April Claggett | Apothecary Shed

Savannah Side Quest: The SCAD Experience

February 15, 2025

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Really the only way to experience the experience is to have faculty privileges. Or maybe mushrooms would be fun.

SCAD is distributed all over. This makes Savannah extra special. Kind of like hot sauce on eggs.

The two queens.

April Claggett Warhol Art

January 25, 2025

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Ah yes. 5/25/25 approaches. Four shots from the black and white party (shot by donnie gray) put into a Warholesque pattern by the excellent April Claggett.

Here is a black and white version suitable for silk screening (hint hint).

Where’s Aubrey at the Barns of Rose Hill 11/11

November 15, 2023

gem music, photography april, April Claggett, barns of rose hill, berryville, BORH, charles arthur, concert, gary, gary mcgraw, gem, hole, jen lee, lice performance, nick, nick schrenk, original music, record, rhine, Rhine Singleton, romey, spotify, video, where's aubrey 6 Comments

Thanks to you, the Where’s Aubrey show Saturday 11/11 was a smashing success. We played to an enthusiastic full house, missing a sell out of the venue by only four tickets. JOBIE’s opening set was excellent. An all around evening of great music performed for a good cause.

Speaking of which, together we raised $3305 on Saturday evening with $1983 going to the Shenandoah Riverkeeper to protect our local river.

We also released our ninth record, Hole, which is now available on most streaming services including spotify. If you would like to join the 18 people who bought a physical copy of the CD for old time’s sake, just get in touch.

Where’s Aubrey before the show: Rhine Singleton, Charles Arthur, Gary McGraw, and Nick Schrenk.

Here are some pictures and videos of the show in approximate chronological order arranged by set lists. What a night!

The band on stage: Nick on Drums, McGraw on fiddle, Rhine on Guitar, and Charles on everything else.

BORH 11/11: Set One

Your Lies Are Gone

Ghosts on the Farm

The Miles Roll By

Snippet only

Dirty Blond Haired Girl

Brown Like Your Cinnamon

*** (stage lighting changed as we performed the entire new record)

All songs linked below to spotify tracks from the record.

Ever Enough

Holes in My Pride

Drawing Back Your Blade

Restless Water

These Ain’t my Pearls

Forty Crows

Snippet only

BORH 11/11: Set Two

Take it Away

Eli’s Song

Full Up

Far too Empty

It Ain’t that Far to Fall

Snippet only

Ham Bone (during a broken string changing exercise)

One More Roadhouse

*** (record over, we ended the concert with full band)

Irish Goodbye (JOBIE cover)

Full video

Full video (different angle)

Devlish Situation

Into a Cloud

Snippet only

Has it Ever Been this Good

JOBIE opening set

Special thanks to Jen Lee for photographs and show publicity. April Claggett also provided photos and videos. Romey Michael provided video of Irish Goodbye. Some images above are Copyrighted.

Performing in Campiglia Cervo: Into the Unknown

July 21, 2022

gem art, dance, music, who knows april, April Claggett, art, dance, dobro, gary mcgraw, gem, guitar, italy, live art, matt, matt savage, painting, performance, rhine, Rhine Singleton, sogol, sogol shirazi, violin, where's aubrey 2 Comments

The stadium in Campiglia Cervo is scaled to match the interstate highway system that blazes through the center of town. We packed the stadium to the gills with what I am told was 65 people, including the vice mayor who introduced us, but not including the mayor himself who had more important things to do like look at himself in the mirror. Just so you know, this was a much bigger show than the show Metallica put on at the same stadium!

The show was actually very good. Intimate. Interesting. Tight. During the rest of our time in Rialmosso we ran into lots of people who either attended or heard through the grapevine about our performance. That was both really cool and very gratifying.

So what happened, exactly?

First we invented the idea. And we practiced. Then Matt arrived and things got remarkably much better. in the end, the performance included:

April Claggett, realtime art

Gary McGraw, violin, mandolin and vocal harmony

Matt Savage, piano

Sogol Shirazi, piano and dance

Rhine Singleton, guitar, dobro, vocals, songwriting

The road crew set the stage after arriving the day before to check electricity levels and make sure all of the seating was available. We have nothing but admiration for our intrepid road crew. They work so hard so we can do what we do.

The show consisted of three parts as shown on the billboard above.

Here is a stage floor view of the set list for those of you collecting bootlegs.

And a view of the nosebleed seating in the back before anyone was in the house. You can see the dancing props professionally built by our dedicated construction crew.

Publicity was run by our crack PR team who were able to put up a poster with the last of the tape.

Fortunately that poster was all it took to fill the space to the gills. When we started (only 5 minutes late), people were standing because the seating was gone. Even the reserved section for mastiffs and toddlers was full.

We sincerely appreciate the willingness of the locals in the area to support our art with enthusiasm and love!

The stage is set. The weather is perfect.

And we’re off. Sogol and Matt play Bach together.

Dancing to Vivaldi Concerto in G major for Two Mandolins, Strings and Continuo, RV 532 (re-re-arranged for violin, guitar and piano).

