Twelve Hours, Five Bands, One Night Only

Caleb Brooks on Louisville’s Rock Lottery

Via Caleb Brooks.

Morning light streams from the room’s lone window as a dozen or so folks mill, sip coffee, and make small talk in clusters. There’s a vague first-day-of-school-energy among them; you can sense resting heart rates nominally raised. Everyone’s gathered in the cavernous brick cube that is Headliners Music Hall, and something feels almost immodest about seeing floors this sticky before noon. Stage lights send violet blossoms pinwheeling around a table with a wide-brimmed hat that’s lit from above like the title artifact in an Indiana Jones film. Each of the hip, kind-faced musicians shuffling in from the cold have their names on scraps of paper in this hat, and after a lot more caffeine and stress they’ll return tonight transformed, reborn in the Louisville Rock Lottery’s euphonic chrysalis.

The Rock Lottery concept is simple enough: twenty-five local musicians with an array of talents are dealt into five bands like cards in a poker hand. These random groupings then have twelve hours to come up with a name, write and practice three original songs, and return to the venue to perform them for an expectant audience. As you might imagine, this is all much easier said than done.

Via Caleb Brooks.

Showtime rolls around at 10pm and there’s little space for fashionable delay. Sean Cannon, local radio legend and the night’s emcee, primes the crowd with a call and response that he grades by decibel. The first band has chosen the name Lost Cinema, and after a brief intro they take their instruments in a flourish. The immediate outlier of this ensemble is a cellist seated at stage left who I identify as Sarah Balliet. Her bow contributes a rich, high-pile rug of sound that the other members sink their toes into. The lead singer has on a long black trench and can really belt it. At one point, the drummer forgoes sticks and just gets right in there with fingers and palms. These folks found time to write songs with lyrics brought fully to term and are being birthed from this guy’s handsome mouth. He stares into space so intently you’d think there was a teleprompter where only a neon Yuengling sign hangs. The lead guitarist is wearing an orange beanie with a big poof and would not be out of place in the film Fargo. He is really saying something with his instrument, and during a solo in their third and final song I get goosebumps from the raw emotion he’s putting down. 

While the stage crew does their first hurried turnover, I mosey back by the soundboards to see what they’ve got going on. These consoles are mesmerizing in their color and complexity. There are what look like architectural drawings of the stage and the whole ROYGBIV spectrum of glowing knobs and a screen devoted to concentric circles that disappear into themselves like some digital representation of time.

Whispers begin to spread through the crowd that the next band has two bassists, and sure enough they do. Mr. Cannon introduces them as Phil & The Blanks. They’ve got a young woman, Grace McDaniel, playing both flute and bass while wearing the fuzziest green sweater I’ve ever seen. The first song is fine but their second song begins with a flute solo that I imagine beckoning every woodland creature in a three-mile radius. There’s a bit of a Zelda vibe. There’s a Cranberries genome here. Their guitarist with longish, ombre hair is also singing, and I can’t make out many of his words but I do catch “Sonny and Cher” and “don’t give a shit” being used as slant rhymes.

Via Caleb Brooks.

The third band gets introduced as S-A-D-D-L-U-L-L and I’m immediately in. They have two women, a fiddler and a guitarist, and a guy who’s brought both trumpet and a little synthy board I’m told is a Korg by an audience neighbor. This man’s name is William Joiner and he’s about to warp time itself. The guitarist has some Rivendell in her and even the basic “1, 2, 3” and “dun, dun, dun” of her soundcheck becomes an incantation. These folks are spellcasting. The trumpet absolutely rips. The fiddler is getting jazzy in pink sock feet. The guy on kit drives the sound forward like a train conductor. The hall fills and ripples with their melodic chaos, and it becomes clear just what an advantage being able to jam with style and dexterity is in this format. It’s also clear what an advantage instrumental diversity is, the aural melting pot that is Saddlull being the secret sauce.

At the next intermission there’s a raffle drawing to benefit the Kentucky Emergency Relief Fund, and the beloved owner of another local music venue wins a bunch of bourbon. The strength of community in the room is palpable. I don’t know many of these folks, but they all seem to know each other, and it’s fun to take all this in with them, cheek-to-jowl. The drawing gives the audience a chance to both see and appreciate the organizer of this whole event, Craig Pfunder. Craig has very long hair and very skinny jeans and is just Very Cool in a way that feels harder and harder to come by. In a bit of irony that’s not lost on me, Craig is something of a one-man band when it comes to putting the Rock Lottery together, and he gets a lot of deserved love for pulling it off a fifth time.

Via Caleb Brooks.

Our emcee does a little more crowd work before calling the night’s fourth band to the stage. They’ve dubbed themselves Doppelgang and are all wearing sunglasses. 3/5 of this group are women and I can’t stop seeing the movie poster for Almost Famous in their faces. Their singer, Sam Brenzel, is such a serious vocalist that she doesn’t need any other instruments. There’s just been an announcement of a benefit show next weekend for Theresa Brenzel, member of local band Juanita who is battling cancer, and in a scene this small I just assume some relation. They’re playing a song with a chorus that repeats “I need that sweet, sweeeeeeeet sumthin”, and I keep thinking about the emotion with which Theresa’s friends talked about the fundraiser and how unforgiving the world outside these walls has become.

Via Caleb Brooks.

In the kindest possible way, I want to confess that I was a little lost by the time band #5 got set up and tuned. We’re told they go by GTA and that GTA stands for “Gator Transit Authority.” One of their guitar players is wearing a vintage Mariano Rivera jersey and has a saxophone that he brings to life late in the set. These guys didn’t write many lyrics, so they’re mostly just jamming, and I feel the witching hour move over the swaying crowd like something contagious. It’s been a really good night, but it’s fully Sunday morning now, and after five solid minutes of shredding the Rock Lottery’s final chords are played.  

The room empties as house lights are raised and stage bulbs go pure white, casting the roadies in an ethereal glow that separates them from us, veiled in a realm without edges or tomorrow mornings. I step into the clear, caustic night and realize that’s what this whole event has been: a dispatch from some place of harmony we all sense but struggle so mightily to attain. Maybe we’ll reach it someday. Until then, and until next year, we’ll all just have to keep making what music we can from the cards we’ve been dealt.