The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.36
First Lines
A white boy rode flatfoot on a skateboard, towed along, hand to shoulder, by a black boy pedaling a brakeless fixed-gear bike. ~ Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue
It’s been said that we play favorites here at The OrphanAGE…and it’s true, all true!
A project of Club Medici, the OrphanAGE often turns to the artists that for the last 29 years, have created in and around Kansas City’s iconoclastic, avant-garde, indy bookseller, Prospero’s Books. A 501c3 and Missouri Nonprofit, Club Medici, was founded in 2023 with the express purpose to support the Middle-American arts scene by expanding access to audiences, improving understanding and preserving a record of the work. But its not all back-looking. Our central mission is to identify and foster new art that captures THIS, our place and time.
This issue introduces the Second Annual Club Medici Major Grant recipient!
Founded in 2005 half a continent distant out of the Pittsburg, Pa instrumental recording act, Whitford, The Sexy Accident has remained remarkably prolific, with 20 recordings under its belt. Their new album Before We Invented the Moon, is their first vinyl release. None of this NFT crappola — we plant our flag firmly in the camp that it is art’s tactile artifacts: its books, paintings, CDs and albums, film, etc. that will endure. The prevailing rental zeitgeist (fanned by AI glop), while capturing a sliver of the real, risks a lotus-eating impermanence.
Visit Club Medici & support our work.
And so, here we go: Meet the Sexy Accident. Give a song a watch-n-listen. Check out a poem by Jesse Kates. If the work resonates, you will want to attend the upcoming release performance!
First Friday, Oct. 2
Studio 360 above the Leedy Voulkos Art Center
In the Crossroads just north of Union Station
Pre-order your copy of Before We Invented the Moon. This is 180-gram vinyl of newly revisioned takes on singles and songs from across The Sexy Accident's back catalogue.
Peace,
Dante
In this Issue
- Interview: The Sexy Accident
- Music Video
- Poetry by Jesse Kates
An OrphanAge Interview
Jesse Kates
The BIG O: Most bands don't make it 21 years — what's changed the about why/how you approach the SxA enterprise?
Jesse: The why hasn't changed. To me, this band has always been about the pursuit of artistic excellence with a trusted group of collaborators. Everybody needs to get along and enjoy each other, but that's not our reason. The Sexy Accident is not about “hanging out.” We're pretty focused. That focus is largely applied to songwriting and recording, yet I've always cared about being a great live band, too. It’s the how that’s shifted over the years. I used to have more time, before kids and moving up at my day job, so I've had to get really, really efficient about how I approach things. It’s a lot to juggle every week, and I wouldn’t be able to keep up if I hadn’t gotten pretty good at it.
The BIG O: If 21-years-ago Jesse could hear the band right now, what do you think would surprise him most?
Jesse: I would be surprised by the level of intricacy and completeness in what we are doing. Especially looking at the new material that's halfway done for the next record. It's another leap for me and for us. I'm incredibly happy with how it's coming together. We’re doing dense, thoughtful arrangements. None of it is fluff or filler. It’s simultaneously restrained and huge - quite a trick. The performances still have truth and real emotion to them, but they’re much more refined.
Ramone Hall
The BIG O: As the SxA’s rhythm anchor, if your drum kit could talk, what would it complaint about most after a recording session?
Ramone: It would definitely complain about the session having to end, about having to pack it all away! You can hear it in every hit: my kit simply loves to be played. The energy, the undertones, just sing out. Because of shared living spaces where I practice, it only gets to shine during tracking sessions and gigs. So whenever we wrap, I can practically hear it begging for just one more take.
Ryan Leip
The BIG O: Word is that you were a fan before joining the SxA. Switching between guitar & keys, what do you understand about the music now, from the inside, that you didn't understand as a fan in the audience?
Ryan: The most important thing I’ve learned from inside the band, working with Jesse, is a greater understanding of songwriting and what it means to lead a rock band. When I first became a fan, I was a senior in high school and just beginning to play music seriously. Even in the early days, I knew the Sexy Accident was something special, something to keep an eye on. I was blown way by the level of songwriting. I would have never guessed that I’d be able to join one day, much less spend ten years in the band. To be fair, this understanding of songwriting and band leading is exactly the kind of thing I would have wanted to pick his brain about back then, too. So, in that way, this has been a very fulfilling experience.
