Here lies a call to action. Get up early and complete rewarding tasks that bask in self forgiveness, universal gratitude, and planetary love. There is a ritual to caring for yourself, your home and your space. We each must find our own actions that branch to an intentionality beyond that of just a “task.” It takes a long time to find the things that make us happy and charge our lives with fullness, and that’s okay. Have a good journey.

At 8 in the morning on Wednesday, July 25th, Lisa Houdei of a gift to the St. Louis music scene, LéPonds, arrived to KSLU for a few hours of amplified wholesomeness. Walking to the studio, she marveled at an unidentifiable native floral plant which had made its home in a bit of grass along our commute. I thought about how many times I had passed the plant, and it’s reiterations across campus, and never questioned its name.

By this time in the morning, she had cared for her sixty house plants, handful of dogs and cats, several chickens, two ducklings, and her garden. Intent on fostering a total haven of sorts in the space behind her home, Lisa does away with any language synonymous to “yard.” On this she quotes her favorite Parisian decorator, saying “if you want a garden have a garden, if you want a yard have a yard.”
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LéPonds’ sophomore album, I Was Dancing With My Dream Team, slowly made a home in some hearts as it released online on July 21st, 2018. Two years after her premiere album Heat, the cumulative sound of I Was Dancing With My Dream Team builds a family of femininity and playfulness as it grounds us in around the edges of life. From personal manifestos to quirky bits of fiction, the lyrics and the meaning behind how they sound paint a picture: what is it like to be a woman right now? What is a safe level to joke around? We can use her album to question how likely it is to, really, fall in love with a gentleman caller. We can use her album to dive into the confusion of existing right now and of trying to foster some love between the bits of what life is. Sometimes, the bits suck.

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“Say you wanna fall in on the porch
Red
He was gonna bite I was walking home
Red
Gone for red”*
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When things get heavy, it’s okay to back out. Knowing when to pack up and leave something behind, no matter how much pain there is, is epitomized in Red. Every way in which we connect with each other runs the risk of growing red- and we live it. It won’t be red forever.

We can learn to take things lightly. The red of something breaking and ending runs sour, but we can use the energy it has to lose ourselves in the imaginary for a little bit, to forgive sexual assault-intrigued men (more on this later), and to actually live a little bit.

The butterfly effect of caring for those around you is a basket of small decisions which build and brace for impact. Maybe each ritual isn’t a permanent decision, but it is one for our own longevity and health. Nothing lasts, but we can make what we have a lot denser with fostering personal and interspecies connection, grounding ourselves, and taking note of the little pieces of the planet around us.

In the end, maybe it’s not about what you fill your time with or what gives you the capital, both social and otherwise, to survive that is most important. Maybe it’s how we fill our little gaps between it all that matters the most for us. Maybe we find ourselves most true when we care for plants, ducklings, or creating a novel or a journal entry into lyrics. That bit is up to you.

Lisa holds an energy that grounds us. Taking notice and appreciation in the tiny gifts of the world, giving back to the world, and being gentle and hopeful along the way. We will all be okay.

Maybe the takeaway from I Was Dancing With My Dream Team is to care for something to care for yourself. Maybe the takeaway is to turn the “this is water” of it all into something lighter. To take the red of something and to recognize how it won’t last forever, as nothing ever ever does.  Maybe we give to ourselves when we pay homage to our local humans in the form of love, and it’s physical manifestation, art. I hope this finds you in a good spot. Go water a plant.
    
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LéPonds
Bandcamp: https://lepondsmusic.bandcamp.com/
Website: https://www.lepondsmusic.com/
Instagram: @leponds

KSLU
Website: kslu.slu.edu
Instagram: @kslu.radio
Author: [email protected]

​*Interpreted wrong, but that's all okay.

In a corner on a Thursday night, Kerry and I talked about death and chaos a bit more than I intended to. Through it all, turbulence reigns as the thread of the loop of the ride.

What does a pattern feel like? Can you see the cycles from the inside? Does acting against your own just enforce the process again? Do you think the waves into action? We fear and we stress, we act against the stress and create it accidentally. We disengage with something and find it in a separate corner of our lives. We make mistakes, we challenge ourselves, and we live.

There is a lot of connection to be found in Bad Bad Hats. From indie-pop and surf-rock instrumentals to sickening lyrics that knit each of our problems together, we can all find ourselves in Bad Bad Hats. If you’ve experienced internal or external chaos, felt loss, or created something that couldn’t last, there is something for you in their discography.

Notice your loops. Thanks for listening.

