Return to Labro

After a month of romping about Europe we finally returned to Labro to rejoin the Art Monastery. It was cold and raining when we arrived, a bizarre reprieve from the heat wave that seared Umbria for the week prior to our return. Our housing situation had changed in the month we were gone, leaving our cozy room unavailable and other options scarce. Using what we had, we improvised some DIY sleeping quarters in the ground floor of the Art Monastery’s occupied staff apartment bedroom. (Which we later left in favor of a tent in the neighbor's yard.) Not a terribly comfortable way to resume our foray into Art Monasticism, but we made do.

The Art Monastery was buzzing like a nervous hornet on our first day back. A sizeable number of shows were on the horizon and the promotional engine was cranking at full speed to keep up. The load was so great that the Art Monastery staff requested a week of everyone’s time to pick up their slack and play administrative catch-up. Office work was not what we had come for, but with everyone else volunteering we agreed, against our better judgment, to help as well. Had we known that at this moment and many others we’d be expected to dedicate significant amounts of our work time to Art Monastery administrative/community responsibilities, perhaps we would have structured our arrangement a little differently. It’s hard to tell, but hey, Buyer Beware. Now we know.

Several days later the Art Monastery was graced by the arrival of one Miss Jennie Knaggs, self-described “sassy classy lassy” and country-western singer extraordinaire. Jennie had come from Detroit to be a featured headliner at a country music festival the Art Monastery was throwing in several weeks’ time. We and the other resident musicians were tapped to be Jennie’s backing band, though most of us had little or no experience playing country music. Andrew had played with Jennie at Burning Man several years earlier and was excited to work with her again, but the rest of the gang wasn’t entirely sure what they were about to do.

As it turned out, working with Jennie was a dee-light. Not only an incredible musician and performer, Miss Knaggs has spent a decade of her young life becoming a comprehensive walking encyclopedia of western swing, old-time, honky-tonk and country-western music, which was about to come in very handy. The day after her arrival we learned that Jennie, now advertised in tandem with “her American Cowboys,” was the only act that had actually been booked for the upcoming two-day festival. How this happened is still mysterious, but we rolled with it, shifting the band’s focus from absorbing style and technique to learning large amounts of music as fast as possible. Fortunately, our high-ridin’ country-western chanteuse was up to the challenge and began cranking out leadsheets for what would eventually become a full three hours of material. Bless you, Jennie Knaggs.

Repertoire on the way, we began to assemble a heroic rehearsal schedule for the following three weeks. A major impediment stood in our way, however: our drummer Rob had no drums to play and there was nary a contrabass in sight for Andrew. Since our first month in Labro countless attempts had been made to rent or borrow instruments for the band; musicians, music stores, music schools, friends, friends-of-friends, former-roommates-of-friends-of-friends-that-we-met-that-one-time…the Art Monastery had tried them all, but to no avail. Rehearsals had to continue, so with a collection of sonorous pots and pans and Andrew’s trusty ukulele we forged onward. With Naomi on board, vocal arrangements came with astonishing speed and fury, but the instrument question loomed over our heads as the country festival drew nigh.

Work on building the festival lineup was still crawling along, so Naomi decided to pitch in. Part of the festival’s nebulous entertainments had been promoted as “Booze & Blues,” and Naomi seized the opportunity to assemble a blues set with the band, buying us another precious hour of music. Art Monastery affiliates Liz and Anna volunteered their services on vocals and soon we were rehearsing two bands back-to-back. Rehearsals were necessarily intense and options were limited, forcing longer and longer rehearsals as our deadline approached.

With time running out we were increasingly unable to accommodate additional demands on our time. Several folks at the Art Monastery kindly offered to cover the musicians’ weekly chores, which helped immensely. Despite this, we were completely unprepared for the next curveball. Two weeks before the festival we were told that a well-known Italian theater director was interested hiring us (particularly Naomi) for a gig the following weekend and wanted the following afternoon to rehearse with us. We were dubious. A gig is a gig, but we had a deadline coming – could we afford the time for another project? The Art Monastery staff felt that this connection would be a good networking opportunity, despite the additional time commitment, and finally persuaded us to take the gig.

We had no idea what we had just gotten ourselves into.

The string of events that followed were so bizarre, so sprawling, so full of mirth and ridiculousness that they need a separate post to relate. Hold onto to your unitard and sparkly hats – the infamous Piediluco Spettaculo is next!