Monday, February 25, 2008
ISSUE 22 - EDITORIAL
While it’s here
With all of the rejuvenation outside currently the opposite is on my mind. The trees are flush with green and azaleas are ripe in near fluorescent pastels but I am reminded of loss.
Silly as it sound, but this began with Brewster’s Millions. If you’re not familiar, it’s the story of a man who must spend thirty million dollars to inherit three hundred million. The task must be completed in thirty days yet tell no one and be penniless at the end of thirty days. It’s a very American film, highlighting the best and worst of people when money is involved.
The 1985 film starred Richard Pryor and John Candy. For Candy, it was the early stages of a movie career but for Pryor it seemed a lateral move. While the film did little to further or embrace Pryor’s comedic talents, it worked because Pryor is likable as Brewster in the film.
In a scene between Pryor and Candy it dawned on me, that both of these actors are dead. Pryor passed last year, Candy in 1994 at the age of 44. Pryor’s reputation unfortunately surpassed his film work; squandering acting roles in lieu of huge paychecks (Eddie Murphy has done much of the same over his career). Candy tended to play the same guy, a reliable comedian in the buddy role or one in which he’s the butt of the joke. However, we all know who they are; we all remember them for many reasons.
It happened again watching 1987’s Good Morning Vietnam. A scene in which Robin Williams gets lambasted by J.T. Walsh and Bruno Kirby happens mid way in the movie. It dawns on me that both Walsh and Kirby are dead as well.
Each of these films is twenty years old and twenty years is a long time but it was a strange realization that these actors were gone, hard to wrap my head around. It wasn’t a connection between age and mortality. Then it made sense, as people we get used to things, get comfortable in knowing they’ll always be there. We all know the average life span and generally act accordingly.
A close friend recently attended the funeral of his ninety year old grandmother. Repeat, ninety years old. By all accounts that’s a long life. But she wasn’t sick, she fell and struck her head and died because of that. My grandparents passed at an early age so it was hard for me to assimilate but the way I related was the fact that she’d always been there. I met her once, long ago, and was a very kind woman, the image that occurs when you think of grandmothers.
This boils down to appreciation and creating in the face of living. Mothers have children and become grandmothers, bringing life into the world and opportunity, more chances. Women and men creating life is by far the most creative act of all. Some of these children grow up to be amazing. Creative people add more color to the world, adding life to life, whether through film, painting, literature or music.
Especially music. Like photos, music is an important cataloging agent for anyone’s life. One Sunday evening years ago the news broke on television that Joey Ramone died from leukemia. The Ramones were gone. No one would ever get to see them play again. All those years of non stop touring, they were always there. You went to high school and they were touring, you went to college, they were touring, you met someone and started planning a life, they were still doing it. Then Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone died. That was it. I couldn’t believe that band did not exist anymore in the world. It was one thing to disband but hard to imagine they weren’t around anymore. I lived in a world where the Ramones were gone.
We get so comfortable, knowing that someone will live a long time, always be here. But does that necessitate treating them with such a laissez-fare attitude? We should value it while there’s time. Nothing should be so expendable. It recalls a line from a Blind Melon song, And I can’t understand why something good’s got to die before we miss it?
- Brian Tucker
With all of the rejuvenation outside currently the opposite is on my mind. The trees are flush with green and azaleas are ripe in near fluorescent pastels but I am reminded of loss.
Silly as it sound, but this began with Brewster’s Millions. If you’re not familiar, it’s the story of a man who must spend thirty million dollars to inherit three hundred million. The task must be completed in thirty days yet tell no one and be penniless at the end of thirty days. It’s a very American film, highlighting the best and worst of people when money is involved.
The 1985 film starred Richard Pryor and John Candy. For Candy, it was the early stages of a movie career but for Pryor it seemed a lateral move. While the film did little to further or embrace Pryor’s comedic talents, it worked because Pryor is likable as Brewster in the film.
In a scene between Pryor and Candy it dawned on me, that both of these actors are dead. Pryor passed last year, Candy in 1994 at the age of 44. Pryor’s reputation unfortunately surpassed his film work; squandering acting roles in lieu of huge paychecks (Eddie Murphy has done much of the same over his career). Candy tended to play the same guy, a reliable comedian in the buddy role or one in which he’s the butt of the joke. However, we all know who they are; we all remember them for many reasons.
It happened again watching 1987’s Good Morning Vietnam. A scene in which Robin Williams gets lambasted by J.T. Walsh and Bruno Kirby happens mid way in the movie. It dawns on me that both Walsh and Kirby are dead as well.
Each of these films is twenty years old and twenty years is a long time but it was a strange realization that these actors were gone, hard to wrap my head around. It wasn’t a connection between age and mortality. Then it made sense, as people we get used to things, get comfortable in knowing they’ll always be there. We all know the average life span and generally act accordingly.
A close friend recently attended the funeral of his ninety year old grandmother. Repeat, ninety years old. By all accounts that’s a long life. But she wasn’t sick, she fell and struck her head and died because of that. My grandparents passed at an early age so it was hard for me to assimilate but the way I related was the fact that she’d always been there. I met her once, long ago, and was a very kind woman, the image that occurs when you think of grandmothers.
This boils down to appreciation and creating in the face of living. Mothers have children and become grandmothers, bringing life into the world and opportunity, more chances. Women and men creating life is by far the most creative act of all. Some of these children grow up to be amazing. Creative people add more color to the world, adding life to life, whether through film, painting, literature or music.
Especially music. Like photos, music is an important cataloging agent for anyone’s life. One Sunday evening years ago the news broke on television that Joey Ramone died from leukemia. The Ramones were gone. No one would ever get to see them play again. All those years of non stop touring, they were always there. You went to high school and they were touring, you went to college, they were touring, you met someone and started planning a life, they were still doing it. Then Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone died. That was it. I couldn’t believe that band did not exist anymore in the world. It was one thing to disband but hard to imagine they weren’t around anymore. I lived in a world where the Ramones were gone.
