June 13, 2017 – Jessica Fleet Smith

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

I’ve known Jessica Fleet Smith for a few years now. I’d always see her and her husband at Mimosa Market, a small bodega up brewery gulch in Bisbee, Arizona – one of those places tucked just far enough away that few tourists ever find it. She’s a unique creature, light-hearted and quick to smile, and always seemed rather shy. That’s part of what makes her so intriguing, I think. Effortlessly beautiful but secure in her relationship, appearing shy but absolutely confident enough to stand behind the microphone and perform in front of a gathered crowd. She’s a very genuine person, reserved and gutsy at the same time.

Today’s image is an unconventional one. I shared it on Facebook a few years ago after she performed with a group called Chasing Light at the Sidepony Express music festival. The classroom, news publications, critiques, and art critics drill into photographers that if the image isn’t tack-sharp, it isn’t worth looking at. This convention of “the image must be technically perfect” robs the photographer of so many opportunities. I’m a fan of atmosphere, of motion-blur, of selective focus – of the certain kind of mood that can be established using these tools. I think there’s something emotional and ethereal about images like this, taken from the crowd, imperfect and out of focus, and let’s face it – I’m no longer in the classroom, no longer pressured to make somebody else’s idea of the perfect picture.

I think this image captures Jessica’s bravery (and her distance) quite well.

Out of the Blue, the group Jessica is currently working with, doesn’t stray from Bisbee very often. But if you’re taking a trip down to the copper town that once was – if the fake, theme-park atmosphere of Tombstone doesn’t distract you from heading further south – I’d be sure to look ’em up. You can follow Out of the Blue on Facebook here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 12, 2017 – The Pit Fire

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

For several years, while I was living in the borderlands of Southeastern Arizona, I made it a point to attend the annual Cochise College Pit Fire. The entire evening surrounds a main event, the lighting of the pit fire itself; it’s an ancient method of baking clay pottery in which the pottery is placed in a trench dug into the ground with a wood fire burning above it. The result is pottery covered in interesting patterns and colors.

The evening is peppered with various musical performances on several outdoor stages, dance performances, acrobatics, theater art, gourmet food supplied by the college’s culinary arts club, and other vendors. It’s free for anybody who wants to attend, and it is genuinely one of the more interesting (and little-known) events in this somewhat remote area of Cochise County, right along the Mexican border.

I wouldn’t even be able to tell you if today’s picture depicts a booked performance artist or if it’s just an enthusiastic attendee who decided to spin poi in the field where the pit fire’s lit. It doesn’t really matter – it illustrates the energy and creativity of the event.

If you live in southern Arizona and want to attend, all you need to do is mark your calendar. You can check out their website here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 11, 2017 – Ghost Town Gospel

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

Lifted from their website, I couldn’t say it better myself:

‘Ghost Town Gospel is straight out of Oakland, blending traditional American folk influences with elements of punk, pop, and protest music driven to create a candid portrait of life in a broken America. Relentless touring musicians, you’ll be sure to find Ghost Town Gospel at a music hall, festival, dive bar or sidewalk near you.’

I had the pleasure of connecting with this group a few years ago, just before New Years Eve. One of their band-mates was an old college friend of mine, and they played a set at The Bisbee Grand Saloon before crawling up the mountain to unpack their gear at my hilltop home. A booze-fueled evening of living-room jams, huddles around laptops watching videos, telling stories and pouring beverages ensued, until that sun came up.There’s nothing like connecting with energetic creative folks, and there’s nothing like live music. If you ever get the chance, this is a group of people worth looking into.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 10, 2017 – Flip Cassidy

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

Flip Cassidy and the Junkyard Gospel:
“Raw, rusty Americana folk-punk perfect for driving on long desert highways. Pairs well with whiskey.”

“The Reverend Flip Cassidy is a rusty man who plays rusty songs on rusty guitars. The Junkyard Gospel is a howling, raging acoustic sound bellowed forth with a voice like a rusty saw blade. His solo performances are known to be highly energetic and infectious, surprisingly loud, and have even caused rippling, whiskey-induced fervors in audiences, fellow performers and bartenders alike.”

Living in a celebrity-obsessed culture, I genuinely believe that a distinction must be made between pop stars and musicians. Pop stars are, in so many ways, packaged products, manufactured for mass-consumption. Pop stars are the Skittles® and soda of music. There’s certainly showmanship, charisma, and skill in the celebrity circuit, but the salt-of-the-earth musician is an entirely different animal. Traveling from town-to-town – drawing people together in parks, at farmers markets, saloons, and theaters – there’s an army of talented folk out there.