Mack McKinney
The BIG O: Bass is often a band's best-kept secret — everyone feels it, almost nobody names it. What's your philosophy back there: do you prefer to chase melody or simply serve the low end?
Mack: I love my role as a bass player, because I get to do both! My goal is always to support the song, staying locked in and providing groove and movement to match Ramone’s drumming. Yet, I always find opportunity to support melody, maybe inspired by vocals, maybe by one of the guitar or keys parts. Sometimes my best note is the one I don’t play, allowing space.
Rachel Jaggard
The BIG O: As the new kid in the outfit, adding color from the background and stepping into the spotlight as lead vocalist, if you could talk to yourself right before you joined, what would you want her to know?
Rachel: I would tell her how awesome it’s going to be to work with such talented, kind, and hilarious folk, that her anxiety about not being good enough is lying to her, and that she’s going to have so much fun! If she only knew how cool the experience was going to be, she would’ve finagled her way into the band a lot sooner!
...ok, one more from Jesse
The BIG O: You’ve worked with and around some of the biggest names in the biz - Fisk, Cooper, Eubank, and you recorded at Albini’s studio. Now, you’ve assumed a more direct role in recording and production. What have you learned from these individuals that influences your current work?
Jesse: The video directors you mentioned - Zack Eubank and Morgan Cooper - are incredible examples of grit, determination, hard work and exacting standards. They were and are both destined to make great things, and they’ve committed their lives to doing it. They deserve whatever success they find, and their journeys are just beginning. As for Albini, I loved his humility, generosity of knowledge, his refusal to exploit anyone and his immense, empirically and systematically-derived competence. The man was a scientist in a world of tribal convention, and I’ve aped and adapted his engineering techniques to the greatest extent I can.
It's hard to catalog all the things I learned from Steve Fisk. He produced so many of our records and was ever-present through such a large chunk of time. He taught me production, layering, visual metaphors for mixing, and about weird instruments I’d never heard of. He taught me that what ultimately matters is the artistic presentation - that there's no such thing as “cheating,” really, unless you’re watering things down or making them feel flat or fake. … which isn’t about the “cheating” but rather the mistakes that can hurt your work. Steve showed me that it’s fun and meaningful to make things MORE what they are meant to be - that you can and should exaggerate stuff and have fun with it: slow down the tape machine, kick the spring reverb, detune the guitar, whistle like you’re in a Disney musical. Those risky-seeming moments generally make things better. He taught me that it can be good to have flaws on a record if they make it feel more exciting and human. That it’s great to have high standards, to rehearse, to plan and to be locked in, and then to edit/make corrections when you need to. I think a lot of bands try to fit into some predefined notion of what their genre is, or what it’s not. One might consider that taste, but that kind of handcuffing can be boring. Most things that stand out durably in the culture involve breaking the rules in one way or another. I'm not saying I've done that in a grandly notable way (yet?), but I can say that everything is becoming more and more confidently itself. I now, more consistently, respect and embrace my obsessions, and I know that Steve encouraged that. Each Sexy Accident record has been a progressively more distilled version of what I want to do as an artist, and I’ll be satisfied so long as that continues.
The Sexy Accident, (clockwise: Jesse Kates, Ramone Hall, Ryan Leip, Mack McKinney, Rachal Jaggard / photos by Tobias Kates
Poetry by Jesse Kates
Political Agenda
pluck mulberries on summer
sidewalks. rinse chlorine
from kids’ hair. Don’t dwell
on the third rail, advocate truth
in bagels. erect lunchroom
pulpits for closet soccer
virtuosos. give figs. sing
to the whites of their eyes.
don’t befriend gun nuts
until they hatch, treehugger.
Reminders
don't chop the tops off trees
burry your hatchet in warm butter
no wrist slaps for nail biting boys
eat only Energy Star bulbs
don’t drink gravy at salad bars
for late night anxiety, chew foil
only listen to massacres
from the distance of a car radio
when lost in cicada sound
look for the child who cries moon!