Musician Abbie Morin knows full well what it takes to try to make it as a fulltime musician—a lot of part-time, maybe less than satisfying odd jobs. The bills, after all, must get paid. And so Morin, who is 27, has been a pizza delivery lady, wait person and house cleaner. All for the cause of making music.

Her latest project, Hammydown, released its debut EP Pizzaface this summer. It explores, not surprisingly perhaps, the emotional and physical tax of coming home every day from work with sore soles and still feel like a slacker. “I think we all feel this pressure that hopefully whatever fulfills us in life will also make us money, and I just think that we were all super set up for failure with that,” Morin says. “I think it’s rare that actually what you love tends to be enough to be comfy.” The conundrum is disheartening, but its ubiquity affords an opportunity to come together around it. “I think we all forget that everyone’s in the same boat.”

Hammydown may be a new presence, but Morin is no stranger to the New England music scene. Growing up in New Hampshire, she discovered a passion listening to records of Queen, The Beatles, and Nirvana with her father. For almost 13 years, Morin played acoustic guitar. It was her trusty partner through her start as a solo artist; during her almost in a self-titled band out of Burlington, Vermont; and during a four-month tour as an acoustic duo. Morin describes her sound during that time “folk, Americana-style.”

Abbie Morin of Hammydown. Photo Courtesy of Robert Fitzsimmons

After the tour, though, her sound began to change. “Once I returned from that trip, I found myself beachside in Long Beach Island, New Jersey at a family house,” Morin recalls. “I was sort of starting to feel really boxed in by my acoustic guitar in general. I couldn’t play a show without breaking a string, and I just was feeling a little tired of my wistful country love songs.”

So she experimented with her great-uncle’s Gretsch drum kit. “It was exactly the change in energy that I needed to start finding the new voice of what I was wanting to say, at this stage of my life.” she says. “I put down the acoustic and started writing from the drum kit and that’s when the Hammydown stuff started to emerge.” She bought an electric guitar—a Fender Jazzmaster—and moved to Northampton to join her best friend, Hannah Mohan, of And The Kids fame. There, she met bassist Josh Speers and drummer Jacob Burnstein. They began playing as Hammydown this past January.

Whereas Morin’s memories of New Hampshire and Vermont’s bucolic landscapes and lush nature informed her earlier folk music, Hammydown’s unadorned, unpretentious garage-pop “takes place right at the dishwasher or something.” Strenuous jobs, unearthly hours in an unfamiliar town provided Morin space for introspection and reflection on her goals. As she hunkered down in her apartment after work, exhausted, practicing on her electric guitar, she had the space to reflect on “letting it be okay to write about what most people find to maybe be mundane, or just writing about the everyday things in life. I used to kind of feel like I have to write about this huge event, or love, or loss, and this time I was just like this is just where I’m at right now.”

In Northampton, Morin found a community of people at a similar place in life. “New England is such a kindred-feeling place,” she says. “I’ve always felt like my community is around. The states I call home—I like to think my music kind of creates that kindred spirit, like ‘We’re all in this together.’” Hammydown’s music is purposely lighthearted to make it universally enjoyable, in appreciation of the kindred spirit. “As much as we want to get heavy, it’s important to me that it’s something you want to sing along to,” she says.

Abbie Morin, Hammydown. Photo Courtesy Brad Bahner

Despite the strain, there is a net positive outcome to all the work Morin has shouldered through. “There’s always an opportunity to make connections with someone,” she says. “I think I’ve learned that I can’t let my weariness and my exhaustion sometimes make me blind to the fact that even the customers that are coming in—there’s an opportunity to meet people and be close to people and to be continuing to just foster that community.”

Want to hear what Morin listens to for musical inspiration? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify channel to hear what’s on her playlist and on the playlists of other musicians we’ve featured.

Abbie Morin–musician, Hammydown
Northampton, Massachusetts
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Top image: Abbie Morin, Hammydown. Photo Credit Kayhl Cooper 2017

The post Abbie Morin: Working 9 to 5 And Then Some appeared first on Take Magazine.

You could almost set a timer —every 20 years or so, the Northampton-area music scene attracts national attention. Bands get signed, stories get written, hype builds. Then, like a lighthouse beam, the spotlight rotates away to the next town or sound. A couple of decades go by, and the whole process repeats: starting in the late 1960s with western Massachusetts acts like Arlo Guthrie, Clean Living, and Fat; continuing into the late ’80s and early ’90s with Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and the Scud Mountain Boys; and moving all the way up to a crop of current groups that includes And the Kids, LuxDeluxe, and California X.

