Two weeks ago, we had the filmmakers who registered to make a film as part of the project gather at The Showroom for the launch. Seven guys showed up to take the challenge: Porter Blackman, Andrew Doughman, Abe Duenas, Adam T. Gordon, Jason Kruczynski, Wade Sellers, and Chris White. They each picked a story from the Hub City Press collection Expecting Goodness & Other Stories: The Essential Fiction of Spartanburg. So, here’s connection number one: South Carolina filmmaker selects Spartanburg writer’s story to use as inspiration for a short film.

Over the last two weeks, the filmmakers have been living with their chosen stories, creating storyboards, writing scripts, and building their teams. Many of them have met with the writer of their story, and many of them have been scouting filming locations in the Upstate.

Then on Saturday night we invited you to Film Fan Night at The Showroom, where you could meet the filmmakers and even sign up to help them on their films. And that was connection number two: bringing the films and filmmakers to the community at the beginning. You get to witness and/or be a part of the progress of these seven films that will premiere on the big festival night of March 24. You get to vote for your favorite to win the $500 Audience Favorite Award. You get to witness the talented people of the Upstate in this, HUB-BUB’s first film festival.

I have zero experience with film–only the several videos I’ve made over the last few months for HUB-BUB and Hub City–but I’m so into this project. Our filmmakers are excited and talented, and we can’t wait for you to get to know them over the next two months. Starting in the next few days, you’ll meet each filmmaker here on the blog, starting with Andrew Doughman, who is a reporter at the Spartanburg Herald-Journal right across the street from the HUB-BUB building.

So come hang out in AiR Steve Snell’s studio with us on Saturday the 4th for the Heroic (re)Production community film workshop to act out a scene from hero movie history and learn some aspects of production. It’s free! And Steve will cut all of the scenes shot throughout the day into a video that will make everyone involved epic.

Another from my Personal Choice of Artist list is Lauren Pakradooni. Lauren is a printmaker through and through. Though recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a master’s degree in printmaking, Lauren prefaced her master’s thesis working at several professional printshops specializing in color intaglio printing and delicate process of photogravure.

Lauren is currently the first artist in residence for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Campus in Qatar and her recent work has been a response to the physical and social landscape of this newly developing country. These works have primarily taken the form of architectural drawings and prints of the expansive, stark, and digitally designed interiors that surround her.

For more information as well as current and previous work by Lauren, please visit:

http://laurenpakradooni.wordpress.com/

and

http://laurenpakradooni.tumblr.com/

Thanks, and I hope to see you at the AiR Invitational Exhibition Opening!

Thursday, February 16th

7-9pm

@ The Hub-Bub Showroom

149 S. Daniel Morgan Ave.

Spartanburg, SC 29306

This exhibition will run from Feb 16th to March 16th.

Lou is one of the many talented, inspired, and hard-working artists and writers that will be displayed at the AiR Inviational. The opening reception is February 16th at the Showroom…I hope to see you there!

The City Paper review
Images of the installation

This Hog had been ridden by Mark Rice

Mouth drape.

Mouth mane.

Nose broom.

Surrounding woven oral bib.

There are many names for beards, but I have never heard them called any of these.

Being the owner of an occasional and usually haphazard beard myself, I tend to take its presence for granted. In the winter months, it gives a much-appreciated bolster of insulation. If ever seeking work in the frigid season, briefly bow your mustache combs to the man who must shave for a job interview.

It can give a jump to the front of the line at the auto mechanic, and narrowed eye from the bank teller.

Which brings up an interesting point, when exactly did beards, and facial hair for that matter become a sign of sloth, and a symbol and apathy, laziness, and uncleanliness? Does this have to do with fast food and the system of complex nets one must wear to rock a mouth mane whilst flipping a burger or two? Beards were a symbol of power and prestige and still are in many cultures, yet things have changed. Beards have gone the way of corpulence, which used to signify an upper class fat-laden diet. They have gone the way of paleness, which used to symbolize a life of leisure, wealth, and a lack of physical labor…(errrr….except because of the “Twilight” series…I suppose its back again.) They have gone the way of tight rolled jeans and Koosh balls.

Alright…well, beards are back with a ferocious thickness and so are these three guys that have them attached to their faces.

Come see Travis Blankenship, Eric Kocher, and Patrick Whitfill spout, fume, coo, coax, cough, whistle, whimper, and whisper their poems out of the thing that is located in the middle of their respectively gorgeous facial plumage.

As I now recite to my own beard what a person that was quoting another person once said to me…

“Grow ye. Grow.”

And grow together we shall.

This poetry reading is:

Wednesday

January 18^th

6pm

@ Hub City Writer Project

186 West Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29306

Pictured below is one of my older paintings of a mustache.

See you there!

This Hog was ridden by Mark Rice

Right now, I feel the exact opposite of the way this person feels:

(This video was taken last summer at the  American Coliseum in Spartanburg)

Explosions in the Sky are a now widely hip band. They are the go-to of nearly every Austin, TX bar and listening to them will make you seem cooler now, at least to the middle majority. I’ve been lighting candles and inviting dates over for dinner to their music now for nearly a decade. They have yet to disappoint me.

Ben Marcus’ introduction to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, which he edited, will change the way you look at a short story. It’ll even change the way you read a book. Swear. And his fiction is just as legit. At the Hub City Book Shop you can currently buy the mentioned anthology, and look for his new The Flame Alphabet on the shelves soon.

