Events

[AMBIENT] If you find yourself at Silo City staring at an upright piano wondering how it ended up there, you can thank Bean Friend for that. The musician from Philadelphia by way of San Francisco, moved to Buffalo from Toronto this summer and immediately plugged himself into the local art and music scene. He was quickly drawn to Silo City, where this fall he recorded an album of reverberating minimal piano tracks titled The Moving Decade. The 29-year-old artist will hold a listening party this Thursday, January 21 at Big Orbit gallery where photographer Max Collins will also be showcasing some of his similarly-themed photography.

How did you end up in Buffalo?
Basically, my wife is from Buffalo but she hasn’t lived here since high school. She’s what you call a boomerang, I guess. They leave and experience other cities and return home. It seems like it’s been happening more and more recently. We had this moment where we were in Toronto and we came back to Buffalo for a weekend and we just had a blast.

How did you hook up with Max Collins?
I met Max after seeing some of his art. I got his number off of his website and gave him a buzz. Striking up a relationship with him was great. He’s got some phenomenal photos from the silos that made sense with my album thematically.

Photo by Max Collins

How did your record this album?
I went down to Silo City a couple times, just socially. I met Swannie Jim, Bob the Builder, and Rick Smith. They gave me a tour of Silo City one day and they brought me into Marine A. I said “wow I’d love to record here. I’d love to bring a piano down here.” And they were like “yeah, cool.” I think they were like “is this mother fucker really going to do it?” They put me in contact with Kevin Cane and I just called him and we chatted and he was really into it too. So what I did after that is I went on Craigslist and found some free pianos…

It’s easy to find free pianos on Craigslist?
Yeah, it actually is! There were maybe five free pianos in Buffalo. It’s mostly people who are moving and can’t bring it with them. So it’s free if you can get it out of their house. I picked one, rented a U-Haul, and we drove the piano straight to Silo City.  So then there was just this upright piano in the middle of the silos, which was really cool.

And then you’re like “Ok, now I’m going to record an album on this piano that I’ve just found”?
Yeah… you know what’s funny? I didn’t even think that far ahead. I didn’t even have anything written. I’m not even much of a—I mean I come from mostly a rock background. But anyways, I got the piano tuned. I met Sharon Mok, she’s in Tiny Rhymes—I occasionally fill in for Tiny Rhymes on bass—and she tuned the piano for me, twice. Once in the beginning and once in the middle because the temperature and humidity changes there pretty often and it kinda went out of tune in the middle.

When was this?
This was the end of September. I went down there and set up the microphones and at first it didn’t sound that good. Over the next couple of weeks it was a lot of just messing with miking techniques and moving the piano around.

Did you give yourself a deadline?
Yeah, when it got really cold.

Like, don’t die in here. A literal deadline.
The last day I was there I remember trying to play piano and my fingers were so cold. There was just a disconnect. I couldn’t do it. That was the first week of November.

So would you say a lot of it was about adapting to the space?
Yeah. And setting everything up. The first day it took me three hours to set everything up. Carrying all of the equipment from my car into the silo. By the time I was done setting it all up I was so exhausted. I sat down at the piano and I realized, like, now it’s time for me to play and I don’t even really play piano!

Well you could have fooled me. I listened to the album and it’s really intimate and emotional without being, melodramatic.
Everything was written in the silos and I was by myself. If you can imagine, on days that I didn’t have anything going on I would go down there, be there by noon hashing out the songs. I wrote about 30 tracks in five weeks. It was a steep learning curve but I got better at piano and I got better at recording.