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Meeting of the Metal Minds

RVA Staff | January 8, 2020

Topics: Enforced, Iron Reagan, music, richmond va bands, RVA 38

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, featuring a conversation about all things crossover between Iron Reagan’s Rob Skotis and Enforced vocalist Knox Colby.

On the heels of their debut LP release this summer, Enforced is amping up their name in Richmond and throughout metal and hardcore scenes with their latest sounds in crossover thrash. Following their tour with Iron Reagan earlier this year, At The Walls dropped in July after their “Skinned Alive” single premiered with Revolver. 

The local bands came together again, as frontman Knox Colby sat down with Iron Reagan’s Rob Skotis to talk writing processes, genre breakdowns, and future plans between the two bands in an exclusive interview. Enforced is heading back out on tour this month with High Command, kicking it off with a show on October 18 at Wonderland ahead of their dates across the U.S. and into Canada. 

Rob Skotis: I wanted to talk about separation, and how humanity is just repeating itself. 

Knox Colby: Oh, yeah, I mean, a lot of a lot of [Enforced’s] lyrics are basically just like, “This is heading off a cliff.” We’re all headed towards absolute fucking disaster. If you don’t see it, I’m sorry, I’m not gonna berate or belittle you. But please see the writing on the wall. I’ll be living in Mad Max in my lifetime. 

RS: Yeah. It’s like if people asked if you want to have kids and you’re like, “No. Do you think I’d want to bring someone in this world?” 

KC: My mom is so upset. She was like, “You and your brother won’t have kids.” I’m like, “Good.” I’m sorry that you can’t be a grandmother, but I’m not bringing another fucking person to live 80 years into absolute chaos that I won’t live to see. They will. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s a really bad idea. 

RS: I’m a little sad about it. Maybe I did want [kids]. 

KC: I really do. I would really love a kid. Three or four, a murder of children would be great. 

Rob Skotis. Photo via Facebook

RS: Talking about all that, trying to find a way to fix it — 

KC: Oh, I have no answers.

RS: One of the things I like asking bands about, because it’s always different: What is your writing process? 

KC: Yeah, it is always different. Every band I’ve been in before Enforced was with the same 10 people, since I was 13. So that writing process got so easy, because you’re writing with each other for 13 years. I know who’s going to do what, I know what their ideas are going to be, and what the music they write sounds like. So you’re like, “Okay, yeah, this is all easy. It’s very fluid.” Doesn’t make it good, but it makes the writing process fucking non-existent. You don’t even think about it. Like: “You do that, you do that, I’ll do that like we always do.” Boom. Throw it up. 

But with Enforced, it’s a completely different group of personalities that I’ve never worked with. I don’t know how anyone goes about anything. But they had all known each other and been in bands with each other prior, so they have their formula down — I was just the new guy, in terms of the writing group. They already had a demo done, and I just had to put vocals on it. But they were very adamant about “the vocals have to be perfect.” They’ve gotta hit how everyone wants them to hit. You’ve got to get the cadence right. Or, “Here’s how we picture the vocals to be for this.” And that’s so strange, because I’ve never had a kind of frame to put shit in. I’ve always been given free rein. 

RS: Do you think having them giving you some constraints actually made you better? 

KC: Yeah, because it’s so much harder. I can’t just be like [making drunken opera sounds] whenever I want. So I’ll go through five or six drafts of lyrics. Then we’ll practice it, record it, just do a quick scratch demo, and listen to it a bunch. And be like, “Yeah, no, it’s still not hittin’ like it should,” and change the song. By changing the song, you gotta change the lyrics. Back to square one. Every time. Until it’s absolutely spot on and they’re like, “Yep, that’s good.”

Enforced. Photo via Facebook

RS: Is there one of the dudes in the band that writes more of the riffs? 

KC: Will Wagstaff and Zach Banahan write 99.8% of everything. 

RS: Does the drummer construct with them? 

KC: Yeah. In terms of what Alex [Bishop] is comfortable doing, what he can do. He can’t do double bass for three minutes straight, [but] I don’t care. I mean, who wants to do that? 

RS: I don’t really get it. You’re like… running. Just let me run as fast as I can for a full sprint. 

KC: And then do the rest of the set. It’s ridiculous. So it’s like, “That’d be cool with double bass. That’d be cool with double bass too. Can you do it for all that?” He’s like, “Fuck no — I put my foot down. No.” If we’re gonna play a 45 minute set, no, that’s not gonna happen. 

RS: I like that you use double bass and you’re crossover. 

KC: Yeah, we also have two bass drums now, so it’s like, full double bass. 

RS: That’s great. That’s one thing I always liked about Municipal Waste; they put a lot of double bass into crossover, which took it away more from the hardcore side of things and brought it to the metal side. 

KC: Our logical progression is going that way. Going more metal, more Demolition Hammer, more Sodom. Much heavier. In some cases way faster. Basically veering away from the hardcore framework of “fast part, slow part, fast part, fast part, two step part, fast part,” and with the breakdown, we’re done. We’ve done that. A lot. So we’re playing a lot with the stuff that we’re trying to demo now. We’re playing a lot with tempos. Some of it’s real poppy. You can tap your foot to it. So it’s the full spectrum of what we’re capable of doing. 

RS: That’s great. I think there are a lot more crossover bands popping up now, and a lot of them are full-blown to the Municipal Waste side, where it’s super-fast pizza thrash. Then the other ones are taking it super Power Trip-side. Or like Hatebreed, almost. 

