Hello Sourcers!

You know what I discovered today? In the late 70s, Sesame Street put out not one but two disco albums! How is this relevant to your life, you ask? We’ll get to it.

🎨 Murals!

🏞️ Rivers!

🪩 Disco!

Let’s start out in Elmira, where this Saturday you’ll find Elmira Infinite Canvas, an interactive public mural event put on by Community Arts Elmira. Individuals or groups can register to help transform Clemens Square and the Elmira Promenade. This community-created mural, made using pre-cut stencils, is just the first of four murals celebrating the Chemung River. There will be live music and vendors as well.

Speaking of the Chemung River, the New York Susquehanna Basin Water Trail, which follows the Chemung and Susquehanna, will be holding a ribbon cutting celebration for the Chemung River on Saturday at Kinsella Park in Painted Post. How do you throw a party for a river? With food trucks, lawn games, and trail hikes, apparently. You can also try out a kayak. Late May and early June are great times of year to get out on the river. I’m partial to a slow canoe trip down the Catatonk, mostly because it’s fun to say “Catatonk.”

Also in Elmira, there’s a really unique weekend-long event at the Park Church put on by Vocal Essence of the Southern Tier. BloomVEST is a two-day multi-generational singing intensive, culminating in a concert on Saturday. Basically, you register, you show up Friday evening to begin learning some songs and rehearsing, you come back Saturday morning to continue rehearsing, and you perform on Saturday at 4pm. Honestly, this is probably worth it just for the opportunity to sing in the Park Church, which is a truly remarkable acoustic space.

But enough of all that; let’s get to the disco.

This weekend is the Ithaca Festival, and the theme this year is Downtown Disco. We’re particularly excited because WSKG will be marching in the parade! That’s where the Sesame Street disco albums come in, because we’ll be rocking such classics as “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco” and “Sesame Street Fever,” joined by a pack of yip yip muppets, and possibly an appearance by a certain grouch. Keep an eye out for us, we’ll be right behind the SPCA. I’ll be the one ignoring the crowd and petting all the dogs.

Hope your May is coming to a lovely conclusion, Sourcers!

Yours,

Bob Proehl

Locally Sourced editor

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Conjuring the spirits of folk writers from a time past are Damn the Kid, a folk band creating a tone that feels like being followed closely by a figure only seen in nightmares. Their newest four song EP, Take the Bait, is a beautifully haunting album that explores ideas of love, freedom, the hunter and the hunted, rejection and acceptance. 

Take the Bait pulls the listener in with soft acoustic tones and beautifully sung lyrics. But once you are in this world, you realize not everything is as it should be. Guitars in reverse, hard panned vocals fading in and out, and warbly instruments suggest that the listener should keep their guard up. 

These eerie textures exist throughout the EP. Track two, “Chained,” has a chaotic guitar solo halfway through that starts as a textural element but it slowly builds until it takes almost the entire mix, like a panic attack that starts at a frightening level but slowly becomes more and more terrifying until it just disappears, and you're back to homeostasis.

When I write about the unsettling feelings that exist on this album I don’t mean that they are offputting or abrasive. They are mysterious and enchanting, a siren song. The height of this atmosphere is “Sleepaway Camp.” The beginning guitar played through a Leslie amp with the soft vocals over top sets the tone for a surreal world. The background vocals in the second half of the second verse make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: they are absolutely beautiful and fit perfectly in the context of this song and the album as a whole. 

You can hear this album anywhere you stream music, follow the band on instagram for details on shows and future releases. 

https://www.instagram.com/damnthekidmusic/

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