Frogville hops into Santa Fe's consciousness.
A few years ago, as many of you know, the little ol' VFW began hosting a group of talented local musicians. Lured maybe at first by the siren's call of cheap beer (destined, I think, to be the scene's downfall) and subsequently enraptured by the amazing skewed country/folk outpourings of bands like Joe West, Percy Boyd, Hundred Year Flood and Goshen, a mongrel breed of Santa Fe music lovers returned in droves each Wednesday, for the beer, yes, for the scene, yes, but mainly for the music.
And then it ended, like a really awesome love affair cut short before it had a chance to grow stale and sexless. The sex was still there in Grant Hayunga (Goshen)'s sultry growl, in the honky tonk dance floor energy and in the cheesy but important excitement and inspiration the whole thing engendered. What followed was a lingering disappointment, an instant nostalgia and a lot of bitching.
That could have been all that followed, but fortunately it wasn't. Local artists John Treadwell and musician Nathan Moore (of ThaMuseMeant and Percy Boyd) just wouldn't let the energy go. So they transformed it into a record company, Frogville Records, which mainly involved turning Treadwell's house into a recording studio.
At last Saturday's Frogville Fest, which took place at the Santa Fe Brewing Company and highlighted almost every band on the label's roster, Moore noted the sacrifice Treadwell has made: "John's got 4x6 feet of privacy in his home," Moore said over the microphone. "The rest of it is recording space." It's true, I've been there.
Such excitement and willingness to do whatever is necessary to make it happen (even if it means turning your bathroom over to a hungry pack of local hillbilly genius songwriters to use for a sound booth) is, for better or for worse, what it takes to succeed in Santa Fe with a project like this. And even when the spirit is there, sometimes the gods are unwilling to help. So far, in Frogville's case, the ambition to make great music and just plain get it out there has worked. Not only worked-it has quietly exploded, like an underground uranium-tipped bomb up at Los Alamos: not much fanfare or hoo-haw, but just enough of a noise to tip you off that something important is happening.
This was no more obvious than at Frog Fest, which was, frankly, awesome. Thriving. Dynamic. Throngs of music-soaked fans buzzing about. The return of prodigal spawn ThaMuseMeant, the only jam band in the world worth listening to. A stunning sunset reminding us why we live here. Treadwell busy selling CD after CD, T-shirt after T-shirt (by the way, ThaMuseMeant's pink T's are awful cute). Goshen sounding better than ever, hammering away at a Bo Diddley-meets-Neil-Young vibe.
For all the joyous, convivial atmosphere, for all the great music, I still wondered, "What is making this work?" There were many times during the waning days of the Paramount, for instance, when I would enter the almost empty cavern of the main room there and wondered the opposite question: "Why isn't this working?" In many ways, the Paramount and Frogville share a story. Though the genre of music might be different, the narrative for both involves people who believed in something so deeply that they somehow created an entity, a movement almost, from scratch. They over-reached and built something big for Santa Fe, something perhaps too big for this town to sustain. For a long while, it looked like the Paramount would go on forever-Wednesday nights, remember, would be packed. Then, as the years went by, one night would be dead and ghostly, the next wall-to-wall people. It seemed odd and arbitrary-how does an entire town decide to go out one night, then the next week never show? I always thought if I could figure out the formula, I could sell it to club owners and promoters and make a fortune.
The Paramount made its run-much of it strong-before finally succumbing to the inevitable and closing its doors. I'm curious if Frogville will share the same fate, though of course I'm hopeful the answer is it won't. And I'm leaning towards a cautious optimism. Whereas the fate of clubs lies in the hands of a number of things-aging demographics, whether dance music is in social favor or not, national economy, national mood-Frogville's footing seems perhaps more firm. For one thing, the label's Americana repertoire seems in no danger of going out of style, especially in these parts. And, a related fact, West, Hundred Year Flood and, especially, ThaMuseMeant have a strong foothold 'round here; I'd argue they are some of the most popular bands in town, and there's no guesswork-audiences know what they're gonna get. It all adds up to something that just might last.
Moreover, the large turnout and response I saw at Frog Fest indicates that perhaps, as I've said before, the death of the Paramount (sad as it was) has opened up opportunities for a dynamism that wasn't there before. Places like the Brewing Company, Pachanga's Hideaway-hell, even Chilaca's-now have a little room to breathe, and there is, paradoxically, new potential in the air. As I noted to an acquaintance of mine who was praising the show Saturday, it's like busting up a boulder with a sledgehammer-from the destruction comes a thousand new entities. So maybe Frogville is the harbinger of Santa Fe's brave new musical world. At least on Saturday night, it definitely was.
