So like I was saying, Amy VanDonsel and I have co-curated a group art show where I'll release my new chapbook of poetry on Intagliata Imprints (printed by Firecracker Press): The Shape of a Man.
The art show, also called The Shape of a Man, goes down 7-11 p.m. Friday, January 6 at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th St. in St. Louis. The event will be a potluck catered by men who cook.
From 8-8:30 p.m. -- that is only a half-hour of live poetry, for those given the hives by live poetry -- I'll perform a few poems from my new chapbook.
I'm given hives by live poetry, so I'll perform duets with musicians: Fred Friction (spoons), Roy Gokenbach (electric guitar) and Josh Weinstein (double blass, clarinet). Furthermore, I will perform through a sculpture, With Solid Stance and Stable Sound by Noah Kirby.
Since even thirty minutes of me live as poet, even with musicians and a sculpture, is too much without a break, I'll do two micro sets and a real poet, St. Louis' and Salt Lake City's own Stefene Russell, will perform one manly poem in between.
To pump up the release of this chapbook, which someone else is paying for and I want him to get his money back!, I asked Missouri poet laureate and my old buddy David Clewell to advance-review my book. And here is what Clewell said:
*
On THE SHAPE OF A MAN
Musician/poet/agent provocateur Chris King discovers some acutely painful sharp angles that contribute to The Shape of a Man. These are poems full of beer, bad guys, car rides, near-talismanic ears of corn, and a laundromat where the speaker’s determined to see his dirty laundry through, all the way to dry—to “pay for / heat, finish something, for once.”
If there’s sadness and regret along the way, these voices manage to find their own kind of resolve in the tenacity of their singing—the distinctive music King makes of language that can’t help saying how, sometimes, it’s amazing we’re still here. In “I Love Taverns When They’re Empty,” the speaker insists that “…it takes courage to enter a bar / when it’s empty, that, or / desperation. I admire courage and find / the desperate quotable.”
I admire the honest desperation in this collection, and I find the courage nothing less than quotable.
—David Clewell
***
Image is the print "Re-in-cur-nation" by George D. Davidson III, which will be exhibited at The Shape of a Man.
Like I was saying, Amy VanDonsel and I have an art show coming up on Friday, January 6 that also is the occasion for releasing my new chapbook of poetry. Both art show and chapbook are titled TheShape of a Man and tackle manly themes.
This Wednesday, from 7-10 p.m., Amy and I are co-hosting an open studio to get geared up for the show. We're meeting at Amy's place, 3419 Iowa in the Cherokee Street neighborhood. It's free, of course, and open to the public; but bring your own thing to drink.
Though this reminder goes out late, we're hoping to entice the other local artists joining us in the show to come out on Wednesday: that would be Kevin Belford, Ron Buechele, Jon Cournoyer, Dr. Andrew Dykeman, Fred Friction, Robert Goetz, Noah Kirby, Sandra Marchewa, Dana Smith and B.J. Vogt. We hope, if possible, that they bring the work they plan to put in the show.
We also hope to see Hap Phillips, who will be in the show, and I mean literally he will be in the show: we are exhibiting Hap himself as an exemplary man at The Shape of a Man.
The show also will include work by Oscar Alvarez, who is a small child and not to be invited out on a school night; George D. Davidson III, who lives and works in Athens, Georgia; and Matt Fuller, who lives and works in Los Angeles. We don't expect their physical presence on Wednesday night, but hopefully Oscar's parents, Anthony and Gina Alvarez, will bring him to the show on January 6.
We also are including work by the late Hunter Brumfield III. In most cases, someone's being dead would disqualify them from attending an open studio or art exhibit. However, Hunter's track record for haunting his friends is so impressive that I half-expect his presence in one manifestation or another.
Finally, at The Shape of a Man I will perform poems from my new chapbook, backed up by some old friends: Fred Friction (spoons), Roy Gokenbach (guitar) and Josh Weinstein (double blass, clarinet). I'm inviting them out on Wednesday, and if any of them can make it then we can also give our fellow artists and friends a taste of our performance for The Shape of a Man.
I am releasing a new poetry chapbook, The Shape of a Man, on Friday, January 6 at Mad Art in the context of an art show with Amy VanDonsel and friends, living and dead; also with a brief poetry performance backed up by Fred Friction, Roy Gokenbach and Josh Weinstein, performing through a sculpture by Noah Kirby.
Press release (updated Dec. 19)!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Amy VanDonsel
avd@amyvandonsel.com
(314) 265-7836
“The Shape of a Man”
Art exhibit and chapbook release
Mad Art Gallery
2727 So. 12th Street, St. Louis
7-11 p.m. January 6, 2012
New work by Amy VanDonsel.
Poetry chapbook by Chris King.
Poetry performance with musical guests.
