Twice this year, for the RFT, I’ve written stories on musician Andrew Franklin. One, published in May, detailed his pitched battle with cancer; the other, published early today, noted his passing at the too-young age of 29.

We were introduced a while back by Kelsey McClure, who mentioned that Franklin’s band at the time, Big Brother Thunder & The Master Blasters, was looking for group photos. At the time, I was working on a personal photo project called The Magic Door and, so, he, I and the rest of his band met out back of an auto repair shop on MLK Boulevard, taking pics until dark. Later, we worked on another series with the group, at Cherokee’s Bomb Door. And not much more than a month ago, we met for that purpose again, this time meeting up at Nebula for a series of shots with his new group, Sugar Kings; I can’t say I did a good job with the Sugar Kings shots and wound up getting some decent pics of each musician, but without ever getting that keeper, full-group shot. Would that we could do it all over again!

A few months prior, I’d met with Drew and his longtime partner Jessica Bellomo, catching up at Soulard Market. We sat outside on the steps of the bandstand and chatted for a good hour, before the two went inside to shop for produce. An anecdote that I’ve told since came out of that. (I’ll share it here, then will turn things over to those who knew him better, those I reached out to for the second RFT piece.) Here’s how “the potato story” goes…

Drew was talking about “food as medicine” at one of their stops in the market. Just down the row, we stopped again as he was putting a couple dozen potatoes into a plastic bag, which he handed to the farmer. Weighing the produce, the farmer asked for $2.90 and Drew handed him three dollar bills, telling him to keep the extra 10-cents, that he’d grab an extra potato to even things out. So, that didn’t go well.

The farmer, lacking anything resembling social grace, handed back the bag and the singles, saying something like “I only sell what I’m paid for,” which prompted a memory I’ll take with me for a bit. Drew took the bag of potatoes back and calmly, without a word, poured them back into the bin. They then exchanged another word, or two, after all, but all points had already been made. While Drew’s lanky body had obviously been stressed by his cancers and their treatments, his spirit had plenty of spark left; he was not about to take shit over a dime’s worth of potatoes. Not that day.

Random, maybe, but it’s the impression of him that’ll last with me longest.

Here are what his friends had to say when asked to contribute some thoughts to today’s RFT piece. Due to story brevity, I was unable to include most of these, so they’re all here, minus any real edits:

Darian Wigfall: I’m still collecting my thoughts a bit. This is hitting me pretty hard. He was one of the first people to buy my book and one of the first people I met and liked in the music scene in St. Louis when I was writing music buzz for Examiner.com. I loved his band, his spirit; he was a good friend. He was a good friend to a lot of people. He was a fireman, which is one of the most dangerous jobs there is, and a great athlete. That was my guy, man. Even though we didn’t see each other often because he was busy, and so am I, but we always would call each other ‘brother’ when we would meet up with friends for music or drinks or at a show.

Donald Williams: A few things immediately come to mind when I think of my friend Andrew Franklin: kindness, sincerity and his smile. He always had a smile for everyone he knew. The two of us had a lot in common and our conversations almost always touched on our bands, being bass players, writing music, and what it all meant to us. As he was dealing with his cancer there was a period of time where the chemo was really wearing on him. We stayed in touch whenever he was feeling up to it and there were times that I could tell he was absolutely exhausted. I wanted to cheer him up and hear him laugh again so one night Jesse Gannon and I took him out to dinner. Afterwards, he said he had some energy and wasn’t ready to go home so we met up with our friends Darian Wigfall and Ted Brookins for a couple of drinks.  It’s difficult to not have fun with that crew of people but that particular night our conversations were so hilarious and outrageous that some of us were in tears while the rest of us were screaming. At several points, Andrew said it actually hurt to laugh. A few times during the course of the evening, it crossed my mind that there was a very good chance I might not get to hang out with him again. There was a very good chance that his family, girlfriend, and close friends might soon lose him. I don’t know if the others noticed when, for a few minutes here and there, I would withdraw from our ridiculous conversations to watch Andrew. I just sat back and watched him tell his stories, crack his jokes, enjoy himself and enjoy our company. I thought about how good it felt to help make him happy, to see him smile, and then I thought, that’s exactly how he always made us feel. That night with that group of friends is how I’ll always remember Andrew Franklin.

