The Dick & Jane Project: an entirely new educational experience, in which kids write lyrics and we take them seriously. Read the (614) Magazine article, watch Ben’s WOSU interview, or listen to the songs from the project.

In April of 2009, I was asked to start an open mic in the tiny bar attached to the Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant. To be honest, I was initially reluctant to take the gig; very few of the open mics I had attended reflected the spirit championed by places like The Gaslight or Max’s Kansas City: a place where the best writers, poets, comedians, artists and performers in a city showed off their newest work, knowing it will be heard and criticized by the other hungry artists in town. If Columbus wanted to be the indie art capital many have hoped, they’d need practice. And a room to do it in.

And now, nearly two and a half years (and one co-host) later, I believe we’ve come pretty damn close to creating that room. People honestly listen. The regulars are some of the finest songwriters and artists in town. Dozens of bands have formed out of that room (my own included). Touring bands are relieved to break up the bar scene with an intimate acoustic show. The word “community” is used a lot when people describe the open mic. Some openly refer to it as “church.” Whatever has happened in the past two years in that room, it is undeniably something special.

So, on the occassion of our second anniversary, we set up a few microphones, got dressed up, and asked all the regulars to play their best stuff. It’s as best an answer we can find to those curious what the open mic sounds like. Listen below or on the bandcamp page.

Also, as a bonus, we’ve released five of the Taj’s “greatest hits:” lo-fi recordings I made in the early days of the open mic. We’ve had hundreds of unique moments in that room; this is just five of them.

Anyway, thank you to everybody who has ever hung out with us at the Taj Mahal on a Tuesday night. Jason and I plan to keep running it for as long as the good people of Columbus keep making art and continue workshopping it in that tiny room. In an Indian restaurant. On a Tuesday.

Back in June, Trains was asked to play an in-studio session at Groovebox Studios in Detroit. We played three songs off the first record and two that should be on the third record. Download it for free here.

If you hadn’t yet heard, two more great Columbus EPs featuring various members of Trains were recently released to the ether. Please listen, we are very proud of them.

the DewDroppers, No Good

Audrey & Orwell – Stairwells

In the spring of 2009, I lived in a studio apartment in the southeastern tip of an area of Columbus, OH that has since become known in some circles as The Peach District.  I had the good fortune of plentiful free time in those days, and I was in no hurry to take a blind leap into the professional world.  In those days, I viewed the full-time professional job as an expensive investment of my (irreplaceable) time and energy and never quite felt I had a fair shot to pick how, exactly, that energy would be diverted into the world.

So I spent a lot of time hanging around the city, meeting people and exchanging ideas. I was looking for people who believed in the power of local, who wanted a vibrant artistic community, and who weren’t afraid to build it themselves. I had an education and a few skills and I wanted to see how I could be put to use in a community full of people with creative ideas. I was curious if there were others who wouldn’t rest until they knew the full extent of their potential.

One of the places I frequented was a too-short-lived coffee and scooter shop called The Kick Start.  Though my time there was brief, it was where I met some of the most interesting humans I’ve yet encountered in my young life.  Most would probably call these people ‘hipsters’ – and though that may have been technically accurate, it didn’t tell the whole picture.  These weren’t your average trust-fund fashionista hipsters – these were the kids who built their own bikes and rode them across country, who had taught English in China, who studied monkeys in Argentina and had degrees in English or Music or Woodworking.  People who read constantly and built websites and never missed an election.  Good People.

For whatever reason, these Good People wanted to name their area of town The Peach District. Maybe they figured that the first step in engaging the members in the potential of their immediate community was giving that community an identity. Maybe they were tired of listening to the locals complain about the greener grasses of other cities or decades.  These Good People didn’t foolishly believe, as too many do, that a simple change in geographic location would solve the complicated equation of one’s own happiness.

Whatever the case, these people had good ideas and were undeterred in their work towards making those ideas come to fruition.

And it was that spirit that led six of us to team up in June of 2009 to see what could happen.  We worked with the like-minded owners of Dragonfly Neo-V and threw a block party called The Peach District Classic.  We closed an alley, grabbed a stage and a PA, and partied in the heart of our newly named neighborhood with dancing, trivia, music, food, drink, and a multimedia art installation. From the vegetables grown in Dragonfly’s backyard to the bands whose practices took place just three houses down from the gallery, everything was as local as we could possibly make it. Over a hundred people showed up. We were hooked.

