(BG Independent News is checking in on some local performers to see how they’re doing with the lights turned off on nightlife. This is the third and final installment.)
By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Being in quarantine hasn’t kept Sheri and Jason Wells-Jensen from scoring a social media hit.
“Amy (a song for Dr. Acton)” has gotten more than 33,000 views on Facebook since it was posted on April 10. The song is the Pure Prairie League’s “Amie,” reworked to celebrate Dr. Amy Acton, Ohio’s director of health, who has become a celebrity for her appearances during Gov. Mike DeWine’s daily press briefings.
“If you hold still for just three seconds, the lyric ‘Amy, what we gonna do’ hits you right upside the head,” Sheri Well-Jensen wrote in an email. “I’m not surprised that people like it because it’s pretty much inevitable once you hear that lyric.”
The song is just one way the couple, members of both the Peace Band at Peace Lutheran Church, and the Grand Royale Ükulelists of the Black Swamp, have stayed active musically while working from home – he as a librarian with the Wood County Library and she as a linguistics professor at Bowling Green State University.
While “Amy” features Sheri on banjo and Jason on lead vocals, they have shared their love of the ukulele during weekly Facebook tutorials on the Wood County Library’s page.
Michele Raine, adult services director at the library, said the sessions provide “a nice oasis” for people, some from other states, to get together virtually to make music.
Sheri said that she and Jason are looking forward to creating a collaborative song “Coming Out of Here Strong.”
They’ll ask people to contribute their ukulele and singing parts.
The virtual Peace Lutheran services have also given them a chance to reach out to people in a time of social distancing.
They join Pastor Deb Conklin in the sanctuary of the church, each participant at a suitable distance from each other, so they can livestream the service. It’s important to them that they model the kind of social distancing that Dr. Amy encourages.
These services, in which music plays an important part, have not only allowed them to connect with those congregants who would usually attend Sunday services, but also those who may have health issues that prevented them from attending. Sheri said she’s also heard from friends in Missouri and Florida, who watch the services.
“They always say a church is not a building: this building just got its walls blown out! We treat the online experience as an opportunity for innovative new things… not as a second-best make-do dreary approximation of community,” Sheri wrote.
Citing the truism that songwriters write happy songs when they’re sad and sad songs when they’re happy, she said: “I’m writing a lot of hopeful and happy songs right now… It’s all a lot and music is something we can do: something that can give people the strength they need to hang in there.” They aren’t front line workers, but in this pandemic music is what they contribute.
“I sort of like the part of this where we all huddle in place and reach out to each other deliberately, but I fiercely miss GRUBS practice,” she said. “We can’t collaborate the same way online that we can standing around in Geoff’s living room,” referring to bandmate Geoff Howes.
Still, she wrote: “ I used to feel like I had to sneakily steal time from other things to do my quiet private music making.” Once the semester is over, she expects to have that time, “real time … that I did not have to steal from something else.” She expects “that when I start getting that … I won’t be able to give it up again.”
Dustin and Sarah (Smith) Galish are another two-musician couple trying to keep the beat going while social distancing. In their case they also have a collaborator in their toddler son, Max.
Dustin’s band Tree No Leaves has just released a live session “Live at Howard’s Club H” that captures the quartet in performance last November. The session was in the works before the pandemic and scheduled for release later. But Dustin said “we decided to release it sooner rather than later because of people’s excess time at home to listen to music and the lack of live music available.”
Work continues on Tree No Leaves’ next project – an eight-song album with digital and physical versions of a 20-page graphic novel by Andrew Thomas of Ando Illustration.
“We began writing the album right before the pandemic,” Galish wrote in an email, “and we have now transitioned into writing the rest of the album from home. We are doing this by sharing tracks via the internet and recording demos.”
He said he’s been investing in the improvements for his home studio for recording.
In the future, he expects, bands to have to focus more on recordings. and figuring out ways to get their sounds out to listeners.
Sarah Galish, who has taught yoga, already has a plan to offer online classes with her own music.
“l’m recording music that I make when I have yoga or meditation in mind,” she wrote. “I often enjoy improvising on the keys in the mornings and as much as I love playing just to play, sometimes I wished I had recorded it. Since we have had a little more time on our plates, we have set everything up so I can just press a button and record.”
After 60 days in the house with Dustin and Max, she keeps coming back to the idea that “no matter what, I have to create time, and in this circumstance, take advantage of the time provided for making art, movement , and music.”
She continued: “It heals the lonely heart, inspires the babes around you, and gives you something to remember this wild time by. Now that I’ve had time to finish some things and tie up loose ends, the future feels more open.”
Zack Fletcher, leader of Moths in the Attic, said he’s pretty much been out of sight. He’s been practicing, as well as writing and learning new material.
He did a virtual livestream at the beginning of the pandemic when a show Art and Performance Center of West Toledo with Chloe and the Steel Strings was canceled.
Since then he’s not done anything online.
His bandmates Mike Williams (Mikewilliamsonsax on Facebook) and drummer, Kevin Jorrey (Kevinonthedrums on YouTube) have been live streaming frequently.
Because he’s still working from home, Fletcher said his time to spend on music has not increased, but he has been able to focus more on the creative side instead of the booking, promotion and other business activities.
Fletcher said he will be working on trying to rebook the band’s first extensive tour which would have taken them to Chicago and Nashville in April and May.
“Live music is an irreplaceable experience for me, both as a performer and an audience member. It creates a bond shared among the performers and the crowd that, on a good night, can be a transcendent experience,” he said.
“We’re hoping local venues come out of this okay, and that they’ll still be able to hire entertainment and foster that beneficial relationship between local business and musicians.
“On the artistic side, we’ll keep finding ways to play, perform, and create. It’s been amazing to see the innovation and creativity from local musicians with online content. And it’s been encouraging to see the community support for local business and art.”
