Getting there is an adventure. You take the F train to Carroll Street, then it's a good twenty minute walk there. Oh yeah, you walk OVER the Expressway. The view of cars flying beneath you wouldn't be half bad if the bridge weren't ominously shaking the entire time. So, yeah... that was fun.
The view from the middle of the bridge... the most unintentionally frightening experience ever.
So somehow, despite believing we were lost the whole time, we get to the Jalopy. Well, we almost walk past it. There is no crowd gathered outside, the street is unassuming, and the door looks like a something that'd be the entrance to a cafe. Not a good sign, considering it's a concert venue. I dragged my friends to the Jalopy to see Pokey LaFarge, one of my favorite musicians. I was initially super skeptical -- Pokey is Americana music, a throwback to ragtime and western swing and blues and jazz, and that's not a style that can be performed in any old venue. Americana music is personal: everyone's involved. And most venues I had been to in New York and Brooklyn were large and very impersonal. I had never been to the Jalopy, and I was terrified that the music and the venue wouldn't mesh. But we walk inside anyway, and this is what we see:
The Jalopy is part theatre, part music school, part musical instrument shop, part bar. Countless guitars and banjos and mandolins and ukeleles lined the walls. A small, one-room venue, we were three of maybe six girls there (not including the bartender), and the youngest attendees by far. The old man sitting at the bar asked us if we liked the Avett Brothers. We said we did. He said their father was performing the following week. Kind of badass.
Behind the music shop area was the actual stage. There were church pews instead of individual seats, two columns of about six rows. The stage, only about three feet off the ground, held an old upright piano and was framed by an old velvet curtain, which was framed by glowing red lights. There was a creepy bust of an old Roman man. On the walls were court-style sketches of past performances. It was kind of like walking to a Baz Luhrmann film, and I mean that in the best sense. And once Pokey started playing, the venue fit the music perfectly.
Washboard, anyone?
Pokey was sick that night, so between songs he alternated taking swigs of water, tea, and, of course, whiskey, the age-old American cure for lost voices. He even has a song written about it.
Spotted: onstage bottle chugging.
Pokey's set was cut short, because of his voice, so to make up for it he and his band stuck around for a while afterwards, talking to people and selling merchandise. We shamelessly introduced ourselves to him and the band, and chatted for a bit. They are inarguably the band with the most interesting facial hair.
Hands down, one of the coolest nights I've had in this city so far. I've never been to a place remotely like it, nor heard music in such an intimate setting. And it's so reassuring, knowing places like the Jalopy exist, giving a performance venue to musical artists whose genres seem outdated or just plain weird.
I'll be making that walk over the Expressway bridge many, many more times, I hope.
-Lida
**ALL PHOTOS WERE TAKEN BY OUR ONE AND ONLY CHELSEA
