In April, 2022, the world was opening back up. Although The Grape Room was a music venue that I was able to go to in late 2021 without covid restrictions, I only made it there once, I think. And their weekly open jam was not back in effect.
Eventually though, in March they reopened the jam. I learned about it in April, attended, and was extremely grateful that this thing existed. I needed to play with other musicians and didn’t find my scene yet. I was rough on the drums, but I’ve gotten substantially better since then.
One year later, almost to the week on April 12, 2023, I was producing the stage recordings for this documentary. The interviews all took place from that day though August. The sound check intro was recorded April 19. I did a little bit of editing trickery there.
Ethan Cain and Ryan Daugherty are the current co-hosts of the jam, alternating from week to week. I make it look more like they co-host together every week, because they often attend each other’s nights.
This is about the jam and the experience of being in that room and on that stage. I wanted to capture the experience of the jam and overlay it with the thoughts of musicians and audience members.
At first, the idea was to be a chronicling, perhaps with multiple nights of stage recordings, and a focus on the history of the jam, the hosts, and the venue. But that seemed too obvious, and frankly, laborious.
My music scene is varied (because I like creating and listening to a wide variety of music) so there isn’t really a single place for me anywhere. The closest I can get to is this jam. Admittedly, the players who come here aren’t very experimental. My identity formed around that notion of always pushing boundaries. Thankfully, that artistic ego is more fluid now.
Usually someone brings a riff, but I’m much more into it when someone just messes around until I can provide enough beat to build on, and it goes somewhere. Whenever someone brings some progression, it gets stuck there. Very hard to break out of a box when you start with one, easier to remain fluid when you start that way.
This idea is streamlined, it’s one night of stage recordings, in fact, just 90 minutes of what is usually three hours, all condensed into a mashup of less than 10 minutes.
I asked everyone a few simple but open ended questions, to allow them to riff on ideas. What is improvisation? What is the difference between an open mic and an open jam? How has the jam impacted you as a musician? Then some follow ups like why it’s important to them, when did they start coming or hosting? I improvised my questioning after the first two.
The result, I admit, is fluffy. This is a zero drama story. What works though is the tension and release within the music. There is a tiny bit of tension in the narrative, but it basically just remains positive. I knew this could become an infomercial.
This is not objective in that sense. It’s a place and a community that I care about, so I did my best to convey that while remembering this is a film for the public to enjoy. It has to be good for everyone.
It’s also G-rated material. Super family friendly content.
I’m proud of Band of Strangers. And THRU Media is my baby. I’m using that brand to publish content again, and I’m brazenly moving forward on a value-for-value basis. It’s an experiment. If people join the crew, it will be successful, but if it remains myself, it’s not going to work.
I can always keep publishing under the brand, but I really want to make it a unique, artist-driven company, as it was always envisioned.
Watch my first short documentary since 2017. Entitled Somos Artesina because I think it speaks directly to the content including their message. They are a Colombian-American couple and homeowners in Philadelphia. Together they call their brand Grupo ArtesinA. They tell their own story and it speaks for itself in six minutes.
Often, when an English speaking subject has imperfections or goes against a strong accent, the filmmakers will subtitle in English. I decided that if I was able to understand them enough to do the interview, then you would understand them, and the people who really needed subtitles were the spanish speakers.
This also gave them the opportunity to write their own subtitles to better articulate what they were saying. Because I am a spanish student, I was able to comprehend them and even edit a little bit.
The production was straightforward. First, I met them at home to capture their studio and conduct an interview. Then I captured scenes at Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden, both at a potluck and at their own garden brunch benefit for ProAnimal Sanctuary in Ecuador.
I also made a music video with the B-Roll. I wanted it to be gritty like those old music videos I grew up on. Because it’s getting harder to find free Creative Commons music, I am producing my own music for my video projects currently. That strategy will find its limit when I do larger projects, but I know musicians and it will be good to work directly in my network. That is what THRU is all about.
This is my first THRU project since shutting down the magazine and moving to Philadelphia in 2018. In 2017, I managed to land one commissioned project (that means it paid) and completed some really good work that ran in rotation at Open Signal television channels across the Portland metro region.
I’m basically picking up where I left off, hoping to lift off. Your support is much appreciated at the value for value page.
This video was kind of an accident. The producer of a fashion show that I participated in called “Red Carpet on Broad Street” came over to shoot a promo. She wanted to make promo video of every designer. I offered my camera and editing. Scheduling and timing just didn’t click, so I took what we had to make this.
It’s basically an intro to Held Gear, as it is now. As time passes, the narrative about myself taking it over will be less and less relevant. It still feels weird.