Kelsey McClure: Drew and I rarely had to call each other to hang out because we had a habit of running into each other at late night bar spots. The night of the Boston Marathon Bombing, we found each other at the Gramophone on open mic night. Drew had come to play and I to drink because it didn’t seem the night for jokes or to be alone. So Drew refused to get on stage, unless I did, too. He coaxed me up by playing to my utter vanity and insisting a full band back my set. But more importantly, Drew swore to never speak of it again if it went poorly, which I insisted it would, having not prepared and also forgotten I was about to take the stage with the bass-playing love child of James Brown and Richard Pryor. There wasn’t a time after that night when we crossed paths that he and I weren’t blowing plans out of proportion to recreate that night in a bigger, better way.

Mathias James: I met Drew when he was about 16- or 17-years-old. Shoulder-length dreadlocks and a thirst to make music his life’s work. I immediately took to him. Despite me being a solid decade older, we ended up having a lot in common. Our love for that FUNK. Good, soulful hip hop. Our mutual zest for the way music enriches your life. Our mutual affinity for the game of baseball. Over the years, Drew became one of my trusted few. Part of the inner circle. Now and then, months would go by without seeing each other, especially when he was out saving lives with the Fire Dept., but when we’d reconnect it was always like not a single day had passed. Early in our friendship, I brought him in to audition for the vacant bass player role in Core Project. I was rooting for him to get it; perhaps he was still somewhat green at the time, so he didn’t. Immediately after that, though, he used that as fuel to go out and become one of the most soulful, innovative, celebrated musicians in STL. He became twice the musician I’ll ever be. I’ll miss Drew terribly. He was always there with a smile and a huge hug. He was one of the most genuine and passionate people I’ve ever known. I’ll be forever grateful to have been his friend.

John Harrington: Every time we played a show & didn’t get paid or I wanted to go to a party instead of practicing he would always say: “Forget about all that side track BS. Let’s get back to the music.” He also was a revolutionary & full of wisdom & would say: “We can’t sit around complaining about what we don’t have, if we don’t get up & go get what we want!”

Dan Mahfood: Not only was Drew a heavyweight in the music scene, he gave his all as a firefighter, brother, son, and cancer victim. Always blew me away that during his battle with the disease that this guy had the determination and strength to keep getting on stage and spreading love through his music. A true hero and funk soldier. RIP to a legend.

-30-

On Saturday afternoon, Typewriter Tim Jordan was at The Tick Tock Tavern a little bit ahead of his normal schedule, loading up our mezzanine with artworks done by the good people who take part in projects at Artists First. That’s a Maplewood-based storefront that offers open art studio hours (along with materials and instruction) for people with disabilities; formerly, it was known as the Turner Center for the Arts. This was the third time we’d opened our doors to Artists First/TCA and we teamed up with the band Unifyah to host a CD listening party for that ska/reggae group’s latest album at the same hour, thinking the two events would dovetail nicely.

Not gonna lie, the turnout was a downer. Sure, there were plenty of reasons. A nice, beautiful Saturday; maybe too nice, too beautiful to be indoors. The Cards in the playoffs, making a mess out of everyone else’s plans. Other art events and sales were taking place around town. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Still, dudes, I was bummed.

At the end of the two-hour fundraiser, I wrote a check to Tim, a teacher at Artists First. I was sheepish in handing him a check for a such a small total, though we also bought a piece of art for the bar.

Me: “Wish it were bigger.” Tim: “Don’t we all.”

