04/30/08 @ 02:11:46 pm by archivesadmin
By: John Pollock
“Symposium” is the word of the day at Water Street Restaurant as owners, wait staff and encore’s own Adrian Varnam—now general manager of the riverside haunt—bustle about in the mid-afternoon lull, setting up for another successful dinner rush. I’m sitting amidst the confusion at a table with Kevin Rhodes of Lamont Skylark who, along with Varnam, is planning the return of Wilmington Unplugged, a monthly invitational jam designed to showcase the art of songwriting.
“It’s a symposium of musicians and music lovers alike,” Rhodes explains as I, confused by his word choice, try to reconcile the image of an English teacher convention with a bar filled with people and live music. “I gave Kevin that word [symposium]; he’s not that smart” Varnam adds, always the humanitarian.
Encarta gives the following definitions for “symposium”: “1. a formal meeting for discussion of subject; 2. a published collection of opinions; and 3. a drinking party in ancient Greece, usually with music and philosophical conversation.”
Bingo! Swap the Aegean Sea for the Cape Fear River, and readers get a glimpse of what to expect at Wilmington Unplugged.
“My idea was to get glam rock, punk rock, electronica, hip-hop, folk rock, country, rock, blues and all those things that happen, but strip them down to their most simplistic element,” Rhodes says, “which is just kind of the way you write a song on the edge of your bed with a guitar, just taking down notes.”
Starting on May 6th and continuing every first Tuesday of the month, Wilmington Unplugged will feature five to six local and regional artists, each playing an original set for about 20 minutes. The goal of the project is a night of music that is structured yet spontaneous at the same time.
A common thread both Kevin and Adrian touch upon is the MTV “Unplugged” series. Everyone remembers the amazing sets by Alice in Chains and Nirvana, among others, which seemed to perfectly capture the intricacies of the grunge genre, right at the time when its musical validity was being questioned and debated.
“What’s really interesting about that series is that you had artists who were completely doing brand-new things with their songs they’ve never done live before,” Varnam says. Those classic performances are still selling thousands of DVDs, and that kind of simplistic chemistry and public experimentation is just what the guys hope to bring to the Port City’s music scene.
“Wilmington has a really fractured artistic community,” Varnam admits. “There’s a lot of great, really cool creative people here, but it’s fractured. There’s not a lot of communication, there’s territorial issues, and there’s not a lot of support often; we kind of let each other down as artists.”
A major goal of the Wilmington Unplugged series is to bring one of Wilmington’s most essential resources—its talented, innovative group of musicians—together through a “sense of space.”
“When you have a lot of people that think alike and come together in the same space, cool things happen,” Varnam explains.
Wilmington Unplugged kicks off this Tuesday down by the riverside from 7-10pm at Water Street Restaurant. Expect to see and hear Justin Fox of Medusa Stone, a few of the Lamont Skylark fellas, members of Doly Toro and more. The affair is free (with tip jar on hand), and CD Alley and Gravity Records will be giving away free music while supplies last. Hell, one might even see Dave Capps from All Tore Up reading poetry—it doesn’t get much better than that.
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