This is a brand I’ve worn for 12 years, I’ve wanted to be involved with it but never expected to be passed a hot potato.
The work is challenging and never ending. It’s like always being behind, until you realize that you’re the boss and nobody is expecting what you are. It’s just step by step. One day at a time.
There is so much going on in the background of doing this project. For one thing, I am new in town. I am a socially awkward rather introverted person. I have a way of performing for the camera, for the audience, but I can also choke that when the introversion kicks in. It’s a tight rope always.
Philadelphia is a place that doesn’t just embrace newcomers and people with bullshit on their sleeve. It has to be your heart. So I’ve learned.
The journey is only beginning, and there will be many more videos for Held to come. Thanks to Forest for kickstarting me back into photography and video editing. It’s wonderful, I love it.
Three dual-camera videos to demonstrate that, to at least a presentable level, A) I can play the drums B) produce the drum tracks and C) cut multi-cam video for whatever purpose.
The first of these three videos came out the best. It is a jazz interpretation of “Reckoner” by my favorite rock/pop act Radiohead. This is one of my favorite songs and even they struggle to capture what they did in the studio with this song.
Someday, it could almost be done with this drum take and different musicians dubbing in the music, I would like to cover the song with a complete band live. This video should help illustrate to people what I want to produce.
Covering a few songs.
The next is a few songs that I’ve butted up together to show a range. It’s all rock, but it’s a range, and these are songs that I practice regularly, amidst roughly thirty songs that I’ve been learning.
The editing is not as good as I’d like, the playing is not as good as I’d like, and those go hand in hand. Part of this is to show that I can edit mistakes seamlessly into a Multicam situation. The average viewer can’t spot each jump in the song, but good players and editors will see it immediately.
One problem is that I threw out two complete sessions because the iPhone video was somehow lost. This one is honestly the third coming back from a trip and not having played drums for a week.
The songs are “Y Control” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Manic Depression” by Jimi Hendrix Experience, and “Achilles Last Stand by Led Zeppelin.
Improvising a little bit.
Finally, it’s just me. What is interesting is that I used to be a total improviser. I barely have discipline now. I should take all of these songs and transcribe the core drum parts as well as the musical sections and have them on my music stand.
I don’t even run the fundamentals like I did when I improvised. I’m very weird like that. All I do now is sit down and start playing my playlists, and I almost never play a song twice. It’s like I’m forcing myself to know what it means to be prepared to play at any moment.
Something else that has been good for that and has accelerated my playing has been the open jams at The Grape Room in the Manayunk neighborhood. You can find me there many Wednesday nights just jumping on stage and facing whatever the players throw at me.
No doubt, by the end of the year, I’ll run another round of these with my new camera, giving me three angles and a much higher quality camera.
The drum session can be opened up and tweaked as well, rather than rebuilt from scratch. I hear a gate that’s releasing to abruptly on the mid tom. Not awful but it’s there and I’ll have to fix it.
Held Gear was packed into a box and shipped to Philadelphia one month ago yesterday. Already I have worked an event and sold dozens of units. People are digging it.
Yesterday, I published this abstract documentary, meant to capture the energy and process of transferring the business into my possession.
Keeping narrative minimal, I used fragments and long shots to reveal detail and carry the story. Every moment is laden with humor, synchronicity, or irony. It is choppy, it is lo-fi. It is honestly myself.
My whole story with Held is much longer. My first belt came into my possession as a raffle item that I grifted from No.Fest 2009.
I wore that belt until 2018. That is when I had my Mother buy me one as a Christmas gift, to replace it.
Now I own all the belts. Talk about bang for buck.
On August 4, 2012, our mutual friend Todd asked me to help him help Micah moving out of his shop. We used the No.Fest van to move him out. I took a few photos, rediscovering them very recently.
Over the years, he kept the brand alive online, and when he was healthy, continued selling them at events. It was always reliable income for him.
Health and personal matters compounded and led to his humble conclusion that it was meant for someone else to continue.
The whole story is contained in the two-hour livestream with Twin in which we discuss his life, Held, the arts, and spirituality.
At the opening of this talk, he drops Jesus immediately. I am comfortable with that, I have found Jesus to be a guide, teacher, and savior. I accept Christ and believe in the sacred heart.
There is no conflict between myself and Twin, however, there was someone present that has more intense feelings. We all worked it out and it was fine. But the issue presented a question to me, it was a reminder of something sacred in my relationship with people.
Twin took me out to the flood plain in the valley that his property connects through. He walked back home and I hung out. When I was on a smidgen of mushrooms and walking the pathless desert, hiking a small mountain, the perfection of the universe palpable, heart open, this feeling that we tie men to the divine and thus tie ourselves up to men, continued to resonate.
