Events

[EXPERIMENTAL] Deep inside the West Delavan subway station, Jeremy Jermaine Jerome, known by some as his stage name Just Ending Now, is holding Art Lakewood—another local musician and artist—in his arms as they both ascend up a lengthy escalator. For reasons that no human will ever understand, Lakewood is wrapped in a Mexican flag and donning a lucha libre wrestling mask—props that Jerome brought for Lakewood to wear during this promotional video shoot. Lakewood doesn’t quite know why he’s wearing what he’s wearing either but that doesn’t matter because Jerome has a very specific vision for this shoot, which he can’t or won’t explain. As they ascend the escalator staring blankly away from each other, just before the camera begins to roll Jerome whispers loudly to Lakewood: “I can’t tell where you end and I begin.” Lakewood doesn’t react because Jerome has been repeating this to him for at least a week. And Jerome truly, sincerely means it when he tells Lakewood this, just as he truly, sincerely means it when he says—over and over—that his upcoming show will literally change not only the Buffalo music scene, but the world. They ascend the escalator facing in different directions and arrangements until they decide that they’ve got enough for their video.

Though Jerome says he can’t tell where he ends and Lakewood begins, it’s actually hard to imagine two local artists who have less in common. Though they both operate on brain wavelengths foreign to the typical human, Lakewood, whose real name is Andrew Esposito, is a reluctant performer who despite creating art and music in Buffalo for the better part of five years, has only presented his material to the public after being coaxed out by Jerome. Jerome on the other hand is an untamed physical performer who intensely enjoys the spotlight. By Lakewood’s description Jerome is “a man who seems to have had a rapturous and divine connection to the mythology of messianic archetypes.” Where Jerome shoots for pure shock value and primal energy, Lakewood aims for delicate musicianship, ambient grooves, and compounding musical structures. 

The two have nonetheless come together for Jerome’s latest, and for sure—100% certain this time—final show in Buffalo, A Grandeur Finale this Monday, October 19 at Kleinhans Musical Hall. Yes, Jerome will perform his outsider hip hop theater show on the very stage that Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke, and upon which one of the world’s most prominent orchestras—the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—performs regularly. If you ask Jerome, he’ll tell you that the prominence of the 2,500 seat venue wagers heavily into what he sees as a precisely calculated career move. “This is a very established, very recognized venue,” says Jerome. “That’s the type of company I want to be in as a performer. I’m saying this literally and I want you to quote this word for word: I am here to prove that I am one of the greatest performers on earth. And I’m not telling, I’m not demanding, I’m asking: Let me prove it.”

The show will also, according to the subway tunnel video, serve as a mock funeral for Lakewood, who will adopt a new alias after the show. “Art Lakewood has now died and I’ll never perform as Art Lakewood again,” says the 26-year-old artist.

This show will be the last in a series of events for Jerome that date back a few years. Past events have taken place at Soundlab and the Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center, but for his most recent performance, he stepped it up a notch, taking his show to Asbury Hall, where after a series of unfortunate events he failed to have his daughter, Lyric Luminary, baptized on stage as part of the show. As they say, the show must go on, and it did, when Jerome leapt from the balcony of the venue onto the stage as the venue’s manager was certainly having a stroke somewhere out of view. The show climaxed with a version of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” playing loudly over the speakers as Jerome made eye contact with each member of the audience individually. 

After spending a small fortune booking Kleinhans, there’s no doubt that Jerome will attempt to take his performance to the next level to ensure that he gets his money’s worth—whatever that may mean to him.

The show will begin with a series of electronic and live percussion based pieces by Art Lakewood with the help of his friend and long time collaborator Rob Schifferli. The duo will perform compositions which have been thoughtfully selected for the finely tuned acoustics of Kleinhans Music Hall. 

In addition to his highly physical and jarring one man performance, Jerome’s shows typically feature elaborate and provactive set pieces. At last year’s Asbury Hall show he presented a series of photo vignettes that depicted him engaging with deceased pop cultural and historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Michael Jackson, Salvador Dali, and the Ultimate Warrior. At an earlier show, he presented photographic collage that juxtaposed the Klu Klux Klan with the Wu Tang Clan within a ying yang symbol to the horror of some, the confusion of others, and the curiosity of the rest. These art pieces reveal something about how Jerome perceives the scope of his artistry. As he speaks to me, he also directly compares himself to figures like Kanye West, Anthony Kiedis, and Paul McCartney.

On the phone with Jerome, I ask him my final question: What do you hope to accomplish with this concert booking?

“It’s a rare occasion to witness true integrity, true resilliance in a day and age when we’re made to think that things are far fetched, things are impossible, and things are unachieveable in our day to day routine. This is designed for people to think for themselves, to stand behind how they feel. People will look back and say ‘those are two men who achieved such a high honor, performing at such a prestigious venue, on top of never selling their souls, staying true to themselves the whole time—and they did it for the history. They did it to benefit their scene and to push the boundries.”