IMAGE VIA MODERN MUSIC MOVEMENT
Tonight I had the chance to speak with Nicholas Selitto from Modern Music Movement (Facebook | Website) and Michael Bernier from The Imposters, a fresh duo he’s in with Buck Colson (SoundCloud), ahead of their show this Saturday, August 29th, at Timucua Arts Foundation‘s White House venue in SoDo. Modern Music Movement is the series behind some of Timucua’s more boundary-pushing bookings, and I’m excited to find out more about what they’ve got planned for this one, straight from the two of them.
Tickets are $30 and available HERE for purchase. The White House is located at 2000 S. Summerlin Avenue [GMap].
1) How did this booking come together? Was it a mutual connection, or did one of you reach out to the other?
Nick: Michael reached out to me. I think we know each other through a mutual friend in upstate New York — Kingston, that Woodstock/Catskills area. A former musician friend of mine, who I’m still in touch with on social media, gave Michael my information. Michael lives out in Brooksville, on the outskirts of Orlando, and he just called me randomly. It ended up lining up perfectly, since we’re also part of the program for the International Guitar Festival they do every year — so it all came together in a great way.
2) Nick, what is Modern Music Movement, and how did it start as a presenting series at Timucua specifically?
Nick: Modern Music Movement is my promoter project. I create the name for the events, the font, the creative ideas, write the copy, all of it. Sometimes I start the whole thing myself and put the bids out to bands; sometimes a venue comes to me with an idea and says, “do a party for us, here’s the theme,” and lets me run with it. When I started working with Timucua, I saw an opportunity to bring in some really cool boutique acts. The venue lives on the edge, so I started bringing in edgy, out-there artists — JG Thirlwell, Scraping Foetus, Lydia Lunch, Norm Westberg from Swans, plus some ambient shows. They were receptive to it because Timucua is a boutique room to begin with, so it needs acts that are special in their own way, that pull a real niche audience.
3) How do you decide which acts get booked under the Modern Music Movement banner?
Nick: It’s about that boutique, underground feel. I’d rather say “niche” than “underground,” since that word’s a little worn out. I’m looking for something obscure enough that a real audiophile would think, “that’s obscure enough that I might actually come out for that.” It’s a tough market out there right now, but there’s engagement on the edge. That’s what I’m looking for as a promoter.
4) What drew you to The Imposters for this particular show?
Nick: Michael reached out and told me about the project, and about his resume… working with Tony Levin of King Crimson (Spotify), with Natalie Merchant (Spotify), Stereolab collaborations. All of that is right on the radar of the kind of acts I book. It was an easy yes.
5) Michael, tell me about The Imposters. Who’s in the band, and how did you come together?
Michael: I moved down to Florida from New York under pretty undesirable circumstances. My girlfriend’s father was dying, we’d just been asked to leave where we were renting, and it was all this weird synchronicity. I said, let’s just move to Florida, take care of her mom, do it all. It took about a year for the studio I teach out of now to come together.
Before that, I’d come up playing everything from Pantera and Deftones to Prog: King Crimson, Stick Men (Spotify), playing with people like Eddie Jobson and Simon Phillips. I play the Chapman Stick — it’s twelve strings, six bass strings on one side and six guitar strings on the other, so I can play chords and solo lines at the same time. It’s tap style, almost like playing piano — very percussive, not like you’re strumming and rocking out. I actually got pulled into Stick Men after Tony Levin came up to me after a show and asked if I’d give him lessons — he only played the bass side of the stick, and I was playing everything. I ended up touring and recording with Stick Men for four years.
The Imposters came out of me and Buck [Colson] just deciding to get together and see what happened. He’s incredibly talented in a completely different way than I am. He has a totally different approach to the instrument.
6) What does the name “The Imposters” mean to you, or where did it come from?
Michael: Everyone points out that Elvis Costello already has a band called the Imposters, so we might end up calling it Imposters Syndrome instead, because honestly, we’re both incredibly insecure musicians. It’s kind of apropos. We have no ego. We’re the nicest people you’ll meet.
7) How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you?
Michael: I was raised in a house playing Black Sabbath, Stravinsky, Mantovani Orchestra, Lenny White, old Miles Davis, but also Deftones and Helmet, Tool and Danny Carey. Meanwhile, I was the kid upstairs listening to Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Smiths. It’s that whole dichotomy of very different influences at once. My dad used to tell me to come downstairs and listen to real music like “Tom Sawyer” and stuff like that, and I always said, “Okay, Dad, I’ll impress you one day.” Eventually he came to a Stick Men show, and I told him, “I’m playing with Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto; I’m basically in a King Crimson trio.” He just said, “Yeah, that’s pretty good.” That’s about as good a review as I’ve ever gotten.
8) What’s it like performing in a listening-room environment like White House compared to a typical club or bar gig?
Michael: I’ve played all over the planet, but I’ve genuinely never played in Florida. We did Northeast tours with Stick
Men, but never came south of the Mason-Dixon line. I hear [White House] is a pretty intimate space.
Buck’s shy, but I’m definitely an extrovert, so I’ll be talking to everyone. I might even go into the crowd with a cordless mic. One thing I never liked about Stick Men was how stodgy and elitist it could feel; everyone in black like Johnny Cash, like we were sitting shiva. It felt sterile. I want to actually communicate with the crowd, not just have something happen at them. We’ve all sat in a theater environment enduring the guy next to us who smells weird. I want people to feel relaxed. Then let the music do the rest.
9) Are you working on any new material right now, and does any of it factor into this show?
Michael: Yeah, we’re actually making an album right now. I’m staring at the grid for it as we speak. It’s still very much in progress, so we’re figuring out what’s next as we go, and this show is part of that process.
10) What do you want people walking away from Timucua on August 29 to feel?
Michael: A big part of it, honestly, is a greater awareness of Buck and his talent. This isn’t just cerebral, linear, methodic music; it’s very evocative. It’s two people, a duo, similar to a project I did before with Richie DeCarlo. It’s challenging, but no more challenging than King Crimson was to audiences the first time they heard them in the late ’60s, when there was nothing to compare it to.
Nick: It’s a very fringe-friendly venue with a fringe-friendly audience, so I think they’ll be fine.
Michael: I don’t want to call it “progressive,” because nothing’s really progressive anymore, and I don’t want to call it “neo” or “new-prog” either. It’s just ours. It’s new, it’s a little weird, and it’s for the audience to decide what to make of it. I think people will genuinely enjoy figuring out how they feel about it.