We get so comfortable, knowing that someone will live a long time, always be here. But does that necessitate treating them with such a laissez-fare attitude? We should value it while there’s time. Nothing should be so expendable. It recalls a line from a Blind Melon song, And I can’t understand why something good’s got to die before we miss it?
- Brian Tucker
ISSUE 22 - SEX & THE PORT CITY
How to say NO! To moochers
Out-of-work-by choice, users, mooching friends . . . it's time we learned how to say no. If you can't, you may find your money drained along with your time and emotional energy.
We all have them in our lives, those people who choose to be unemployed. They are our friends, lovers, brothers or even a next-door-neighbor. I have an overstocked number of them in my life for some reason. They choose unemployment for philosophical arguments. They avoid a regular job because it takes away from their poetry writing. I know a user friend who once said to me after I suggested she find a job, “Oh no, that would kill me.” They always manage, so why bother punching in at the time clock now? They get by on the kindness of strangers, the reliability of over-giving parents and taking advantage of everyone’s politeness. They ask me to drive them all over town since I have a full tank of gas and I have an auto that runs or heck that I have a car. We aid them because we feel we must give alms to beggars, even those who choose the impoverished life. I could forgive them and even admire their work-free lives if they actually made a living from the poetry “Ode to a toad” writing or if it wasn’t the double standard they live in, “Money is the root of all evil, don’t sell out to the establishment, may I borrow $200.00?” By grace, there are church’s in the Wilmington metro area that have funds set aside to help the needy, particularly people who are down and out without choice. I have a friend who makes the rounds to these churches and asks them to pay her bills and sometimes she gets them to pay her mortgage. She promises to stop asking and donate a return once her movie script is sold, right after she writes it and may she borrow my computer, or until the pine cones hand dipped in gold paint sell for big bucks!
The users also try to take up our free time, we the overburdened, underpaid slave to industry laborer. The moochers not only ask but sometimes expect us to give up our days away from the salt mine to run long distance errands for them, or in an acquaintance’s case, pick up stones lining her flower beds. “It would take me all day if you don’t help,” she woes. Let me think on that? Give up a beautiful perfect Sunday afternoon at the beach to recuperate from the week’s stress or schedule an appointment with a chiropractor to fix vertebrae I strained from bending over for 8 hours picking up 5000 stones? I am a sucker for a pretty face or a teary sob story but enough is enough.
Liz, my long term friend, tells me that among the relationship skills we should learn early in life -- but usually don't -- is the ability to say no. Saying no is essential if we want to preserve relationships with many of the people, including loved ones, who are trying to get us to say yes.
Take a minute to think. The person who's making the request (or demand) probably spent a lot of time mulling over all the reasons why you should agree. You, on the other hand, may have been hit out of the blue. You can put up your hand, say "I need a moment" or even walk into another room to collect your thoughts.
Don't make a sucker's choice. In our panic, we may think we have to choose between two bad alternatives: "I have to give her a loan, or she'll never speak to me again!" (Practiced moochers are, by the way, experts in backing people into this mind-set.) The reality is that we usually have far more alternatives than we initially think. Taking a moment to consider those, and what we really want out of the situation, can keep us from grabbing a bad choice.
Go public. Tell the other person where you stand as soon as you can. This is also known as "articulating your boundaries," and tells the listener that "you're now driving the conversation," Instead of responding to their arguments, you're setting out what you will and won't do. Most petitioners "will see the answer coming" once you've gone public, and if you stick to your guns will shorten or end their attempts to persuade you. "Don't just say no," "Soften the blow by telling them why." Make it clear that your reasons aren't a personal reflection on the petitioner, but are instead solidly held beliefs. They will either choose to remain friends or move onto the next gullible party and that is all I have to say because right now I have some gold painted pine cones, I just bought, to hang up somewhere.
Out-of-work-by choice, users, mooching friends . . . it's time we learned how to say no. If you can't, you may find your money drained along with your time and emotional energy.
We all have them in our lives, those people who choose to be unemployed. They are our friends, lovers, brothers or even a next-door-neighbor. I have an overstocked number of them in my life for some reason. They choose unemployment for philosophical arguments. They avoid a regular job because it takes away from their poetry writing. I know a user friend who once said to me after I suggested she find a job, “Oh no, that would kill me.” They always manage, so why bother punching in at the time clock now? They get by on the kindness of strangers, the reliability of over-giving parents and taking advantage of everyone’s politeness. They ask me to drive them all over town since I have a full tank of gas and I have an auto that runs or heck that I have a car. We aid them because we feel we must give alms to beggars, even those who choose the impoverished life. I could forgive them and even admire their work-free lives if they actually made a living from the poetry “Ode to a toad” writing or if it wasn’t the double standard they live in, “Money is the root of all evil, don’t sell out to the establishment, may I borrow $200.00?” By grace, there are church’s in the Wilmington metro area that have funds set aside to help the needy, particularly people who are down and out without choice. I have a friend who makes the rounds to these churches and asks them to pay her bills and sometimes she gets them to pay her mortgage. She promises to stop asking and donate a return once her movie script is sold, right after she writes it and may she borrow my computer, or until the pine cones hand dipped in gold paint sell for big bucks!
The users also try to take up our free time, we the overburdened, underpaid slave to industry laborer. The moochers not only ask but sometimes expect us to give up our days away from the salt mine to run long distance errands for them, or in an acquaintance’s case, pick up stones lining her flower beds. “It would take me all day if you don’t help,” she woes. Let me think on that? Give up a beautiful perfect Sunday afternoon at the beach to recuperate from the week’s stress or schedule an appointment with a chiropractor to fix vertebrae I strained from bending over for 8 hours picking up 5000 stones? I am a sucker for a pretty face or a teary sob story but enough is enough.