A day later, Typewriter Tim, in the guise of the performance artist Bodybagman, apparently fell off of a wall while performing at Artica. Thought he’d dislocated his hip, though he’d actually broken it. In the span of a day, he went from his usual gregarious self to an injured version; though I shouldn’t assume that he’s not upbeat today, too. He kinda just comes that way.

What’s weird is that a year ago, I doubly-broke my wrist while leaving Artica, in a cycling accident that took a toll on both body and mind. I went under the knife, as will Tim. When something like that happens, you deal with pain, first. And the awkwardness of daily activities. Plus there’s the pain. The loss of income and the outta pocket expenses. And there’s the mental push of getting right again, hard to do, what with all that pain. It sucks and it somehow sucks more when it happens at/during something you love. Tim will have a memory of his first Artica, but not one that anyone would want.

This year, I wasn’t able to attend as much of Artica as in the recent past. It’s a great place to chill and be energized, to spend multiple hours just being around. It’s a hopeful, spirited, whimsical, sort childlike environment. So, the kinda place that Tim would seemingly fit into, any day, and certainly during one pretty weekend in October.

This accident’s a drag, but you take something out of the experiences of others. This bit of badness reminds me to give a lot more, whenever possible. ‘Cause of this…

Here’s a quick anecdote from Saturday. Tim was talking about the artist Paul Stanton. I’ve never met Paul, not even during some drop-bys at Artists First. But along the way, I’ve bought three pieces of Paul’s for the bar (Miles Davis, Dizzy Dean, Redd Foxx) and one for my house (Nelly). Self-taught and then polished at Artists First, Paul’s got a recognizable style, one that you’re immediately drawn to when looking at AF  works in a group setting. Not to say the others don’t have gifts, but Paul’s obviously in possession of a unique talent. Just a couple days back, Tim was preaching to the choir of one, me, that he was going to keep working to break Paul in St. Louis and beyond; they’ve already combined to get Paul’s work into a few “important” hands. And that’s the plan for the foreseeable future: to do portraits of famous folks and to get those works into their possession.

It’s an interesting concept. One of probably 100 that Tim’s talked about doing over the past years and one that obviously means something to him. You can hear it in his voice, when he talks about Paul and the desire to see him be a working artist.

Tim and I have circled similar scenes for years. Shared a physical space more than once, usually with something interesting happening. We’ve done a good turn for each other, when possible. And today?

Today’s a day to encourage the ultimate encourager.

A few weeks ago, I took a spill off of my bicycle, breaking my wrist for the trouble. Further back, in 2012, I wrote a column called “Second Set” for the late stlbeacon.org, re-examining the St. Louis rock music scene of the ’80s/’90s, a project that bled into 2013 with the “Encore” sub-series. I wouldn’t have sensed any connection between these experiences until I saw that bills from my surgery were landing at my doorstep. It struck me that an e-book based on those 2012/’13 writings, released as “Second Set: Encore” in November of 2013, had never resulted in a payout. Put the idea of needing money together with a tiny rivulet of cash flow, well, you see where this is going.

My guess was the e-book hadn’t sold a ton, though it’d been out for roughly a year, with a few ads running in Eleven Magazine the sum total of the non-Beacon marketing effort. (Ads worked off in writing, I might add, rather than cash.) My math went like this: I figured that around 200 e-books had sold over the year, priced at $2.99 on Amazon, and that my one-third cut per sale would mean a check of $200, or so. And this was working with a very conservative estimate of how many I’d assumed were sold. Considering some of the bands and artists and clubs and shows covered in the book, that seemed kinda-realistic.

Yeah, well.

After contacting my editor, now in the employ of 90.7 fm, I was passed along to another member of STL Public Radio’s staff. We exchanged a few bits of info. The first feedback indicated that the Beacon’s account had been closed since March, and that any payout would’ve/should’ve happened before then. My indignation chilled as we kept in touch throughout yesterday and another former Becaonite was able to pass along the codes to Amazon. Turns out that the account was live, but was essentially now in the control of the University of Missouri system, which owns KWMU, which, in turn, owns the rights to the Beacon. As someone who knows the reality of media melds, this wasn’t something to get upset about; sending an invoice to the University of Missouri or a local website doesn’t really make a difference.