Yet as any music fan in the region knows, the local scene doesn’t rely on outside illumination to thrive. For more than 45 years, the sound of music in western Massachusetts—in Northampton, but also throughout the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires—has been abundant and varied. Rock ’n’ roll, blues, punk, and various indie rock sounds have all taken root, along with heavy metal, jazz, and plenty of folk. Bands have come and gone; venues have opened, closed, and burned down; and the scene has flourished through it all.

“I just always marvel at the richness of it, considering how small the area is,” says David Sokol, who was music editor at the Valley Advocate from 1977 to 1993.

Dave Sokol, photo by Izzy Berdan

Billboard magazine expressed a similar sentiment in a slightly condescending frontpage story in 1992 that described the area as “a picturesque, place-that-time-forgot farming community.” Yet despite a population less than a quarter of the 3.4 million people in greater Seattle—the aspirational baseline for music scenes since the city birthed the ’90s grunge explosion that gave us Nirvana and Pearl Jam—the four counties of western Massachusetts have for years had the essential ingredients of any successful music scene: a creative class of musicians; places for them to play; audiences who will go see them; and supportive local media, including radio station WRSI-FM and the Valley Advocate, that will play their records on the air and write about them.

Western Massachusetts is also an affordable place to live, with a youthful atmosphere that flows from the local colleges, most notably Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts. It’s also near the intersection of two interstate highways, which is helpful when it’s time to go on tour. Those attributes have made this area attractive to a continual flow of music-minded people, far more than there’s room to mention. Some of them got famous; more of them, then and now, play music simply because they love it and it’s fun.

“Northampton is an incredible place to emerge as an artist and to find that group of people who support what you do,” says folksinger Dar Williams, who moved to Northampton in 1992 and began building her career. So far it’s yielded 10 solo studio albums, including this year’s Emerald. Though she relocated to New York in 2000, she adds, “I would say it’s the reason I’m still doing what I’m doing.”

Ray Mason, photo by Izzy Berdan

The beginnings of the western Massachusetts scene date to the mid-1960s, when musicians like Holyoke native Ray Mason would play the local YMCA and slip an occasional original song into sets of covers of The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Rascals. The covers-are-king attitude started to fade when bands like the Rockin’ Ramrods from Boston and The Wildweeds from Connecticut came through playing their own songs, almost as if they were demonstrating that such a thing was possible for regular guys from New England.

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Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
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Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
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Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our April/May 2016 print issue. 

It’s a cold day in January when I speak with Hannah Mohan, guitarist/singer and primary songwriter for the western Massachusetts-based And the Kids, who calls me from amidst a month-long recording session at Montreal’s Breakglass Studios. Friends Share Lovers, the 10-song album they’re crafting with the aid of Canadian producer/musician Jace Lasek, is scheduled for release in June on Northampton, Massachusetts’ Signature Sounds label.

“We’re in the studio only during Mercury in retrograde,” Mohan notes, referring to the astrological phenomenon that’s customarily associated with confusion and delay.

“Isn’t that crazy?”

Part of the reason the band is recording in Montreal is that keyboardist Megan Miller is Canadian and had the unfortunate experience of being deported from the United States a while back. New York native Taliana Katz, who had just begun playing with the band when they performed for National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Concert series last June, has assumed bass duties and was unceremoniously tossed into “the mom van” for two North American tours with the bands Highly Suspect and Ra Ra Riot, including a stop at Austin, Texas’s requisite South by Southwest rock roundup in March.

“I had just gotten back from India and moved up to western Mass. from New York,” Katz says of her whirlwind induction by fire. “When I got there, we talked about Tiny Desk and decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to play it because I had just started. But when we went to the label to do a preview of the concert, we tried it as both a trio and a Hannah-[and]-Becca-[Lasaponaro] duo, and [Signature Sounds] decided that it would be all three of us. It was a pretty surreal experience!”

When I ask if the band has considered moving to a big city like New York or L.A., their answer is appropriately adventurous.

“We are constantly considering every city we go to,” Mohan laughs. She says she’d like to stay in Montreal but admits that the non-Canadian band members would then likely have similar problems to the border woes Miller has suffered. “Yeah, we already decided—no more deportations.”

The group came together at the Institute for Musical Arts (IMA), a nonprofit music education facility in the hills of Goshen, Massachusetts, dedicated to supporting women and girls in music. The camp was cofounded by Ann Hackler and June Millington, the latter a Filipina musician who fronted the trailblazing early ’70s all-female band Fanny. After Mohan and drummer Lasaponaro dropped out of high school, they were encouraged to see what the place might have to offer them.

And the Kids | Photo by Pierre Manning

“Our parents sent us to the IMA to make sure that we were actually doing stuff,” Mohan chuckles. The band’s name stems from a Peter Pan-ish tale of teen rebellion and resourcefulness that brought Mohan and Lasaponaro together during their wayward youth.

