LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
The loft where Teletextile practices is sparse on one side (the living room side, where a metal futon and burnished yellow velour couch share the space with a small wooden keyboard and an asymmetrical painting), and rather lovingly cluttered on the other side (the practice space side, where stringed instruments surround a small harp, a Wurlitzer, and a stand of bells). These are – some of – the tools of Teletextile’s trade: what they use to draw out their lushly textured and layered songs. Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Pamela started using the name Teletextile years ago; the lineup has morphed into what it is now, with bassist Caitlin Gray and drummer Luke Schneiders. On a cold but bike-able Sunday night, the threesome sat down with some strong home-brewed coffee (Luke works at a coffee shop) and talked a little musical shop, starting with how they went from being a five-piece to being a three-piece in the new year. Teletextile plays Jezebel Music’s Feature Show on Thursday.

JM.com: You lost two members of your band recently. What happened?

Pamela: We’d been working on an album for two or three months and it wasn’t going at the pace I wanted. We were working with a new engineer who I really liked and we had some great conversations with him. So we got together and started talking about how we were going to make this work. The main factor was that two of our band members are just very busy people. Brian who played keys for us tours with Cymbals Eat Guitars and they’re out of the country or on the road three weeks out of the month sometimes. And our guitarist just started a Ph.D. program in September. It’s kind of been a holding pattern waiting around for them, and we realized that it’s not realistic to keep doing that, so we asked them to leave. We love them and they’re amazing musicians, and we miss them. And we’re scared as fuck to do this!
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
Brendan Coon wants you to know that his band Ludlow Lions is not named after Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side. That, he quips, “would be something half-baked out of West Side Story.” Coon is one quarter of this so-named Williamsburg-based band; the other quarters of the pie go to guitarist Jordan Melkin, bassist Oscar Albis Rodriguez, and a rotating drummer. Their self-released album is called No Stories, an appellation that fits when you consider that Coon doesn’t count himself as a storyteller. Despite this, JM.com got a lot of stories out of him when we sat down in a back booth at The Abbey for a ginger ale with Coon, who genially discussed finding his first bandmate on Craigslist, his life as an ex-poet and what it was like working with Dinosaur Jr. producer John Agnello. Ludlow Lions plays tomorrow’s JezebelMusic.com Feature Show.

JM.com: Tell me a little about how Ludlow Lions got together.

Brendan: With this current lineup, let’s see. I moved to NY in 2005, was looking to start a band, went through a bunch of people, and eventually found Jordan through fucking Craigslist, believe it or not. I had looked a couple of times, just generically, “lead guitarist interested in starting band,” searching things like that. And eventually I was like, why don’t I put in bands I like, just the band name, and see what happens. And pretty much my favorite band is XTC. So I put in XTC, and the first time I ever put it in, his ad popped up. And yeah, we just kind of hit it off musically, and personally. He came over to my apartment, with a little tiny amp, and from the minute he started playing, he was going for something that I was so into. No effects; his feel was very much musical and technical without ever showing the technical side of it – making it look easy. And his influences: he liked a lot of noise. So meeting him was the real sort of start of the band. The bass player’s name is Oscar; he’s fantastic. We met him through this place Headgear Studios. Oscar came in one day to do I think a bass session. Our drummer at the time was like, “you have to come down here and hear this guy.” So I kind of casually showed up under the auspices of hanging out with the drummer, but really just checking out Oscar. And he fucking blew me away. I know he’s the best musician I’ve ever played with. It’s been the three of us with different drummers since then.

JM.com: How about the name, Ludlow Lions?

Brendan: Ludlow Lions is – I’m originally from Ludlow, Massachusetts, and the local high school teams and grammar school teams, a lot of them are called Ludlow Lions. I played soccer, I think I was eight or nine, for some version of Ludlow Lions, and I was so fucking horrible, so bad. I wasn’t even really that into soccer, but it was a very huge sport in the town, and I was on the bench every game except a scrimmage and one game. So anyway, when looking for a name, I really was like, “what can I take that’s meaningful but also just of my own personal mythology or whatever you want to call it.” I don’t know why, that just stuck. Alliteration, two Ls. But everyone thinks it’s Ludlow Street, so then there’s something kind of shitty and cheesy about that, but I don’t really care. Because if honestly that was the name of it – “We’re the Ludlow Lions from fucking Ludlow Street, New York,” it would be something half-baked out of West Side Story, or something. Despite that, I really like the name.
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
If you were to have walked into the coffeeshop-bar at Brooklyn Fireproof on a recent wet Saturday evening, you would have noticed a trio quietly playing Jenga in the corner, drinking coffee out of large paper cups. Get closer and you would have noticed that the members of Brooklyn’s Tayisha Busay were also sporting glittery eyelids, huge dollar sign earrings, and finger gloves. Tessa Greenberg, Ariel Sims, and Brandon La La Vek took a break from playing Jenga to talk about their recent NASTYASS party at Glasslands, a propensity for singing about food, and their first moments with spandex.

JM.com: Tell me about your Glasslands show.

Tessa: It was awesome.

Ariel: It was phenomenal.

Brandon: We really had a good turnout, the acts were really fun, and everyone was really supportive of each other.

Tessa: Yeah, it’s cool to go to a dance party where everyone actually dances and lets loose and is completely uninhibited. And it’s not really about the sex and the glamour, and it’s just about the release and enjoyment and having fun. And we were really fortunate to get such a good group of performers and everyone was really talented and dressed in really amazing clothes. Just like entertainment; we like doing shows where it’s good music but it’s also really entertaining. So NASTYASS – it was the first of what we hope to be a series.

JM.com: Glasslands is a pretty small venue. Other venues you’ve performed, like Le Poisson Rouge or Santos Party House, are pretty sizable by comparison. Does that change your dynamic when you perform?

Tessa: We’ve actually adapted our set to work in any venue. So if it’s a bar and they don’t have a backline, we put all our tracks on an ipod and we just sing along, and Brandon will use his Kaossilator. So we’ll use a minimum of equipment electronically. And then if there’s a really good venue with good backline and sound, like Santos Party House, where the sound system wraps around the whole room, we’ll bring our whole set there. We have many controllers, a synthesizer, drums, our computers, it’s all pretty much going through a midi. so when we have the opportunity, we’ll set up completely. But if it’s a mid-sized venue, we have a half-setup. We’ll actually bring half of a keyboard.
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