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BAD BAD HATS
Instagram: @badbadhats
Website: www.badbadhats.com/
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/2bstapBmz…WzS2e00J14xExKCQ


SHORTLY
Instagram: @shortlymi
Bandcamp: https://shortly.bandcamp.com/
Next STL SHOW: www.facebook.com/events/215335849293567/
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/45q7ao4hK…m8QpSdtAUF_Oif1g


KSLU
Instagram: @kslu.radio
Facebook: @kslu.slu.edu
Listen: kslu.slu.edu
(turn your phone sideways)

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Edited by Brendan Eckert

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon in early July, KSLU General Manager Caleigh Horan embarked on her first interview in a series she has deemed Caleigh's Corner. Her first guests in this thrilling saga were The Slaps and Manwolves, two Chicago-based bands that played RKDE on Sunday, July 8th. The St. Louis stop was an early part of a three-week "Southern Hospitality" tour that extends through July 22nd.
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The Slaps
Instagram: @the.slaps
Contact: [email protected]

Manwolves
Instagram: @manwolvesband
Contact: [email protected]

​Contact KSLU:
instagram @kslu.radio
facebook @kslucollegeradio
general manager [email protected]

​“Up last we have a song that is near and dear to our hearts… we finished writing it about three hours ago. We can actually only play it if we have a capo… but we forgot to bring one with us, so does anyone one in Little Cowboy or Dear Genre have one we can borrow right now?” A man dressed in dark jeans and a flannel reaches into his back pocket and extends a capo from the audience to the lead singer of Big Tobacco standing on stage. Big Tobacco can close the three boy-band show with a guitar heavy, impassioned anti-love song with plenty of jumps and headbanging. Throughout the night, each band had the opportunity to fill the venue with their rock-based sounds. They each came with about ten friends or followers leading to an audience of 30 smiling faces, only filling a fourth of the Ready Room. Three small, local bands coming together to host a concert provides an opportunity for the members to get practice in a live setting which also provides a means for publicity. They were able to connect to fellow musicians that make the same style music as they do.  The use of a small, intimate venue, distribution of CDs, and overall fan connection made for an impactful evening.

By having a small, intimate audience, the bands were able to practice their showmanship in a judgment-free zone. The performers moved through their sets without a second thought about their actions and were able to familiarize themselves with performing in front of a small crowd of people. The main guitarist for Big Tobacco closed his eyes and swayed with emotion as he strummed violently on his guitar and nearly fell off the raised stage when he tripped on the cord plugged into the amp a few feet behind him. Each band had their technical flaws, whether it was the way Little Cowboy could not balance their instruments correctly with the guys working the soundboard; or the amplifier and guitar problems afflicting the guitarist of  Big Tobacco. Not long after the start of Dear Genre’s set, the drummer lost control of his sticks, and they propelled towards the audience. The bumps in performances continued to make the evening feel like a jam session rather than an actual concert. Every hiccup accentuated how the show did not entirely go as planned. Each band adapted to the stage by the end of their sets, and they were able to learn how to perform in front of a live audience successfully. Although the performances had their mistakes, the audience was able to see the band grow before their eyes, enforcing the closeness of the crowd.

Off to the side, a white plastic collapsible table rested with a few t-shirts and posters decorated with Big Tobacco, Dear Genre, and Little Cowboy's names. In addition to the merchandise, the bands had stacks of CDs, each containing a single song. The groups gave these homemade CDs out for free, and it was a way for them to get their music out and have their exposure go beyond their 45-minute sets. This opportunity gives them a means of diffusion for their music, one that is placing a physical copy in the listener’s hand;  more direct than just telling the audience to check their music out on Bandcamp or Spotify. The homemade way of the CDs only made the bands more personable and easy to connect with strengthening their bond with the audience and emphasizing the intimacy of the evening.

Every person in attendance fed off the passion exhibited by the performers and did their best to match that passion through dance and cheering. The bands played at the energy level of the listeners standing only a few feet away, careful to make eye contact while singing, and never failed to engage in conversation in between songs.  The bands used each other's networks of fans and followers to broaden their scopes. All three groups are “underground,” indie bands, so it a sense they were each other's “support” bands. It allowed for greater exposure sustaining a bigger audience, which will probably already like their music based off their attendance to the concert to see the “main act,” in this case, the one band they came to support. The small following of people each band brought with them grew to like the music of the other groups. With their phones tucked away,  the audience was living in the moment, securing the connection between the artists and the newfound fans. Further strengthening this connection, the artists took pictures and conversed with fans after their sets. The intimacy of the concert contributed to the success of the evening, as well as setting the stage for the bands’ future success with their new fan base and mastery of stage performance.
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Link: ​Big Tobacco
Instagram: @bigasstobacco