The House of Cracked

February 12, 2015 / jodycallahan / Leave a comment

Cracked Head

Well, I finally got that interview with Matt “Cracked” Frye that y’all didn’t know I was after. I’m sorry, it’s because I keep my fears and desires close to my chest. It’s under the site header called The “Cracked Mother Fucker” Chronicle. And, I’ll try to be more open with you guys in the future about my wants and needs. We’re gonna get through this, y’all. I know we’ll be ok. We’re gonna be ok as fuck.

Cracked Home

Matt let me into his home for this interview. His wife showed me pictures of a gawky young Mr. Frye from an actual photo album. After the interview, Matt confessed his love and adoration of Taylor Swift. He sang me some songs. I was fed chili. We went to a bar nearby. Matt and Rivka taught me about Unitarianism. A man O.D.ed on heroine in the bathroom. It was my favorite sort of day.

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So Long, Farewell, Goodbye Blue Monday

November 28, 2014 / jodycallahan / 1 Comment

GBM On November 30^th one of TRS’s favorite venues, Goodbye Blue Monday, will be shut down for good. This is sad news, friends. GBM was a truly eclectic bar/venue in a city overstuffed with faux eclectic. As I have written before, it was the first spot I became a regular at when I moved to Bushwick. Back then I was mostly showing up for comedy, even dreamed of doing my first stand-up set there (Due to laziness it would happen that my first stand-up was at an artsy joint in Park Slope called Two Moon Café—now gone.). I used to write there during the day. It was there I dreamed and worked toward becoming a real writer as I’d spend all my other free time looking for any kind of work. The beer and the food were cheap, and it always felt like some-damn-where worth being.

It was more than an old school Brooklyn joint. It was the kind of place where freaks from all over these United States could come and feel at home. But, alas, the rent is too damn high.

I did a lot of good editing and writing there. Laughed a lot there. Heard some shitty music there. Heard some great music there. Heard some of the greatest shitty music there! No one will see it, and only too few of us will know it, but the beacon light that is Brooklyn and NYC shines a little dimmer.

So it goes.

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A Young Lady Sings The Blues

November 10, 2014 / jodycallahan / 5 Comments

The first time I saw Mary-Elaine Jenkins walk on stage I almost balked. TRS was at Goodbye Blue Monday to see Matt Frye. His set had ended, and I was starving. I ordered a cheap beer and a cheap burger. Intrepid photog, Andreea, and I shot the shit with Mr. Frye and his wife Rivka. Andreea snapped my favorite pic of me. It is a testament to her ability that she makes me and a junk store/bar look like a couple of class acts. Believe me, GBM is no swanky joint, and I am not that well put together.

Andreea makes me look not dumb looking.

The intrepid photog leaves. Matt and Rivka depart. I am alone with the burger I neglected to eat while chatting. Just off stage I notice a young blonde woman and a guitar strapped to her back. Cute, attractive, young—have I said young, yet? A few of her girlfriends pony up to the bar. All young, all pretty. I’m getting a sorority-sister vibe. I try to finish my burger before her set begins. To brace myself before she goes on I Google her. Blues singer. And, yes, this inevitable thought runs through my mind, “So, this pretty little white girl is going to attempt the blues.” I decide to stay for the first song so that I might have a funny little anecdote to add to my dinner party repertoire.

The first note of the first song… There came from her a smoky voice, a depth that belied her winsome face. But for that youthful angelic visage I had to turn my gaze. I stared down at my shoes for the length of her set, and did what you’re supposed to do with music. I listened. Her original songs were good; studied, deeply felt, and honest. Mary-Elaine did not put on airs. She announced her next tune as a Tom Waits cover. I thought, “Ok, little girl, you’re good, but let’s not overstep.” She sang Chocolate Jesus, and she sang it true. She found the soulful rhythms, and she found the dry, yet tongue-in-cheek humor. She succeeded in the one aspect of Tom Waits covering that many other talented professional and wannabe musicians fail at. She made no more of the song than what it is.

After her set, I gave her my card. After I left, I felt like a fool.

Mary-Elaine did not overcome the obstacle of being young, or being pretty to prove to me or whoever that she is a legit musician. She is talented. She is soulful as any, because any can be. “Pretty little white girl.” That was not the platform from which she ascended. That was me being an ass, me being a pretentious fuck who, if I’m being honest, thinks, though “believing” otherwise, that gender, race, and age cannot be transcended through music, or art. I am an ass, a pretentious fuck, which is what I would call any who told me I’m just some little white trash boy from the trailer park, and that my ability to speak well, or write well is but a cute trick of luck.

In some email exchanges Ms. Jenkins let me know she comes by her music, which she called spooky-sultry (which I like), from living in Savannah, Ga and hanging around the local guitar shop. That’ll do it. She told me some of her influences are Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, and Cat Power. I believe it.

