pt at large

Ride Shotgun With The Coachmen

The Coachmen
Rosebud Bar & Grill
Behind the Rosebud Diner Car
"Rare soul, 6Ts, Funk and Northern"
381 Summer St., Davis Square
Somerville, MA, 02144-3203
Sunday, December 27, 2009

Assuming you can admit your gut instinct was totally wrong, it can be disarmingly enlightening to see how reality gives you and your assumptions a wedgie. You’ve been told by a reliable source that this group is talented, fun to listen to, and dance-friendly. You listen to a couple of youtube clips and are not convinced they’re your cup of tea. You go to the venue anyway, girded with low expectations. A group with the name of The Coachmen? Not inspiring. Retro. Acoustic folk? Michael Rowed The Boat Ashore?

Two songs into the set, you feel your jaw drop in surprise. Good grief, these guys are setting this place on fire.

The above scenario would describe yours egg-on-face truly. I am talking about The Coachmen, a most unassuming name for three guys who can deliver 12-gauge honky-tonk, country swing, rockabilly, rock & roll, and a touch of bluegrass. The trio appeared at The Rosebud Bar and Grill, another unexpected surprise in the equation. The decision to leave my pad, pen, and camera at home, since I was likely to stay for one set then light out for home, deserved a whack on the knuckles from a wise Zen master.

These guys have talent as opposed to flash. They may have started as teenagers practicing in somebody’s basement but they’re studio quality players. Lead electric guitar Jerry Miller has a muscular Les Paul sound with impossibly nimble picking fingers. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Allen Sheinfeld has a gorgeous voice that can slide from a Johnny Cash baritone to a rich, deep bass that sounds like it’s coming from the back of a cave. ”John Sciascia’s one of the best upright bass players I’ve ever heard,” says one aficionado of Boston’s rich musical heritage.

Their arrangements are spare and crisp. They don’t need to showboat their talent with extended solos. They pack their musicality into each three or four minute number, pause, and go on to the next. Sheinfeld’s stage patter is unselfconsciously droll.

In between songs, I learned who these guys were from a group of enthusiasts who’ve  heard them before and were smart enough to show up with their dancing shoes. About forty other appreciative listeners filled the Rosebud’s well laid out interior. The Coachmen have a following.

Sciascia and Miller are mainstays in the Eilen Jewel band; all three of them play in a band called The Spurs. Sheinfeld is from West Roxbury, Miller from Somerville, and Sciascia from Waltham.
 
Google “the Coachmen” and you can find several youtube video clips of their songs, some of which The Coachmen played tonight (they have no website). Google ‘unprepared journalist’ and you might find pt at large, who resolves to eliminate acts of laxity in 2010. The Coachmen play again at the Rosebud Bar and Grill on January 10, 2010.

Dispatches from Key West 3: Christmas In The Tropics

Dispatches from Key West: Christmas In The Tropics

If you’ve lived your entire life in New England, chances are you haven’t been attired in a T-shirt and shorts as you’ve been admiring the houses in your town twinkling with Christmas lights. You haven’t passed porches festooned with Yuletide decorations and wondered whether you applied enough sunscreen to your limbs that morning.
 
Whenever in my lifetime I’ve heard Christmas time lyrics like “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” Jack Frost has truly been doing his job.
 
I'd be dressed like an L. L. Bean commercial, gloves, boots, a scarf, something on my head to prevent losing 30% or more of my core temperature. I could see my breath. Sunscreen? Does Nanook of the North worry about sunscreen?
 
 Cognitive dissonance the week before Christmas in Key West, Florida. Every time I hear a Christmas carol on the radio or in retail store I have the vague sense that the people down here in Key West had made a dreadful mistake in their civic planning. And the men and women wearing red Santa Claus hats with the white bunting are dressed for a costume party with a December theme.
 