Enforced’s Knox Colby. Photo via Facebook

KC: The opposite side of party pizza thrash is metalcore crossover. 

RS: Yeah, exactly. Taking it that far, but doing a bad job at it. 

KC: Both ends of the spectrum are fucking questionable. You gotta get it right. If you get it right, then great. What right is, I don’t know. If it slaps, it slaps. 

RS: So my next question is: do you like writing music that slaps? 

KC: Do I like writing music that slaps? No. I fucking hate it. It’s hard to do. If I wrote shit that fucking slopped then it’d be awesome. It’d be the easiest shit to do. I could just do it in my sleep. But there’s a difference between slop and slap. You gotta slap. Can’t slop. 

RS: Are you guys really into making this a band that you could just tour with for the rest of your life? 

KC: We made a blood pact. 

RS: So you’re really fucking going for it? 

KC: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s spooky, for me at least, because I’ve had a job since I was 14. So having a job, going to work, doing the grind. No matter what, for 15 years, and still doing music. Neither of them ever intersecting has been a constant. So now it might get to the point where I have to quit my job. That’s great if it does, but that’s super fucking spooky for me. I just turned 29, so it’s like: you really want to quit your job now? At 29? You’ve been doing this shit for about six years. Does that seem like a good idea? No. But that’s really what I want to do.

Top Photo: Enforced, via Facebook

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Rest Easy With WRIR’s Death Club Radio

S. Preston Duncan | January 7, 2020

Topics: Alane Cameron-Ford, Death Club Radio, Firehouse Theatre, Jack Johnson, local radio, Open Source RVA, Phil Ford, RVA 38, WRIR

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, in which we explore the ins, outs, ups and downs of death and dying with Death Club Radio, the weekly WRIR show that helps demystify the universal experience of the end of life.

Here’s the thing: you’re going to die. If that makes you uncomfortable and you stop reading this right now, you’re still going to die. It is the singular universal experience of all living things. That platitude about death and taxes being the only certainties? Propaganda. It’s just death. That we die is inevitable — how we do it is not.

There is a movement right now in the workings of collective thought, a shifting perspective on death and dying. It has the potential to reintroduce End-of-Life experiences to the human narrative of life itself; to transmute this inescapable end from a fate we all ignore into an action undertaken with intention and grace.

Of course, in order for that to happen, we have to actually talk about it. 

That conversation started on a larger scale in Richmond with the introduction of Death Club Radio (DCR) in a weekly show hosted by the River City’s champions of local radio, WRIR 97.3 FM. DCR makes no claims of paradigm-shifting grandeur. It’s not hitting the campaign trail for wisdom in dying, and its only catch phrase seems to be “Stay Alert, Stay Alive.” But it is the kind of extended conversation that has the capacity, in thirty minute increments, to subdue our cultural knee-jerk aversion to addressing our mortality. And, at the very least, it sticks a pointy-toed shoe in the path of the unlockable door we’ve been slamming on death.

DCR started when twenty-year hospice veteran Alane Cameron-Ford was asked to do a segment on death and dying for Open Source RVA, a Richmond-centric radio news show on WRIR hosted by lauded local journalist Don Harrison. But it was their producer, Jack Johnson, who saw potential for something more.

Alane Cameron-Ford: I had no radio experience, knew nothing about it. So several free lunches had to occur before I could be talked into it — and then it was actually our producer, Jack Johnson, who totally talked me into it.

The show didn’t come into its essence until Alane’s co-host (and now husband) Phil Ford wandered in from recording his own show elsewhere in the studio.

Phil Ford: I guess there had been a revolving door of various co-hosts. I had my own show I was doing at the time. And she was recording hers. 

ACF: We were sitting in the studio looking lost, and Phil just kinda popped his head in and said “Are y’all… okay? Do you need anything?” And we did.

PF: Just to provide commentary. Ask dumb questions. Or insightful questions from the common person.

ACF: Phil, Jack, and I didn’t really know each other well at this point.

PF: And this was after it was a module. So what happened was, she had done a little 5-minute segment on open source and then through Chris Dovi and Don’s encouragement, as well as Jack’s. She needed to do a bigger show — she needed to do a 30 minute show. The station was looking for local programming. And so everybody was like “let’s just do it.” She was a little trepidatious, and there were some rough moments when Jack was still trying to find his ground as a producer. But it all came together, in this nice little fold of her and I being able to have this great dialog back and forth. And Jack also included sometimes in the dialog, but also to be able to edit… mostly me out, when it needed to be edited.

ACF: It’s amazing, when you talk about death… you get to know someone real well.

But they weren’t bonding over a shared morbid fascination. Listeners will tell you there isn’t much depressive fatalism being kicked around in on-air conversation. DCR focuses almost exclusively on our relationship with death; not just experiences of grief and loss, but cultural perspectives, social attitudes, and the ways in which coming to a deeper understanding of our mortality might improve our lives. 

ACF: I’ve heard other death shows. They’re not as interested in science as we are, and they’re not as interested in social science as we are. They are interested in how the body dies and that’s it. We are not preoccupied with how the body dies. It’s part of what we talk about. It’s important to what we talk about. But we’re as interested in talking about cures that are being found. We’re interested in talking about people who recover from devastating grief, and how they’re able to recover and live their lives.