After the first set, I knew I wanted to write about her (However, I didn’t think it’d turn into an apology), but I wanted to see a second show. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t wrong in thinking all the “more than a pretty young face” is worth the time it takes to write these posts (They take me longer than you‘d think. Because, I’m dumb, but a hard worker.). We saw her at Strong Place in Cobble Hill. I was nervous, nervous that Andreea would give me a queer look when the young, pretty singer walked in. I was, despite all the above well intentioned admittance and righteous self-deprecation, worried that I might have been entranced by beauty, and merely wishful in her merits as a songstress. Learning doesn’t always mean growing, folks. She came in with her guitar strapped to her back. Kindly, she said, hi, to myself and Andreea, and thanked us for coming. Some boys bellied up to the bar nearer to her. Andreea took her camera and flitted about the performer as she’s wont to do. I’m looking at the pretty, young girl thinking all the dumb thoughts from the night at GBM, not seeing her. She sings her song. I avert my eyes, gaze at my shoes, and listen. That’s her. And I am right about how good she is, and I am right about how dumb and unfair I can be, and I am grateful for the music and the lesson by the young woman and her you-done-me-wrong songs.

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Cracked Out

September 29, 2014 / jodycallahan / 3 Comments

I have been hoping to see a Matt “Cracked” Frye show since I first saw his short set at Roots Family Reunion. TRS finally caught up to him at Goodbye Blue Monday. GBM is an old stomping ground of mine from my early, miserable days in Brooklyn. I lived a few stops down on the J train from the eclectic venue near the Halsey Station, the east side of Bushwick. Back then all of B-wick was hood. I laid in a tiny room I was renting terrified that I would never find a job. Sometimes I think I heard gun shots. If I left my building after midnight there’d be drug dealers posted on the street corners, and prostitutes displaying themselves along Broadway. One time a thick, busty lady of the night was trickin’ out in the rain in a next-to-nothing tube top and skirt. To would-be johns she called out, “I’m already wet, baby, let’s have a good time!” She politely refused my umbrella.

In winter, at our nation’s brokest time I was standing in job lines next to Harvard grads, and ex-Wall Street employees. We were all waiting in the freezing cold, the snow and slush for some janitorial type job. All of us turned down for some congenial 20-something. Disappointed and crestfallen, I’d return home to that little more than a closet of a bedroom and despair over the possibility of having to return to my home in Georgia and move back in with my mama. Survival in this economically bullying city seemed an impossibility. There were many nights of distress.

Five-six years later, I’m back in Bushwick enjoying the hell out of a Matt Frye show. A good quality beer in my hand, at the joint that used to be my haven for free entertainment and $3 PBR on tap. I arrived a little late because GBM is now out of the way of my new digs where I’ve yet to hear a gunshot in the night. Andreea, intrepid photographer, was already snapping away at Matt. Mr. Frye stuck out like a sore thumb at the Roots Family Reunion show, but there amid GBM’s antique junk, bad art, and random curios he looked more in his element.

I have described his music before, here. So, give that a look over and/or give a listen to the music posted here.

Matt is from North Carolina. Charlotte. I was surprised to learn he started out in electronic music down there, which knowing how the majority of southern folks are, I’m sure it was in some way a “fuck you” to his surroundings, to his culture. My culture. Our culture. Then he moved to NYC, and out came the Americana, the Appalachian folkie with the Woody Guthrie “trick” in his voice. Back home, my home, his home, shoddy lip-serviced tradition and commonality are shoveled upon one in heaps. It is no wonder we slide into our punk states of mind. A lot of who I am is because looking at my trailer park neighbors then, I only had one image of myself in mind for the future. Anyone but them.

That’s why books and Leonard Cohen instead of football and Garth Brooks. That’s why rap music and dressing gangsta—until that became socially acceptable to the rednecks who wanted nothing to do with black people as individuals, but would steal and appropriate, as ever, their culture. After that that’s why I wore chokers, and long hair. Because, wild aimless expression over agreement, over broken polite-society. I wonder what that proto-Jody would think of me now as I have succeeded in making it out of that town and into NYC only to seek out southern/country culture. I would tell him whether he realizes it or not, (he didn’t) he was seeded by those things he swore himself against. He could let those seeds germinate and take root in that place of lip-serviced tradition and broken polite-society, and become just another. He didn’t. Or, he could hold them close instead, buck the trends and traditions, give himself to the wind and see what new things can come of old seeds in other worlds. He can cull from the old a new purpose, new point of view, unhindered by tradition, un-buffered by commonality.

Of course, Matt “Cracked” Frye chose that old folkie sound. Maybe he heard it as a babe, or a young man, but knew that it was America’s original “fuck you” music. They were bucking against government, and social norms/injustice well before rap, rock and roll, and even country western music. Of course, he imbued it with a modern urban punk sensibility. Of course he stuck out like a sore thumb before that crowd that came to Roots Family Reunion to hear that traditional old-timey music with their friends from church. He’s an intelligent, kind and funny man, but he’s also one cracked motherfucker. What the hell else was he gonna do?

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The Road Southern

A Trek Into Brooklyn's Southern Culture

Goodbye Blue Monday

The House of Cracked

So Long, Farewell, Goodbye Blue Monday

A Young Lady Sings The Blues

Cracked Out