This is not controversial to anyone other than fundamentalists that view Jesus as equal to Christ and equal to God by proxy and there is literally no way around eternal damnation but to accept Jesus.
I decided to separate the desert walk from the doc. I had video and images of his property and more, but it’s a distraction.
Part of the mission with Held is to support Twin’s community work not only running a totally free and voluntary radio signal for Why, but also with indigenous communities and nature connectivity inherent to his property. This should be a documentary in itself.
Who Twin is, I believe will remain someone that understands the path that people need to take can get weird.
Twin handed me a copy of X-Ray Visions from the thrift shop. It inspired me to just cut videos regardless of how roughly they are produced, and get on with my heart’s desire to produce film.
X-Ray Visions shows an era of Portland when the artists were anarchist-hippy-weirdos that tolerated anyone and everyone except for douche bags. The venue known as X-Ray Cafe was a prism for the weird in Portland in the late 1990’s.
Now Portland has colonized weirdos and industries have weaponized them. The movement that was Portland’s whole energy from the time that Twin came up there truly is the basis for the HELD brand of punk/urban styles with social/environmental ethos. It is essentially 90’s Portland. No wonder the brand is still received as cool.
When I watched that, it reminded me of the importance of letting people encounter their path in life naturally. A strange, winding path has been mine, and it led me to take on Held.
My argument was that if someone is devoted to a spiritual life, even if that person’s realm is pathless (like mine), they will encounter Jesus.
Lo and behold, I had wandered off the trail and in my searching I encountered a saguaro adorned with Mother Mary and Baby Jesus.
Saguaro in the Why valley adorned with Mary and Jesus.
Micah and myself intersected in Portland briefly, and I had to keep in touch with him in Arizona. That’s when he became Twin. He had property in the wild and it was an excuse to get away from my family in Tucson when I was on family visits, especially as a layover toward Los Angeles.
The heart tells you when there is a reason to keep up with people. Most direction you receive through the heart is not meant to be understood. And this is where I believe Christ communicates. This is why living by the heart is an act of faith.
The spiritual and social foundation for Held is total unity. It is here for the weird. It is here for the worker. Held is for everyone.
Twin in the 1990’s and myself in the 2000’s, we both were influenced by Portland’s anarchist economy.
The first home I lived in was one block from a worker-owned record store, four blocks from a worker-owned grocery co-op, six blocks from a worker-owned coffee shop who bought their baked goods from a worker-owned bakery down the street. Artist-owned businesses were also common.
Then things changed in Portland. Maybe we participated in that by accident. We both fled, for our own reasons.
Whatever HELD is to become, it is with that same open loving attitude that we came up with in Portland.
My views do not interfere with the choices of any consenting adults. Your path is yours to undertake, and I believe your karma unfolds over countless iterations. Yet this life at this moment itself is divine and worthy of daily praise and thanks to _____.
Producing belts and fashion accessories is a grind like anything in life. This grind is fun, interesting, and feels good. The better I am at it, the better it is for people. That is it.
HELD Gear and THRU Media are my two brands. I am reviving them together because this little documentary is nothing, I am about to produce a tremendous flow of media only to promote Held Gear. It is either contract that I give to someone, or I revive my own media brand.
That too is just the beginning. My heart is asking that I document the Love I see in Philadelphia. I believe the same energy Portland had twenty years ago is here. It’s a very different context, but I know it when I see it.
I am older, but I’m still ready to rock. It’s a different context for me too, but I’m on the dance floor, metaphorically and literally.
Held is already plugging me directly into that world, as the DJ Instagram accounts I follow led me to my first event by Rock the House and FRNDS called Day Jawn.
Held was a hit. This week, I’m doing another DJ event, curated by BLCKTEETH. They asked me based on what they saw at Day Jawn.
It’s happening. It is exactly where it needs to be, and so am I.
at Day Jawn, introducing Held Gear to PhiladelphiaMicah Twin Recovering in 2012August 4 2012August 4 2012August 4 2012August 4 2012Sky selfieIt’s about the 5One of the last Radio Shacks, Ajo AZHaving installed the radio gearSunrise to workSmoking not drinkingVeganism“Held Belt” wagon (not really)The inherited product inventoryLittle mountain in the valleySaguaro by designMary and Baby JesusEnjoying the heatEl Tambó Festival 2022El Tambó Festival 2022First solo beltsMy first solo buildsThe box held, barely.I really stuffed it!Strapping ready to be producedMy first shop setupMy first batch of AurochsIn chronological order from 2012 to 2022, my trail to Held Gear.
