location: the racounteur
Circles. You know, I had a conversation at Au Bon Pain with a friend of mine a few weeks back about circles in New Brunswick. "It's weird. Everyone knows everyone," she said. At the time I just passed it on with some generality. It wouldn't be a surprise that writers knew other writers and artists knew other artists right?
We ran into Glad Hearts at the Mill Hill Saloon in cold, midnight Trenton. A show Christine and I were invited to by The Delfields. Apparently, the two bands are friends. And I laughed a little at the convenience of it all since we were trying to schedule a pollifax session with the band through their guitarist, Ryan Bing.
Glad Hearts were superb and downright memorable when they came on. It was Ryan with a guitar, Mallory with the keyboard, Cassidy on the drums and John Valencia, unfortunately the member we didn't meet during the pollifax shoot...played a saw. With a violin rod.
And their songs were hopeful in both lyrics and flow while the crescendo of all the instruments joining together in the end parts kept me swinging all over the bar.
Before Glad Hearts finished their set, the tall figure of yet another New Brunswick person came up in front of us. John Terry. Cassidy from Glad Hearts also plays in Rapid Cities with him, I found out. Again with the bloody circles. Everyone in New Brunswick really does know each other. It astounded me, you know? Here we were, The Delfields, Glad Hearts, John Terry, Christine and I, a decent-sized bubble from New Brunswick sipping beers together in some basement not in New Brunswick. How lovely it is, especially for someone like me who's really just starting to uncover the deep-rooted layers of this web of an art and music scene, to see that these people stick together. Maybe that's why this little, run down town is absolutely bursting with creative talent.
We talked about music and organizing and the many faces of New Brunswick. But then John Terry told me something that I'll always remember as both a product of New Brunswick and an organizer. "New Brunswick has this machine that's constantly working to keep things the way they are. Status Quo," he said. I didn't really know what to say after that. But I thought of it, you know? A lot.