And I wasn’t upset at the end result of sales, which netted me, as you might guess from the title, the grand sum of $19.61. Meaning those 200 sales were a serious pipe dream. And I have a witness to this, but my first response when getting the number was: to laugh. I mean, what else can you do when $19.61 presents itself to you like that?

Once upon a time, in the ancient days of a year ago, I thought that there could be some value in a press that specialized in local-only titles, released exclusively on digital formats. My experience with the “Second Set: Encore” project made me think that the micro-niche model of publishing was the real way to go. A book on the Spirits of St. Louis basketball team? How about an e-book? An oral history of St. Louis brewing. E-book! A look back at the clubs and restaurants of our town, from Gaslight-to-today? Gotta come as an e-book!

Screw you, e-books.

Yesterday’s experience reminded me that even in a world in which the most-specialized content can find life online, we’re also in a world in which no one wants to pay for anything, at least not in any substantial amount. (So says the guy listening to Spotify at this very second.) The project was fun, with about 70 pieces emerging from the year-and-change of writing. The experience allowed me to reconnect with a ton of people from my old tribe. It allowed for, I think, some good writing to emerge, a bunch of cool stories to be shared and allowed some old wrongs to be righted. On a personal level, “Second Set” worked for me and it was received favorably by the folks that were meant to read it.

The $19.61, well, let’s just call it a modest tip.

(The pre-book series you can read for free: http://secondsetstl.wordpress.com/beacon-columns/.)

Gosh, time sure does fly. And as it does, personal websites fall to the wayside.

But, yeah, I opened a bar. With some other folks. And I’m not teaching or proofing grad school papers.

And everything’s changed.

Here are three preview stories about the Tick Tock Tavern:

Preview 1

Preview 2

Preview 3

This story begins, as all good ones do, with a visit to see minor-league professional wrestling.

Some months back, winter still with us, I decided to catch a pro show in East Carondelet, IL. It was held in a strangely-clean community hall and featured the usual assortment of tag bouts, pimpings of coming matches and an appearance by former WWF star Hillbilly Jim. It was a fun night and I wrote about and photographed it for the stlmag.com blog, Look/Listen.

For the same blog, I’d been doing a recurring series called “The Bars Of…” It was a continuation of the bar reviewing I’d be doing around town, for a variety of publications, for about a decade. These, though, typically were based on geography or type. So, five reviews of bars on far-flung Manchester, or five bars founded in just the past month. It was a fun series to execute on a mostly-monthly basis and it typically drew a good number of readers. The bars were usually enjoyable to visit, but equally interesting was the chance to run through a lot of different neighborhoods or municipalities. Without the conceit of the column, I’d never have jetted up-and-down St. Charles Rock Road with a mission; I’d certainly not have hit a bunch of suburban chain bars for a first-time visit, not that my visit to Joe’s Crab Shack was a life’s highlight.

By driving to East Carondelet for wrestling that night, I passed through Dupo, noticing a few bars along the way. These looked like classic corner taverns, the kind that still offer $1.50 drafts and $2 you-call-’ems. After a bit of time passed, I went back to Dupo and found that my basic assumptions were correct. These were old-school affairs, the types of places where everybody knows your name; unless, of course, you’ve driven in from the big city on a random night, looking to write a piece of quick-take, online journalism. At the three places I visited, I sat alone, ignored, unbothered by the usual social norms. It was kinda, to be honest, depressing.