A Yankee’s Christmas spirit is apparently linked genetically to arctic temperatures. Inflatable Frosty the Snowmen are usually plopped on ground that has the density of permafrost. They aren’t propped against palm trees.
 
Back up north, when the inky blackness of a near solstice night is illuminated with strings of colorful lights strung along porches I’m observing it from the comfort of my heated car, not coasting by on a bike with the warm breath of the tropics evaporating my perspiration.
 
People in this southern outpost are highly evolved. They get the metaphor that is Christmas. Santa doesn’t need to shed his puffy red coat and black boots for a tank top and sandals down here. He still soars stratospherically over the aurora borealis from the North Pole with those tiny reindeer.
 
After several days, I start to enjoy seeing Christmas decorations hanging from southern streetlights and storefronts and porches. Palm trees trimmed with Christmas lights are quite pretty. And you don’t have to haul them to the dump after the New Year.
 
Witnessing Christmas season in Key West transforms the geographic lens through which I've been filtering the experience. Jack Frost can nip at my nose. I can still smell chestnuts roasting on an open fire. All I ever needed for that was my imagination.
 
We all follow our personal North Stars to arrive at our own versions of Bethlehem at Christmas time. No matter where we are, Frosty doesn’t melt, Santa doesn’t sweat. All we need is the right frame of mind and it will be  “Merry Christmas to All and To All A Good Night.”
 
 

Dispatches From Key West 2: Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory, "Flowers of the Sky"

Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory
1316 Duval Street
Key West, FL 33040
305 296 2988 (800 839 4647)

December 18, 2009
 
I began to giggle. A spontaneous eruption not unlike one I would hear later from a five-year-old kid and a young Chinese couple. Rewind a day or so.
 
Nearly every fellow guest in The Grand Guesthouse included The Butterfly and Nature Conservatory on Duval Street in their you gotta see this list of attractions when you’re in Key West. The owners of the guesthouse and a waitress at The Bistro on Duval weighed in to the same effect.

For my money, observing the unending variations of the female form on the perfect white sand ribbon of Smathers Beach seemed a more rewarding mode of investigating nature’s bounty. A nature conservatory? My idea of being a naturalist is shedding my togs at a clothing optional beach.
 
Today, after spending several hours biking to the White Street Pier, Higgs Beach Park, and the aforementioned Smathers Beach, I was ready for an indoor venue by mid afternoon. Still in Key West attire, bathing suit and T-shirt, I thought the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory sounded perfect. Indoors and tropical. A half-hour glancing tour through Lepidoptera Land and I could add something cultural to my Jimmy Buffett itinerary of beaches, bars, and bistros.
 
Five seconds after pushing through the entryway doors, I stop dead in my tracks. Nothing in the murals, maps, and videos in the conservatory's "Learning Center" just outside the entrance to the habitat prepares me for this.

A petite squadron of tiny yellow butterflies has pirouetted around my head forming a halo shaped welcome. I am enthralled. And giggle. I look around sheepishly to see if anyone noticed I’d lost my cool. After a few more minutes, I don’t give a damn.
 
There isn’t that much bustle in Key West to begin with but this whole scene feels especially dreamlike. Mid afternoon sun filters through the vaulted glass canopy high overhead and spills onto the lush green foliage inside. Warm, moist air blankets me with soft womb-like immersity.

The whiff of growth and decay in the damp earth evokes a deeply buried evolutionary memory of the smell of the primordial ooze onto which our most ancient seed crawled from the sea.

New age music floats softly through the air on the wings of thousands of butterflies silently swooping, gliding, playing tag, and hanging by their feet on shrubs and leaves (show offs). Some lay shamelessly spread-winged on plates of ripe fruit placed by the attentive staff. The continual circular, spirally, fluttery motion is mesmerizing and calming, sort of Nature’s version of ambien. A half hour slips by. I am still here and not thinking of leaving anytime soon.

