BY CARLA JEAN WHITLEY PHOTOGRAPHED BY BEAU GUSTAFSON
THE DETAILS:
GreyHaven 10
Sept. 25, 7 p.m.
Urban Standard
2320 Second Ave. N. $5.
Coming in October: A special Eliot Smith tribute show. To become involved in GreyHaven, email Caleb Chancey at greyhavencommunity@gmail.com.
ONLINE ONLY
Click here to see a slideshow of a recent Greyhaven preformance.
Click on the links below for free downloads of past GreyHaven shows.
THERE’S NOT MUCH HAPPENING TONIGHT; IT’S JANUARY, one of the slowest months on Birmingham’s social calendar. But on Second Avenue North, parking space is at a premium, and though the coffee shop at the heart of it is already packed, people keep coming.
The evening is heating up inside Urban Standard. Musicians rotate on and off the stage like it’s a carousel. Listeners gingerly pick their way through the crowd, in search of another cup of coffee or on their way to say hello to a friend across the room. And as one artist or another completes his set, fans and friends whoop and applaud.
The cozy coffee shop holds maybe 100 people comfortably, a test it’ll take tonight as it does every other month. The musicians of local music community GreyHaven are in residence, and when this group takes the stage, a crowd follows.
The GreyHaven stage has hosted big names in Birmingham’s indie music scene: Wild Sweet Orange’s Preston Lovinggood. Matthew Mayfield, formerly of Moses Mayfield. Duquette Johnston. But dozens of hobby musicians have also tread its boards. They are photographers, students, pastors, retail sales associates, nurses. GreyHaven is reaching into the local music scene to create a place where both seasoned and fledgling musicians can develop their art.
A place to create
Three weeks later, Caleb Chancey is back at Urban Standard and talking about music. It’s something he loves to do, and his enthusiasm—not only for music but for the people who create it—is what led him to found GreyHaven.
It started with an idea and friends meeting over barbecue. Josh Wilson, a pastor at Branch Life Church, and Chancey, a photographer, struck up a friendship as they bonded over a love of music and photography. Wilson divulged an idea he and other musicians had toyed with for years: launching their own Birmingham-based record label.
“There are all these bands in this town. Why don’t we have something we can call our own?” Wilson asks.
As the conversation continued, Chancey simplified those dreams into something more accessible. GreyHaven community was born.
“Nerds will say it’s a reference to Lord of the Rings, but it’s really not,” Chancey says. “[It’s] ‘grey’ because it’s a place to take incomplete songs, ideas. All different types of worldviews are presented under the banner of creativity. Neither black or white, but grey. Haven is a harbor, or a place of shelter and safety. You can bring yourself, your incomplete, underdeveloped art to GreyHaven, and you can feel safe.”
GreyHaven employs a simple formula: At each show, 10 musicians play two songs each. It’s a place where musicians can try out new material, and a welcoming place for first-time performers. In May, Sharon Collins was one of those. The daughter of a Baptist music minister, she always sang in church and school choirs, then entered college as a musical theatre major.
But GreyHaven was Collins’ first performance in a concert setting. “Whenever I see a concert, especially a local kind of concert, I felt like gee, I should get involved,” she says. “It felt good and right.”
“It offers nighttime musicians the ability to get out, come out of the closet and say, ‘Hey. Yes, I play music. I sing. I write songs,’” Wilson explains. “You don’t have to break your arms and legs to try and play at GreyHaven.”
It’s not an idea unique to Birmingham, Chancey is quick to note. The Hotel Café Tour, which features a group of singer-songwriter friends touring the country together, grew out of a similar community at Los Angeles’ Hotel Café venue. Ten out of Tenn is a tour featuring 10 Nashville, Tenn.-based musicians. Also in Nashville, the Square Peg Alliance is a group of friends who collaborate on each other’s albums.
GreyHaven’s organizers see their venture as a similar opportunity for musicians to expand what they do. Songwriters can pair their songs with instruments they haven’t incorporated in the past by pulling from the community. “It’s a show, but it also offers you the opportunity to work with a bunch of different musicians who can add all kinds of greatness to your songs and bring a lot of life to your songs,” Wilson says.
After settling on a format, Chancey and Wilson approached Talent Buyer Todd Coder at WorkPlay. Coder quickly agreed. The first GreyHaven show was held at WorkPlay on March 21, 2008.
“Little endeavors like that allow us the opportunity to be a part of something as it’s being created,” Coder explains.
The shows didn’t pull enough of a crowd to make remaining at WorkPlay financially viable, though, drawing an average of 80 people each time. After the third show, GreyHaven found a new home at Urban Standard. There, GreyHaven has pulled as many as 180 fans.
The coffee shop was already a hub for GreyHaven members, says owner Tom Wrzesien, with many of the group’s key players patronizing the store on a near-daily basis.
Urban Standard ordinarily closes at 6 p.m. if it isn’t hosting another concert or open mic event Pour. But Wrzesien offers space to GreyHaven for free. He makes up for it in coffee and cupcake sales, and besides, he believes in supporting his community.
“Without that, we wouldn’t be here,” he says. “And without our support, they would have a harder time doing what they do.”
