From Fred Kovey Aden Tour Diary - Salt Lake City and Kilby Court
Entry 10: A whole new world.
Now this is what I go on tour for. We're headed out of Salt Lake City now, and I feel transported. The word lifestyle has become trite from overuse, but I think I can say that visiting Salt Lake City opened my eyes to new lifestyle possibilities -- or at least reminded me that they exist. I'll start at the beginning of the trip.
We pulled into Salt Lake at five in the afternoon. The sky was clear and blue and the air was warm and dry -- and as we leave town the conditions are much the same, as I imagine they always are. Our first stop was Sage's Cafe, a vegetarian/vegan-friendly restaurant that Kevin had been raving about from his last trip to Salt Lake. As he predicted the food was excellent. I'm not one for fake meat, but the vegetarian items I ordered were really good. I was particularly grateful to stop at a health food place because the previous day’s double whammy of BBQ and pizza had left me feeling pretty raunchy.
The first thing I noticed about Salt Lake City was how beautiful it is. The city is in a valley surrounded entirely by mountains. The air is so clean and clear that the snow-capped peaks appear close enough to hit with a baseball. The streets are wide and clean; the sidewalks and gutters are marked with directions for bicyclists. It feels like a city that's working. The promise of life in the West -- surrounded by beauty, master of your own destiny -- feels entirely possible.
The second thing I noticed about Salt Lake City was how beautiful the people are. They seem to glow with health and purity of purpose. Walking among them I felt like a short, hairy invader in their midst: a threadbare plaid velour couch in a Mies van der Rohe interior. Our waiter at Sage's Cafe was decorated with pastel tattoos that I can only describe as whimsical; he wore a peculiar blouse and had those dumb plastic plates in his ears. Still, I must admit that he looked pretty cool. People in Salt Lake City look good enough to weather any fashion disaster.
After dinner we headed to Kilby Court, our venue for the evening. Here's where I start getting obsessive about lifestyle. The place is run by a couple, Phil and Leia. They are both kind, even-tempered people who look as if they were carved from stone. The club is a complex of buildings, one of which is their home. It's hard to describe the place cause I've never seen anything like it. It's in a somewhat industrial section of Salt Lake. Kilby Court the street is almost an alley. As you drive down it you see abandoned houses on either side. Instead of giving off a feeling of danger or decay, the houses are almost reassuring. Even in neglect and disrepair they are things of beauty; their weathered boards and simple, unpretentious design giving off airs of noble poverty as if from a Steinbeck novel.
The club itself is a purpose-built collection of buildings surrounding a courtyard. The performance area is a simple wooden structure with a corrugated roof. Across an expanse of dirt there is a beautiful wooden shed, which serves as a merch area for bands to ply their wares. It is almost asian in its simplicity of form, with large floor to ceiling windows and two symmetrically placed doors. Towards the opening to the courtyard there is a little shed where Leia sells magnets which are miniaturized versions of the posters she silk-screens for each show.
Standing in the quiet gravel road that runs between their house and workshop and their club, Phil and Leia appear the epitome of bohemian success. Their life is self-contained and purposeful. Their two dogs and two cats are well-behaved and charming, as is their baby son. They provide a valuable service to their community through music, fun and art; they have built their own life and the structures they live it in. Of course, nothing is as simple as it appears at first, but Phil and Leia do seem to have it all figured out.
I have much less to say about the show itself. We played with Ken Stringfellow, who used to be in the Posies. I didn't catch his set cause I was out in the courtyard chatting and absorbing the atmosphere, but Jeff tells me that it was really good. Our set and Kevin's set both went well and were well received by the small crowd that turned out. Phil and Leia seemed pretty concerned about the low turnout, mostly because they had promised Ken Stringfellow a substantial guarantee and clearly weren't going to make enough money at the door to cover it. As good people they clearly wanted to honor their commitment, but without even a bar to subsidize the cost of running the club, they clearly can't afford to dip into their own pockets to cover band fees. We decided unanimously to refuse any payment for the show, which although it probably only saved them a few bucks was well-appreciated by Phil and Leia. As Jeff Gillam pointed out, being in the presence of such goodness and dedication can turn even a group of cynical assholes like us soft.