Liz, my long term friend, tells me that among the relationship skills we should learn early in life -- but usually don't -- is the ability to say no. Saying no is essential if we want to preserve relationships with many of the people, including loved ones, who are trying to get us to say yes.
Take a minute to think. The person who's making the request (or demand) probably spent a lot of time mulling over all the reasons why you should agree. You, on the other hand, may have been hit out of the blue. You can put up your hand, say "I need a moment" or even walk into another room to collect your thoughts.
Don't make a sucker's choice. In our panic, we may think we have to choose between two bad alternatives: "I have to give her a loan, or she'll never speak to me again!" (Practiced moochers are, by the way, experts in backing people into this mind-set.) The reality is that we usually have far more alternatives than we initially think. Taking a moment to consider those, and what we really want out of the situation, can keep us from grabbing a bad choice.
Go public. Tell the other person where you stand as soon as you can. This is also known as "articulating your boundaries," and tells the listener that "you're now driving the conversation," Instead of responding to their arguments, you're setting out what you will and won't do. Most petitioners "will see the answer coming" once you've gone public, and if you stick to your guns will shorten or end their attempts to persuade you. "Don't just say no," "Soften the blow by telling them why." Make it clear that your reasons aren't a personal reflection on the petitioner, but are instead solidly held beliefs. They will either choose to remain friends or move onto the next gullible party and that is all I have to say because right now I have some gold painted pine cones, I just bought, to hang up somewhere.
ISSUE 22 - MUSICIAN STEPHEN SELLERS
by Brian Tucker
photos Ava Bock
Two years ago Stephen Sellers lay in the top bunk in a Connecticut correctional facility, his face eight inches away from the ceiling. Long before he began his twenty five day stay in the Connecticut prison a previous inmate drew a circle on the ceiling, a bare circle, nothing more. Sellers stared at the circle, feeling the way he’d felt for a long time, feeling sad, confused, depressed, thinking about how much it sucked to be locked up.
Sellers had lived a life fueled by self doubt and self medication, a life where music, alcohol, anything filled the void. There were no more second chances. He’d finally been handed a possession charge there was no way to get out of with money and lawyers. The road led him here, locked up. He was in a minimum security prison, safe away from the five days spent in a holding facility where all types of inmates shared space, with dangerous men. Sellers was lucky, luckier than the young man running his mouth and subsequently held down and raped not twenty feet away.
Sellers lay in the bunk staring at the ceiling, at the circle drawn by someone else. And a switch flipped inside him, as efficiently as the clock going from the ninth hour to the tenth. He figured it out. He knew what the problem was.
In the spring off 2006 Sellers left a CD behind a tiny Buddha at the front door of my house. The CD was Beatific Star and it was the start of the longest gestation of anything I’d write about. The CD is magnificent, a collage of music styles and, I would learn later on, a hard look into his own life. It is an album I’d return to frequently, play again and played loudly in the living room as I worked. I struggled with Beatific Star trying to review it for Avenue, it was so thick musically, so strong thematically, I honestly didn’t feel I could do it justice. I didn’t think I could tell a reader what I heard, how beautifully varied the album is. It is a collection of music you could listen to and craft a novel at the same time. Moving along like a soundtrack to something heart wrenching and hopeful, it offers musical shades of Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nails and Roky Erickson. It’s acoustic and bombastic, the production spare and elegant, a Mercator Projection of music.
Sellers sits at the edge his front porch off Orange Street smoking a cigarette, looking content, bemused almost. His silence could be interpreted as someone sitting and stewing. I walk over and upon standing up he flashes a wide, tight smile. His blue eyes glisten and get small from smiling so wide. He’s in his late thirties, tall with a face textured and interesting, lined and angular. Seeing the smile I believe he may be the only person I know who looks his age and yet seems like a new born child, happy with what the world can offer.
“You want to see the new van?” he asks excitedly. I realize then that he was not staring out into space when I drove up but looking at the new white cargo van out on the street. Inside the van he points out work he’s done on it. There’s a storage area built at the rear doors to keep musical equipment from being stolen and the thick carpet on top for people to sleep while driving. It is a large van able to hold a lot of people and Sellers is planning to tour this year.
Back inside the house he plays a new song. It pours through the speakers reeking of psychedelic tones. It’s ethereal with a subtle groove.
“I’m trying to find a way to get that psychedelic country thing going and have parts in that are real tripped out,” he explains.
Placed center in the living room is a dark blue drum set. There are two small tables he made from nice, thin wood that look like a cross between the Jenga game and Frank Lloyd Wright. The room is filled with music equipment. Seller’s second album, Getting Born, was recorded in this small room decorated with photographs and diminutive pieces of art. There is no television, only furniture, music equipment for playing and recording and several shelves of books, CD’s and cassettes. That’s right, cassettes, many homemade from bands that have disbanded. It’s symbolic of the time passed since Sellers played in the Roanoke, Virginia band The Wanderers, living in a band house and going to college.
The road that began in Roanoke is long and winding and ended in Connecticut. Roads anew, life began again moving to Wilmington. It would be straightforward to talk about redemption, but perhaps rebirth is more appropriate.
Sellers played drums in The Wanderers, a serious touring band in which the members lived in a house together. At seventeen Sellers and a friend were digesting a lot of punk music. They bought an album by the Big Boys that on the back said START YOUR OWN BAND.
“We had been listening to all this music and thinking to ourselves this doesn’t sound that hard. It doesn’t sound like Rush or Black Sabbath or something we can’t do. We sat around one day and said, ‘we’re a band.’ All we have to do is get instruments and learn how to play. Starting today we’re a band.”