If this sounds hopeful (if not downright uplifting), that’s because it is. These conversations look directly at something almost universally feared. That focus gently illuminates the anxious shadows we cast, often refusing to openly deal with End-of-Life processes. It lightens the neurotic dread that festers in the parts of ourselves we don’t acknowledge. It does so with candor and — more often than not — humor.

PF: To use an analogy, we kind of take death out of the hospital and take it to a natural grounds, someplace where you’re more in tune with it. And I think that’s the goal. Being able to identify with it easier.

While the need for these discussions is by no means geographically limited, regional attitudes and lore play a significant role in our death mythologies. Death is a community event, after all. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, it’s hard to describe Richmond without noting the spectre of history we live alongside.

ACF:  I think what makes it easier in Richmond is that Richmond is big enough — that a lot of what we talk about is news to people — but it’s small enough that we have certain niche groups that really like to listen to it. That would be some of our nursing schools, our social work pool, funeral directors, the Richmond City Jail. When we start talking about their stuff, they all know each other. The fact that WRIR is known nationwide for being an extremely successful independent radio station brings much to the show. I mean, that is absolutely essential — that they are so popular with so many people, and people really trust that station to give them information. So could it exist in another town? Yes, but only if it had another WRIR. 

PF: Another strong community.

ACF: And WRIR only exists here.

PF: We’ve done interviews out of state, and when we tell people what it is, they’re like… what? Because it is a strange thing. They don’t know what to expect. We’d love to get it on PRX, and I think it would be picked up by a podcast. Other community stations, I think, would absolutely pick it up. I think where there’s a strong sense of localism and community, it would be successful, because we don’t specifically talk about Richmond. I mean, sometimes. We did a show on the Jefferson during the holidays.

ACF: But Richmond does have a few attractions that are death-related, that make it a town where people are talking about these things. You’ve got the Poe Museum, you have the constant discussion — thank goodness — about burial grounds, and the respect that has been historically shown them versus the respect that needs to be shown. And that’s at least five different sites. You have a very prominent medical school. And Hollywood cemetery, which is just the jewel.

PF:  We have a lot of famous presidents buried in our backyard.

ACF: So all of those things promote more discussion about death and dying. And then if you look at our history museums, they cover it a little bit, between The Valentine and the Museum of History and Culture, and Tredegar. They all touch on it a little bit.

In another turn of local providence, Alane and Phil have started hosting live recordings at the Firehouse Theater. Under the banner of Death Club Radio Live, these bi-monthly black box events provide both a physical forum for community engagement, and supplement the on-air experience with vaudevillian theater.

ACF: The Firehouse, for various productions, would have a group discussion about the production. And they invited me on to discuss the aspects of death and dying in To Damascus.  And that evidently went so well, it might have been an audition I didn’t know was an audition. 

PF: The Artistic Director, Joel, was looking for a collaboration among several different types of things. He’s really a big fan of that. And obviously, she’s a wonderful speaker and engaging person. And then we combined that with the EAT people. They’re a nonprofit where they do these educational pop-up meals, combining Indian food with whatever subject they had in mind, and a chef would come in and cook for a family-style table.

ACF: So we did one of those on death and dying. We collaborated with them and we talked about funeral food. We talked about traditions. So we did a couple collaborations with the Firehouse, and then they invited us to be in-house every other month for two years.

PF: As part of the fringe. 

ACF: Yeah, we’re the fringe. But it’s really nice because it gets our listeners introduced to The Firehouse, and it gets Firehouse people introduced to us. It’s a nice collaboration. And they do all kinds of incredible things. They have like 250 shows a year or something. What we’ve spent our time on is community events — events that are also related to the radio station. We also have multiple publications that we have made as part of a community education effort. We’ve looked into grants. If we were able to get some grants, what we’d like to do is more work with marginalized populations, and how they cope with death and dying.

Death Club Radio at Firehouse Theatre

A cursory search of the internet will reveal thousands of articles, sites, and services tagged #deathpositive. But it’s not a niche enclave of macabre Hamlet enthusiasts, nor is it an iteration of “New Age Positive Thinking,” which claims that by simply concentrating on perceptually enjoyable aspects of life, we can dispense with all unpleasantness. Death Positivity is not attempting to trade culturally-predominant death denial for a denial of grief. It doesn’t offer an oversimplified approach to overcoming the foreboding feel that we are genetically wired to feel toward dying. It doesn’t free you from loss. What it does is engage in a dialog about — and at times with — death. It offers up the taboo notion that, with a bit of luck, the end of your life can (and should) be an expression of the ways in which you have lived.

As a society, we have come to view death as a medical issue. Lives end in hospitals. Last breaths are intubated. There are visiting hours and harsh light fixtures. These sterile environments are attended by exhausted strangers in scrubs and coats. Death is hidden from view. It’s a combative approach to the End-of-Life enabled by death denial. This is an extension of our conditioning toward embattlement — we have to fight for what’s ours. Anything less is weakness. Anything less is giving up. We have become so obsessive in our pursuit of cures, we’ve largely lost sight of something profoundly more attainable: healing.

Here’s the thing: you’re going to die. Whether that happens in a hospital, surrounded by overworked and underappreciated nurses, or at home surrounded by family (or friends, or pets, or string lights that look like Corona bottles) won’t change that. But it will change your experience. And that matters. A terminal diagnosis is an opportunity to co-author the last chapter of a story written by every day of your life. In the business of stories, endings are important. But there’s a catch: you have to co-author this one with death.