I’ve seen my share of monarch butterflies in New England. This is an order of magnitude beyond the pale. The sheer variety of butterflies - colors,  wing patterns, flutter rates, sizes - overwhelms the senses.
 
The conservatory is about the size of a miniature golf course. Groups of fat, red, gold and white koi glide idly through a narrow pool in the center of the floor plan. Ground cover, plants, and trees are unobtrusively labeled. Branches from small trees and cascading plants droop over the narrow pathway through the preserve.
 
I feel like I’ve wandered into an animated Disney movie set. Seven dwarfs trailing a bunch of monarch butterflies might appear in a conga line any minute. Doc will hand me a flute to hail the rest of the butterflies under the compact glass palace roof and Happy and I will orchestrate our own little second line parade to sashay through the conservatory’s narrow tree, bush, and groundcover lined paths.
 
These butterflies are apparently fearless, inured to human activity. Sit down and before long you have company on your bench.
 
The effect of wonder is apparently universal. “Wow,” is the only word I understand in the conversation between the Chinese couple who sit next to me in a tiny gazebo.
 
By this time, I’ve noticed that tiny birds share this peaceable kingdom with the butterflies and flora.

Everything inside this habitat can be found in the outside world but not condensed into such a thimble-sized space. Once you get past the New Age music, you’re immersed in a musky, earthy humidor with the soundtrack of gurgling water and twittering birds. I believe the word I’m searching for is serenity. A rare quantity these days, even in dear old Key West.

The butterflies and tiny Australian Diamond Doves and Chinese Button Quail and dense foliage thrive on the constant heat and humidity. We sweat. My face is gleaming like one of the broad leaf ferns on the trail.
 
 “We have 50-60 species of butterflies here,” says Margaret, a centered, silver-haired woman deftly pruning the shrubs. “Two hundred to 300 are imported here every week from Asia, Costa Rica and Ecuador. We raise about 10% here in the conservatory.”
 
“The conservatory is carefully climate controlled,” Margaret says. “The optimum temperature is 86 degrees with humidity of 80%. When the temperature exceeds 86 the conservatory is cooled with air conditioning ducts. In August and September, we use those light dispersing shades (neatly furled overhead at present) to reduce the temperature inside.”
 
“Butterflies are cold blooded. They won’t move much in the morning till the temperature is 79-80 degrees. Late in the day, they begin to settle, flying lower and lower. By 4:30 today, they’ll find leaves and roost upside down by their feet till morning.”
 

Sure enough, by the time I’m leaving, hosts of butterflies are buzzing along at eye level. I won’t be sleeping upside down tonight, but I can just see Key West winking at me as if to say, “And you thought Duval Street couldn’t balance its hurdy-gurdy party town reputation with a little demure aesthetic charm.”

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Key West: Part 1

Desultory. That's the surprising word I'd use to describe the general level of activity on Duval Street in Key West, Florida. There just wasn’t much juice in the wires here at 6:30 on Sunday night, December 13.

Of course, nothing compares to Fantasy Fest, Key West's annual mardi gras, that I witnessed the last time I visited the Conch Republic. Key West lived up to its reputation as a let the good times roll capital. Upwards of 60,000 people who flocked here from October 23 to Halloween October 31 could attest to that.

I returned to this carefree little island to see what Key West looked like when shiny glass beaded necklaces weren't being flung from every balcony in Old Town, and men and women were wearing clothes, not their birthday suits, as they paraded down Duval Street during Fantasy Fest.

The musicians in this town are seasoned pros. On a short stretch of lower Duval you can hear rock, blues, country, country swing, reggae, and the occasional folkie. They get the patrons rocking and the bartenders busy. Tonight, the musicians are working at it but the patrons lack their usual reciprocal energy.

A great band, The Mojitos, is belting out samba, salsa, blues, cha cha, meringue, and rumba at Sloppy Joes from 5:00 to 9:30 pm. These three guys, guitar, conga, trumpet, were alive, but all they could do was get some of the patrons to wiggle in their seats.