The friend said he wanted to play drums and Sellers agreed to play bass. Walking home from the friend’s home that same day he came across a drum set a family had thrown to the side of the road. It was so little and so light he carried the drum pieces home. He called up the friend telling him about the drums he found.
“I found a drum set so I’m the drummer,” he boasted. The friend agreed, went to a pawn shop and bought a used bass guitar. Sellers recounts the story, remembering the humble beginnings, animated and excited as if it just happened. He mimics playing an instrument.
“We got together a few days later and played dunh dunh dunh and we were a band, man! We went and got a guitar player and guy who could sing. But we couldn’t keep a singer. Then we found this guy named Jim who was in another band but got on board with us. We became The Waltons. And Jim could write good songs and was the drive behind the band. He was the guy who said we’re really gonna do songs, we’re gonna record, make music and play live shows. Do what other punk bands are doing. That was really exciting.”
For two years The Waltons played punk but morphed into playing psychedelic surf rock. The band became The Wanderers whose members ended up staying together, living in a house together, buying a van and touring. The band garnered some play from record labels. The Wanderers lived in a downtown neighborhood in Roanoke, Virginia where there was a bevy of musicians. The house was a functioning band living space and practice house for several bands. It was then Sellers met Pat Starkey.
“There was a lot of coming and going. Pat and his girlfriend broke up and he moved in the band house. We new he had music equipment and played in a band. Jim eventually went on to do another project years later and started a band called Vim Vigor Vitality, that had a cool, complex rockabilly sound.”
In Roanoke, Sellers attended college as did other members of the band. Everyone went to college within driving distance of Roanoke so The Wanderers never broke up.
“We all drove from whatever college we were going to into town on the weekends and played gigs or practiced. The thing slowed down but never died, always ramped up during the summertime. We would do these loops, playing Outer Banks, West Virginia, Tennessee and in North Carolina. We played Raleigh, Charlotte.”
All these Roanoke musicians were in respective punk bands in Roanoke. Mary Huff from Southern Culture on the Skids was in a punk band, NMP, and Sellers describes them as the best hardcore band in Roanoke. They also made it big, serving as inspiration for any band in the area.
“Mary was their bass player and not only were they the best punk band, but they had a girl in the band. The Walton’s were inspired by that and got two girl singers. Mary and Dave moved to Chapell Hill and started playing,” he says.
Time passed and Sellers reconnected with Mary. “We would get notes about them and then all of a sudden I’m talking with Mary and she says ‘We’re on Geffen records.’ I was like, Get the fuck outta here, man!” After Southern Culture on the Skids first release, Too Much Pork for Just One Fork, he started seeing CD reviews everywhere. “I think I saw a blurb in Rolling Stone. They got big in Australia. And then they started touring the world. I remember thinking, holy shit, it happened to some people from Roanoke. It can happen. At that point I didn’t know anybody who was signed to a major record deal and somebody was footing the bill for their tour. Look at their tour schedule; they’re relentless, over 200 gigs a year. They inspire me, for playing and sticking together,” he says and pauses, thinking for a moment, “because it’s hard.”
The Wanderers eventually grew apart. Sellers and Pat Starkey loaded up a car full of stuff and moved down to Austin, Texas. The pair was a “wrecking crew together” and subsequently their lives split, selling everything they owned down there, music equipment and all and moved away. Starkey stayed in Virginia and Sellers went north.
At thirty, Sellers moved to Connecticut where he took on a job with ESPN and it was his first job, having spent his twenties playing in a band as a moderate living. “I wouldn’t call it a living,” he says without humor.
Seller’s life advanced but problems still existed, there was now an influx of money working a good job for ESPN. But money meant material things, cars and nightlife which led to continued drinking and then cocaine. Money from a high profile job at ESPN made it much easier to fill Seller’s personal voids.
After six years in Connecticut and numerous arrests to his name, things hit a wall. A lawyer couldn’t save him anymore and without help he wouldn’t be able to help himself. But prison didn’t do the trick as one might think; it wasn’t incarceration per se, or the horrors of concrete confinement. He finally figured something out and it just took longer than most people. Spending thirty days there - five in a holding area, surrounded by men far more dangerous than him, and the remaining twenty five in a minimum security prison, something happened that he finds it difficult to explain to people.
“I’m laying in bed one night on the top bunk and the roof is only about eight inches off the top of my nose. I’m laying there basically the same person I’ve been for the last twenty years, very sad and depressed and confused and really not thinking about anything but how much it sucks to be locked up. And I’m staring up at the ceiling and some dude had written a circle on the ceiling and laying there staring at the circle but it was like somebody flipped a fuckin’ switch. And all of a sudden it dawned on me that the problem was not the world, that the problem was me, and how I see the world. And I know that sounds like a really simple thing and I think most adult people know that, that how you view the world is how good or how bad your life can be. That was the first time that had ever dawned on me.”
He pauses and looks straight ahead, thinking hard about his next sentence and then smiles.
“I woke up the next day it was like I was walking around in a new skin.”
Leaving prison nearly a month later Sellers knew substance abuse was going to be a problem, a large hurdle. For the first time in his life a request for help was made. He knew he had a problem, because he kept getting locked up over and over again, kept ending up in front of judges, getting DWI’s, possession charges, possession with intent to distribute charges. He knew there were all these problems – police, judges, the lawyers and parents and friends, everybody knew, including him, he just didn’t know how to stop. He ended up saying words that were difficult to say. Help me.
“Ask and you shall receive. That was the first time I asked for some help. Everywhere I turned, my friends, my family, as long as I was willing to ask for help. I got it. That hurdle became a little easier to get over. Then it was about how to be happy, how to have some confidence in myself. How to figure out who I am. Those are tough questions, those are tough questions for someone in a natural state of development I think. And for someone whose growth gets stunted as a teenager because you’re not asking the difficult questions, you’re not trying to move forward into adulthood and figure out how to be happy and productive.”