We’re taught to run naked into battle, screaming Not today! and Fuck cancer!  Hopefully it’s not today. And definitely fuck cancer. But battles are messy. Explosive. And there’s a very real possibility of getting more meaningful mileage out of an emptying tank than a head-on collision. It’s your journey. The Death-Positive movement wants you to know that, as much as circumstance allows, you can choose how it ends. And since, in truth, we’re all on that road, Death Club Radio is there to help make sense of the miles.

All Photos via Death Club Radio/Facebook

Taking Off With Spacebomb Records

Reggie Pace | January 6, 2020

Topics: Andy Jenkins, angelica garcia, Fight The Big Bull, Fruit Bats, Hiss Golden Messenger, Matthew E. White, Reggie Pace, richmond music, Richmond music scene, RVA 38, Sinkane, Sleepwalkers, Spacebomb Records

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, in which Spacebomb Records founder Matthew E. White and his longtime musical compatriot Reggie Pace discuss the label’s path to its current status. Journey into the world of professional record-making with White as he discusses the journey of founding Spacebomb.

The final months of 2019 have a lot in store for local record label Spacebomb Records: from their Richmond Folk Festival album to the Andy Jenkins EP that dropped earlier this month, and with upcoming releases through the rest of the year, founder Matthew E. White has a label that stays busy.

Moving further into the season, Spacebomb Records is releasing Sinkane: Alive at Spacebomb on December 6. Angelica Garcia’s album is set to debut in 2020, along with Nadia Reid’s latest album and plenty more in store for the River City. To learn what’s behind the doors at Spacebomb and ahead in its future, Reggie Pace sat down with White to kick off his podcast (appropriately called “The Pacecast” until its forever-name is settled) and talk local music.

Check out Reggie’s interview with White below, and head over to spacebombrecords.com for more releases in Richmond. 

Reggie Pace. Photo by Lauren Serpa

Reggie Pace: You were playing music. But on the other side of town — not together.

Matthew E. White: Yeah, I was playing with The Great White Jenkins a little bit, and then Brian Hooten and Pinson and I started Fight The Bull Trio. And that was my first thing that was the instrumental free-jazz kind of music. And that grew into Fight The Big Bull.

RP: Do Fight The Bull have records?

MEW: Yeah, I guess we did. We did have one record, but that was as homemade as it got.

RP: I mean, aren’t they all in a way? Not anymore.

MEW: Yeah, but that was great. And we put together a tour for Tony Garcia’s music business class. That was my final project — to put together a tour for five people. So we did that, and it was great. That was really the beginning of everything that I’m doing now, it was that moment to decide to make it. It kind of went from there a little bit.

RP: And then Fight The Big Bull was an extension of Fight The Bull. A bigger ensemble?

MEW: Yeah, it was. Originally it was kind of like an extension, but it very quickly became “The Thing.” It was the main thing almost immediately, once that gelled into a group of people. That was cool. It’s funny, you know — those moments where you don’t know it’s happening. You look back and you’re like, “Oh, man. That’s when it happened.” Everything for me happened when Brian and I put together Fight the Big Bull. And I thought, “Okay, I’m going to start writing for this.” We did that first Dying Will Be Easy record, and that got on NPR. Then David Carson Daniels heard about it, and that brought me into the Durham music scene, then that brought us into Sounds of the South. People ask me all the time what happened, but I don’t know, man… for me it was just all about creating energy. Trying to make and do and go.

RP: There’s there’s something to be said about timing.

MEW: Yeah. Good timing. But I think when you look back, me and you — and there’s several other people — that was a special time in Richmond. It still is a special time, but for us, that was our 20s. That was my youth. And there were several people that made the decision to say “I’m going to stay here. I’m going to make stuff from here.” It’s not that we planned it… I didn’t ever talk to you about it, it wasn’t a coalition. It was just in the air. And I think big picture-wise, it had a lot to do with the internet. That breaking down of geographical barriers in the music industry.

I definitely didn’t think about it like that at the time. I just sort of thought, “These are great people. Who’s better than these people?” I still say that, you know? People ask what’s the deal with Richmond — there are better players [here] than anybody. And that is what it is, man. There are more unique musicians here… not even per capita. Just period, it’s incredible. I guess I had an inkling of it then, but I’m rock-solid sure of it now. And I was just lucky to cast my bet.

RP: So, tell me about what you’ve got going on [at Spacebomb Records] right now. 

MEW: Right now, Andy Jenkins just released a new EP. Sleepwalkers have just released a record. 

RP: What’s the scene with that? Are they on Spacebomb?

MEW: Yup! 

RP: Are you releasing records they made?

MEW: Yeah, we had nothing to do with [the recording process].

RP: I feel like that’s a big change. Someone came to you with the finished record.

MEW: Yeah, yeah. And we just signed with Angelica Garcia, she’s released a couple singles and she has a record coming out.

RP: She’s a badass. She’s fucking outta here, bro.

MEW: She’s unbelievable.

RP: She’s got this fighting spirit. Every time I see her, I’m just… I’m happier. You know?