Fat Tuesday, not much going on inside. Fogarty’s and Flying Monkeys Saloon, calm.  Big Uns, “buy one get one free, no matter what you damn well want,” exhorts the shill to the passersby on the sidewalk just outside. The guitar hero on the little stage is cranking out some serious Led Zeppelin. The peanut sized gathering assembled at the bar is more interested in the pro football game on the plasmas. Matter of fact, the pro football games at just about every establishment have as attentive an audience as the live music in town.

Hog's Breath saloon, an acoustic guitar balladeer had the crowd in his hand. I expected rowdier music from the biker bar with a few bad-ass Harleys parked by the door. But looking at the bright side, the audience was into it. So much for assumptions.

Cheeseburgers 7:30 pm. I’m one of the only patrons. It’s a very long haul to Hawaii, but that’s where most of the other Cheeseburgers eateries on the planet are situated. That explains the grass skirts on the waitresses.

The guitar and bass player at The Lazy Gecko, An Island Bar, is doing justice to Jimmy Cliff’s “Stir It Up.”  Good energy from both sides of the bandstand. A pleasant surprise.

The guitar player at Irish Kevin’s has the crowd energized by covering each and every song the patrons want to hear. This is more like it. A small spark, a little heat from a tiny pile of kindling. The embers are doused when I tuck into Virgilio's and find I am an audience of one at 10:00 P.M.

Music is the mainstay attraction at most of these bars strung together elbow to elbow on this street. Oddly enough, there is way more listening than dancing. My speculation: most of the patrons are used to hearing live music at indoor sit down concert venues. They wiggle in their seats, they cheer, sometimes they talk to their friends over the music - but they don’t dance. More research is required. Stay tuned.

Maybe it’s too early. Time to pack it in for the day. Check things out tomorrow night.

No matter what is transpiring this sleepy night, Key West is still one of the best destinations to let it all hang out in the continental United States of America. Great eateries around every corner in Old Town. Tourist sites like the Hemingway (as in Ernest) House, the Shipwreck Museum, The Butterfly and Nature Conservatory, drop dead gorgeous white sand Smathers Beach, reliably spectacular sunsets at Mallory Square, people watching galore, fabulous music and balmy 80 degree tropical weather day after day after day. This is Jimmy Buffett country. 

Duval Street is sitting on its haunches this Sunday night. Except for nuclear war, Key West is generally immune to the outside world. Have the long fingers of the recession stifled the activity all the way down here in the southernmost tip of the United States? pt at large will dig for an answer.

Next dispatch: taxi drivers and innkeepers weigh in on the fortunes of Key West.

Toulouse-Lautrec at Boston MFA: Disappointing Dollop

CAFÉ AND CABARET: Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris
At: Museum of Fine Arts Boston,

Through Aug. 8, 2010

Look, the guy died from alcoholism and syphilis. It took him 36 short years to burn his candle down to the wick. But what a tall, brilliant flame was cast by such a diminutive, bedeviled artist.

Henri Raymond Marie de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa (1864-1901) was a misfit from birth, born with a congenital deformity that stunted his growth (to a height of about 4 1/2 feet), disfigured his legs, and gave him a world of pain. Absinthe took care of the pain. Hanging out with dance hall girls and prostitutes took care of more worldly needs. And gave him colorful subjects to fill his canvases and posters during Paris’s “belle epoch,” the giddy final decade of the 19th century.
 
 The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is currently hosting a canapé of an exhibit that barely does justice to Henri’s talent. France has produced a ton of world-class artists. Few of them had the bold signature style of Toulouse-Lautrec. His lithographs captured the racy seediness, the earthy debauchery, of one of Paris’s most bohemian districts, Monmartre.
 