That combination laid groundwork for drugs and alcohol. Sellers was in a vicious and repetitive circle in which he needed to have people around him. He felt uncomfortable alone, needing to always have a girlfriend. Everything that made him feel deficient was replaced with something to fill the void – girlfriends, music and all the people who were interested in him because he played in a band.
“I thought that made me something. Made me cool, made people want to be around me,” he says, knowing it delayed the inevitable. “When I look back on that period of time it’s like looking at someone else’s life. If someone had told me four years ago that I could buy a guitar, that I could write one song, that I could be the guy to put together a band. I would have told them they had the wrong guy. I used to get tanked by myself during the day and daydream about, ‘am I the kind of guy that could start a band? Because wouldn’t that be cool, to be in a band again? That was something I look back on fondly. Wouldn’t be cool to front a band? I’d look at myself in the mirror and say I’m not that guy.”
Gary Anderson, a member of The Wanderers had heard of Wilmington. After the band split up, Gary moved to Wilmington and formed the surf band called The Derailers. The Derailers came back and played Roanoke and told his old band mates, Sellers included, that Wilmington was awesome, that they should move there. That was ten years ago.
After release from prison in 2003 and going clean, Sellers knew he needed to take a period of time, a long look at his life and figure out what he wanted to do with it. He asked what did he look back on and have good memories about, what made him happy, what is viable? It wasn’t material things or substances. His thoughts led to playing music, something that always made him happy. Creating music, practicing, touring, recording – all things he had great memories of and made him feel creative and alive.
Sellers was living in Roanoke, having lost his job, with a drained bank account from legal fees and without a driver’s license. He was at square one, in his mid thirties and without direction.
But he’d always wanted to write a song. He wondered, could he do it? Playing in a band for a long time taught him how to put one together. But he didn’t know.
“I thought I’d go out and buy a couple of guitars,” he says. “An acoustic and an electric.” Initially he bought a set of drums thinking he’d play in a band again. While looking for drum heads he saw a guitar that matched the blue in his drum set and put money down on it. He said, “I’m gonna kill myself if I don’t get the guitar that matches the drum set, even if I don’t learn how to play it.”
Buying a guitar was beneficial, was really for healing and purging. He didn’t know if it would work or not. He surmised that if it didn’t work that’s okay, but if it did, what would happen? It was an idea that started to grow and there was a reason it continued.
“I needed to focus on connecting with people. These were all problems that I had in the past that led me into substance abuse, that lifestyle. I think it was a lot about self confidence. I felt very out of place everywhere I went, never really developed. I never took the time to figure out who I am and develop that, which is why I decided to figure out something to do with my life that makes me happy,” he explains.
Sellers could look back on his life and recognize that he was unhappy for a long time. He figured, there were times when he was happy, so, was it possible to get back to that place? That was the catalyst for a return to creating music.
“It has taken my life in a direction that I thought; wouldn’t it be nice if my life was like that? It all has to do with trying to get out of bed in the morning and trying to connect with people, trying to be a loving person wherever I go? That’s difficult for me, that’s not natural. For twenty years of my adult life I really didn’t live that way. I lived as a scared person, scared of the world and other people, and success and failure and relationships and not having relationships. Just a very conflicted person.”
But he now owned an electric guitar and set about seeing whether he could write a song. He wrote one that ended up on Beatific Star. Some time passed and others taught him how to play chords. He bought simple recording equipment and found there was much to write about, emotions viable for songs.
“It started happening and I spent a lot of time doing it.” Listening to other artists helped him see possibilities in crafting music. Wilco had a lot of impact on him, how Jeff Tweedy put a song together, what was allowed and what was not allowed, what could be done in the middle of a song.
“It blew me away that you could have noise and nothing but feedback in the middle of a song and make it more beautiful than an E chord. Then I stared listening to this weird Miles Davis CD On the Corner.”
After learning two chords “on that thing,” referring to the guitar in which he wrote a song, having enough words to fill in all the verses and choruses. Knowing how to play the drums led to getting back into recording. Sellers attended engineering school so he knew how to record. The problem was that even though he once recorded bands, he’d never done so as a one man operation. But a fire was lit under him, creatively and spiritually. He recorded a five song demo, the only five songs he’d written. “I needed to record them and see how they sounded.”
At the same time he was trying to form a band in Roanoke but nothing came together like he wanted, not a single practice. Months went by and practices still weren’t happening. A friend needed help moving to Wilmington and once in town he looked up Gary Anderson. Sellers found a phone book and Anderson lived not far from the apartment Sellers would eventually move into. Anderson answered the door to find Sellers standing outside. Anderson was a father now, doing well. Sellers asked if he moved down would Gary like to start a band. Yes. Sellers said he’d be back in a month.
Sellers packed his things and moved down, setting big goals. In a year he promised himself that he’d have a full length CD. With only the five song demo he began to hammer away at the first full length. Upon nearly finishing that first CD and spending so much time practicing every day, he searched for other musicians. He went places people were hanging out, people he thought he might have something in common with. He was steadfast in looking. Sellers was reaching out to people, making contact. E-mailing.
He e-mailed me when Bootleg was Avenue. The e-mail was simple: “I moved down, I’m a musician.”
Everywhere Sellers went he did what he’d never done before. He asked. He met the people at the Independent Art Company by walking in the front door and saying, “I don’t know anyone in town, I play music, what are you guys doing in here?”
“I met a bunch of musicians at the Juggling Gypsy or did so walking up to musicians after a show at the Soapbox and introducing myself. A friend of mine is on the roller derby team and one of the girls she skates with, Missy, plays drums.”
He asked for her phone number.
“I called her and said I’m from Virginia, I played in a band in Virginia, I live here now and want to start a band. She said ‘I’m from Virginia, I played in a band in Virginia and I wanna play in a band.’