Realtime art during We Will Float Away.

Then the game.

Here is a (raw) video compilation of the show, barely edited. This is six minutes of an hour long show.

A complete properly-produced video will be available someday (or so we believe). We are told it is being edited by the BBC in cooperation with NPR.

Another view of the Finale from the audience.

We had so much fun inventing the game and performing it that we want to do it again.

How many paradises are there, anyway? A visit to Terzo Paradiso in Biella, Italia

July 20, 2022

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You might die, but if anything is noted as the cause of death, it will be loneliness.

There are no people doing art or even visiting Terzo Paradiso unless you count our unruly bunch. Here’s what we saw (and what we did).

First we explored random spaces.

And then we found some art to see (but only after getting lucky).

After a short nap in the hammocks near the circles, we found the projector and those glowy rocks from Land of the Lost.

There were no Sleestaks. So here are two for good measure. They covet the glowy rocks.

There was dirt.

There was also very silly science. But it was arty.

Not surprisingly, the room was better than the dirt.

Watch this video. Really.

Rhine took pics too. It was hard not to.

We got lucky and found another human who told us how to cross the highway, go down the stairs and find even more art. Or rather more art places with not much art. Something like that.

Rhine woke up from his long nap, dreaming of Sleestaks and late 1970s TV.

The space rang a long cool echo of lost civilizations and the empty planet to come.

So there was dance.

And reflection

We climbed back down to reality using a ladder that was too short to reach the sky.

And then we left.

Do Not Abandon Art in Italy

July 19, 2022

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Our resident artist in Rialmosso, April Claggett, made some excellent pictures under lots of diverse constraints. Improvisational. Realtime constrained. Performance related. Then, like all of us, she ran out of time.

So it was up to me to preserve her pieces, roll them up, find a tube and fly them back to the US.

That’s exactly what happened.

The one below is my very favorite.

Creating a New Art Form

July 8, 2022

gem art, dance, music, travel, who knows april, April Claggett, Bach, chopin, classical music, creativity, dance, dobro, gary mcgraw, gem, improvisation, matt savage, new artform, painting, rhine, Rhine Singleton, sogol, sogol shirazi, vioin, visual art, vivaldi, where's aubrey 3 Comments

Eight of us have convened in Rialmosso, Italia to create some art together. Sadly, three of us were almost immediately infected with COVID from the trip across the ocean. So far, the other five of us are healthy and working together to create, well, something. Here’s how that is going.

We have a movement artist, a painter, and three musicians. For one section of the show we are performing this Sunday we’ve decided on an art form where we pass a token between us, one after another (and sometimes to a group). The idea is for each artist to improvise in their medium given what the artist before them came up with in another medium.

This set of videos shows our second attempt at this performance game.

It all starts with April Claggett

Who passes the token to Rhine Singleton (uncharacteristically playing the dobro).

Who passes the token to Sogol Shirazi.

Who, uh oh, passes the token to me (Gary McGraw). Fortunately, I was unable to film myself playing the violin. (Though you can find some video on Rhine’s blog Blame it on Sally.)

Now that Matt Savage has joined us on the piano, we have five players. This is an interesting experiment that we’re having fun with.

Ready…

Set…

Go…

We are also performing some classical music. Here is some Vivaldi being worked up. Sogol will dance to this once we figure it out.

A more pedantic video of the Vivaldi sessions.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41tER0a_0fQ

There is Bach being worked up, and Chopin too.

And we’re spicing up some Where’s Aubrey tunes with simultaneous art and dance.

The incredible result of one of our improvisations

Our time together at Villa Emma has been filled with ideas, collaboration, and the joy of creating something together.

Making music Near Biella (Miagliano)

July 6, 2022

gem art, dance, music, travel, who knows alabama art, april, April Claggett, art, concert, dani, drawing, gary mcgraw, gem, improvisation, into the unknown, italy, miagliano, original music, performance, rhine, Rhine Singleton, sogol, where's aubrey 1 Comment

What happens when you convene an eclectic group of artists with a vague plan to “make something” involving music, dance, drawing, and possibly opera? Well who knows. We haven’t been able to find out yet as one of the dancers came to Italy with COVID (everyone tested on arrival) and spread it to two others in our group before proper quarantine set in. The biggest impact involved our fearless leader and chief convener Shooka taking to her bed.

The upshot on Sunday about three hours after landing in Italy was a hastily constructed spettacolo involving Bach, improvisational movement art to unplanned spontaneous music, and Where’s Aubrey in Miagliano, Italy. Amazingly, the people who came to see us actually enjoyed themselves.

We fittingly call ourselves, Into the Unknown.

Instruments fly from Germany

Giant guitar case travels well

Sogol plays Bach to open the show

The audience mostly avoided the actual amphitheater seats, instead opting for the shade

We shifted the “stage” to face the shade loving audience.

“Backstage” with a dobro

By far the most interesting part of the show was when the musicians played whatever occurred to them (us?) as the dancers moved to the improvisational music and the artist drew what she heard and saw. We divided that piece into eight parts defined by the artist. We also asked the audience to participate by drawing as well.