Musicians connect with people, hang out and have a beer after their set, tell you about the road, and occasionally crash on your couch. Pop stars have a celebrity that renders them inaccessible, walled-off by security, by entourage, by wealth. Going out to your local pub and watching people make music right before your eyes is a magical experience. Everyone should go out to see live music more often. These guys live out of their cars, on buses, in cheap motor lodges – they have stories, passion, and a measure of honesty and bravery.

Flip Cassidy blew through town and drew one helluva crowd. Not only is this wandering poet a musician, but an insanely talented photographer – naturally we had a lot to talk about. When he rolled through town a year later, I bought his old twelve-string guitar. It’s currently resting on the corner of my study. I highly recommend you take a look at his music and his artwork. This guy is always making something, and he produces really amazing work.
Check out the Junk Yard Gospel
Check out Flip Cassidy Photography

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 09, 2017 – JP Harris

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

A ran across this character in Arizona several years ago at a saloon. He and his crew were all very gracious and made some great music. It almost sounds deceptive to apply the term “country” to these guys, but that’s what they insist they absolutely are, eschewing all of the confusing classifications of music in this modern age. I can dig that. But this isn’t the kind of country you might imagine, what with pop country, americana, and other folk sub-genres . JP Harris has an edge, and I think it’s pretty apparent when you look at him.

A while after I met him, I was foolishly angered when one of my Facebook photographs – today’s photograph, in fact – wound up in an article without my permission. I was pretty hot-headed back then and didn’t react kindly, but I’m hoping there isn’t too much love lost (but hey, it’s difficult to tell). It’s hard to accept how little currency a photograph carries these days, but in a world where everybody is in the picture-making business – in a world where everybody has a camera in their pocket, on their phone – it’s just one of those things.

In the final analysis, “Facebook” means “free to all.” I don’t have to like it – just as musicians, I’m sure, have to suck it up when dealing with digital distribution and file sharing – but I guess that only means that I have to continue to adapt and try to find new ways of building value in the images I make.

Challenge accepted.

JP Harris was born only a couple of weeks after me, in the year of our lord 1993. According to the bio I found on his website, “he left home on foot at the age of 14, traveling via thumb and freight train, living the next 4 years mostly from a backpack, a tarp, a bedroll. Eventually landing in the northeast, he worked as a farm laborer, equipment operator, lumberjack, luthier, and carpenter.”

It ain’t about the age of the model – it’s all about the mileage. And JP Harris has lived at least a couple of lifetimes in his thirty-four years.

His first all-original album, “I’ll Keep Calling,” won “Best Country Album of 2012” in the Nashville Scene. He won the same honor at the Independent Music Awards, landed a cameo on NPR’s ‘American Routes,’ and collected accolades in various print publications. Rolling Stone has named JP Harris one of 2014’s “Country Tours Not To Miss,” as well as one of “21 Must-See Country Acts at SXSW 2015.”

Check out what’s going on with JP Harris today.
You can find him on Facebook here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 08, 2017 – All Souls

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

There really isn’t much that I have to say about All Souls. For anybody who has lived in Southern Arizona, you already know about it. For everybody else, the All Souls Procession is a Tucson tradition that culminates in a community-wide procession through the downtown area, ending with a grand finale of pyrotechnic theater, live music, and acrobatics. The event first began in 1990 by a local artist, Susan Kay Johnson, who wished to express her sadness over the loss of her father; she wanted to ritualize her grief and create an event, much like Dia de los Muertos, to honor the dead.

Tens of thousands participate every year. People start to gather along 4th and 6th avenues before sun-down, arriving in costume, tailgating and helping paint each other’s faces in a fashion reminiscent of Day of the Dead. Jugglers and street performers, musicians and stilt-walkers weave through the throngs of people. Participants are encouraged to write notes to the dead on pieces of paper and deposit them into a giant urn that leads the procession – once the urn reaches the end of the procession, it is elevated above the crowd and set ablaze.

I have never seen a not-for-profit, grass-roots community event like this anywhere else. It’s an amazing thing to see.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 07, 2017 – Carlos Arzate

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

Living in Tucson for a majority of the past fifteen years, I saw a lot of bands come and go. Many of my college buddies had garage bands and a few of them had it in them to hit the downtown music scene. Most of them have scattered to the wind these past few years as degrees were earned, families begun and careers established. There are some,though, who have had some serious staying power here in Arizona, and Carlos Arzate is one of them.

Carlos Arzate is a singer-songwriter, native to Tucson, whose songs draw inspiration from his personal life growing up in the Sonoran Desert. I believe I read an article in The Tucson Weekly that described his style as “Sonoran Soul.” It’s got a ring to it, but it implies a softness that, while present in many of his songs, doesn’t communicate the dynamism of his work.