Additional manly art by:
Oscar Alvarez, Kevin Belford, Ron Buechele,
Jon Cournoyer, George D. Davidson III
Charles and Chalot Douglas-Book,
Dr. Andrew Dykeman, Fred Friction,
Matt Fuller, Robert Goetz,
Kim Humphries, Chris King,
Noah Kirby, David Langley,
Sandra Marchewa, Hap Phillips,
Stefene Russell, Dana Smith,
B.J. Vogt, Eric Woods
and the late Hunter Brumfield III.
Also, one exemplary man – Hap Phillips – will be exhibited.
Potluck provided by men who cook.
November 18, 2011, St. Louis, MO – Amy VanDonsel and Chris King collaborate on and co-curate a small group show, the first in a projected annual exhibit series exploring the shapes that men and women are in.
“The Shape of a Man” opens Friday, January 6, 2012, at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12th Street, with a reception from 7-11 p.m. “The Shape of a Man,” explores the shapes men are in through a creative conversation between a woman and a man working in a variety of media (with help from their man friends, living and dead).
Amy VanDonsel will show new mixed media, paintings and installation, and Chris King will release a chapbook, The Shape of a Man, and perform poems from it with Fred Friction (spoons), Roy Gokenbach (guitar) and Josh Weinstein (double bass, clarinet).
The exhibit also will feature visual art by Oscar Alvarez, Kevin Belford, Ron Buechele, Jon Cournoyer, George D. Davidson III, Charles and Chalot Douglas-Book, Dr. Andrew Dykeman, Fred Friction, Matt Fuller, Robert Goetz, Kim Humphries, Chris King, Noah Kirby, David Langley, Sandra Marchewa, Hap Phillips, Stefene Russell, Dana Smith, B.J. Vogt, Eric Woods and the late Hunter Brumfield III. Also, one exemplary man – one Hap Phillips – will be exhibited in his natural, fabricated habitat.
A potluck will be provided by the men artists and other men who cook.
Amy VanDonsel creates mixed media paintings on canvas or panels and installations with paper, tape, string and found items. Her work examines textual communication and the processing of information through abstracted and figurative imagery, and combines research interests in literature and technology with handmade visual representations. She is the Director of Marketing and Development for Saint Louis City Open Studio and Gallery; plans arts and charitable events; and serves on the board of directors for non-profit Poetry Scores. Examples of her previous work may be viewed at www.amyvandonsel.com.
Chris King has been recasting his old, bad poems into the 7/11 form innovated by Quincy Troupe, alternating lines with 7 and 11 syllables and alternating stanzas with 7 and 11 lines, with results he likes enough to publish. The Shape of a Man (Intagliata Imprints) compiles his more manly 7/11s. As an “artist,” he sketches people and then has the subject sign the sketch, or makes paintings on vinyl records based on his sketchbook. He will perform his poetry with musical guests through Noah Kirby’s sculpture With Solid Stance and Stable Sound.
VanDonsel and King have previously collaborated on projects for the non-profits Poetry Scores and Saint Louis City Open Studio and Gallery. They also happen to share a birthday. VanDonsel/King plan to continue the “Shape of a Wo/Man” project with a follow-up exhibit, “The Shape of a Woman,” in January 2013 at Mad Art Gallery, then continue the themed project with future group collaborations.
What: Visual Art Exhibit Opening and Chapbook Release, with accompanying performances
When: Friday, January 6, 2012, 7-11 p.m.
Where: Mad Art Gallery, 2727 S. 12th Street, St. Louis, MO 63118
Who: Presented by Amy VanDonsel and Chris King, also featuring Oscar Alvarez, Kevin Belford, Ron Buechele, Jon Cournoyer, George D. Davidson III, Charles and Chalot Douglas-Book, Dr. Andrew Dykeman, Fred Friction, Matt Fuller, Robert Goetz, Roy Gokenbach, Kim Humphries, Noah Kirby, David Langley, Sandra Marchewa, Hap Phillips, Stefene Russell, Dana Smith, B.J. Vogt, Josh Weinstein, Eric Woods and the late Hunter Brumfield III.
Sparked by the recent inaugural Uncle Tupelo tribute show in St. Louis, I am posting some chapters from my unpublished musical memoir that deal with those guys. This is Chapter 118, twelve chapters along from my previous post, "Picking and grinning". The band Enormous Richard became the band Eleanor Roosevelt, which evolved into a field recording collective. Uncle Tupelo pops back into this account of some of our folklore projects.
Math problems
By Chris King
Anthony Seeger must have taken a break from dancing with the Indians in the Amazon, because Smithsonian/Folkways finally got around to releasing its Bascom Lamar Lunsford CD I instigated. The release was announced that summer at the festival in Asheville Bascom had founded.
