Photos courtesy Andrew Feller
Ruth B8r Ginsburg and Mark Waldoch
With all due respect to good intentions, D.I.Y. fundraisers in the Milwaukee music scene tend to be modest successes at best. Most raise some awareness for their cause, but little in the way of actual funds. So Milwaukee’s multi-venue Arte Para Todos (“Art For Everyone”) festival is a welcome rarity: an independent benefit with the talent, scope and organizational clout to do real good. Last year in its inaugural outing the event netted more than $21,000 for arts programs in local schools, and given how much the now-four-day festival has expanded in its second year, it’s a safe bet that it’ll surpass that number.
Each night of Arte Para Todos spotlights a different neighborhood, and this year’s began with an unusual choice: Walker’s Point, an area that’s never been known as much of a live music hub. That might finally be changing, though. Tellingly, three of the four participating venues Thursday night didn’t even exist a few years ago. Even with a thinner lineup than the rest of the weekend—especially compared to the 11 venues included in Saturday’s Riverwest lineup—there was still so much talent scattered across the schedule that it was often difficult to decide what to see.
Over at the Var Gallery, a beautiful recent addition to Second Street that’s been a magnet for many of the city's best young artists, three acts took advantage of the venue’s perfectly placed but typically underused stage. The acoustics flattered Ruth B8r Ginsburg, a bluegrass group that thrives on the interplay between its six singing multi-instrumentalists. Making music as intrinsically rural as bluegrass speak to city issues is tough, which may be why so few urban bluegrass acts even try, but Ruth B8r Ginsburg’s take on the genre spoke to concerns specific to Milwaukee. Along with a couple of Gillian Welch covers, the women sang originals that touched on racial segregation, societal double standards and political hypocrisy, packing often biting commentary into a charmingly quaint package. They closed with a touching a cappella number inspired by the mother of Dontre Hamilton.
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Like the Var Gallery several blocks to its east, Brenner Brewery also touts a prime stage that makes you wonder why it isn’t used more. Backed by a band that cast creeping shadows over her spindly folk songs, Marielle Allschwang delivered a powerful set of lullabies and nightmares. She opened with the first of what would no doubt be many Prince covers that weekend, “Seven,” a number her band Hello Death included at last fall’s Prince Uncovered concert. (Back at the Var Gallery, Mark Waldoch delivered what I’m told was a killer harmonium-led rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” another reprise from that unforgettable show).
On paper, Brenner Brewery’s warehouse acoustics were an awful match for the unapologetically loud punk quartet Fox Face. In execution, though, it was awesome. Volume becomes this band, whose purebred punk is simultaneously no thrills and all thrills. Meanwhile at Anodyne, a coffeeshop that has fast become the neighborhood's flagship live music venue, the prog-hop duo Def Harmonic rapped about living in the past and living off the grid. Fiercely individualistic and proudly feminist, the on-again/off-again duo was a bright spot in the Milwaukee hip-hop scene back at a time when it frankly didn’t have many, and if they sound out of place in the current rap climate, it’s just as well. They sounded out of place in the mid ’00s, too.
One of the great Milwaukee music narratives of the last year or two has been soul singer Lex Allen’s rise from one of the rap scene’s unsung supporting players to a destination headliner in his own right. Though Allen didn’t cover Prince during his packed, amped-up set at Anodyne, he didn’t need to. As an androgynous, genre-busting singer with a crack live band, he channels the spirit of Prince better than any performer in the city (Gabriel Sanchez excepted, of course). Allen’s band knew how to work the crowd just as well as the singer. Even when the sound system died in the middle of their set, they didn’t miss a beat. They just kept jamming acoustically, and kept the crowd dancing and clapping while their sax player took advantage of his opportunity to shine.
The night closed with another popular local draw that does brilliant, unexpected things with a saxophone: Soul Low, a quartet that sets the bar for the rest of the city’s indie-rock scene. The group’s 2013 debut Uneasy is probably the closest spiritual sequel to the first Violent Femmes album the city has ever released, even if the two records don't sound all that much alike. It’s a perfect album, and the band's musical vocabulary has somehow only expanded in the years since. They debuted a new song that sounded like a cross between Josef K and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Could their next album be the one where they embrace the saxophone’s full ’80s ambiance potential? It’ll be exciting to find out, but in the meantime their plucky set was a fitting cap to a night the celebrated the state of the local music scene while teasing things to come.
Photos courtesy Andrew Feller.