MEW: Yeah, she lights it up. We saw her play when we did the show in Austin for South By Southwest — that was a lot of Spacebomb artists, and people who came in from production that were associated with Spacebomb in one way or another. And it was five hours of music with the house band backing people up, it was sort of insane. But she did a solo set of her loop stuff, and it tore the house down… it was crazy, man, it was crazy. I was just like, “Oh my god, Angelica.” Just effortless. Effortless. It was amazing, so I’m very happy about that. And it’s nice that they’re local — that’s cool, but we’re not signing them because they’re local.

RP: I always thought that that was the thing y’all were missing in a way, local signings. And people who look different, you know? Different types of music in different backgrounds… less beards, less indie-ness.

MEW: Well, to be fair, there’s only one beard [laughs]. Sleepwalkers are really great, Angelica’s really great. What else? Like I was saying before we turned on the mic, we have the Alive at Spacebomb series that allows us to work with friends in the industry who aren’t necessarily signed to the label. So we did something with Hiss Golden Messenger and Sinkane. We did something with Fruit Bats and Vetiver earlier this year.

RP: Fruit Bats. That’s a fun band. They’re definitely out of left field, but they sound so good that it doesn’t matter. 

MEW: Yeah, it’s great. And it’s funny, the whole Spacebomb world has grown tremendously. Like I was saying before, we have our own studio. I am involved, but it used to be more like… I was the founder, and I was the driver of it. Now it has its own things rolling. I’m in there occasionally, but I’ve been focused as much, if not mostly, on Matthew E. White as a solo artist. Anything I produce goes through Spacebomb, but Spacebomb is a real record label with people that work in an office from nine to five every day. 106 Robinson. Go see ‘em if you want.

RP: I gotta go by there. They’re a great team, you know? I feel like it works well because you have a team full of go-getters, like Trey. Trey is a go-getter. He’s getting it done. And Alan, and Cameron is a deep artist. Pinson is a very deep artist.

MEW: It’s a lot bigger and a lot more energy, and a lot more work than just me. I think people kind of project it [a certain way]… sometimes in the interviews, I’ll read things as if it’s a Matt White thing. And at this point, it is just partially a Matt White thing. Like Merge.

RP: You got it off the ground. Merge is always going to be Mac, it doesn’t matter what he says.

MEW: It’s the label that goes, man. And that’s cool. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of those guys — Dan, Jesse, Dean, and Trey — and all those guys that work their asses off day-to-day to make it go. And hopefully, the idea is, we all kind of work it. And it all goes a little bit back into the same pot.

Listen to the full interview on Spotify below (or launch it in your app from mobile here) with Reggie Pace and Matthew E. White on The Hustle Season Podcast sponsored by RVA Magazine.

Matthew E. White photos via Spacebomb Records. Interview by Reggie Pace, words by S. Preston Duncan.

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Inside Flexico: The Mind, The Rise

Hip Hop Henry | December 30, 2019

Topics: AGM, Green & Gold, Michael Millions, music, Nickelus F, Richmond hip hop, richmond va, RVA, RVA 38, Segga Spiccoli, The Adventures of Flexico, The Life Company, YOUNG FLEXICO

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, in which we learn how Richmond’s Young Flexico has wound through a career of video production, rapping, and recording by sticking true to himself in his work.

“I try to have fun with it. The point of this is to do this stuff, and we don’t want to work normal jobs and have to be serious all the time.”

That’s Young Flexico, a Richmond rapper, visual artist, and marketing guru. “Not everything needs to be super serious. That’s not the mood I’m in, really,” he said. “I’m not going to say I’m in a goofy mood all the time, but I’m not in a serious mood all the time.”

For Flexico, it’s more about authenticity when it comes to subject matter in music.

“I couldn’t imagine making music that was just serious all the time. I mean, I can hit that pocket — but I’ve got to be already there [mentally]. But I don’t really be living like that,” he said. “Like, you don’t go in the studio and just be serious, you know? It was hard for me to rap about things I don’t care about as much. I feel like some artists try to touch on topics because they’re relevant, but some stuff isn’t really relevant to them. I think it [doesn’t] connect with the listener because they can feel it’s not real.”

Flexico has made quite a splash since arriving on the scene in Richmond a couple of years ago. Originally from the Hampton Roads area, he moved to the River City as a teenager and has been a part of the hip-hop wave in the city for a while. He brought his talent for video art to The Life Company (now Green and Gold Label) under the alias “G” as their director. Then he transitioned from behind the camera to performing, taking on his current moniker. I was fortunate enough to catch up with him (after months of missed connections) at his house, where we talked about promotion, the microwave minds of today’s society, and his plans for dropping new music. 

“I don’t know. I was talking to a friend and he was telling me that I should just push this for a while, but I’m always working on music, you know what I’m saying? Nothing will probably come out before the end of the year except for one or two random songs. But I’m working on another project. I’mma name my next project Tenacious — that’s what the title is right now, but it could change.” 

Before the surge of Flexico’s career, he started at the beginning as “G,” the video director. Reminiscing on his early days, he talked about how that first life began. 

“My older brother rapped. I was doing videos for him and shit like that. That’s when I first got my feet wet,” he said. “And then me and Segga (Spiccoli) became really good friends, and he rapped and all that. I ain’t have nothing to do ‘cause I wasn’t rapping. I didn’t really want to rap. I just started directing videos from there. I just looked at a lot of YouTube videos and kept practicing at it, and then I just kept sharpening my blade.” 

Seeing those early Segga Spiccoli videos and other visual work for The Life Company, I assumed he went to school for this. But he chimed in quickly to set the record straight. 