In a subculture of eccentric artists, dancers, writers, poets, prostitutes, and showgirls, Henri’s dwarfish appearance and prodigious artistic output was a match. Talented and alienated, he would never fit into the aristocratic society into which he was born. Give him a brothel or a dance hall, voilà, he was in his element - and could document it with an unerring eye to skewer and romanticize at the same time.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s signature works were the commercial lithographs he created for the Moulin Rouge and other popular nightclubs and performers in Monmartre, Using flat colors similar to those on Japanese woodblock prints that were popular in salons at the time, his posters often featured one or two main figures, slightly caricatured with the subjects’ mannerisms or attire, and emblazoned with text he designed to add wallop to the piece.
 
There are only two of these in this petite exhibit in one of the museum’s hallway. “Aristide Bruant in his Cabaret,” (1893 lithograph printed before the lettering and background details were added) gives you a whiff of his genius. A solitary small 1891 oil and mixed media painting,"At the Cafe La Mie," gives one the idea of his style.

With a title of “Café and Cabaret: Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris,” you expect more than a scanty appetizer. ( A review in a Boston newspaper gave the impression of a much larger presence of the artist's work.) Half a dozen smaller examples of his work just don’t do justice to the artist. Toulouse-Lautrec created an estimated 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, and 5,084 drawings. Why, then, devote one measly hallway to his output?

Credit the museum’s curators for including several oils and lithographs done by his contemporaries in the exhibit that by comparison underscore the uniqueness of Toulouse-Lautrec’s art. It’s a shame the Museum of Fine Arts gives Henri such short shrift.

Photos by Paul Tamburello- handheld camera, no flash, available light, somewhat fuzzy, my apologies, Henri... I wish I could say it  was the absinthe.

Harry Callahan Exhibit at MFA Makes Your Day

 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue
617-267-9300
Boston
Herb Ritts Gallery
Harry Callahan: American Photographer
November 21, 2009-July 3, 2010

Harry Callahan (1912-1999) was a major figure in 20th century photography. The tidy little retrospective of his work at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts shows why.

Of all the “ists” you can apply to Harry Callahan’s photographic style, formalist floats to the top of the list. Whether his subject was his wife Eleanor, landscapes, architecture, nature, or inventive darkroom technique, the results are a combination of a dispassionate eye and an unerring sense of composition.

The exhibition of 43 photographs spanning Callahan’s long career does a great job of highlighting the breadth of his interests and the brilliance with which he pursued them. Pretty good for a guy who began taking pictures when he was a shipping clerk in the late 1930s.

The photos are grouped according to Callahan’s interests named above. Several architectural color photographs appear almost banal compared to Callahan’s work in black and white.

Callahan’s darkroom sensibilities are apparent. Glance around the gallery and you’ll see plenty of prints using high contrast paper. Others are deeply toned photos, grays and blacks, almost gothic with the paucity of light emitted from them. A series of close-ups or Eleanor is followed by a grouping of her as a speck of light in a nocturnal shot or a reclining figure in a sprawling field.

The nude studies of his wife Eleanor have an air of detachment about them, as if he were more interested in composition than flesh. Eleanor’s body was wonderfully mature and un-sylph like. The way he prints the nudes of her force you look at them as abstractions or designs. His overexposed 1953 composition of her on a rumpled sheet, if rendered in oil paint could easily be classic Goya. Her complete comfort in front of the lens hints at the trust built in a 60-year marriage.

His willingness to try new techniques (double exposures, sometimes printing a pinup from a girlie magazine over an austere landscape or building, and use of a flashlight to produce effects on his prints in the darkroom) endeared him to students of Rhode Island School of Design where he taught from 1961 to 1976.

 

We are awash in a world of color. Callahan's photographs show us how much can be achieved with just two: black, white, and the tones of gray in between.

Photos taken MFA
gallery by Paul Tamburello: hand held camera, no flash, shaky hands, lots of reflection from ambient light splashed all over the glass on the frame, give viewer an approximation of Callahan's work.