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Thursday, July 13, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
An Interview with Festival
Organizer Nick Mavodones
Having been raised in Portland,
Maine and having lived the bulk of
his adult life in Burlington, Vermont,
Nick Mavodones III is finally right
where he belongs — or at least where
I think he belongs — in Detroit,
Michigan, as the general manager of
up-and-coming venue El Club.
Located
in
Mexicantown,
El Club opened in the Spring of
2016, Mavodones being hired in
November later that year by club-
owner
Graeme
Flegenheimer.
“(Graeme) used to come to the venue
I managed in Vermont when he was
in middle school,” said Mavodones,
“he ended up becoming friends with
everyone at the venue and over the
years we’ve just stayed in touch. He
just called me Labor Day weekend
and was like, ‘Hey do you think you’d
want to move to Detroit?’ And I was
like, ‘I don’t think so, man.’”
So what changed? Mavodones
came out to Detroit for a couple of
days to help with shows and check
out the scene. After he returned to
Vermont, Flegenheimer kept on him.
“I talked to all my friends and I was
like, ‘ah shit maybe I should try to do
this.’” So two months later, the day
after Halloween and shortly after
his 15th job anniversary at Higher
Ground — a music venue in South
Burlington where he will be dearly
missed — he hopped in his car and
moved to Detroit.
Despite the quick turnaround, he
was pleasantly surprised in Detroit
when he found that he would be
working with a couple of people
he had previously worked with in
Vermont. It also just so happened
that his best friend from college had
roomed in Portugal with one of the
club’s other managers for a time. “I
had a few familiar names to come
into it. But everything’s been sweet;
it’s been fun!”
Since his arrival in Detroit,
Mavodones
has
been
working
on envisioning an installment of
Waking Windows — the festival-
slash-booking-company that he runs
with four other friends — in El Club’s
space. Recently, the venue has hosted
a couple small festival-like events
which, Mavodones says, “gave us a
little better idea about how we could
better utilize the space.” Now, only
eight months into Mavodones’s time
at El Club, Waking Windows Detroit
has become an immediate reality,
with headliners of Mount Eerie,
Whitney, Dâm-Funk, Moodymann
and Car Seat Headrest as well as 20
other acts.
Waking Windows as it is today
originally
began
with
a
blog
Mavodones started over 10 years ago.
During his time at Higher Ground,
he started putting on shows —
“house shows, gallery shows, proper
shows” — and his blog eventually
metamorphosed into a booking
promotion company. That company
evolved into another entity and two
years ago he and the friends who
operate the company changed the
name to Waking Windows. “We’ve
done seven of them in Vermont,
two in Portland, Maine, with the
third one coming up in September,”
Mavodones said. The most recent
iteration of the festival in Vermont
was held early May, where they
had “185 acts over three days and
something like 12 stages.”
But the festival didn’t start that
big. Eight years ago, a friend of
Mavodones’s who was involved in
the local jazz scene put on the first
and only “Other Music Festival,”
a
more
experimental,
weirder
alternative to Jazzfest, which was
happening at the same time. This
original curator formed a band
and moved out of town, leaving the
festival to Mavodones and another
friend. The two both worked at
Monkey House at the time, a small,
endearing bar and music venue in
Winooski, Vermont, a city that had
recently undergone some serious
redevelopment. As a result, the city’s
storefronts were mostly empty.
The next year, in putting on the
festival, Mavodones and company
used this emptiness to both their
advantage as well as that of the city.
“We talked to the realtors and we
talked to the cities, and they were
letting us use all these storefronts for
free, to showcase music to get people
to come to the town and potentially
move in there,” he explained. This is
where most of the idea for the name
“Waking Windows” came from; it
was the idea that they were literally
waking up these empty storefronts
for weekends at a time and hopefully
longer. “We were taking overall
of these empty spaces and then
turning them into either galleries
or performing spaces or reading
rooms,” Mavodones said.
The other inspiration for the
name, Mavodones noted, came
from “a list of bands that were
coming through the Monkey
House,
and
there
was
one
that had ‘walking’ in the title,
like ‘walking something’ and
someone thought it said ‘waking.’
