In 2000, photography school graduate Dan Collins never imagined that a trip to Vermont, taking snapshots for a family friend’s book on guitar-making, would provide the inspiration to one day start his own guitar workshop, teach classes, and own and manage a live music and event venue with his life partner, Ariel Rose Bodman.

Shortly after graduation, Collins traveled to Vermont to shoot some images of George Morris, who had been building guitars since the late ’70s/early ’80s and wanted to capture his process in a book. “I got there and totally fell in love with the process and with woodworking in general,” says Collins. “I’ve always been a very hands-on hobbyist sort of person, and woodworking was an awakening for me.” Morris offered Collins the opportunity to barter his photography work in exchange for learning how to build guitars, and he jumped at the chance. When he came back to Rhode Island with his new knowledge, he immediately got a job at a woodworking supply store and saved up money to start his own guitar making shop. Shady Lea Guitars was born.

Collins’ approach to guitar making at Shady Lea Guitars is as organic and fluid as the initial encounter that unexpectedly led him to the craft. “Every guitar maker approaches their craft differently; my process and techniques have changed with each guitar I’ve made,” Collins says. “This is because I’ve never made the same model twice. I’m always experimenting with new designs. That’s what keeps it fun!”

“There are just so many parts of an instrument that can be customized,” Collins continues. “Most start as a blank canvas and evolve throughout the building process.”

Collins also runs a guitar school at Shady Lea. “The students really feed off of each other’s creativity, too. Ideas are shared and encouraged here, and because of that, there is no telling what the next guitar will be. It’s always an adventure.”

Dan Collins, Shady Lea Guitars. Photo by Bob Kidd

To help create a space for students and local musicians to perform, Collins recently opened up his workshop to create a performance space. The main structure of the old converted pump house in Wakefield was erected in 1888, with a 1960s addition attached that houses the workshop and a small bar with coffee and other refreshments. Together, the two rooms make up Pump House Music Works. which for just over a year has hosted many of the area’s finest musical acts and the occasional out-of-towner.

Two to three shows take place each weekend, soon to become five, and the Pump House recently hosted a wedding for the first time. Acts such as Julie Rhodes, Ian Fitzgerald, and Arc Iris have recently played the venue. “But we really like giving opportunities to blossoming new music, too,” Bodman says. About 75 percent of the acts are local musicians performing almost entirely original music or jazz. The nonprofit’s biggest and best-attended event, however, is its open mic potluck, a concert-style community gathering with music all night and seemingly endless dishes to share on the last Saturday of every month.

Dan Collins–luthier, Shady Lea Guitars
Wakefield, Rhode Island
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Top image: Ariel sings with Kevin Vidmar of The Occasional String Band. Photo by Bob Kidd.

The post Pumped in Rhode Island appeared first on Take Magazine.

With its wistfully dreamy, grunge-meets-pop sound and eclectic-romantic imagery, Newport Rhode Island-based duo Holy Golden crafts fantasy worlds and brings them to life in music. Now in the middle of their second cross-country tour, Leslie Schott and Andrew Valenti say New England still figures large in their creative world.

The couple’s first chance meeting on Martha’s Vineyard set the tone for a living fairy tale. Schott, who spent her childhood in Michigan, grew up visiting her grandparents on Cape Cod and “always felt the most grounded and inspired in New England” thanks to its strong connection to history. In 2012, while pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles, Schott visited Massachusetts to help care for her aging grandmother.

During a spontaneous December day trip to Martha’s Vineyard, she wandered into a record store. Valenti, the young man who happened to be working the counter that day, was a Martha’s Vineyard native from a musical family who played in bands himself. He admired the albums she purchased, which sparked a conversation. A week later, Schott returned, and “we just jumped right into making things,” including their first music video.

Photo by Caroline Goddard.

The name Holy Golden is partly inspired by Valenti’s grandmother, a Vermont Reiki master, who described her grandson as having a “golden aura.” The band’s first album, Funsucker, debuted in 2014, and after two years of recording and a recent September EP release, the duo will launch their 4th album, Otherworld, in January.

“As a girl growing up, I was a total outsider but always had different dreamy landscapes I would imagine—sort of safe places that I would escape into while trying to fall asleep,” Schott says. “I wanted to make an album based off of that fantasy world.”

The city of Newport became its own character in her dreamscape when Schott and Valenti relocated there a couple of years ago. “A huge theme in Leslie’s childhood fantasy that we’ve been working with is imagining a castle on a cliff,” Valenti says, “and that’s what Newport is: literal mansions on a cliff.”