Two of the first people he met after moving to Wilmington were Rich and Shawna at Rebel Books. “I was shooting the shit with Rich one night and Rich said, “I’m a bass player, I’m from Virginia, and I want to be in a band.’
So it was three Virginians hanging out in Wilmington who played in bands with mutual friends, had passed each other on tours, playing in different places, all these bits and pieces in common. And soon they were sitting in Seller’s living room getting ready to make music. Missy, Gary, Rich and Sellers were now Revolution Summer.
The four would park stools in the middle of the room and sit and sing to each other. “I always think its great as its happening ‘cause I’m so happy to be doing it,” Sellers says. He recounts a story of people hanging out at the house, singing and playing. The next day a neighbor spoke to him, practically for the first time, saying “Ya’ll sounded real good last night.”
Sellers describes this as a ‘payoff’ for all the hard work in trying to create. The payoffs are far and few but hearing something like that, something earnest and simple, makes all the effort worth it.
Sellers’ songs for Revolution Summer were fairly simple, comprised of A,E,G, and D chords or just power chords. Rich was a quick study and Missy had played in bands and they all knew how songs were put together. Gary brought his lap steel guitar and added to the band’s sound. Missy and Stephen sang together and something clicked.
“The combination of the lap steel, the combination of the instruments or the simplicity of the songs,” he explains. It was something Sellers, for a long time, believed would happen – he just didn’t know how. And now it had. By meeting people and asking. That was a year ago.
Beatific Star was recorded in Sellers’ apartment on Castle Street. He did it all himself, playing, recording, completely DIY and homemade. The process can’t be anymore hand crafted, hand crafted like the beautiful tables in his home made from scraps of fine wood.
“The first song I wrote was ‘One Love’ off the first CD. Laura Spencer and Addie Wuensch sang on it. It’s nothing but A and E the whole time.”
The song is about the worst day Sellers ever experienced, the day the door slammed shut, in which all the ways out of trouble were used up. There was another charge and knew he would be going before a judge again. His lawyer told him to quit his job because the lawyer couldn’t save him this time.
“He told me I was going to jail.”
Stephen felt broken, depressed and lonely. Pulling all the curtains in the apartment, he locked the door. Hiding. He sat quietly with a fifth of bourbon and a refrigerator of booze. Some grass. Sitting alone in a dark apartment getting tanked. While it was happening he began to think about what a sad existence to live, to be so scared that someone will knock on the door.
“I’m in there with the only things that I trust to make me feel good,” He says, “and I just felt so defeated.”
‘One Love’ is about that day. The song sounds like it’s about a girl but it’s about booze. It’s about being locked away, about how obsessed he’d become, how trusting of substances much in the way a husband might confide in his wife. Writing the song was in part cathartic. It seemed to feel good to write the song so that now he can be honest about it, can tell people about it. To feel naked and be more comfortable. And he tried another song about a past relationship to see if he could feel better about it as well. And it did. This led to thinking about specific things, markers in his life that encompassed a life falling towards substance abuse.
Take the first song on Beatific Star, ‘Page 91,’ about an eighteen year old Sellers starting to discover drinking and grass, being able to do whatever he wanted to do when he wanted to do it in the first year of college.
“I discovered that this stuff temporarily solves all my problems. If I’m worried about something alcohol makes that go away. Grass seems to make that go away. This stuff is kind of a solution. ‘Page 91’ is about being 18 and the entire CD runs up until ‘Away to the Sun’ about coming out on the other side, of finding a way to be happy.”
Addie and Sellers worked opposite shifts at A Little Bit Hippy at the Cotton Exchange. He worked when Addie didn’t, never really meeting. Addie came in to work for a check one day and they finally spoke. The conversation was about art and the jewelry she made. Music came up and Addie mentioned that she and her friend Laura hang out and harmonize together. Stephen invited them over to his apartment.
On a Wednesday about five o’clock Beatific Star was given additional flavor. Until then he wrote and played all the parts, the only person involved in everything. That Wednesday was the first time he heard anyone else interject in his music. Addie and Laura came up with a harmony on ‘One Love’ and it was a revelation.
“I didn’t know that anything I wrote could sound like that,” he says. “On that CD the vocals are very tentative; there are some moments where it sounds like I’m sneaking up to the microphone and trying to figure what’s gonna come out of my mouth when I take a breath. That got a little better on Getting Born. But when I heard them sing, they sounded like angels or something. So beautiful.”
After the Beatific Star album was finished - cases, inserts and the discs all made at his apartment, Sellers felt there was more to do.
“I’ve had more. I’m not done. I still have a bunch of songs ready to start.”
That next project was Getting Born. He loved the way Laura and Addie sounded, the way their voices harmonized together. He offered it to them to work on. Addie had recently moved back from New York and jumped on it. They sat in Stephen’s living room and hammered away at Getting Born, both of them adding a song each to the album. “The whole thing came together in less than eight weeks.”
They were all interested in playing the material out live, doing so last winter at Bottega to a full room, playing the songs sparsely, with just vocals, acoustic guitar and tambourine. It was a throwback to how people may have played in the sixties or during the early thirties, acoustic and heavy singing. By then, Sellers had two full lengths completed, a band and the upcoming project with old friend Pat Starkey, Aardvark.
Aardvark was born out of the RPM (Record Production Month) Challenge. It’s a contest put on by two guys in New England, an open ended contest encouraging people to get involved in the artistic process, to create an album of music during the 28 days of February. The only rules are that, you’re on the honor system, that it all be recorded in the month of February. In part, it’s to get people that have been hanging onto songs and not doing anything with them or half completed projects, to make an album of music. Artists can use older material but they encourage people to do a project from square one, beginning to end, in those 28 days.
A third of Aardvark was recorded in Virginia in Pat Starkey’s basement. Sellers made the trip with different ideas about what the album would be. Nothing was written until the pair got together.
