This Friday, May 6 at 8PM Albert Cummings will be performing at MASS MoCA for a homecoming of sorts. Albert has been noted for his skills as a guitarist as well as a home builder (you might have also seen him on local billboards for Adams Co-Operative Bank). Earlier this week we had a chat with Mr. Cummings on the phone (found out later in the interview that he was actually on the job!). Mark your calendars for Albert, a musician B.B. King has noted as “a great guitarist”!

MASS MoQ&A: What inspired your interest in the blues?
Albert Cummings: A simple answer for this is Stevie Ray Vaughan. The reason I say that is I was only a senior in high school and never even knew who Eric Clapton was at that time. I was so out of tune with music. My brother-in-law used to give me tapes of Stevie Ray, and he was such an idol there for me. Once I studied Stevie a little bit I learned about all the people he studied like Albert King, Freddie King, B.B. King, and all those people.

MASS MoQ&A: There was actually a comment on a Youtube video that said, “SRV? Is that you? Damn this guy is good!� How does it feel to be compared to an idol of yours?
Cummings: That guy is out of his head because Stevie is on a plateau. I appreciate the comment but the guy is wrong! (laughs) Nobody ever touched Stevie. Stevie used to put Hendrix on a plateau similar to what I put Stevie on.

MASS MoQ&A: How often do you practice?
Cummings: Not a lot of practice, I am a builder by day so I don’t get a lot of time to practice. Sounds impossible but it’s true. It’s a tough challenge, but you know, nothing is easy.

MASS MoQ&A: Must be tough juggling a construction career and a music career…
Cummings: I love them both. Both give me something the other doesn’t. I try to do what I can with both of them for sure.

MASS MoQ&A: It’s interesting that you started a music career in your late 20s, a time when most musicians have packed the equipment and entered this thing we call “real life�. Do you have any advice for this group of musicians?
Cummings: It’s definitely true but the style of music I play you gotta be an older guy to understand the meaning of life, the pains of life, the struggles of life, and the benefits. Blues to me is an expression of feeling. People tell me all the time “Oh you should have started when you were 19 or 20 years old, what were you doing?â€� And I would say, “I was getting to know myself.” That’s really the truth. You can’t be a good blues player in my opinion unless you know who you are first.

MASS MoQ&A: Can you tell us a little more about your connection with Double Trouble, how did you arrange sessions with them?
Cummings: I actually got my start in Albany, NY. There were no blues clubs in the Berkshires you know. I got a good following, people were coming out to see me. RPI was having a blues day and wanted to have me as a local headliner and they wanted to get somebody as a national headliner to come in. They said, “Who should we get Albert?â€� and I said, “Why don’t you get Double Trouble to come play?” Two weeks later I get an answer, “Yes, they’ll come and do the show!â€� And I just freaked right out. And what’s weird about it is the last place I saw Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble play was the RPI field house, and the next time I walked in there, I walked in with his band. I was on the stage with them. I managed to book another gig that night while they were in town, in Saratoga, NY. We went to this gig after the field house gig to a sold out crowd. People just going nuts!

We had an amazing night of dynamic with the band. They’re telling me, “Albert you gotta do a CD, you gotta get out there and do something!� I was like, “I really want to but I don’t know how to do it�. They said, “We want to do it for you, we want to produce it, and we want to play on it.� Next thing I knew, I’m in Austin Texas. When I did my demo album I went in the studio and I basically told the drummer, “If you stop your paying for it� and I was out of there in an hour and a half with 11 songs. That was my only studio experience. As I am going down they told me they are bringing in Reese Wynans, Stevie’s keyboard player, so this is the first time that Double Trouble is going to do an album with an artist since Stevie Ray. So this was a really scary experience for me to be walking in there with no studio experience, walking in with my idol band, I should say my idols band! I spent 19 days in Austin with those guys. I learned more in those 19 days than I could have learned in 19 years. I walked out of there with a whole new confidence, if I could do that I could play with anybody.

MASS MoQ&A: You will be playing out in Colorado and Wisconsin, as well as playing larger festivals this summer. What is the best aspect of playing live?
Cummings: I’ve been to France, Spain, Norway, played every state except Alaska and Hawaii, so I got to see the country and I got to experience the world a little bit more than I ever would have if I were to stay at home. You get to meet thousands of people. The most fun for me is ending up being friends with guys that were my idols like Double Trouble, B.B. King, and Buddy Guy. I was in Memphis and I went to B.B.’s club to see him play one night, just standing in the crowd. B.B. saw me and he asked me up on stage. That’s the most rewarding thing for me, maintaining friendships with people that I have such respect for. It’s a really nice environment to be able to do that.

————————————————

Remember, the show is this Friday, May 6 at 8 PM, Don’t miss out!

The Garden, a film by Scott Hamilton Kennedy is screening at MASS MoCA this Thursday on April 28th.

The movie is about a quaint organic farm in downtown L.A. that fights against the City Hall’s unjust decision to destroy their community garden.

Now MASS MoCA wants to know… What would YOU fight for?

Equality? Arts funding?

Let us know!

Post your comments (keep it clean guys) and tell us what you’re passionate enough to put yourself on the line for! And come see The Garden at MASS MoCA Thursday night at 7:30pm for an inexpensive night out ($8 tickets, $5 for students)!

Yes. Here at MASS MoCA we are literally built on contradictions. I mean…Come on people, we are a contemporary art museum that used to be an old factory!