Working together
It’s now Monday prior to a show, and this month’s musicians are gathered around the corner in a downtown photography studio. The full slate of 10 songwriters hasn’t shown (musicians are famously unpredictable). Members of one group, a jam band/classic rock hybrid, meet one of their members for the first time. Come Friday they’ll have added yet another, a keyboard player recruited for the occasion.
But last things first: Chancey begins practice by rehearsing what will be the closing song. GreyHaven shows often conclude with a singalong, and after polling people via the Facebook event page, The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” was selected. In the true spirit of GreyHaven collaboration Chancey calls out, “Does anyone know a trombone player?”
That collaborative mentality is key to GreyHaven’s success. Just ask Neil Couvillion. After attending the community’s second show, Couvillion asked Chancey how he could get involved. Couvillion’s GreyHaven debut was July 11, 2008, the first of many shows in which he’s played his own songs and supported other musicians. In the 14 months since, he’s sharpened his craft, met musicians who have become friends and recorded an album using musicians, a producer and a sound engineer he met through GreyHaven.
GreyHaven was the push Couvillion needed.
He has been playing music since his pre-teen years, first as a drummer and then adding guitar and songwriting to his repertoire. But it’s only been since he moved to Birmingham in 2003 that he’s developed his sound.
“The challenge is finding the time, the mental capacity, to do it after a long day work,” says Couvillion, a landscape architect. Prioritizing music was especially difficult as he recorded his album, Time Machine, which releases digitally in September. Couvillion scheduled recording time after a busy season at work, but the three days a week schedule was still demanding. “That was tough because I would leave work at 5:30, go straight to the studio, sometimes get home midnight or one o’clock,” he says. “And I’m the oldest one out of the whole group,” the 30-year-old Couvillion notes with a laugh. “I try to be in bed by 10 but it’s tough.”
An eclectic mix
Four nights later, the musicians reassemble at the coffee shop for a 4 p.m. sound check. Music fans file in well before the show. Chancey ushers them out at 7 p.m. so he can get a headcount and collect the $5 cover charge. Minutes after the doors open, GreyHaven has already attracted 40 people, a third of the evening’s final count.
Tonight, the room is populated with parents of musicians, the 30- something-year-old friends of the “older” songwriters and plenty of indie rock fans. That’s one of the charms of GreyHaven: Because of the revolving cast of musicians, each show attracts a different crowd. You’ll see some of the same faces, of course, but each artist draws their own fans. The person who shows up for Wild Sweet Orange lead singer Preston Lovinggood, for example, may never have heard of the daycare worker making her GreyHaven debut. That’s exposure for the hobby musician and sometimes results in a new favorite for the listener.
To be initiated into the GreyHaven community, musicians must play with someone who’s already a GreyHaven member.
That doesn’t have to be a songwriter who has fronted their own songs in the past; becoming a member is as easy as playing the egg shaker on someone else’s song. GreyHaven simplifies the performance process, providing songwriters not only a show venue and date but also musicians to collaborate with and a ready audience.
Shows take place in the odd months of the year. After the date and venue are confirmed, Chancey emails the 100- plus members to see who wants to play. He then creates a Facebook event page and invites the artists, past patrons and friends.
The show is mostly first-come, first-served, though Chancey aims to include a variety of songwriters each time.
In January, GreyHaven Six highlighted long-time members; March introduced allnew songwriters into the GreyHaven community. Shows aren’t always themed, but in the past GreyHaven held an all covers night and they’ve toyed with doing an evening of Broadway songs. A special October show will be an Eliot Smith tribute. Diversity varies from show to show. Sometimes the set list is laden with guys and gals with guitars. Other times, an evening will bump indie rock up next to pop, followed by soul, blues, classic rock, eight-bit electronic music or folk. The changing genres make for a different atmosphere at each show. Some are laid-back and mellow; others are rollicking. Sometimes a night embraces both dynamics, with listeners applauding dark folk music then dancing along with a DJ minutes later.
“It’s not supposed to be all indie rock, sounding the same,” Wilson says. “It’s supposed to be eclectic.”
Tonight, people are splayed out on canvas pillows, and others gather on the sidewalk where they talk, listen and occasionally even dance. There’s a long line for caffeine, and songwriters pick their way through the masses when it’s their turn on stage. “It’s just like they’re at a party and chatting it up with people they haven’t seen all week,” Wilson says.
After a particularly quiet performer is drowned out by the loud crowd, sound guy Corey Scogin takes the stage between songs. Be quiet, he admonishes the crowd. These songwriters have worked hard; show them the respect of listening to their music.
Despite the chatter, Scogin, who runs the sound for each GreyHaven show, is able to create remarkably clear recordings of the concerts. Those have been available for free download since GreyHaven’s beginnings, “partly, I guess, to get the word out, partly for the artists to be able to hear what they sound like,” explains Scogin, an electrical engineer by day.
After the final song plays, the crowd empties onto the sidewalk, talking about the night’s best performances and what’s next on the evening’s agenda. The agenda likewise stretches out for GreyHaven’s organizers. They’ve bandied about ideas like a DVD sampler, a website directory of musicians and house shows by request.
Regardless of what’s to come, the goal remains the same. GreyHaven is bringing Birmingham together to sing its songs.