“I thought he had a bunch of music ready to record and was counting on me to record about twenty minutes worth of stuff and then go up there and record his stuff and then pile it all together onto one CD.”
Sellers thought they were going to start making noises and turn them into songs. He returned with pretty basic guitar and drum tracks. “It was a scramble and that’s why there’s some filler on that thing.”
Starkey and Sellers reconnected years ago after both of their lives had been in a tail spin. Sellers was living in Connecticut and getting out of prison. He returned to Virginia and heard a rumor that Starkey cleaned up seven years ago and was doing well, having a good life.
“So I looked him up and asked for help. That’s how we reconnected and he helped me start the process of getting clean. Then there we are four years later in a basement playing music again, both clean. That was the amazing part of that process, that me and this guy that had played music in Virginia, we’re back together in his house recording this project and I wrote some lyrics around that experience. But it lit a fire under Pat because after I left he called me two days later saying he ordered microphones, a 16-track, a keyboard, and musical equipment. The whole process, Pat wanted to keep doing it.”
The members of Revolution Summer have been going in different directions lately. Missy is working on another movie, Rich and Shawna are moving back to Los Angeles and trying to sell their house. Everyone wants to get together.
Sellers likes to stay busy, he likes to and probably needs to. But is it potentially harmful to take so much on? He doesn’t necessarily think so.
“I have a tendency to take on too much stuff. I also have a tendency to underestimate myself. I’ve wrestled with it all of my life. It’s back to not having enough confidence in my own abilities. I’m at a point where I’m willing to take on a lot of responsibilities. Sometimes it’ll be three o’clock in the morning and I’ve been up 24 hours and I’ll have three more days of stuff I’ve got mapped out to do, obligated, or want to do. I’ll think, I’m doing it again, I have too much to do, but to this point I’ve managed to get all that stuff accomplished. I think in some cases I underestimate what I can do but then a lot of people do. It just depends on where your passions are, where your heart lies. People who take on artistic endeavors, people who have a deep need to create, and are uncomfortable when they’re not creating are willing to make almost any kind of sacrifice to do that kind of stuff. What I’m finding out is that this is the stuff that makes this a cool and happy process for me. I can get wrapped up into my ego but the thing that really makes me happy is that I’ve connected with friends and what happens when all of us get together.”
Sellers sits atop an old stool in his living room, the sun setting casually and air moving coolly through the open front door. He sits up straight, eyes always seeming to be somewhere else yet focused on the moment. I wonder if he is merely looking out the window or at the house across the street he may help paint this summer. Or maybe, he’s just thinking of a new song idea. I think Sellers has been doing the same thing in the last several years, constructing songs as he reconstructed his life. I know when he gets inspired he knows to put on a pot of coffee. It’s a tremendous feeling, no substance can give you that type of energy. The best drug is creating; the need to do something that inspires you. It has to be synonymous with peacefulness and a stilted calm.
“I’m already in a place I never thought I’d ever be anyway. So for all those things to happen...everything else is like icing. It feels like I have this awesome cake and everything else that happens is extra.”
The last Saturday in April I walked along Front Street to a friend’s apartment to attend a birthday party. Crossing Chestnut Street, I saw someone standing just outside Bottega in a bright white dress shirt. It looked angelic, glowing as if the contrast were turned way up loudly. The shirt burned bright on the sidewalk against black trousers.
There were a number of people outside and I realized it was Stephen Sellers. He was talking to a woman. We talked a few moments and he was smiling ear to ear, looking incredibly happy. He had just finished playing a set of music minutes before. A homeless man was approaching everyone asking for change or something. Sellers and I were talking about few things for this story, a few clarifications. The homeless man approached Sellers, interrupting our conversation. Sellers stopped momentarily and turned to the homeless man and said he’d speak with him in a just a moment.
From the outside it seems like what anyone would do, maybe to blow someone off. Sellers turned his attention back to me and we spoke a little longer. I said I’d call him the next day.
As I walked away Sellers turned and spoke to the man, saying, hello, how are you, man?
For more, check out:
Myspace.com/revolutionseason
Myspace.com/giantmediamusic
Myspace.com/gm2music
Myspace.com/lowvictorecho
www.rpmchallenge.com
ISSUE 22 - DRAGAN
by Josh Spilker
Dragan (pronounced “dragon”) has an African Grey in his living room, and it’s staring me down. It has large eyes on either side of its head and glances at me cautiously, in its bird sort of way. The bird is silent for a moment, a rarity in its life. She does not know what to make of me, a stranger. She has become content in this home, flying in peace, in her own recognizable surroundings, and I’m an intruder.
But I know more about the bird than she knows about me. Maybe she knows that we are talking about her, that Dragan is sharing intimate details about her life with me. The bird’s name is Lola. She’s a tropical bird, the African Grey. Her head is the size of a small cup, and fully feathered, but her body is mostly bare, too bare for a bird.
Lola looks at me and then back at Dragan. She needs reassurance from him about my character. Dragan tells me not to touch her, that she’ll snip at me. Dragan is Lola’s savior, and she trusts him. Dragan rescued her, driving five hours from Wilmington, NC to Virginia Beach to get her. To bring her here, a safe place in which Lola can be herself, and talk to whoever she wants.
Dragan picks up Lola from her perch and brings her over to the couch for a conversation. We are in Dragan’s home, a paneled house near Monkey Junction. His home contains three aquariums, all of which he built. There’s a large bird cage for Lola and another perch.
As we sit down on the couch, Dragan tells me Lola doesn’t just mimic, she listens and responds in words. Like how a dog barks, except with a vocabulary. Dragan says she can pick up as much language as a three year old. So if Lola is thirsty she asks for water. If she wants Dragan to take her down she will ask “Where are you?” The bird is not much different from a child who needs care and attention, which Dragan says many people don’t consider before purchasing such a bird. That’s why he had to rescue her.