Michelle Borkin cares about the quality of human life. Her work so far has crossed the disciplines of art, astronomy and medicine to help doctors visualize patient’s hearts using 3-D imaging tools. She is a badass. And she’s making your life better. Watch her brilliance here:

Shree Bose is going to affect your life one day. Still a teenager, she has already provided research on chemotherapy resistance that will eventually alter the way we treat cancer. She won the 2011 Google Global Science Fair. Check out her abstract:

genius.  The 2012 competition begins on January 12, for you agile minds. Check it out! http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/index.html

Stephen Pinker will convince you we can be better people. We really can. Just read his book on the decline of violence: The Better Angels of Our Nature. In fact, you should be a better person today, go to Hub City Books and buy it.

The last year has been so exciting for me! It was such an honor to be featured on the Ellen Show website! It opened so many doors for me and allowed me to sign a management deal with LH7. Over the summer, I had some very cool things happen! A few weeks ago, I played my first show in Nashville, TN, at The Basement. After I finished my set, a girl came up to me while I was putting my guitar away. She was very complimentary and spoke with me for several minutes. It was dark in the club and it wasn’t until she came over to my table later to meet my parents, that I realized she was Sara Bareilles!!! She had been sitting in the front row during my set and had videoed me on her phone!

Sarah Bareilles and Noah

I also had the pleasure of opening for Selena Gomez at her concert in Charlotte at the Times/Warner Amphitheater. She also plugged a couple of my videos on YouTube which

Noah and Selena Gomez

was a HUGE help! A couple of weeks ago, she and her parents, my managers, invited me to come out to Los Angeles to open for her at the House Of Blues in West Hollywood for her 2nd Annual Benefit Concert For UNICEF! I’ll also be performing at Room 5 in LA for several record producers and industry people for a showcase. This is my first trip to the West Coast so I’m VERY excited!!!!

–Noah Guthrie

In 2010, I launched the first version of the show with the help of friends and acquaintances in music and media from western NC and upstate SC. It was an ambitious project, a show that was filmed at a venue and streamed live to the internet, where viewers could comment on and question the folks on stage. I was the host of show, and interjected the viewer comments by monitoring our Twitter and Facebook streams via an iPad. We had a panel of several artists and music professionals on stage, discussing topics like “What Would You Do In The Music World If You Were King or Queen For A Day?”, “Songs That Get Stuck In My Head” and “Upstate and Western NC Music History,” which we would talk about for roughly fifteen minutes before breaking and letting our musical guests play a song.

The first two shows were at the White Horse in Black Mountain, NC, in August and September, and the third was at The Showroom in Spartanburg, SC, on November 30th. John Watson filmed and edited all three shows, and in The Showroom episode, we were joined by emcee Barbie Angell and musical guests The Antibodies and The Pulse dancers. Paul Riddle of The Marshall Tucker Band, Joe Bennett of The Sparkletones, plus producer, performer and songwriter David Lee and archivist and producer Jason Perlmutter made up the panel. The link to the video of the first part of that show is here.

It was a stormy night, so much so that the annual Dickens of A Christmas was cancelled. Sirens went off a number of times as tornadoes passed through the area. Despite the bad weather, there remained a crowd at The Showroom and we went on with the broadcast, which was well worth all the work and preparation. The band was tight and focused and the panel had plenty to say about the musical heroes of the region, rare and vintage vinyl and analog recording. The audience jumped in on the conversation and we were covered in the Herald-Journal and on Channel 7. It was wonderful to be there, to see everyone taking part in a show designed to bring everyone closer together from their love of music, and realize that I had put it in motion.

Afterwards, I went home and collapsed for a few days. It was an exhausting, albeit exciting, experience, and I knew there had to be changes for the show to succeed. For one, streaming the show live to the internet was a technical hurdle that we never pulled off without some snafu or another. Also, the quality of the video was never very good, being hampered by our inability to afford either the bandwidth necessary to upload the video with better definition nor a paid account that took out the intrusive advertising. My dream of #linguamusica becoming a trending topic on twitter was light years away, it seemed, as there were as many or more people in the live audience as there were watching the show online. I let the project lay dormant over the winter and thought about new directions and new dialects.

Upon coming back home from Easter vacation, the idea hit me: interview artists on shorter videos. Instead of making a grand production involving lots of people, produce simpler shows with an interviewer and artist(s) talking about their music, their friends and colleagues and their passions outside of music. I focused on artists from or passing through Asheville, and teamed up with a new group of volunteer videographers and host interviewers. Barbie Angell, a key partner since the beginning, was there to push the project forward once more as well.

Since May of 2011, Lingua Musica has made 30 shows, interviewing everyone from up-and-coming acts like RBTS WIN! to  regional heroes Jonathan Scales Fourchestra to international stars Lloyd Cole and Rosanne Cash. Myself, Barbie Angell, Kelly Denson, Erin Scholze and James Cassara interviewed the artists while Tony Preston, Jackson Stahl and Jesse Hamm did the bulk of the videography and editing. Music magazine Blurt is a sponsor of the show and regularly profiles our episodes such as this article about our interview with Danny Barnes.

Going forward, we seek more sponsors and broaden the scope of the show to include more footage of the artists playing and singing, whether in concert or just for our cameras, and to shoot more interviews at sponsor businesses. Of course, we also plan on reaching out to more artists from the region and those playing here in our effort to document how music is the universal language. I hope you will subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can see all of our shows, and let us know about your own musical story. Our show is just the beginning of the conversation, really, and truly comes alive when you take part.

Yours in music,
Joe Kendrick

http://thit.bandcamp.com/album/perspectives-soundtrack