Already thinking of buying into a bar with friends, it struck me that the day we’d go official with a contract was the day I’d be forced for make an easy decision: you can’t write bar reviews and run one yourself. Bad policy, bad idea. But the fun stopped that night in Dupo. Like air rushing out of a balloon, I sat at a place called Judy’s Corner and knew it was over. It was a fun run, which went from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to insidestl.com to stlmag.com, where the idea went into that multi-bar mode.

The Tick Tock Tavern will be a amalgam of ideas borrowed and stolen from all those visits. Luckily, the memories are written down for easy recall.

The hidden/lost DVDs/tapes keep turning up. The latest is this parody of “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” shot by Meatloaf Productions for the 2009 St. Louis International Film Festival trailer competition. Another selection of ours was chosen, though this remains a fave (’til now) lost production.

Thanks to Alex Ihnen and nextstl.com, the 10-part series on local graf is up-and-running. Hope you enjoy.

The first piece, just shy of 3,200 words, went live this morning. It’s here.

For almost exactly two years, or about 100 weekly columns, I was given an interesting opportunity at stlmag.com. The initial idea I pitched them revolved around exploring. A weekly blog that would let me get to know St. Louis in new and unique ways. If not truly “new,” at least new to me. At first, I opted for some tried-and-true stuff, like running around abandoned packing plants; at other times, I visited people in interesting jobs, folks like the hellbenders exhibit keepers at the Zoo. It was fun, though all over the place, thematically. In trying to find the weekly outlet’s “voice,” I eventually settled into a pattern of four stories a month around a common theme. At that point everything clicked.

When posting these stories to Facebook in recent months, a common joke intro was that I was trying to be a better St. Louisan by writing these. And while that was just a goofy conceit to get hits for the pieces, it also turned out to a be a bit true. This November, for example, I took the concept of Autumnal Wanderings and went to four places in/around town (and one short road trip), all of them being locations new to me, despite most of them being well-known. Every experience was cool, even one made while in the throes of a killer cold. I visited some massive graveyards, walked down a path off of the Delmar Loop, visited Cairo, IL.

As the blog is now going into a new direction, my freestyle columns are going away. Interestingly, the piece on Cairo is going be the last. The vortex of loss surrounding Cairo is apparently very strong indeed. But I feel like it’s a decent piece of writing, a worthy capstone to an enjoyable, two-year experiment.

It’s here. And some additional photos are here.

In the summer of 2010, a well-regarded local video producer asked if I wanted to work on a web series with him. Familiar with the term, but not the form, we spent the better part of an afternoon watching Apple TV and talking about what “works” for web-based, episodic programming. For various reasons, the project never came into being. Oh, well. If you’ve worked in independent media circles for any length of time, it’s more surprising to see a project come into being than it is to see it fizzle.

A few months back, I met with two trusted folks at O’Connell’s. The place had meaning because I’m (to this point, more theoretically than actually) working on a book about O’Connell’s, to celebrate the pub’s 50th anniversary. I needed to talk so someone else about making sense of creative progress, as I’ve recently started getting bogged down in every phase of project creation, from prepping to execution. The advice gleaned at that meeting was that I should focus on the O’Connell’s book and not the web-based web series, now known in my head as Half Order Fried Rice. I agreed with the advice, then did the exact opposite of the plan. Good intentions didn’t carry the day vs. inspiration.

To get Half Order out of my head and into reality, I needed some major elements to come into being. Either a producer who could execute the video components, or a sudden uptick in even the most basic skills of web video on my own part. After annoyingly striking out on the former, I borrowed some money and bought a solid camera, then a MacBook Pro. And those things sat underutilized for another good while, until I figured out how to finally use the kid-and-elderly-friendly iMovie. When you’re psyched out, it’s sometimes hard to get past the first, big push needed to learn a new skill. And, for me, it wasn’t until artist Kevin Belford sat down with me one afternoon at Kaldi’s that the fog started to lift. In the span of a couple hours, I dumped down some video from old SD cards, cut together some clips and generally left feeling as if the project might actually happen. Which was important, because…