So
we
were
like,
‘Waking
Windows.’” The important bit,
though, is that Waking Windows
has always been a serious practice
in community development, and
will ideally continue in that same
vein in Detroit.
I am especially hoping that
Waking Windows will help have
a lasting, positive impact on
Detroit and, more specifically,
Mexicantown
because
when
the
venue
originally
opened
Flegenheimer got no insignificant
amount
of
kickback
from
the community for being an
agent of gentrification in their
neighborhood.
Their
worries
were legitimate, but Mavodones
held that Flegenheimer and the
venue as a whole has been doing
more, especially recently, to be
involved in the community in a
positive way.
“Graeme maybe didn’t reach
out to everyone he should have,”
when
originally
opening
the
venue, Mavodones said, “but I
think It’s always tough for folks
coming in, that aren’t from an
area, to gain the trust or gain
the connections that make it
worthwhile
for
everybody.
I think there are still lots of
conversations to be had.” Even
now with the club’s recently
successfully funded Kickstarter
project — the Vernor Cafe, which
will add another dimension of
community to El Club with retail
space, practice rooms and an
additional, smaller music venue
— there are plans to have the
construction work done by local
crews.
‘Hug of Thunder’
an album of hits
MUSIC INTERVIEW
Broken Social Scene are a rarity
in contemporary music: They’re
a
supergroup
that’s
actually
incredibly good. Sure, we’ve seen
decent supergroups emerge in
recent years, but none have been
as influential as this Canadian
collective. All members, including
the brilliantly talented Kevin Drew
and Leslie Feist, unite and combine
creative endeavors in the most
complementary way. BSS has had
up to 19 people in its ensemble, and
all contribute just
enough
without
stepping
on
one
another’s creativity
and
individuality.
After a seven year
hiatus, they return in
top form.
Hug of Thunder
comes as a surprise
for fans who thought they would
never hear another BSS album.
Thankfully, those fears were put
to rest earlier in May, though
after a series of performances
last year, the announcement
wasn’t
overwhelmingly
surprising. Following their 2010
release Forgiveness Rock Record,
Hug of Thunder is a warm and
uplifting
addition
to
darker
times. And even though their
political leader is less orange
and more progressive than ours,
even Canada could use some BSS-
induced optimism that we all
love them for.
“Sol
Luna,”
the
album’s
instrumental
intro,
reminds
me a lot of “Capture the Flag,”
the intro to their ambitious
magnum opus You Forgot It in
People. But whereas “Capture the
Flag” fades gracefully into “KC
Accidental,” immediately after
“Sol Luna” we’re hit with a quick
burst of energy with “Halfway
Home.” And this sets up Hug of
Thunder quite well, considering
the album maintains a surging
pace for most of its 52 minutes.
“Halfway Home” in particular,
however, stands out as being
especially triumphant, a lot like
a musical embodiment of a post-
tennis match victory celebration:
not in-your-face but still full of
emotion.
Yet, Hug of Thunder avoids
the melodrama and eccentricity
that
basically
launched the more
commercially
successful
Montreal-based
Arcade
Fire.
Unlike the (dare
I say overrated)
aforementioned
Quebecois
band,
these Ontarians rely on their
own songwriting abilities to fill
a track rather than grandiose,
pretentious
arrangements.
Take “Protest Song,” a neatly
structured pop song with plenty
of
musical
complexities.
It
features a wall of sound with
layers of guitars and effects,
but never feels bombastic. Not
actually a real protest song, its
lyrics are cryptic yet powerful.
She sings “You’re just the latest
in a long list of lost loves, love,”
harrowingly cutting lyrics that
would curse any ex into months
of gloom. “Protest Song” delivers
what we’ve come to expect from
BSS and is some of their finest
work.
WILL STEWART
Summer Managing Arts Editor
SEAN LANG
Daily Arts Writer
ARTS & CRAFTS
Broken Social Scene members perform with glee
Something to
Tell You
HAIM
Polydor Records
MUSIC REVIEW
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com