“I didn’t go to school for nothing I do,” he said. “I went to school. I got a degree in business administration, a bachelor’s degree. I started shooting videos. Like shooting good videos with Segga. The first person I shot for AGM [Association of Great Minds] was Nickelus F, but that was like some recap shit. And I reached out to [Michael Millions] after he dropped Ghost of $20 Bills, and asked him to shoot a video off the joint. We never shot a video, [until] he was recording the Beautiful album. And then we just shot the whole film because that’s when I really started learning how to do shit. 

“I didn’t have the proper tools. Like a D3100, which is like a really beginner-DSLR. And I had this fucked up ass laptop and Adobe Premiere Elements — I did all that on Adobe Premiere Elements and then chopped it together, probably going too deep in detail,” he said. “So basically I was with Mike probably for a year working on that, and just creating content for him. That was a good moment in my life. And around that time, that’s when I got my first MacBook. My girl had got it for me for Christmas, then I upgraded the camera, too. And then I just started on the first video I did with that. [It] was the ‘Laced Weed’ video [for Nickelus F], and that’s the video that people were really liking a lot.” 

In his early career, Flexico’s self-taught director skills made his transition to hip-hop almost effortless. Funding all of his own work, he’s grown from his humble beginnings with a never-wavering drive to believe in himself — and the people around him as well. Segga Spiccoli didn’t have a place to record at the early days, and Flexico bought his own recording equipment. 

“I believe in his talents so much that I bought all of the recording stuff, and then he wasn’t really using it,” Flex laughed. “I don’t know why, but Mike taught me how to use it, equipment and everything. So one day I just was like damn, I don’t want this shit to go to waste. I had spent a lot of money on that shit. He ain’t even use it, I’m just going to use it myself. 

“And that’s how I started dabbling in music, because I didn’t want to waste my money. It’s not like you can return it,” he said. “It’s right there. I got the whole set up that Mike had, I could record Segga’s vocals and then go to Mike’s House and he could fix everything — same program, same interface, same mic, same everything. I bought all the same shit that Mike has.” 

The first day he recorded, he recorded five songs back to back. He made it into his first mixtape, which he titled The Adventures of Flexico. 

“I had sent out fake mixtapes to like five people, and they was like, that joint kinda crank a little bit. But it was some goofy shit,” he said. “I was like, alright, cool. Then I came back and I was like, ‘Damn, I’m gonna really put out a mixtape.’ I think that what happened with that joint is like… if I’m going to do something, I tried to do it 110%, like go all the way in. I don’t want to have no regrets. 

“I was like damn, I’m about to start rapping. So I can’t make myself look stupid, because I already had a kind of respect for just doing videos. That’s why I ended up buying beats, trying to get cool producers on my shit.” 

Learning that he had a business degree, I had to ask Flex if he took many marketing classes. Some of his promotional moves as an artist have already earned legendary status in the community.  

“I think that goes back to how I was raised. It’s like your moms saying don’t go out of the house looking a certain way, it’s the same thing. Don’t step into whatever you’re doing without looking a certain way or creating a certain experience for people. It’s entertainment. So we have to entertain listeners. I’m calling myself Young Flexico, that mean I gotta flex, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t give myself the name, Mike gave me the name. But at the end of the day, I got to flex.” 

When it came to living up to his newfound rap alias, Flexico decided to flex that persona where nobody would miss it.  

“So it was like, what can I do that would wow people? Because honestly, if I wouldn’t have done the billboard, then nobody really would’ve noticed what I was doing,” he said. “It was like the only way I could get people’s attention was to do something that was never done before. 

“And I was just like, might as well just go for it… Then I motherfucking bought the billboard, ‘cause I was trying to make a big ass splash. And I feel like honestly all those were good steps in the right direction. The billboard was wild. That was one of the coolest things I did in my life… I feel like nobody ever did that shit before. And I came out of nowhere completely, so it was just a cool process. That’s when I really started falling in love with doing music. That shit was a cool moment in my life. 

“So I didn’t take no class [in] marketing. I just tried to think of cool ideas or excite people, because I feel like a lot of artists in general — not even just in Richmond — just don’t think outside the box. They just confine [themselves] to a certain space. And that’s why I try not confining myself, so people don’t put me in a box.”

While discussing his marketing moves, Flexico touches on some of the missteps he sees artists take, recalling the beginning of our conversation about letting his album cook for awhile. 

“The rollout part of it. I feel like artists don’t really… Alright, so you’re used to taking all your time on this stuff. Hours after hours of recording music, mixing music, all that. You do all that. You put all that time into it. Right? To put it out and just promote it slightly,” he said. “So it’s like, if I’m doing something and I’m putting a lot of my time into it, I’m taking away from spending time with my girl, spending time with my son, hanging out with just family, doing other shit. Then I might as well put that same amount of energy into the process of letting people see. 

“I feel like people might get a little bit discouraged when [they] drop something and they don’t see returns. So they don’t keep going. You know what I’m saying? Like my last video I put out didn’t do as good as the previous video. It could be a situation where I should just get on to the next thing, but I got other good songs on the album that people might like,” he said. 

“It’s like if you don’t keep pushing what you worked your ass off on, cause you gotta think like other people don’t, people will stop believing in you.”

