitar (former Elektra recording artist, longtime friend of Mark's) had arrived from New Jersey the day before and music rehearsals had begun. But Monday would be the first full band rehearsal.
Shortly thereafter, I met Dave and Chris, as well as Kristy, who everybody loved, and who did all sorts of behind the scenes work, working side by side with Ben Katchor on the computer animated slides that would be shown on two screens behind the actors.
I liked these people immediately. Ken returned and we all hung out for a while. The music team was complete and ready for a lot of hard work. And Ken's evenings would no longer be quiet and peaceful.

Monday through Thursday consisted of the following: Rehearsals from roughly 10am until 9pm. The piece was being presented as a work in progress, so the thing was, how rough or how finished a product did we want to present? In the end what was sacrificed was stage blocking. There was not enough time to do blocking, or for all the actors to remember all their lines. So ultimately the play was presented with the actors using props and costume changes, but standing mostly in front of music stands with the script.
Each day we all made marked progress. Everyone in the band multitasked. I did drums, percussion, saxophone and glockenspiel and sang back up vocals. Ken did keyboard, guitar, mandolin, accordion and vocals. Dave did bass, recorder, trumpet and slide whistle and vocals. Chris did guitar, bass, and played the part of a dry cleaner.
The music proved a natural fit for all of us. The chemistry in the band was amazing, and Dave and Chris were constantly registering amazement at Ken and me, saying we'd be the busiest session guys in New York if we moved there. Kind words from seasoned pros. And they were a lot of fun to hang with.
The sound of the music did at times have a bit of a show tune-y vibe, but over all was very hip. On several of my script notes I had written "VU", meaning, play a Velvet Underground type beat. Or "Ringo" or "Belle and Sebastian" or "Floyd". Just reminders and associations for me. I even had "Figments" written on a couple parts, since there was a familiar groove going on.
During the rehearsals, during downtime, Ken and I became a jukebox, playing medleys of Steely Dan, Beatles and Elton John songs, with Chris and Dave and sometimes the actors joining in.
The actors were amazing.
Mark was one of the main actors and his soulful, earthy voice was an interesting ingredient to the other 3 main players, who all had theater-trained deliveries. But it worked.

All through the performance, there were 2 screens showing Ben Katchor's animation, which aide in the telling of the story. Unfortunately, for the most part I couldn't see the screens, so I was promised a video of it from Ben's wife Susan, who documented much of the rehearsing and performances. Susan also provided dinner and lunch most days for the actors and musicians. Very, very sweet. But the bits of the artwork I did see looked fantastic.

So, the typical day: wake up, shower, eat breakfast at home. Usually all the musicans walked the short but painfully freezing walk to the theater. Rehearse, lunch, rehearse, dinner, rehearse, go home. Once home, usually the band would either hit a bar, or stay in and watch a movie at Mark's and make some drinks. Some would stay up 'till 3 or 4, despite the 10am start the next day. I usually whimped-out and was in bed by 2. But you'd need serious unwinding time after rehearsal, since they can get especially repetitive and draining. Hanging with Mark, Dave and Chris, rock and roll road veterans, made things constantly fun and entertaining. Lots of stories were told. And things felt more familiar than probably a typical theater deal would feel.
The theater staff kept the green room always stocked with foods (veggies and humus, M+Ms, coffee, bottled water, pita bread, crackers and cheese, soda, granola bars) which you could grab when you had 5 minutes. During rehearsals, Mark and Ben would occasionally have to give interviews to radio or newspapers.

After the last dress rehearsal, Ben came up to me and said (in his often imitated, very endearing NY/Jewish delivery), "so in the fall, more rehearsals, then onto the Brooklyn Academy, maybe a tour of Europe...". I said "is that really the plan?". He said, "well, that's hopefully how these things go. Does Mark have a way of keeping in touch with you?" I felt very proud to be a part of all of it and that the band really gave life to and enriched Mark's music.

The first show went as good as could be. There were familiar faces in the crowd like Henning and Lesa, Frank and Lauri, Debbie, Zeke, Joel, Mary.... Afterwards, there was the cast/crew party and we were all given special "SLUG" stickers which entitled us to drink for free until midnight at the Mohawk bar down the street. We cocky musicans felt we didn't another rehearsal, but the management did, so Saturday we had another full run-through.
Saturday night was an almost packed house, and familiar faces included the Drakes, Michael and Ruthie from The Mammals, my old bandmate and housemate CJ (who I hadn't seen in years and years). Apparently, several prominent wealthy Berkshire folks were in attendance too.
The entire artist house was the scene for the after party, people floating from apartment to apartment. It was great to see Andrea after a week of being away. It was all great fun, and at the very least, the band has vowed to do something in the future. Who knows when or where? But many new friends were made. New contacts. New talents were discovered. New nerves were shot.
It ain't no playing in a bar, that's for sure. But I'm glad that Mark was our boss. He's a great, great guy. And I've been working with Ken so long, I'm used to his odd genius. But it's great to see the looks of amazement on folks who are working with him for the first time. Chris was asking him questions as if Ken was a form of extra terrestrial life. "Do you realize that your gift is not common? People can't just hear something once and know it as if they've been playing it 20 years. Do you realize that? You've absorbed the ins and outs of this opera in a matter of days". Mark said he wouldn't have been able to do it w/out Ken--he would have been at a total loss . Mark plays on instinct, and it took Ken to be able to translate what Mark wanted into musical terms and expand on it. Ken was under pressure, but he thrived. We all did.
So, that's that.
The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island. An opera which gets funnier and sadder with each reading. Quite a thing to have gotten involved in.