Pepper Place Showrooms was alive on Saturday with the strange viscera of music happening in the Lite Box Gallery. An aural triptych made from the sounds of Nancy Richmond, Karst, and Them Natives filled the gallery space, much in the spirit of chance.
First, Nancy Richmond graced a widely varied audience with her folksy outsider pop songs. Richmond, who has written some 75+ songs in her lifetime, rarely performs her music in public. Thanks to the urging of Them Native’s Jasper Justice, who coordinated the performer’s for Saturday night’s show, Richmond gave the some-thirty listeners a candid glimpse into her very personal songwriting. In character of that intimacy and in true folk tradition, Richmond introduced each song with a brief anecdote as to whom the song was written for and what it was about. Though many were about close friends and, most especially, her husband, a song titled “Buttermilk Dreams” was a definite crowd favorite. The song arose from a long-ago crush Richmond had on another musician, who, when she confessed she’d been having strange dreams about him replied, “I have strange dreams when I drink buttermilk before bed…” Richmond’s voice is lilting and lovely and her guitar playing is clear-toned and traditional, harkening to one of her influences, Joan Baez.
Second, with music that could be considered more of an acquired taste in outsider composition, was Karst. Spare and poetic, Kathleen – or Karst – performed on violin and water glasses sent through effects loops. Over these loops, Karst sang in a seemingly improvisational manner in loose verse, her voice pleading and frail, with a flutter akin to Björk. Though Karst’s arrangements were intuitive and savvy, her comfort level with her technology was clearly that of a novice. She’s an artist to watch, as surely as her comfort with the technology develops, she’ll be free to shine compositionally.
Finally, Them Natives took the room. As happens with many improvisational/found-object sorts of music projects, many in the room had not registered the show had in fact begun until several minutes into the first piece. Them Natives experiments with sound and viscera, using a combination of traditional instruments – banjo, acoustic guitar, autoharp, bass drum, crash cymbal, finger cymbals, shakers, violin bow, mouth harp – as well as found objects – an improvised kazoo, dry leaves, two brass chalices, saw, and tin cans. The three musicians began quietly, almost in consultation with one another, as a symphony tuning their instruments, getting a sense of the collective conscious, the overall mood of the room. Ceremoniously, the sound began to build until everyone’s awareness in the audience was fixed on the musicians before them. For several minutes, the build continued and sustained. Each of the musicians gravitated toward whatever instrument compelled them at the moment, singing syllables and half-words, or words and short phrases that were manipulated into harmonies.
As with any experiment, the improvisational music of Them Natives had successful moments and not-so-successful moments, but the arc of their half hour performance was effective and well received. After the performance had officially ended, the spirit of the night had seeped into the audience members, who were spontaneously picking up everything around them — from plastic cups to ice — some were even beating the sides of the nearly-empty keg of beer. This eruption of sound can only be attributed to the contagious, playful nature of the night’s performances and the energy thereby created at the Lite Box Gallery. Though we eventually had to shut things down, it was clear nobody wanted the night to end. The result? Another Them Natives performance for a closing reception, date TBA, for “Terra, Aqua, Flora, Fauna.”