“For three years, the lady didn’t take care of her. She fed her peanuts, and that’s it,” he says. Dragan compared it to a human eating only bread. The woman didn’t know how to care of her, Dragan explains and Lola is still naked from the stress, missing many feathers.
Dragan is certified as a tropical bird rescuer by Phoenix Landing, an animal rescue shelter for tropical birds. Based out of Asheville, N.C., Phoenix Landing will contact Dragan if there are birds from pet stores or delinquent owners who don’t want them anymore. Once Dragan retrieves them, Phoenix Landing will put them up for adoption. Dragan decided to keep Lola as his own.
Apparently, they’re not the most considerate of birds. African Greys demand affection and attention, just like a member of the family. They also live a long time, and may need assisted living.
“People don’t think that these birds live 50-70 years,” Dragan says. “You need to think that the bird will be with you for your life. That’s a decision for your life. You need to think that if something would happen to you, who would keep that bird, who would take care of that bird?”
Dragan Zeljkovic is in his mid-thirties and currently a cab driver. Originally from Bosnia, the town of Gradiska on the Sava River, he came to America surviving much of the fighting in his home country. Gradiska is split into Bosnian and Croatian sides. He lived on the Bosnian side and his house was bombed by Croatia in the Yugoslav Civil Wars during the early 90s. It was a civil war that broke up Yugoslavia.
“First, in speaking about the war there is nothing nice to say. Really, most don’t talk about it, but there were three different religions fighting for territory, around Croatia in that area,” says Dragan.
We stepped out from his back porch where Dragan lit a cigarette and showed me another piece of his handiwork, the decorative garden pool. It’s covered with rocks and he said he wants to put larger fish in there, if he had more time to care for them. He later shows me pictures of one similar pool and patio that he installed on Oak Island. The conversation returns to his homeland.
“I chose to go with the UN Peacekeepers, two sides fighting - you go in the middle,” Dragan continues. “I was with a special border police, because I had a lot of friends in that area, and I had friends that were Serb, Croatian and Muslim.”
As a member of the border police, Dragan watched different groups, like UNICEF, coming in and out. He checked paperwork and checked what was inside the various cars.
“That war was a very nice cover for people to take advantage of the war, and make it a business and make a lot of money,” he says.
In 1993, in the third year of the war, he lost “everything,” he says. He was a jack of all trades, having gone to school for metalworking, raised tropical fish to sell and even had a pet shop or two around town. “No good side,” he says about the war. “Everyone lost something. It’s been a waste of time.”
After displacement from his home in Gradiska, Dragan went to Belgrade, the largest city in Serbia. He found work doing odd jobs, one of which was supplying angelfish to a local general mercantile store. He still raises angelfish. In addition to the three large aquariums in his home, he tells me he sold a few others recently.
“Too much upkeep,” he says. We look at a few of the fish, and he shows me pictures of others.
“I grew up on that river (the Sava River), fishing and stuff, and now you can’t go fishing on that half,” he says.
Dragan arrived in the U.S. and then Wilmington in 2003. He came to Wilmington because he had people here willing to “sponsor” him, Winter Park Baptist Church of Wilmington. From what I gather, he was here for twenty days, and was able to find a job, and start out on his own. He’s been a manager for Chuck E. Cheese, he’s built countertops, worked at Mayfaire Cinema, bred angelfish, constructed elaborate rock ponds on Oak Island, drives a cab and sometimes delivers flowers. Now, Dragan can go fishing whenever he wants, or raise his own fish. His choice. And choices were very few when he was stuck between two or three warring factions.
“It’s ridiculous,” he continues. “There’s a bunch of hardcore stories, and I can’t take it. I want to live my life and I want to have peace and that’s it.”
Actual peace on land and peace on pieces of paper are different things. Peace may have been achieved to a degree between countries in Western Europe for the time being, but that doesn’t mean peace has occurred with its occupants. Dragan said that Gradiska was a good city until the war made it unbearable.
“War destroyed the middle class of the people, so it’s very hard to find a job,” Dragan says. “If you have a job, it’s like $200 a month, not like here.”
Such a common occurrence spread his family over three continents. His parents are in Australia, he’s in America, and his daughter is back in Belgrade. It’s a situation he doesn’t see changing, though he would like his seven year old daughter to one day make it here.
“I survived and I lost everything and I don’t want to do it again,” Dragan says. “America is pretty much a secure country, and I like it. And I think I’ll stay right here where I am.”
Dragan’s demeanor is pleasant. He is friendly and easy to talk. His openness is enjoyable and he’s always favored work with the public. The openness has a positive side effect in that he has more time to speak English which is accented, but pretty flawless.
“I learned Oxford English, but when I came here I didn’t understand 50% of what people were saying,” he says mentioning a particular British form of English. “I spent nights and nights on the Internet learning grammar and spelling. You can’t translate word by word, you must take the meaning of that sentence, and put it inside my head, translate it and put it another way backwards and put it out. So my head has been like a freaking computer. Sometimes, by myself, I have headaches talking to people. It’s been very hard for me, translating for people.”
Dragan may struggle with American English, but it’s different than dealing with translating rude American behavior. He recalls a cab story involving a drunk girl he picked up from lower Market Street in downtown Wilmington. He was picking up some of his regular customers from downtown, and the girl stepped in front of his cab because she thought he was ignoring her. He was ignoring her, but to pick up somebody else. Then the girl grew angry and began yelling at him from outside the cab. He picked up his customers and then returned for this girl. Upon returning, the girl didn’t understand how he would still be nice to her.
“If I help you, because it’s my pleasure,” Dragan says. “What you need to see is that if I help you, you help someone else. And if everybody acts like that, this world would be a lot nicer place to live.”
www.phoenixlanding.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