Living in the attic of a 1713 house and then a ballroom built in 1855, as well as hearing stories about the townspeople, “got us into story mode,” Schott says. The old ballroom was used in many photo and video shoots, and Doris Duke’s Rough Point framed another setting. Local thrift store Maison DNA supplied colorful vintage outfits for shoots, and also hosted the band’s first live show on January 1st, 2017.

At the time of this interview, Schott and Valenti had just played an “amazing” concert at the Park Church Co-op in Brooklyn, whose Gothic cathedral setting, lighting and smoke machines provided the perfect backdrop for Schott’s ethereal, sometimes mournful vocals. “It was probably the most spectacular venue we’ve ever played,” she says.

Schott says that the beauty and positivity in Holy Golden’s art also “stems from kind of a dark place, which gives it that other edge. It’s a way to escape from that—a therapeutic sort of thing.”

Want to know what Schott and Valenti are listening to when they’re not playing? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel. While you’re there you can listen to the playlists of other musicians we’ve profiled. Enjoy!

Leslie Schott and Andrew Valenti–Holy Golden
Newport, Rhode Island
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Top image: Holy Golden at the Golden Pony. Photo by Paul Somers

The post Holy Golden’s Otherworldly Music appeared first on Take Magazine.

Not many professional musicians can say they got their start playing subway stations, but Dan Blakeslee has never been typical. His artistic journey started at his family’s farmhouse in South Berwick, Maine, where he unknowingly turned down his art instructor’s invitation to meet Andrew Wyeth and instead opting to ride his bike—a typical 7-year old there, at least. From a BFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, to stints around Boston (where a friend urged him to play the subway in 1995), Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Newburyport, back to Somerville, and finally relocating to Providence this spring, Blakeslee has rambled across New England and beyond. Road life suits him: he averages 150-200 shows a year, including a performance at Newport Folk Festival in 2015.

About a decade prior, while drawing a tour poster art at a cafe in Burlington, Vermont, Blakeslee noticed someone peeking over his shoulder. That person was John Kimmich, owner of The Alchemist in Waterbury, who then asked Dan if he could do some artwork for the brewery. He was working on a new beer he thought might be something special.

Craft IPA lovers already know where this is headed: Blakeslee’s drawing of a man‘s head exploding with hops is on every label of Heady Topper, the legendary double/imperial IPA that scored 100 on www.beeradvocate.com, as well as its sister beer Focal Banger. But despite his iconic artwork in the beer world, Blakeslee has never had a drink in his life.

Instead, he gets his kicks from doing scratch board, silk screening, full color pencil drawing, and recently mural painting, as well as from natural wonders like the Grand Canyon, which he finally saw up close on a 70-day cross-country solo tour in 2016. “I was electrified, illuminated and floating,” he says. “Letting it sink into my soul was so important. There were thousands of people lining the banks, but no one was speaking. They were either speechless or whispering.”

Dan Blakeslee and the Calabash Club

Blakeslee has another outlet to blow off steam; in 7th grade, his older brother showed him punk rock music, which “took my soul,” he says, although his own songwriting is more folk-Americana. But each year around Halloween, Dan performs as Doctor Gasp, the fez-wearing, maniacal alter ego who sings spooky songs, jumps and kicks onstage, and throws candy corn at the audience. “It gets all that pent-up art kid energy out,” he laughs.

Blakeslee’s new album, The Alley Walker, debuts August 18th; it’s his seventh but the second with his band, the Calabash Club, recorded at 1130 ft studios in New Hampshire. In his lyrical, easygoing tenor, he sings true life stories: “the good, the bad, the weird, and everything in-between,” mixing in some rock elements and folk finger picking, fiddle, and pedal steel.

A friends-turned-family of musicians welcomed Blakeslee to Providence, and he loves being a New Englander: “We have it so good [here]. There’s interesting architecture, beautiful spots to visit, towns, nature, food, nightlife… It’s really amazing and diverse.” Although he could easily book an entire year of shows within a three-hour radius, Blakeslee makes sure to visit the far reaches and points, taking back roads whenever possible. “Even if it takes an extra hour or more,” he says, “just to get that beautiful country road in—it frees my soul.”

Want to know what’s on Blakeslee’s playlist? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel to see. While you’re there check out the other musicians we’ve featured, too.

Dan Blakeslee–musician/illustrator
Providence, Rhode Island
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Top image by Amanda M. Grosvenor

The post Rhode Island Ramblin’ Man Dan Blakeslee appeared first on Take Magazine.