Jersey City musician Tris McCall posts his writings at www.trismccall.net. What follows is his entry from March 28, the day after he saw the band American Watercolor Movement at L.I.T.M.
I’ve been going to Maxwell’s in Hoboken since ’88. Back then, Hoboken still had Blackwater Books and Pier Platters Records, and a hand-painted sign that said “You’re in Hoboken/No jokin’ ” to welcome you to Washington Street. It felt like an arts town, and it was.
Hoboken, while pricier now than then, is still artsy. The Symposia Bookstore has moved its project into the space that used to belong to Blackwater Books, and the Guitar Bar and Tunes cater explicitly to rockers and those who love them. The demise of “Cool Hoboken” has been exaggerated.
In a good month, I’m at Maxwell’s three or four times. That’s 30 visits a year for 15 years, several bands per bill. You know I’m up front for all of them; I don’t hang around at the bar. So when I say that last month’s American Watercolor Movement show was one of the handful of best performances I’ve ever seen at Maxwell’s, that’s saying something. I don’t like to make recourse to transcendental categories of value, and I don’t go to shows to be “blown away,” but by the time they’d finished their set, I was speechless.
So when they decided to play even closer to my Jersey City home on March 28, I had to go. What follows is a rundown of that night.
Exceeding expectations
ATM appeared at L.I.T.M. (140 Newark Ave.), the bar that’s upending conventional nightlife expectations for downtown Jersey City. This would be the first real rock performance in this space – in March, Suzanne Vega, of all people, did a surprise acoustic concert there on an improvised stage. (Vega’s brother, the local artist Michael Vega, was showing work at L.I.T.M.) I missed that show. My girlfriend, Hilary, was mad at me. “What’s the use of being Tris McCall,” she asked, “if you don’t know when Suzanne Vega is playing down the street?”
I had no answer to that one.
The spot was already crowded when we walked in. William Main, a poet who read gory excerpts from Christopher Marlowe at the Keyhole, was seated by the door, and other spoken-word night regulars (Tracy Luscz, Ernie de Zavala) were chatting it up by the bar. This was another Waterbug Hotel evening, and as I’ve come to expect from Lex Leonard and his collective, it was well-promoted. L.I.T.M. is generally the busiest spot in a three-block radius from the Grove Street PATH Train Station anyway (except, tellingly, for the Thursday night poetry session, when the crowd is around the corner at the Keyhole on Erie), and I was already looking at the ceiling for evidence of a ventilation system. I expected it to get smoky.
The Waterbug guys had thrown together an opening act. Cucarachas de Agua, they called themselves. [That’s “Water Cockroaches” for you non-Español speakers.] Okay, that’s funny. Jesse Wright, a painter who exhibited his work here on the wide, white walls of the bar’s large back room, was on guitar; Lex himself was seated behind the bongo drums. Spoken-word impresario Aaron “Middlepoet” Jacksonand Nyugen were taking turns on the microphone, reading longer pieces over musical accompaniment. It took a while for the sound to focus, but once it did, the poetry settled into a groove. Jackson was engaging and disarming as always, and Nugent, whose performance at City Hall struck me as a bit strident, was wonderful: relaxed, conversational, wry, ironic. He rhymed “ambitious” with “do the dishes,” and bleeped himself out on the word “shit.”
The Cucarachas packed up. L.I.T.M. patrons crowded into the back room, anticipating the main event.
It occured to me that even as the hall filled to capacity, I could still breathe easily; it also was not particularly hot there. The high ceilings had taken care of much of the ventilation, and pure energy handled the rest. The track lights that shined on the artwork went down, replaced by soft gels and the video projector that AWM uses to such powerful effect.
For a moment, I felt as if I were inside one of Norm Francouer’s light boxes: those sculptures of glass, plastic and bright electricity that give downtown Jersey City so much of its distinctive character. American Watercolor Movement was without backup vocalist and dancer Elisa Monod, which was a shame – her interaction with front man Jason Cieradkowski gives a visual focus to his stories of love, longing, and pursuit in déclassé Europe. Also, guitarist Marcos Cid – he of the jazz-chords and snarling lead of “I Paparazzi” – was also missing. He was been replaced by a substitute, though; the band hadn’t tried to compensate for Monod’s absence. Cieradkowski had miked an old typewriter and was hammering away on it as the band began in a swirl of riffage – Mark Townsend triggering percussion samples like a Tubeway Army vet, Brian Wilson rattling on the snare with martial precision.
I’d written for an online website that the bass tracks on their second album, And The Maps Came Down, were lacking intensity. That was before I saw John Fesken play. I didn’t realize how much of what I thought was synth was actually Fesken on the high strings; he’s one of the most unique bass players in the state. In performance, he drives these songs with a propulsion that often feels robotic – he hits with the authority of a piston engine, and pushes these songs forward with precision and grace.
The stage at L.I.T.M. wasn’t big enough to accommodate the entire AWM machine. Cieradkowski was down at audience-level, gesticulating, shouting, scrambling foreign languages like a guidebook in a blender. I wish he were up on the risers for everybody to see, but nobody was going to stop him now: he had the front lines dancing, he was egging us on, arms waving in the air. The group ripped into “Lifestyle”: Fesken, Cieradkowski and Townsend in unison, shouting mystery syllables, swinging to the beat. “Paparazzi” was even better – the crowd clapping along in rhythm, bartenders and wait staff threading their way deftly through the packed house, one eye on the stage. We were locked in.
The sound system held up pretty well. Lex and PerhapsTransparent honcho Stephen Connolly were sharing board responsibilities (and unlike so many absentee NYC sound people, they were sweating every note), but there was just not that much tweaking necessary. The room was large enough that the drum hits weren’t caroming off of back walls, and if the P.A. speakers were a bit trebly, they weren’t not the worst I’d heard.
L.I.T.M. certainly could have chosen a more straightforward act to serve as guinea pigs for their rock experiment. Starting with a band as complex and challenging as American Watercolor Movement – and having them sound as good as this! – is the best sign possible. There isn’t a single musician in attendance who wouldn’t want to try their luck on that stage: here in a room so energetic, artistic, and exciting that there’ll be many more shows here.
One final run through “Motorbike,” and then it was time to say good night. Drinks were cheap (a glass of wine costs $5), but in Jersey City’s historic district, the last call is at midnight.
L.I.T.M. isn’t going to become the Maxwell’s of Jersey City, because there’s no equivalent to Maxwell’s anywhere – but also because this is our vibe, our spot. It’s radiant with the virtues of our downtown. It encapsulates our values and our desires: it’s artful, surprisingly multicultural, even a little intellectual. Critical mass and the unerring demands of local interest are going to make L.I.T.M. a prime musical performance space. That cabaret license ought to be in the mail tomorrow.
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