bands seek places to play—audience optional

When the band Mating Dance started playing at last week’s open-air Tong, many in the crowd lining Pleasant Street were confused. The band’s faces were obscured by paint and masks. The drum set was cobbled together with a bucket and silver buffet pan and the saxophone seemed strangely out of tune. Their set started abruptly, with a metal pail being dragged across the ground. They looked and sounded like a hastily assembled garage band in a Bill Burroughs novel. Between songs, there was some hesitant clapping. Was the song over? When did it even start?

The singular experience of seeing bands like Mating Dance used to be commonplace in Portsmouth. The Tong, the experimental music series that called the Newberry Room at the Muddy River home for a little more than a year, was a breeding ground for such acts. The original Tong is gone gone now, though from the its ashes has risen a collective of Portsmouth artists eager to promote the city’s underground scene and find a new place to play.

The group, led in part by Sean Reardon, Owen Thompson and Steve Calebro, is currently known as the Portsmouth Arts Collective, although that name seems to be mutable. During an interview, Thompson mentions how it’d be nice if the group’s name were a word that could exist “outside the context of art.”

“Like ‘daffodils,’” Calebro suggests.

It’s Friday afternoon, Calebro, Thompson and Reardon are in front of their Brewster Street apartment, known among the group as Chutney Flatts. Reardon, in a pair of oversize dark sunglasses and a pink T-shirt that says “Everybody needs a little tender loving bear” (complete with a smiling cartoon bear), is helping Calebro tape together a banner for use in the parade that will kick off the evening’s open-air Tong show in Market Square.

The Tong began in February 2004 and transformed Sunday nights into a much-anticipated musical adventure until football season began that year, unleashing acts like Giant Bat on unsuspecting crowds. Each installment was an event unto itself, whether it was a live soundtrack performed to a screening of “Predator” or the science-fair atmosphere of the invitational “Musical Machines” night. The series lay dormant until this spring, when shows resurfaced semi-weekly until the series ended in May. When discussing the reasons behind the demise of the Tong, Reardon and Calebro cite “noise issues” as the primary cause, but obliquely reference other problems.

Calebro says they were “prepared for a full summer of stuff,” with bands booked and a slate of original musical experiments ready to go. The Portsmouth Arts Collective grew out of “the death of the Tong and us not wanting to stop all that momentum,” Reardon says.

Part of that momentum is being channeled to find a place for Portsmouth’s experimental artists to play. The Collective started holding shows in backyards and basements. They teamed up with Béa Weathersbee, now also part of the collective, who had staged an indie-pop/experimental show on the small stage in Rock Street Park. Their events attract both local and out of town bands and a following of 40 or 50 people. The show in Market Square came about as an invitation from Pro Portsmouth, as part of their Summer in the Street music series. But the musicians and artists wanted more than just whatever venue space happened to be available that week.

“We decided we should get together and talk more about the state of arts in general in town,” Reardon says.

And so began the weekly meetings at Chutney Flatts. Like-minded artists live in two other buildings on the street.

“Most people just have an apartment,” Thompson says. “(This is) kind of a little compound, which is pretty rare.”

The meetings usually begin at 6:30 on Sunday evenings, starting with some time for socializing and a vegan potluck supper. And then it’s down to business, with discussions about artistic intentions, venue space and miscellaneous projects. The first meeting in June attracted about 28 people, says Reardon, who stayed for about two hours.

“We took audio minutes and let people speak individually” about what they want to do as artists, he says.

The primary issue of concern is, of course, venue space. Though the Seacoast’s music scene is rich and varied, bands like Mating Dance don’t exactly draw big crowds.

“Bars aren’t anxious to pay entertainers ... bars are out to sell beer,” Calebro says. “An experimental show … is only gonna bring in a certain amount of people” because, well, only a certain amount of people want to hear experimental jazz and noise bands.

“We want to find a space that can let musicians play and artists do their thing, similar to the Button Factory,” says Thompson.

Reardon compiled a list of contact information for each artist who came to the meeting, along with a brief artistic statement and a list of skills and equipment. There are 58 names on the list now. It’s a big help when organizing shows like the open-air Tong, Reardon says.

The group also developed a mission statement. At the moment, their three goals are “to localize and consolidate local artists, to attract outside artists to display, perform and promote in the Seacoast area and to form a management group/label for (the) collective with the goal to display, perform and promote outside the Seacoast area.”

This is a real, official statement, typed up with some interesting asides about the group. There’s some tension between artists who want to promote the business aspects of having an artists’ collective and those who simply want to create art for its own sake.

There’s no other grassroots effort quite like this among Portsmouth’s artists, at least not that the PAC knows about. Last year, the Portsmouth Emerging Artists Coalition never quite got off the ground, though they began an artist census that was followed by a more comprehensive survey on live/work space by Art-Speak, the city’s cultural commission. Art-Speak works to promote and lobby for the arts and artists in the city. Neither group has approached the other just yet.

“I don’t believe they really know what’s going on,” Reardon says. “We haven’t been to them, and they haven’t been to us.”

Art-Speak coordinator Elizabeth Shepard-Rabadam says that increasing the amount of performance space for artists is one of Art-Speak’s priorities, though the issue of space for experimental-type shows has only recently come to the forefront.

“I didn’t really understand that it was difficult, so I think there have to be conversations about the challenges people are facing as they are looking for venues for alternative music,” she says.

Shepard-Rabadam cites the recent Rock Street Park show as an example of potential venue space. As the collective continues to grow, she says Art-Speak would “love to help them advance their issues.”
“I think that’s evidence there are more upsides and opportunities than there are downsides. We need to sit down and figure out what the challenges have been so we can address them and eliminate them, if possible,” Shepard-Rabadam says.

And though Reardon says some in the PAC have “put out reservations” about working with Art-Speak, some links exist. Chris Greiner, a board member of Art-Speak and a local musician, attended a recent PAC meeting.

The Tong is now “like a satellite” of the group’s efforts, a side project in the continuing quest to get more space and more opportunities for the city’s artists. And there are other plans. Thompson says members of the collective have their eye on creating a distribution system for local music, as well as a zine or some kind of online magazine. Calebro says they also want to “put Portsmouth on the map” as a destination for touring bands.

“What we’re all really looking (to do) is sustain our lives by doing art,” Reardon says. “We want to be adventurous and continue to be adventurous, and that notion gets seen easier when you work together with people.”