In October we threw Peachtoberfest, complete with comedy, art, music, saurkraut, liederhosen, brats, beer, bobbing for apples, and a limbo contest. In January we launched The Greatest Show where we crammed as many Columbus acts as we could into 11 consecutive Fridays – comedians, bands, dj’s, improv comedy, art, film, dancers, political speeches, community radio, a ventriloquist and a magician all took the stage at Dragonfly and reminded everyone that Columbus was and is an extraordinarily talented and happening city.

In February we threw Peachi Gras (parade and marching band included). In April we partnered with OpenHeart Art and Short Stop to throw our first children’s event. In May we released a compilation of Columbus music to benefit Gracehaven, a local organization giving a home to sex trafficking survivors.

All told, we generated over $8,000 for local artists and charities.

After taking the summer to travel and regroup, the members of the district returned to Columbus, each working harder than ever on our separate projects, born directly out of the district’s philosophy of community building and promoting local art. Zachariah Baird and Phil Kim have taken the unique theatre element of the district and formed Organ Grinder Productions, which continues to showcase the top local talent every Thursday and Saturday at Kafe Kerouac. Trains Across the Sea been heavily involved in the development of The Dick & Jane Project, a non-profit organization which works with youth to write lyrics that are then turned into songs by local musicians. We still run the Taj Mahal open mic on Tuesdays, which continues to provide an honest space for songwriters to hone their craft. The spirit of The Peach District is still strong as ever, though the work is no longer under its namesake.

Of course, when I started getting involved in the district, I had no idea it would grow into the curious beast it did. I just liked that I had found Good People with intelligent ideas about how their community could be improved. They were fully aware of the sacrifices required to pursue their art, and were unafraid of the hard work necessary to make their ideas reality. We found that implementing change in a community actually does only need a handful of passionate people dedicated to common ideals who don’t care (at least for a little while) if they get paid in return.

The year I spent actively participating in The Peach District was the most eye-opening year of my life, if only that it removed any limits I had placed on my own potential. It’s been an incredible ride so far, and I can’t stress enough the genuine power of a wholly local approach to living in your city. If I learned one thing from my involvement in The Peach District, it’s that if you want to live somewhere interesting, you simply start making where you live interesting.

And that can start anywhere.

1. After an incredible amount of ado, we have finally started a mailing list. We intend for these e-mails to be infrequent, witty, and reserved for only the most important happenings. Please join if you’re the e-mailing type. Otherwise, there’s always facebook.

Email:

2. Trains has added its fifth active member, 14th all-time. Mike Kohn, whom we got to know through the Taj Open Mic, is a great friend of ours and an incredible musician. He’ll play lots of instruments and sing, like everybody else. Most importantly, he doubles the number of minorities in the band.

3. In addition to bandcamp (always the preferred digital purchasing method), Thanks For Coming Out Tonight is now on iTunes, in case you’re one of the noble, precious few who still think money should be exchanged for recorded music.

The other day somebody I hadn’t met asked me “are you that kid that quit his job?” Well…

In a month it will have been two years since I quit my job. It was without question the best decision I’ve made yet in my young life.

After taking the first year completely off to focus on music, I’ve since then washed dishes, picked chestnuts, hosted karaoke, driven vans of children to after school programs, started a band, released two albums, helped name a district of Columbus, performed lots, toured, traveled a respectable swath of the country, and genuinely enjoyed life more than I ever had before. If you ever get the chance to spend a year or two chasing your dreams, I highly recommend it.

These days, I work part time back at the old engineering firm, part time with Columbus’ oldest non-profit organization, run an arguably successful open mic, and spend the rest of my time split between helping my friend get his non-profit off the ground and working on whatever’s next for this band. I bring home about half as much money as before and am incomparably happier than when I left. I guess even if I still have to lose a few days each week to the cubicle, I also have the certainty that my path is, at the very least, one of my own choosing. And that feels pretty good.

The above video was taken by Megan Leigh in December 2010 in Columbus, OH. That’s our old pal Adrian Jusdanis playing his tremendous solo on “Galileo.”

Trains Across the Sea is Andy Gallagher, Joe Gilliland, Michael Kohn, Adam Nedrow and Counterfeit Madison. We’re another one of the local bands that call Columbus, OH home. We plan to keep on playing shows and making music as long as people keep coming out.

Thank you to everybody who has ever willingly came to a show or bought an album or said something nice to their friends about us, and also thank you to anybody who might do so in the future. It’s the only reason we’re still around. That, and that the four of us might go crazy if we couldn’t regularly write and perform music.