I was unable to attend, though Jo Lunsford Herron later played me a video of the event, and sure enough, “a young man in a rock band from St. Louis” was thanked from the grandstand and in the liner notes. I puffed up at my first folklore credit.
LIj and I put out a cassette for the Grebo elder Nymah Kumah. His Grebo archive deserved a 10-disc boxed set, not a 90-minute cassette, but we were penniless. Seeger wouldn’t release it on Folkways, and our usual lack of business sense and patience with tedium kept us from working the marketplace to find Nymah a deal. Never mind its chintzy aspect, our tape made the old Grebo clown more proud than anyone who ever unfolded a thank-you note at a Grammy podium.
We staged a release party for Nymah at Focal Point in St. Louis. It was well-attended, since word had spread among drum connoisseurs — the one type of person I have ever seen Nymah Kumah disappoint. These guys came in talking math. They were interested in learning new time signatures and syncopations. It was a little like the people who descend on distant corners of the earth just to check one bird off their career list of species sighted.
Nymah Kumah wanted to talk humanity, not math. The drum was just another voice to him, not an instrument for technical display. He refused to pull a drum pattern out of the context of a story and teach a rhythm in isolation. A lot of drummers showed up buggy-eyed with anticipation, but went home grumpy that night. That was fine with me. They all bought cassettes, which they could pause and rewind as often as needed to nail down the latest exotic rhythm pattern.
Nymah’s local girlfriend, the Goddess of Illusion at fifty, showed up at the gig with a warm smile, and went home with a warm smile, taking a grinning Grebo songster with her. I let them sleep late the next morning, since we had no pressing travel plans. When I went to retrieve him in the afternoon, Nymah answered her door naked. The image of that old man’s bare bum busting back up the steps will accompany me to the grave.
We mailed the hippie commune East Wind copies of Nymah’s cassette, but paid no visit this time around, as I was needed elsewhere. Lij’s ambitions for the Rosco Gordon record were outgrowing the field of folklore. He thought the old man had another hit record in him.
Lij wanted to build a band around Rosco through overdubs in Nashville, but he couldn’t work with those rotten piano tracks. So I put Nymah on a plane to Boston and drove Lij in the equipment-crammed Birthplace (my battered 1987 Cavalier) back to New York, where we borrowed time on a family Baby Grand that lived in Lij’s brother’s Brooklyn apartment.
Rosco, we learned, had diabetes. He took a break from our session to jab a needle of insulin into his little belly.
At least he didn’t sing his ulcers into aggravation during this session, though there was nothing we could do to stop him from playing ferociously enough to rip himself apart.
“I’m running out of chances,” Rosco said. “At my age, one day is two weeks. One month is two years.” He worked out this confusing math on a scrap of paper and left it with Lij, as a reminder of urgency.
Lij jumped right on those overdubs. He was trained to build a recording from the drum tracks up. For the Rosco record, we already had piano, guitar, and lead vocal tracks, so Lij’s instinct was to get the drums next. He called me down to Nashville, and we built our studio in the basement of a local drummer named Ken Coomer.
Uncle Tupelo had crept into our life once again, we would have thought for the last time. When Tupelo’s drummer, Mike Heidorn, left the band to raise a family, they replaced him with Ken Coomer, who then joined Jeff Tweedy in his new band Wilco after the Jay-Jeff split. Wilco was exploding in ways unknown to Uncle Tupelo or any of our peers, and had given Coomer a taste of life in a plush tour bus with beds, a fridge, a mini recording studio, and a professional driver behind the wheel.
But Coomer still knew the root, the real deal, when he came across it. “Come on!” he said, as Lij set up microphones, and I stir-fried cactus in Ken's kitchen. “Let’s get one with Rosco!”
Getting one with Rosco was no simple task. No amount of drummer’s math would prepare you for it. The Rosco rhythm had a logic all its own. It was not a question of keeping time, but rather following the unpredictable rhythmic instincts of an unusual old man. You had to learn his mood for changes.
Rosco’s beats changed in ways they don’t teach you in music school or in a pop band like Wilco. I thought of the chicken Rosco used to get drunk and set atop his piano. Maybe we should have got a chicken drunk, let it dance, and had Coomer play to that. We had no use for a click track. Maybe what we needed was a cluck track.
*
From And Let Him Ply His Music: Adventures in Post-Punk and Amateur Folklore (unpublished).
*
The record Lij and I produced for Rosco Gordon was released by Dualtone Music Group in Nashville as No Dark in America (2005). The cover art, above, is by my friend George Davidson of Athens, Ga.
Big event for me: the arrival in the mail today of two prints from my friend George Davidson. This is a detail from one of the prints, "Feels Like 2nd & Beale".
Another detail from "2nd and Beale". The prints are signed with an allusion to George's artistic alter ego, Dak Maverick.