By this point, I’d already shaken the digital beggar’s cup on the Indiegogo corner stoop. Not sure how much money to ask for, I chose $1,001, figuring that the amount would give me enough to buy any additional, needed equipment, plus could spot me some cash for lunches and drinks for the cast, plus other unknown add-ons during the shooting process. Unlike Kickstarter, Indiegogo accepts any project, but with different pricing gradations; to get the full percentage, I needed to raise at least the $1,001 and the final push to that number didn’t really come until the literal last few hours, when the day prior’s $600 became, magically and exactly, $1,001. Everyone that kicked in to that fund is thanked on the site and in my brain, whether they potted $200 or $5, the range that came in. (And, in the interests of disclosure, one of the cooks at The Royale handed me a $5 bill, an old-fashioned twist on the whole process.)

With the Indiegogo cuts taken out, I had $931 in my bank account about two weeks after the campaign ended, monies that were already being spent on the show. Turns out that the SD cards I had been using were too slow; I had no idea that SD cards had speed capabilities, but this is the kind of thing you learn at the camera shop. So that was about $80. And the cabbage for the Food Trunks episode cost $17… cabbage for cabbage. The virtually-unseen rodents of the Mouse Racing episode were another $17. Various lunches for cast members nipped a few bucks here and there. And a cast/contributor party at the house ran a modest $49, for snacks and drinks. This wasn’t the no-budget production that many people claim, but it was pretty close.

Several of the actual shooting days will go down as my favorite moments of 2012, with people generously saying “yes” to a project that was mostly improvisational and with the bulk of the content in my head, as opposed to the page. But people kept agreeing and shoots came about at a crisp regularity. Virtually every shoot took place the day prior to posting, so there was a steady production schedule at work, even with actors falling out and with my forgetting to turn on the audio on a couple occasions. An early attempt to use a Flip camera was quickly abandoned when that camera proved unsteady and unreliable, forcing me to re-choose the better looking/sounding Canon.

And therin lies the whole point of the experience, as far as I’m concerned. Prior to this, my attempts to bring video into stories were mixed, at best. Here, for five weeks, I had to force myself to use a camera for both stills and video on a daily basis. And I had to cut the pieces together, into something marginally viewable. I’ll probably be more critical of my own technical work on the project as time goes by; already, I’ve gone back and added a few things that sit there as obvious glitches. More will get fixed with time. But the show, the experiment, is over for now.

Folks invested dollars in my personal education. And I invested enough hours to feel that an honest effort was given.

Intending to extend the show one additional episode, I ran into the wall. My primary actor, aged 13, got a free ticket to Six-Flags and headed to Eureka. Some added folks couldn’t make a shoot that day; maybe I’d burned out my talent pool completely. Actually, I did do that. But the scene I had in mind can be picked up later, for another project, which I now know is more than just a theoretical. It’s doable. What a good feeling.

There’s also a good feeling in watching this last piece. Starring the one-and-only Thad-Simon McRosenthal. A great way to end things, as it turned outz’ a loose idea and some inspired improv combined into a fun segment.

Thanks to those thankable.

HOFR Tight Shoes from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

A while back, I got a chance to hang out with some of my music pals from the 1990s, Judge Nothing. Now a five-piece, the band’s playing shows in the St. Louis area through the coming weekend, with an anchor show at Fubar on Saturday, along with a Record Store Day gig at Euclid Records at 2 p.m. It’ll be a great day of music there (JN, Sleepy Kitty, Jans Project, Finns Motel, etc.) and I also get to play some music as a deejay, outside from 2:30 – 3:00, just before the latest Painkillers reunion.

While doing on-scene “reporting” on Judge Nothing, I also ran a bit of video and after multiple, failed attempts at unloosing the video tracks from my SD card, the results are out. Rob Wagoner, who wrangled much of this reunion, recorded the rehearsal sets and placed my video against those live takes. These are what resulted from that AV marriage.