Moveable Feast - Legends to Us

Moveable Feast L-R Tommy Barbarella, Peter Vircks, Kevin Washington, Jeff Bailey

I decided to postpone doing my taxes even more! Who needs a 1099 anyway?? And instead I went to go see the Jazz Residency at Icehouse. In February Kavyesh Kaviraj was holding court and for his final night and he tapped the artists he was inspired by to close the night. That includes this group Moveable Feast that was an absolute fixture of my early musical journey in the Twin Cities. Tommy Barbarella, Peter Vircks, Jeff Bailey and Kevin Washington. All heroes, all a handful of years older than me. In February of 2000 Heiruspecs put out our first CD. We had released a cassette a handful of years earlier, but the CD was a big step. The release show was at Foxfire Coffee Lounge. Opening up the show would be Abstract Pack and Moveable Feast. Primarily because everyone in Abstract Pack and Moveable Feast was old enough to drink we thought they were the coolest guys on the planet. But the reality is, these men from Abstract Pack, from Moveable Feast and from countless other groups that invited us onto their stages and vice versa became our family. Musical icons, teachers, lesson givers, they welcomed Heiruspecs into the fold, into the scene, into the brotherhood and sisterhood of Minnesota music. It meant and means the world to be. I had been taught how to write a press release by a woman named Kim Randall who ran a record label called No Alernative that I was interning for. That press release helped get some coverage for the CD. Including a write up from Jim Walsh in the Pioneer Press. Including Kim bringing a young Keith Harris to the show. Probably the lessons I learned between fall of 1999 and fall of 2000 gave me more foundation for my career than anything afterwards and maybe anything before. I had the groundwork from my work at St. Paul Central High School, but those first couple lessons from Kim Randall and from booking Heiruspecs directly into nightclubs around the Twin Cities was an education. And seeing Moveable Feast was part of that education.

I loved Moveable Feast, I listened to their records, I remember going to one particularly amazing show at the old Dakota in Bandana Square. Tommy Barbarella walked in to the venue about ten minutes before taking the stage looking like he was the hottest motherfucker on planet Earth, a stunningly beautiful female on his arm, his hair effortlessly and unexplainably wet, his keyboards somehow shinier than any surface on Earth. I remember thinking, “this is a cool thing to play music and hang with amazingly attractive women and walk into already sold out clubs and rip amazing solos in strange time signatures”. I still think that’s cool. And then I got to see what these men did to make it work, they practiced, they taught, they promoted, they networked, they listened to music. In something like music it helps immensely to just see people doing it. My first bass teacher was Sean Hurley, who is now a well-known LA bassist for big ass artists. But I got to accompany Sean to gigs, watch him set up his amp, he’d let me sit in on a tune. God bless the rest of Moveable Feast, but I’ve probably spent the most time around Kevin Washington and he embodies this spirit of passing it on. In the set before Moveable Feast he even brought up one of current high school age students to play on two tunes. That spirit of bringing musicians into the fold, moving this music thing forward into the next generation. It’s so strong, it’s so moving. Yesterday I saw just about everyone I know in the Twin Cities cool music scene in the audience: Kenne Thomas, LA Buckner, Brian Ziemniak, Omar Abdulkarim, Jordan Carlson, Zacc Harris, Brandon Commodore, Greg Schutte, The Lioness, Andrew Gillespie, Tanner Montague, Lucia Sarmiento, Erik Jacobson and I’m forgetting about a million other people. We were all there to see this band that in one way or another welcomed us into Minnesota music. The room felt so warm, so many memories rebubbling. And then they started playing. . .still wow. How are they remembering these songs? They were navigating these athletic jumps with unisons passages and intriguing textures lined up for each solo and they looked like they were a working band that would do it all again the next night. I left feeling so warm and connected and happy. And thankful. The path I saw these gentlemen starting on some 23 years ago. . .I took that path, I chose it so long ago I can’t see the other tines of the fork. Was it everything I thought it would be? Fuck no! I struggle in strange time signatures, I am not where I want to be as a bass player and I don’t know if I’ll find the time to get there. I have been so thoroughly disappointed in the Twin Cities music scene so many times. Disappointed by how we act, by who and why we anoint to higher ground. But everything I do, how I carry myself professionally, how I am able to communicate information, passion and humor surrounding the world of music it starts in the late 90s in a world laid out by Moveable Feast, Abstract Pack, Rhymesayers, Lifter Puller, Truth Maze, Mint Condition, The SPMC, Bellwether, Mason Jennings, Happy Apple. Some of these names mean something to you, some of them might not. It’s not a perfect foundation, far from it, but it’s my foundation, these were the people I would study to do what I do. And seeing Moveable Feast on stage last night, it just got me, it reminded me of this journey, my life’s work, their life’s work, the ups, the downs, the off nights, the on-nights, the days not even your tuner works properly and the days where you feel you could do anything imaginable on your instrument.

The journey isn’t done, but I’ll be honest with you, it’s half over by a lot of measures. I’ve made a lot of the records I’m going to make, I’ve done all the touring I care to do besides for when I can finally get that Pizza Luce Heiruspecs gig up in Duluth and I can go with my whole family. The journey continues but at this way station of Moveable Feast reuniting I glow, this is my world, this is my community and these are some of my big brothers. Thanks for doing it again last night.