“It used to be ‘And the Kids and the Pirates,’ ” says Mohan. “We had a group of friends, and we all lived on this island [in the Connecticut River] for one summer. We built a huge fort out of all these tarps and just…lived on this island,” she laughs. “Sometimes we’d go out for supplies. To everyone else we were just ‘The Kids,’ but to us, we were ‘The Pirates.’ ” The name was eventually shortened to keep it simpler.

The band’s music is, like its musicians, unusually original and not at all constrained by any conventional pop sensibility. Buoyed from a young age by a strong network of supporters, they’ve been allowed to grow artistically in a way that is rare in the music biz—a way that is perhaps aware of the commerciality of the medium but not at all beholden to it or even that interested in it.

Frontwoman Mohan is a striking individual who’s remarkably confident and comfortable in her own skin—skin that’s been customized with unapologetic, unconcealable tattoos including a solid black line that dramatically splits her lower lip and gives her a tribal aura, and the words Folk the System emblazoned across her upper chest.

Her voice sirens in a mellifluous, elfin vibrato from the upper octaves, a sound that makes your spine tingle a little in a rare way, like the first time you heard Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow.” Mohan’s singing has been compared to that of ’80s punk/new wave icon Siouxsie Sioux, though she points mostly to more contemporary artists like Feist and Arcade Fire as influences and even some much older favorites like Buddy Holly and Jimmy Rogers.

“I grew up listening to country music. Oddly enough, my parents were really into pop country. And then I met Rebecca, and I started listening to ’60s rock. That’s kind of where I think the structure comes from, and then…I don’t know, I like noise music…a lot of different stuff.”

Lasaponaro has added to the mix some interesting percussion—another quality that gives the band a unique sound—including sleigh bells and glockenspiel, an instrument she describes as “what I imagine magic must sound like.”

She adds, “I think the percussion instruments add a little ear candy to the music—something people are maybe not expecting to hear, and when they do, they’re like, ‘What was that?’”

https://andthekidsmusic.bandcamp.com/

And the Kids – Hannah Mohan, guitar/vocals | Rebecca Lasaponaro, drums/percussion | Taliana Katz, bass | Megan Miller, keyboards
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Photos by Pierre Manning

The post The Kids Are Alright appeared first on Take Magazine.

It’s time you heard about Mammal Dap.

Making melodies so catchy and singular that they feel slightly familiar, Mammal Dap’s EP Deep Field, to be launched February 23, brings listeners more of its signature style of super tight, sometimes funky, always optimistic psych fusion featuring furious guitar (Killian Karlsson), expert beat-keeping (Reed Sutherland bass and synth bass, Colin Jalbert drums and samples), and wild keys (Zack Cross). It’s like these melodies, songs, and tiny electronic musings have always existed, but Mammal Dap was there to tap into the ether, and record them for our eternal enjoyment.

(left to right) Zack Cross and Killian Karlsson

These four boys hail from Western Massachusetts, a region known more for its punks and indie rockers than its exclusively instrumental producers. Mammal Dap, however, seems right at home in a music scene constantly creating something new from something not so old. And The Kids, for example, borrow a bit of their sound from early folk rock, then imaginatively tailor their music and lyrical content for a much stranger, queerer future wasteland. In a similar way, Mammal Dap’s recordings call up a time of quartets and trios, devious jazz fusion demigods and early Moog modulators, all made simultaneously contemporary and timeless through obsessively precise arrangements, intriguing samples and, most of all, a lot of fun.

At times, Mammal Dap’s music gets intense and even heavy, layering lots of deep synth, bass, guitar, and wild fills, but always lands on the side of cool and tight. To get a full range of the soaring solos, catchy beats, earworm melodies, sexy guitar, and breakdowns, peep PRMLMND when the Deep Field drops.

Mammal Dap is one of those rare bands whose live sound is nearly as tight as the record—yet the band isn’t afraid to depart a bit. Since each member is literally a master at the machine they pick and slap, Dap’s members can knowingly improvise and reinterpret their illustrious, sparkling melodies. Solos abound during a Mammal Dap performance, but they’re not the typical extended musical rants that often bog down an otherwise energetic genre. Dap’s members offer mini, often momentary, musical departures from the melodies you love; like the twist end of a short story or a small secret you never knew you needed to know.

Deep Field to be released February 24, 2017 | Cover art by Josh Unsderfer at Conifer Studios

Mammal Dap is a psych-fusion band from Northampton, Massachusetts. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram to listen to their upcoming EP Deep Field, and be sure to look out for their forthcoming New England tour. 

All photos by Coley Krystyna

All video produced for Take Magazine by V. A. Karsaliakos

The post Into the Deep Field with Mammal Dap appeared first on Take Magazine.