REVIEW: Third Annual Ooky Spooky Musical Showcase Brings New Tunes To Old Tales
10/25 @ Troy Listening Room, Troy
Photos by Elissa Ebersold
“This is the beauty of the night, watching the artists take their unique perspectives and turn a bleak event into an engaging creation for audiences.”
Just before Halloween, Troy Listening Room became a place of shared stories as some of the Capital Region’s most outstanding songwriters took the candlelit floor for the third annual Ooky Spooky Musical Showcase. With eight performers, the evening was a mix of local history, camaraderie between artists who may not typically share a bill, and overall spooky vibes.
If you’re unfamiliar with the event, hosted by Zan Strumfeld and Michael Gregg of Zan and the Winter Folk, artists are challenged to choose a newspaper article from a curated selection that Gregg has pulled from the Troy Public Library. The stories, all dated pre-1920, are a mix of true crime, hauntings, or just odd journalism from the city’s earlier years. What results is a show illustrating not only the artists’ musical talent, but their creativity as they put their own spin on their respective stories.
The night kicked off with Armbruster’s song “Sunoco Sun,” in which he demonstrated his writing talents by taking on the ultimate challenge of writing an actual murder ballad – one that told the whole story of an event, in the tradition of the oral histories of yesteryear. He had chosen a story in which perhaps the most haunting aspect was the parallels it had to modern life. After careless and dangerous shortcuts taken by a large corporation (in this case, Sunoco dumping ballasts of water and gasoline off the side of a ship) the Hudson River was set ablaze as it flowed through Watervliet. Through rising and falling, transfixing acoustic guitar riffs, he sang from the perspective of a young boy who saw the event from his classroom window, taking in the horror and the rapidly changing world around him.
Armbruster was followed by three more artists to finish up the first act: Geoff Gordon, Angelina Valente, and Michael Gregg. Each artist took a different approach to their tunes, which is truly the joy of the evening. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of the artists or unfamiliar with their craft, there’s no telling just what they’ll bring to the stage during the showcase.
Gordon took his story and built a narrative atop the source material of a disgraced heiress’ obituary, opting to go for the verse-chorus-verse route rather than the straight-shot ballad style. His chorus featured a catchy hook in which the woman sought out her lover one last time before illness consumed her, passionately singing, “I’ll wear that bright white dress and I’ll take you to bed,” made all the more sorrowful in the context of the title “I’ll See You One More Time.”
While many songs were poignant like Gordon’s, there were also folks who saw the levity in their situations and chose to lean on that aspect. Buggy Jive was the best example of this with his brilliant and hysterical tune, “Attempting To Burn The Troy Hotel.” This song told the story of the worst arsonist of all time, who – yup, you guessed it! – attempted to burn the Troy Hotel.
The brilliancy of his song, though, wasn’t just in the material, however, but in the way he told the story. This is the beauty of the night, watching the artists take their unique perspectives and turn a bleak event into an engaging creation for audiences. For Buggy Jive, this took the form of a wildly catchy chorus, paired with spoken verses where he took on the persona of a noir detective film narrator, walking us through the events of the four (yes, four) attempted fires. He even treated us to the Law & Order theme as he introduced the detectives who would, unfortunately, fail to catch this foolish fire-setter.
Also in the second set was Sova, aka Sophia Subbayya Vastek, part-owner of the night’s venue with her husband Sam Torres, who handled sound for the night. Sova treated the audience to a purely instrumental song, “What Remains,” a fitting approach as she told the story of the haunted memory of a stolen bell with an even more haunted past. While at the time of its departure it was in the belltower of a church, the metal had a past life as a cannon on a confederate warship. Her combination of twinkly high notes and dark low notes, swelling together and pulling apart, showcased this juxtaposition better than words ever could have.
Rounding out the second set were Super 400, whose song featured the only percussion of the whole event, and, of course, Zan Strumfeld, who mirrored Armbruster’s idea of melding the modern and the old. In her song “Nowhere Home,” she wrote from the perspective of a man who had been too old to fight for America in World War I, went to Britain to fight for them and gained citizenship. When he returned to the U.S. after two decades of life overseas, wishing to spend his final years in his beloved home country, he was met with deportation. Strumfeld’s soft, emotional vocals added depths to the story beyond the words, bringing a chill down spines, no ghosts necessary.
Once again, the night was a spooky, spectacular hit. Each artist brought their best game, smashing the challenge to go beyond their comfort zones and create a piece that spoke not just to the season, but to our community and to our lives.
