A Conversation with Alicia J. Rose (continued)

PM: So does your time get divided kind of equally between music, photography and booking the club? How does that play out?

AR: Well, it just depends. It depends on what demands my attention at the time. I think that Doug Fir is such a wonderful--

PM: It's like a hub.

AR: It's a hub for sure, but it's a real passion for me. I'm a massive fanatic of live music.

PM: So tell me about this venue, Doug Fir.

AR: Well, Doug Fir Lounge is the reason I decided to go back into club booking. But I should probably back up just for a second. There were nine years in between the Chameleon and Doug Fir...

PM: Oh, yeah.

AR: So in the mid '90s, I decided to move to Portland. It just felt like it was time to go move on. I decided to move to Portland because, well, I'd met this really cute boy here, and I had made a few friends coming through on tour three or four times opening for different bands. I just felt it made sense to me. So I interviewed with a bunch of companies, and ultimately wound up working at a company called Nail Distribution. I came into their fold as a salesperson, but quickly rose in the ranks, and turned into GM, and then vice president, and ultimately president. I ran the company for a good nine years until we sold the company in 2001 to another company called Allegro. I stayed for two more years--and then I wound up leaving and transitioning over to Doug Fir pretty seamlessly. But that particular avenue for me was good, and it was sort of the antithesis of the rock 'n' roll nightclub life style, while still being rock 'n' roll. I mean, it was me in a cubicle, eating too many sandwiches, and having too many delicious beverages. And I really was a little too obsessed with my Plantronics headset to the point where it wasn't good for me, and I definitely wasn't getting enough exercise.

I love music, and I seem to have a bizarre knack for combining industrious business sense with actual artistry. I think having to work with artists while being one has been a real key part of my growth in this business, but I can also cut one hell of a deal.

PM: Wow. There are so few musicians that can cut a hell of a deal.

AR: Well, I think that's a big part of why I've been able to have such an interesting and diverse career. I have a knack for combining the two on a pretty even playing field. It creates its own share of difficulties, of course--because sometimes I have more fun with one than the other. [laughs] What was your question? I just wanted to make sure you had a piece of the puzzle.

PM: Damn, I don't know where we'll go from there. It doesn't matter. There are so many things I want to know. Let's talk some more about photography, because the music stuff is so all consuming, we'll just spend it all there. But there are a couple of photography things I want to know; for instance, I think it must be different when a musician photographs other musicians.

AR: Oh, there's so much truth to that, let me tell you. It's crazy, Frank. One of the coolest things that I've been able to bring to photography is my fear of photographers. I've been photographed as a musician many times.

PM: It's so true, because it's paralyzing. But if you know that, you have that in your pocket.

AR: Right! It's a hopeless feeling to be in front of the lens. So when you're getting your photograph taken as a band, as a person, as a human, as a celebrity, as a doctor, as a child, as whatever, a snapshot is a snapshot, but the reason you're comfortable in the snapshot format is because somebody you know and like is taking the picture, and you're responding to them, through the camera.

AR: Right.

PM: And so my approach with it is get to know people, laugh your ass off, take pictures in the process.

AR: Right.

PM: Recently I had my photograph taken for the first time in a long time, as me, as Miss Murgatroid, and it was the best thing I ever could have done for myself, because something that I thought might be true became crystallized for me. I had to feel it to know it. My immediate instinct in any situation is to put people at ease. As a photographer I just do it naturally because I'm a funny person. I laugh, I crack people up. I want them to be comfortable, or it's no fun for me.

PM: Right.

AR: And having my photograph taken recently, I stood there in front of the lens, and I felt kind of helpless. That's not a good feeling, but I know that's what everybody else feels too. But in the process I realized that one of the things that really is so obvious to me, but seems to separate me from the pack a little--not from all photographers, not from the people that I consider to be my peers, but from people who are taking pictures of bands specifically--is that I want musicians to be themselves, I want them to look good as themselves, and I'm going to help them get there without feeling self conscious. I want to give them a leg up. I actually try to start out every shoot with a meal if I can...

PM: That's a great idea.