…And we have quite possibly the ONLY exhibition in the world that combines elements of North Adams, MA with Jamaica.

On Saturday, April 23, MASS MoCA will be housing yet another contradiction!

Ladies and gents, we are here to introduce to you: THE SHANGHAI RESTORATION PROJECT!

TSRP mixes traditional Chinese instruments with hip-hop and electronic music for an exhilarating juxtaposition. TSRP blends musical elements from the East and West.

Supplying its audiences with danceable, evocative, traditional, and innovative compilations TSRP’s music will accompany a virtual tour of the Shanghai created by some of the best existing filmmakers.

The Shanghai Restoration Project combines a number of different sounds such as classical piano and Chinese instruments, echoes of children playing, the noises of building houses, and impressive synth-work while exploring mixed-media using song and film. Join us in Club-B10 to discover new music and hear something DIFFERENT!

Click here to listen to a song by TSRP!

The Shanghai Restoration Project will perform on April 23 at 8pm. Tickets for the performance are $12 in advance and $16 day of show. Student tickets are $10. MASS MoCA members receive a 10% discount. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M.

It was a pretty exciting weekend here at MASS MoCA. As most of you know, Iron & Wine rocked down the house in a SOLD OUT performance in the Hunter Center.

If you missed The Low Anthem’s SOLD OUT performance in March, hopefully you were able to see them open the show. (The Low Anthem is currently on tour with Iron & Wine.)

MASS MoCA would like to take this oppurnity to send another “Thank You” to our amazing volunteers. On Saturday, we held a ceremony with flowers, cookies, and lemonade to express our gratitude to our hard-working volunteers.

Our volunteers assist with every live event at MASS MoCA, help with giant mailing shipments, and always offer a friendly smile.

Don’t these cookies make you want to be a volunteer??

Let’s review.

Thank you to:

• Iron & Wine
• The Low Anthem
• MASS MoCA volunteers
• and Miss Danelle Cheney for the photos!

And don’t forget to visit our galleries to see Sub Mirage Lignum and Memery!

Bureau for Open Culture is an institution on-the-go that initiates the overlap of art, science, ecology, and design. In a variety of locations, BOC helps foster collaborations that explore cultural, social, economic and political conditions.

We are so happy that BOC has landed here in North Adams for the summer and fall as part of our upcoming show The Workers. BOC’s series titled, I Am Searching for Field Character (after a Joseph Beuys essay), invites artists and thinkers to explore North Adams’ historical roots and current relationship with MASS MoCA.

James Voorhies, Director and Chief Curator of Bureau for Open Culture, met with us on Sunday to discuss the ideas for North Adams...You know, because we really like ideas here at MASS MoCA. Get it? The project is an exploration of a community that evolved from an industrial society into a cultural getaway.

When we met with James, he told us about three projects that will take place this summer from May 26 – September 30. First, there’s Beer Garden, a center for conversation AND beer nestled alongside the Hoosic River. Starting on May 26 (let’s hope the snow is gone by then!!), Beer Garden will open for intellectual conversations about community and cultural work over locally brewed beverages every Thursday and Friday night from 5pm-10pm!

Another project is Work Site, a lovely office space in the formerly un-renovated Building 8 at MASS MoCA which will be open to freelancers who would like to bring their laptop to a new workspace and meet some new colleagues! (Think of a coffee shop without the coffee).

James also introduced me to one of the artists, Sarah Cowles, professor of landscape at Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University and mastermind behind Elegantly Wasted: a Fashion-Forward Ecosystem for the Hoosic River. Sarah was joined by some of her brightest architect and landscape students from OSU. The group spent the weekend in the Berkshires becoming familiar with the area.

They visited the Natural Bridge State Park, local restaurants, the Hoosic Tunnel, and even tried their luck with Trivia Night at the PNA in Adams!

Made into a concrete channel in the 1950s, the Hoosic River has not always been a “dead-zone�. The 66-mile long river once provided ecological strength to the Berkshires and industrial power from the 1700’s to the 1900’s. Today there is a disconnect between the community and the river. Sarah and Bureau for Open Culture are here to change that.

The students split into three groups and surveyed the four-mile channelized section of the Hoosic River that runs through NAMA; sketching and observing the area. Their goal was to contemplate and discover a possible relationship between the North Adams community and the Hoosic River.

Two suggestions were thoroughly discussed: One was creating a sound-piece that would be affected by the changing water levels in the River; another was creating smaller ecosystems off of the channelized river to support wildlife.

Bureau for Open Culture is looking forward to connecting with the North Adams community through natural, scientific, and cultural development. Keep reading to see what they come up with!..or visit Bureau for Open Culture’s website!

(Look how happy they are to be in NAMA…)

We’ve teamed up with our friends at Taylor’s to offer a special package for Chautauqua! Just $35 gets you a delicious dinner and a delicious show.

Stop by Taylor’s before Chautauqua! and choose from a special three-course prix fixe pre-theater menu:

Start with a garden salad

Then choose from

• Cheese ravioli with spinach and sun dried tomatoes in a cream sauce
• Baked cod with mashed potatoes
• Chicken picatta with mashed potatoes

Finish it off with a piece of yummy chocolate cake.

You have to reserve in advance but you can do so up until 5 PM on Friday, April 8. Reserve by calling MASS MoCA Box Office at 413 662-2111, then press 1.  We’ll take care of the rest. (Well everything but the gratuity.  Please don’t forget to tip your server generously!)