Photos by Bandolero and Klasheee

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Walled In

RVA Staff | December 5, 2019

Topics: claustrophobia, Heaton Johnson, Jessi Rosenberg, mixed media, photography, RVA 38

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s another article from the issue, a photo feature in which photographer Heaton Johnson and model Jessi Rosenberg explore tiny spaces as a metaphor for the arbitrary limits people attempt to place on art.

“When I approached Jessi to do this shoot, I didn’t have a clearly defined concept or purpose. While touring her home, the first thing that caught my eye was a wooden alcove in the master bedroom. The tightness of the space immediately evoked feelings of claustrophobia and discomfort.

“The feeling of being boxed in, confined to an area or even a category, has always made me incredibly uncomfortable. Most of my life has been spent trying to overcome real and perceived pressures to ascribe to certain parameters. I’m slowly overcoming these limitations; it felt right to have her do the same.” —Heaton Johnson (@heatonjohnson)

Photos by Heaton Johnson. Model: Jessi Rosenberg

Hit Me When I’m Pretty

S. Preston Duncan | December 2, 2019

Topics: Hit Me When I'm Pretty, Poems For Dead People, poetry, RVA 38, RVA poets, Ryan Kent, Secretly Y'all

RVA Mag #38 is on the streets now! Here’s the first article, in which Ryan Kent, the author behind Poems for Dead People, talks rock bottom, writing, and redemption with the release of his latest book.

You know the tune: boy grows up on dreams of baseball, falling asleep to bedtime stories of a future riding into battle, saving the princess, starring in his own fairytale. Boy wakes up 30 years later, in an abandoned house full of empty beer cans and cigarette butts, with his baseball bat in a pile of broken glass. With a divorce and a drinking problem, slouched over a space heater, he writes poetry in an old fur coat. It could end there. It probably should have ended there, logically.

This story, felt by those whose childhoods took similarly-unexpected turns, is the story of Ryan Kent: a Richmond artist whose work has become increasingly recognized throughout local poetic and musical communities.

Kent recently released his third collection of poetry, Hit Me When I’m Pretty. His poems are blunt; comical out of necessity, and told with a mortician’s smile alongside vulnerability. The new book, like Kent, is sober and unflinching. It’s the kind of thing that can only be written by someone who hasn’t been seized by morbid fascination, but instead walked the path of death and changed direction. That path began with his first book, Poems for Dead People.

“I got that idea when I wrote a random poem after Norman Mailer died,” Kent said. “I had an autographed copy of Time of Our Time. I wanted to see how many people had put their things up for sale. There was a lot of stuff — it just put it in my head that if you have a name for yourself, you really aren’t anything until someone can exploit you.”

Kent with his latest collection, Hit Me When I’m Pretty, at Plan 9 Music. Photo by Amy Robison

Kent started writing poetry as a teenager, but those early pieces weren’t the angsty ruminations that you might expect from someone who would end up earning cautious comparisons to Bukowski in his later years.

“The shit that I wrote back then was bad, man. It was flowery and whimsical,” Kent said. “You know, dance, dance, dance, tree tops, fly, fly, fly. That kind of shit. I didn’t really know what poetry was, all I knew was what I learned in school. It just didn’t resonate deeply with me. The things that I related to were songs by Nirvana and Soundgarden.”

“Then I read Allen Ginsberg, and it was completely different. It helped show the mechanism. It helped wake that up a little bit. I didn’t really do anything but swim team and baseball. And when I didn’t do that anymore, I had no substance. And I decided I was going to be a writer; I really loved it,” Kent said. “I loved reading books and collecting books, and those became my heroes in the same way as Jose Canseco, Greg Maddux, Jeff Bagwell, Shaquille O’Neal — all those guys were my heroes. These guys didn’t let me down. A lot of ‘em were already dead.”

Richmond abounds with outlets for spoken word artists for whom performance is an integral aspect of their work. But Kent is not a spoken word artist. He’s more of a storyteller with a passion for line breaks.

“I like going up and just telling the story,” Kent said. “Secretly Y’all — I did that once and that was cool. Everything has to be done off the cuff.”

Secretly Y’all is a local organization in Richmond that hosts live storytelling events every other month for the community to participate in and attend. Similar to many spoken word poetry events, listeners gather in a close room and performers are given a theme: but rather than pre-written poems, Secretly Y’all speakers are chosen randomly from names voluntarily thrown into a hat, and share their personal truths from memory in a full story.

“You tell this true story about the topic they decide,” Kent said. “Some people are just great storytellers. Like when you go sit at the bar, and they just rattle off all this stuff that they did 20 years ago. And man, beer is so easy to drink when you’re sitting next to that person.” 

Photo by Jill Hammer

That kind of training doesn’t come with certification, but with an awestruck history of storytelling credibility. There is a belief in the clarity of hindsight among barstool storytellers, like Kent and his heroes: the idea that you have to give yourself over to the absurdity of chaos and despair, so that one day you might dig your way out and make sense of it all.

If there’s an overarching narrative to Kent’s collections, it’s certainly that. 

“The first [book] was cathartic for me. I wrote about people that I actually knew, and people that fascinated me. I could relate it to my own life,” Kent said. “But it was mostly done from a deep ache in my childhood, while the other two focused on my new periods. And those all have a glow of heartbreak, in one way or another.”

Growing up in a small family, Kent’s formative experiences with loss revolved around the deaths of holiday relatives he only saw once a year — and nevertheless, still found himself mourning.