Arzate is just as expressive and kind in person as he is on stage, and he’s deeply anchored in the music scene, collaborating with other prominent musicians. I have enjoyed every performance and would absolutely recommend checking out Carlos Arzate & The Kind Souls. The songs tell a story, communicate an emotion and paint atmospheric pictures.

This is one of my favorites, written as a first person narrative of a laborer who chooses to risk the dangerous journey across the desert to the United States in search of a better life.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 06, 2017 – Logan Phillips

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

Lifted from his website, Logan Phillips explains what he’s all about in words more eloquent than I could conjure. Suffice it to say, being in the room while this man speaks is an experience; I have never been moved by spoken word or poetry, ever in my life, until I met this man. I’ve been moved to tears by Steinbeck and been affected by Virgil’s “Aeneid,” had my mind twisted and perplexed by Hume, questioned my reality because of Descartes and questioned my morality because of Kant, but I had never been struck, emotionally, by spoken word poetry. I had never seen an artist so skillfully weave his stories.
– – –

“Poetry is holding the center, not hiding in the margins: we construct our world through words. Poetry is the art of putting into words all that which is otherwise unsayable, of constructing other ways of knowing.

No matter where I’m working––the DJ booth, the classroom, the art studio, the stage––I’m creating a poem; stringing together disparate elements to say something new, creating connections in collaboration with everyone in the room––

E.E. Cummings said he was ‘overly fond of that precision which creates movement.’ Poetry is word precision, poetry moves the world forward.”

~LOGAN PHILLIPS

– – –
A lot of people immediately disregard poetry as something that just isn’t for them. The word itself, ‘poetry,’ elicits the trauma of under-enthusiastic English teachers and classmates murmuring, passionless, one after the other, lines of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost in sterile high school classrooms. Many of us have a negative association with all kinds of art specifically because they were taught so poorly. Logan’s mission is to illustrate that poetry can be meaningful and moving, that it’s accessible and culturally significant. He participates in education programs and seeks to inspire creative passion in our youth, which is no small task.

I’ve enjoyed sitting-in during several of his readings, and encourage you to take a look at his work. You can learn more about him at his own website here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 05, 2017 – Bowie Johnson

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

I’ve met Bowie Johnson a couple of times now, along with other musicians who passed through town on their way to Austin, Texas to perform at SXSW, I think (these meetings were also usually met with a heavy dose of revelry and booze). He’s the lead singer of a group called Dum Spiro Spero, the name derived from a latin phrase that translates to “while I breathe, I hope.” I really dig the motto, and I really dig that Bowie and his band-mates adopted it.

They’d roll into town on their own bus, and they killed it every time they set up in the Grand Saloon and started playing.
Beats and claps, smiles and dance – these guys liven up every room they play with timeless music that damn-near anybody can sink their teeth into. I’m no music journalist, so I won’t dig into the details. Strings and chants, boot-heels clapping on the ground, these guys keep the energy up and make time for anybody who wants to hang out, drink a beer, ask a question, or get an autograph.

Looking forward to seeing them again soon.
Check out their page here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER

June 04, 2017 – Melissa Reaves

Posted on by

FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
– – –
OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

Melissa Reaves is another one of those magical wonders that, in this craven modern era of the celebrity musician, is known more on the road than on the television – and I celebrate that fact. There are pop stars and there are musicians, folks, and while there’s definitely some overlap in the venn diagram, I have met in my thirty-four years so many astoundingly talented people, miles ahead of some of the nonsense we see on television. The club, the concert hall, the local pub – that’s where some of the greatest music in the world is being cultivated, and I think it’s important to go out and see what’s out there, to support these artists, and remember that there are beautiful things out there beyond what your television or smart phone is going to beam into your consciousness.

Reaves is experimental, kind and humble, avant-garde, and weaves her sonic concoctions with white-hot flame. She improvises, inventing on the spot, and deconstructs blues and jazz riffs, blending classic licks with modern rock.

She lived seasonally in Bisbee with her partner and probably still does; let’s face it – when Bisbee, Arizona gets into your veins, it never really leaves. I was fortunate enough to get some serious up-close and personal viewings of Reaves at the local bars and clubs, and was proud when her “New Rock Song” was placed on the 55th Grammy Awards nomination ballot for Best Rock Performance. Just like Stanhope, this is a seriously committed and talented person who is, without question, humble and kind, whose talents and status haven’t separated them from the rest of us mere mortals.

I miss seeing Melissa playing the Copper Queen Saloon on the weekends. Hopefully our paths will cross again one of these days. Check out her website here and her Facebook page here.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
– – –
SIGN UP FOR THE LENSEBENDER NEWSLETTER