A Motherlodge Moment – a review from Motherlodge NYC by Bob Bahr 3/3/11
Scott Mertz was drunk. I’m not sure what he had been drinking; it looked like bourbon
was involved. Night Court was playing the last set of the night at the Lower East Side bar
Cakeshop, wrapping up a Motherlodge weekend in NYC, and the sounds and spirits in
the room were loose…so Mertz jumped on stage.
His earlier, short songwriter’s set was a spiky bird’s nest holding three songs of rough
living, simple chords, and hard-earned wisdom, and several drinks later, as he slipped
onto the platform, surprising the two musicians in Night Court, an audience member
would be forgiven for fearing messiness.
And Mertz brought the mayhem, as expected. He bellowed some appropriately raw
sentiments, nodded his head like a possessed animal, sucked everyone’s attention to him
as a frontman. And he hit his marks.
Mertz’s performance was real, essentially unbridled, unmistakably from the heart, and yet
professional. Even with corn mash sautéing his brain cells, the performer knew how far
to take it, how to handle a microphone, when to stop. In many ways, Mertz’s impromptu
appearance during Night Court’s neo-absurdist noise nocturne was a representative
snapshot of the Motherlodge aesthetic.
Motherlodge has several parents, but one mother, and that’s Ray Rizzo. He couldn’t pull
off the Motherlodge events alone, but Motherlodge would almost assuredly fall apart
were he to abandon it. A story: I’m sitting in a church for Rizzo’s wedding rehearsal, and
he and his fiancée, Traci Timmons, are describing how the ceremony should go. It is
unconventional in structure. It seems loosely organized. A longtime friend of Ray’s turns
around to me and mouths the word “clusterfuck.”
The next day, the wedding is beautiful, touching, unique, and very, very Ray and Traci.
Right down to the Maker’s Mark the groomsmen pass around in the sacristy before the
proceedings. This was no clusterfuck. It was an organic event, spontaneously sending
out wild, tender green runners and blooming freely. Motherlodge similarly roves freely,
guided with similarly slack reins. Expect professionalism from a Motherlodge event, but
not precision. Because it may very well be that a more tightly run organization would not
have a Mertz Moment. And that would be sad.
It would be a mistake to over-emphasize the loose structure and demeanor of a
Motherlodge event. Or the booze, for that matter. The looseness of a Motherlodge show
may allow the creativity of performance to flower a bit more, but it’s the professionalism
of the players that makes the show worth going to. On this particular night, the veteran
performer Tyrone Cotton unreeled three tweedy, acoustic tunes warmed by the pleasantly
scratchy texture of his voice. His song choices and a few careful inflections in his
delivery communicated sexual hunger, and when he sang about a “wicked” wind that was
going to blow on a fetching lady, it’s clear he wasn’t referencing a toothless Broadway
play. When Cotton started his set, people were talking among themselves. By the end of
the first song, and straight through the demanded encore, there was rapt silence.
Similar professionalism emanated from Allana Fugate during her careful solo set, and
while the Bandana Splits lace plenty of levity in their music, their vocal harmonies and
stage presence that night likewise revealed skill and experience. The first act on the bill,
Little Silver, stressed the side of Motherlodge that holds dear artistic exploration, in this
case the potential of a wife-husband duo making new music.
How many people were at Cakeshop to witness the above? Hard to say, and the crowd
turned over and otherwise mutated over the course of the evening. But the last and most
important word perhaps should go to the bartender downstairs, who, it turns out, is one
of the bar’s owners, and who, as Mertz injected the musical equivalent of a vod-bomb
into Night Court’s set, laughed and yelled with abandon. So, in essence, the news is,
Motherlodge: Ooooowwwwww!