Love and education,

-Andy Gallagher

So…since we put the album out, plenty of words have happened. First, UWeekly wrote some very nice words. Then I wrote some apparently controversial words in The Other Paper, and internet people had lots of words to say about that. Then the next week The Other Paper returned with more words about my previous week’s words, but was kind enough to also review said album. Then The Columbus Dispatch published words about open mics in Columbus, which included the one we run at the Taj Mahal. Phew.

So this is a very fine time for Zack and I to run off to Burning Man. In the meantime, be sure to catch The DewDroppers (the rest of my band) at Urban Scrawl, hop in the aforementioned internet discussions if you’ve got some ideas on this topic, and, if you haven’t yet, please listen to the album and decide if it’s worth five bucks. See you in a few weeks, sweet Columbus.

Busy times here at Trains…still reeling from that Comfest set. Some news:
1. Adrian Jusdanis, the finest fiddle player I’ve ever had the pleasure of performing with, will be focusing on some other fantastic local projects for a while. When Adrian joined back in the summer of 2009, he was unquestionably the greatest thing to happen to Trains yet. Seriously watch out for this kid – one of the brightest futures of any musician I’ve seen in town. It has been truly a treat to play alongside you, Adrian, and I wish you the absolute best. Of course, every time our albums need a fiddle I know exactly who to call.

2. The DewDroppers. Playing their first show as a three-piece at Comfest this year, The DewDroppers are what happens when Andy gets too tired or drunk and wants to sit down and have something pleasant to listen to. The three non-front men of Trains (Joe Gilliland, Counterfeit Madison, Adam Nedrow) are making the most original music I’ve heard come out of Columbus yet this year. Please listen to their music.

3. I did a solo set on Live From Cleveland on the fine WRUW radio station a little while ago. They stuck me in a hallway and I think it sounded pretty good. Feel free to listen if you’re bored at work.

4. My grandparents recently got remarried (met in ’52, married in ’53, raised 8 kids, divorced in ’86, she moved back in in ’88, he proposed again this year) and I was asked to write a song about it. Here’s what that looked like.

5. We’ve been recording the next album for a little over a month (I don’t leave the house for days at a time and my room is a disaster…this is the most stressful time for me in the whole game), and it should be out pretty soon. Let the buzz begin!

The Peach District has teamed up with Gracehaven House to put together a compilation of the best current Columbus, OH music we could find. Then we all got drunk one night and recorded an old Trains song and stuck it at the end. Despite that, we honestly believe this is an objectively great album, and it’s really fucking amazing that such great songs are coming out of this city right now.

We highly recommend you hop on over to gracehavenhouse.bandcamp.com to give it a spin. All the money goes directly to Gracehaven House, a phenomenal local organization looking to provide a safe house for victims of domestic minor sex trafficking. This compilation is a great first step to align yourself with these modern abolitionists and simultaneously support all this fantastic music coming out of this wonderful city.

As for our track at the end, we had plenty of help that fantastic evening, recorded in that wonderful “one mic in the middle of the room” way that’s oh so easy for us and occassionally painful for the listener. For our basement re-recording of “The Cobbler’s Blues,” the following people were kind enough to show up in my basement and help out.

Zachariah Baird – who let him in?
Miles Curtiss – laughter
Joe Camerlengo – stylophone
Jason Dutton – harmonies, whisky
Andy Gallagher – guitar/harmonica, PBR
Joe Gilliland – bass
Adrian Jusdanis – fiddle
Phil Kim – guitar
Tristan Seufert – drums, street cred

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For the curious, the track listing for And Female And Brave, what I think should be our city’s Summer 2010 album:

1. Super Desserts – Yr Heart
2. Andrew Graham & Swarming Branch – Take It Easy On Kathy, At Least She Can Dance
3. Ghost Shirt – WOLFPACK!!!
4. Old Hundred – Winter Months
5. Saintseneca – Grey Flag
6. DJ Moxy – Chicken Scratch
7. Phantods – The Crying Call
8. Monolithic Cloud Parade – Do Ghosts Dream of Death?
9. Alwood Sisters – Perfect Day
10. Wing & Tusk – Home, Sick Home
11. Arlo & The Otter – Passing Lane
12. Moon High – Smoke Before My Eyes
13. Shin Tower Music – Patterns
14. Wonder Twin Powers – WreckUH’d ON
15. Heather Evans – Priceless
16. Fellows, Inc. – From The Shore
17. Trains Across the Sea – The Cobbler’s Blues