Trombonist Mike Fahn is looking for more light so that
he and his band can read their music. The back room
at Barbes is not dark per se, but it is lit in a way that
would be called quiet were it sound. Fahn is not on
stage, because the tiny, round stage is only big enough
for Chris Roselli's drum set. Instead, he is feeling his
way around the room, looking sheepishly unprepared
as Tom Guarna sets up his music stand light.
Performances at Barbes are very do-it-yourself,
and so Fahn seems to be in a real bind. Soon, of course,
someone points out that there is another light on the
wall, one that is pretty centrally located, too. The light,
like each of the others in the room, is a bare bulb
surrounded by an old record. Red walls and a red
ceiling swallow the light whole once he has turned it
on, and even with Fahn's new find, it still is not a
bright room.
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Trombonist Mike Fahn is looking for more light so that
he and his band can read their music. The back room
at Barbes is not dark per se, but it is lit in a way that
would be called quiet were it sound. Fahn is not on
stage, because the tiny, round stage is only big enough
for Chris Roselli's drum set. Instead, he is feeling his
way around the room, looking sheepishly unprepared
as Tom Guarna sets up his music stand light.
Performances at Barbes are very do-it-yourself,
and so Fahn seems to be in a real bind. Soon, of course,
someone points out that there is another light on the
wall, one that is pretty centrally located, too. The light,
like each of the others in the room, is a bare bulb
surrounded by an old record. Red walls and a red
ceiling swallow the light whole once he has turned it
on, and even with Fahn's new find, it still is not a
bright room.
While Fahn might have had trouble seeing his
lead sheets, for an audience the ambience is of
candlelight, even without an abundance of candles. It's
just that kind of room. A few tables and a bunch of
chairs line the side wall, a very different scene from
the full bar just a room away.
Barbes co-owners and musicians Olivier Conan
and Vincent Douglas moved the wooden bar in
themselves when they first found the space. Neither
had planned on opening a bar, but they did not think
a music club could survive without one. We wanted
to open up a music place actually before a bar. But we
figured it out that there's basically no way you can do
it. So we had to open a bar, but the main interest for us,
being musicians, is the music, says Douglas.
Because Conan's and Douglas' main concern is the
music, patrons of the bar, even as they are in a separate
room from the performances, are treated to a version
of the show. There is a microphone on the ceiling of
the back room, which is attached to speakers at the
bar. When the show starts, the CDs that they play for
the bar stop, and people at the bar therefore know
when to be quiet.
That does not necessarily mean that they are
always quiet during the shows, however. Recently,
baritone saxophonist and bass clarinetist Alex Harding
and pianist Lucian Ban performed at the space, and
non-audience members were heard laughing and
carousing in the other room. This did not particularly
interfere with the duo's bluesy meditations, but
Michael Attias, who books Wednesdays (aka Night of
the Ravished Limbs) at the club, says that one time the
cross-pollination of sound from one room to another
actually added to a show.
I remember one night when there was Anthony
[Coleman], Okkyung Lee and Doug Wieselman were
doing a trio, he says. There was some woman having
an incredible conversation and they started
incorporating it into their playing. I remember the
woman saying something like 'Yeah, Salman Rushdie,
he's a writer and he's a Muslim, too.' In the middle of
this quiet improvisation.
That kind of interplay and looseness pervades the
club. When you walk in off the street, there is not the
pomp and circumstance of a Manhattan night spot.
Shorts are welcome. The street is quiet. Conan and
Douglas even started Barbes off without allowing full
drum sets or electric basses, though they have since
relented (the rule was mainly to discourage rock
groups). But what they have not relented on is the
diverse booking that their Brooklyn space permits.
For all that New York is the center of the jazz
world (and, let's not be timid, the whole world for that
matter), its rents are so exorbitant that
experimentation is a difficult thing to do. Opening a
club in Brooklyn, then, is a good alternative to serving
$9 gin and tonics and only booking established acts.
While it may not relieve a club owner of the need to
sell alcohol, it does allow for the nurturing of acts that
might not sell out every night.
As a result, Barbes can pursue Attias' Ravished
Limbs series, can pursue Matt Otto's Tuesday night
straight-ahead jazz series, can pursue films, lectures
and music from around the world. The only persistent
theme is that these guys like to book accordion players
(they're French). Aside from that, the sights and
sounds filling the club are always changing.
August will see violinist Jenny Scheinman make
multiple appearances, as well as a show from the
always intriguing Ruckus Trio. September will even
see Mark Helias bring his group, Open Loose, to the
club. And Douglas favorites, eccentric circus rockers
One Ring Zero will stop by in the meantime (there is a
gigantic One Ring Zero poster on Barbes' wall).
Music fans who live in Park Slope are lucky to
have this comfortable little space in the neighborhood.
Musicians, a large percentage of whom live in
Brooklyn, are lucky to have a musician-run venue in
the neighborhood. And the folks over in Manhattan
would be good to get on the train and check it out,
because a good venue is a good venue. The rent may
be lower, but this is still New York, after all.
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