Macabre fixation isn’t exactly a novel concept in the literary world, but Kent’s approach to it offers a life-affirming honesty that doesn’t rely on sugary positivity. The antihero of his own botched American Dream, Kent’s narrative style plucks at the mundane nature of everyday life. It finds tragedy in the miraculous and, more significantly, doesn’t distinguish between the two.

“I think I just look at how profound someone’s story is,” Kent said. “The person sitting next to you at the stoplight, it’s some lady with a purple shirt on, and she’s in some Geo Metro that’s still running. I don’t know how. You just happen to glance over at her. She’s just some person. And she will have an end, and her story will be over. Everybody’s got some story that that would mean something to other people, regardless of whether that story is good or bad.”

Photo by Audrey Shadowwoman

“One of the Poems for Dead People is called ‘You’ll Never Make It as a Singer.’ It was about this rockabilly performer named Eddie Bond. He was in the rockabilly Hall of Fame, he wrote songs for like 40 years. And he is best known for being the man who rejected Elvis Presley.”

“[When] Elvis Presley tried out for his band, he said, ‘You better stick to truck driving, you’ll never make it as a singer.’ So his legacy was being the one who rejected The Man Who Would Be King. He did all that to be remembered for the mistake he made. Maybe he wasn’t right for his band. We’ll never know. That mistake overshadowed everything. Isn’t that the story of every human being?”

Kent became accustomed to being vulnerable as he started posting his poems online, and later joined a band —  a similar outlet for expressing his words. Once his wife left him, he noted that he “kind of flew on.” Without a care, he moved forward, but in a self-destructive manner. It was around this time that his second book, This Is Why I Am Insane, started coming together. And everything else in his life fell apart.

Sleeping on the couch without heat or a bed, Kent resided in an abandoned house. His best work came out of this accumulation of life’s bad decisions, as he almost literally slept in the bed that he made.

“It was a cave,” Kent said. “It was awesome because I could smoke cigarettes inside, I could drink inside, I could play music as loud as I wanted, swing my baseball bat around. I didn’t have any heat, so I had space heaters. I had electricity, no running water. The bathroom and the kitchen were both demolished. And I loved it. I would sit there and smoke cigarettes in a fucking fur coat in the wintertime and just get trashed. It was like camping, camping by myself.”

Image and Photos by R. Anthony Harris

“I was at the bottom, but not that hard. Real bottom is when you have no other choice. I had fuckin’ choices. I could have been somewhere else. I chose that. That was all I knew I wanted to do at the time.”

If This Is Why I Am Insane welled up from a whiskey-colored pit of metal riffs and heartbreak, Hit Me When I’m Pretty is a process of silence and acceptance. There are no Eat, Pray, Love-style motivational morals. No peachy preaching about flowers sprouting from soils, watered with liquid that doesn’t have an alcohol content. Nothing is suddenly and magically great. But it is better.

“I was pushing a lot of people away from me. I was really angry. I was hurt. People always used to tell me, you’re a functioning alcoholic, barely functioning. And I started looking at how there’s always a crisis in my life,” Kent said. “There’s always some fucking problem, and what’s always in my life is alcohol. I remember sitting at the Fasmart across from Millie’s on Main Street. I was going to get a six-pack of Hamm’s for like, $3.99, and there’s this dude outside asking for a dollar. I got a sandwich. I gave the man a dollar, and got back in my car. And then I just didn’t drink. Then I didn’t drink the next day. And it wasn’t really hard, because I was just fucking over it. And then a month went by, and I looked at the track record of the past month, and the month before. And the only thing that had been removed was alcohol.”

“I’m still going through shit. It’s not like a bunch of happy stuff. I’ve read some happy poems by Billy Collins that I really like,” Kent said, “but the ones that always hit me the most were the ones that had a heavy air of poignancy. In that, I saw a type of beauty in something that’s heartbreaking and sad.”

Typed almost entirely on a cell phone notepad app — according to Kent, the only way to accommodate his ADD — Hit Me When I’m Pretty isn’t a story about redemption. But it is itself a kind of triumph; not over mundanity, but through it.

One poem that stands out to readers in Kent’s latest book: two dudes watching a dog eat shit.

“Two dudes watching a dog eat shit. Yeah. It was actually glorious,” Kent said. “Really, it’s taking a picture of how low someone is, that watching this dog eat shit was just unexpected and funny. It’s like a little break in the monotony of darkness. And that’s kind of where I was in my life. So doing it this time, it was some sober thoughts about ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?’”

The new book may be a sense of relief for Kent, or it may just be step one of everything else coming. Like a CD coming out of a brand-new cover, all scratched up after six months, the latest piece of art can often feels like the artist’s peak… until, down the road, it lays a foundation for their best work. Getting better is the focus, and real writers can put it into words and break your heart with it.

Photo by Audrey Shadowwoman

For Hit Me When I’m Pretty, the spark for the title came from an artistic whim.

“It just popped into my head,” Kent said. “There’s this quote I heard a long time ago, it was Jose Marti — I might be wrong, but it was ‘It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’ It was the same idea, that if you’re gonna knock me down, do it when I’m doing well. Do it when I’m doing good.”

“Or at least let me stand up and fix my fucking hair.”

Interview by R. Anthony Harris, words by S. Preston Duncan. Top Photo by R. Anthony Harris. Other photos via Poems By This Fool/Facebook

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