What would you say is the funniest or weirdest thing that has ever happened at one of your shows?
In the mid-1980s, the F-Art Ensemble played a lot at what was called the Nightshade Cafe, a little basement dive on Tate Street — it’s not there anymore. Every evening was totally different. We would have concepts sometimes for our evening. One of them, one time, was to destroy a piano. And we did.
We took sledgehammers and saws and screwdrivers, and we took two hours to dismantle a piano, until it was nothing but splintered wood and pieces of metal. The people in the place were just rocking and rolling, just loving it. People took pieces home with them.
Sometimes, I’ll be walking in the park, and I’ll see someone I knew from the ‘80s, and they’ll say, “Man, I still have that box of piano parts from that evening at the Nightshade Cafe.” That’s pretty awesome.
For musicians, the last year-and-a-half has been like a tragedy unfolding. It’s hard to get together with other people to make music, when just the act of blowing air was against the rules for a time.
The symphony just started again. We went for 14, 15 months without playing a note.
But, for me, I’m struggling to get my head back together to form the F-Art band again in a safe way. It’s been five years since we last played. We played every month at First Friday in Greensboro for 10 years. Then we fell apart when Mack and Mack closed, the store where we played every month.
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