I love this streetscape imagery of some Memphis of the mind. George did his hard time in Memphis, though he is from Charlotte, North Carolina and lives now in Athens, Georgia, where I found him years ago (long story).
Here is a slightly skewed look at the entire print, "Feels Like 2nd & Beale", signed and numbered 30/32. I was standing with one foot each on two stools with this spread out on the kitchen table when I took the picture. The prints are huge.
Fervent singing from the soul in a detail from the other print that arrived today, "Rabbit Foot Diva", a title that reflects Dak's genuine feel for the mystical folklore of the South.
Another detail from "Diva". Lots and lots of primitive musicmaking in George's imagery. George himself plays wicked saxophones, in various and shifting musical settings in Athens, which doesn't have quite the jazz scene he needs to nurture this aspect of his being.
This detail from "Diva" takes in some other core icons from Dak's visual lexicon: dice and playing cards, the element of chance as explored and exploited by gamblers.
"Rabbit Foot Diva" in its entirety, signed by the artist and numbered 13/41.
I have written about George on here several times before; here is this blog searched for his name, if you want to read more.
I love this cat, this dog; this friendship has done us both a lot of good over a pretty long span of years now. I also am incredibly fortunate that every so often Dak decides to archive some of his work with me. I will cherish and display it.
When you lose someone, you really need people, and you never forget the people who come through for you at that time. So I won't forget that my buddy George Davidson in Athens, Georgia just sent me a batch of his prints, in the wake of the passing of my father in law, Kpakpo Mensah.
George generally shares my belief in traditional religions, so it was significant that he sent me the print "Re-in-cur-nation," since most traditional religions have the soul being recycled rather than facing judgment and segregation to heaven or hell.
The pun on "cur" (dog) is typical of George, but also affectionate toward me, since my family nickname is "Brother Dog" and George is more likely to call me "Dog" than anything else. I, in turn, call him "Dak," from his old nickname, Dak Maverick.
I also took it as an affectionate reference that this dog-themed poster he designed back in 1985 has my last name on it in the show credits.
This "cur" poster incorporates even more of George's signature imagery.
And yet another dog pun in the band name, the K-9's.
George had already made a thoughtful gesture toward my wife, Karley M. King, regarding the loss of her father. He met her for the first time during our recent Southern swing and was really taken with her and our daughter, Leyla.
George wrote and sent the following poem when he heard the news:
On Your Father's Passage
Take heart in the joy that lights your daughter's eyes
and in it see through the veil of death's disguise
your Father's soul is free from the pain of traveling on this earthly plane
in time all will pass this way for now, that your heart be healed I pray/
Here are more images I took on Saturday of work by my buddy George Davidson, aka Dak Maverick, of Athens, Georgia. Click on any image to get a bigger and better view.
These first two images are side panels of one of his boxes, which I call juju boxes. Often but not always, George adorns the exterior of his juju boxes with the same iconic imagery he has been carving into blocks and printing for decades: blues, serpents, violence, chance, masks.
This is the box with those two side panels. Love the knob hockey wing player transformed with the African mask!
He often illuminates his boxes with colored slides, to eerie effect.
Healthy portion of goofball humor in George's game, which fits the sacred clown paradigm that rules much of his outlook on art and life. He and I share the black cat as totemic figure as well.
Note piano keys as frame motif. Everything George does is dominated by music. He is a record collector and gifted saxophone player and composer/improviser.
Just like him to stick a gauge - an image of science and the urge to quantify nature - on a stump of salvaged wood then make it into the basis for a juju mask.
While we were hanging out, he was riffing like hell on the image on the panel he stuck onto this box: of a pirate ship on the verge of the void. I take it as a comment on our civilization at the moment.
Here a jazzman is joined by the ever-present dice (chance, luck, cosmic uncertainty) and reeds from one of George's own musical instruments.
This afternoon I had the good fortune to visit a couple of hours with my longtime soul brother George Davidson in Athens, Georgia. I spent some time taking pictures of his artwork and will be posting up images in sets. This is George's Jazz Destroyer sculpture.
This is a detail from Jazz Destroyer. George makes ample use of kitschy elements and is quite the flea market hound collecting materials.
This painting grew out of images he painted on the sides of one of his juju boxes. These are iconic images that George has been putting into his prints for decades. The wood this is painted on was part of a speaker.
Detail of an etched panel. Jazz instruments and Indians - very Dak. (One of George's artistic nom de plumes is "Dak Maverick".)
Juju mask from scavenged materials.
Sculpture from same. Love the minimalism here.
A little more eye candy and ornamentation to this guy.
Poetry Scores translates poetry into other media, from its home base in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., but with friends and partners around the country and here and there all over the world. *** (Contact creative director Chris King, who maintains this blog, at brodog [@] hotmail.com.)
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