AR: It works! Dinner the night before, or breakfast the day of. To get to know each other. We sit down and we break bread. It's like, "Tell me about your tour, tell me about your day, tell me about who you are. Let's just chill out, let's make jokes, let's laugh, let's brainstorm." It's a collaboration. I come into every photo project like, "Well, how do you see yourselves?" I love music, so I listen--if it's a musician, specifically, I'll listen to their music for a while. I'll give it like 5 spins, 10 spins, 50 spins, depending on how far into it I get. I'll draw some parallels, I'll draw some ideas out of their music, and say like, "What would you think if we did this or this..." Is it a stupid idea or not? Do you want me to work from the record, or do you want me to work from your own personal life? Some people may have a clear idea of what they want, and some people have no idea at all. Most musicians appreciate ideas if they are thoughtful and potentially awesome.

PM: Right. "We have musical ideas, but we don't have visual ideas."

AR: I'm lucky, when I shoot bands, I get to listen to an album they made to inspire my imagination. That's a great place to start. I'll listen, brew up some ideas, bring them back to the artist, and then we go from there. It's pretty straightforward. But it's really fun. I look at photography really as a collaboration. It's the few times where it's not a collaboration, that's when I don't enjoy it.

PM: Right.

AR: When it gets a little stale or when somebody is too cool for school, when they're not interested in really being a part of the process. It shows in the photographs, in my opinion, number one; and number two, it's just not that much fun for anyone. But as I get better, and as I grow more as a photographer, that becomes less and less of an issue because I'm getting better not only at my craft, but at communicating with the client. Also, people seem to want to work with me as an artist, versus just as a photographer. I'm starting to really see that come back at me now--it's such a blessing.

PM: Are there any other artist-inclined photographers whom you enjoy, or you admire?

AR: I do. I'm a big fan of Autumn de Wilde. I'm a big fan of Christian Lantry. I don't know if either of them are specifically musician/photographers, but they're people that I think really love music. In some ways I think being a musician has helped me in a different way that I can't really quantify. But in general, I look at their work, and I think that they're just as connected, just in different ways. Connected to the love of the music, connected to the love of the process, and connected to the love of the medium itself. I think personally I'm a much better photographer than I am an accordion player.

[laughter]

AR: I've come to that conclusion in the past year, if only because I never really wanted to be traditionally successful as an accordion player. I love making music, and I want to have people hear my music, but I don't want to tour the world opening for Radiohead playing the accordion. That's not my deal. Not my ambition. I love to play and make music for people that are interested in it. But I'm an avant-garde accordion player, make no bones about it. I'm not in it for commercial success.

PM: Got that.

AR: I'm in it to exorcise what's in my brain with a musical language; the accordion is kind of my primary tool of choice for that. That's always been the way I've made art, whether it's photography or music, even writing--it's a matter of giving whatever is in my head some kind of a voice and vision.

PM: Wow.

AR: Music is one method, photography is another, even booking the calendar at a rock club is another way. Expressing myself through curating a live experience...it's an amazing feeling. Also I've written some over the years, that's a part of me too.

PM: Prose?

AR: Yeah, a little fiction here and there. I wrote poetry in my early 20s, and now I'm very interested in writing screenplays and treatments, I'm curious about making music videos too. Finding a way to do what I do photographically but take it to the next level. I eventually want to do more than that, but one step at a time.

PM: But if it's scripting, it's film or video in mind?

AR: Well, believe it or not, that's what I went to school for. Way back when, I was doing everything else in the early '90s, I was also going to school full time at San Francisco State as a Broadcast Electronic Arts major. I directed commercials, wrote tele-plays, etc. And even before that, when I was in high school I was part of a video production program for my junior and senior years. Supposedly I was the first female director for our closed circuit weekly video show since the program started. When I was 17 or 18 I learned how to edit, I learned how to direct, I learned how to write. Then I took myself to SF State, then got involved with college radio. I guess music won out--I got distracted for a while.

PM: Wow.

AR: There's an interesting connection to it all. At the same time I was going to State, I had a darkroom in the basement of the Chameleon. That was one of the things that made it okay. I was going to school, playing accordion, doing Miss Murgatroid, and booking this club. And then for nine years got distracted with the toils of music distribution--still playing music, making records and all that, but I actually lost my focus on photography. The Decemberists very much helped get me back into it. That's another interesting arc to this whole little tale.

                         continue

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