I could talk to Martin England all day. He is one of the good people of the world and you should know about what he and his wife, Jenny, are doing in southern Maine. Continuum Arts Collective is a non-profit that supplies “materials, mentors, and methodology” to young artists and musicians. Often, the recipients of CAC’s work are living in poverty and cannot afford the luxury of an instrument, of lessons, or do not have a connection to a practicing artist for direction and encouragement. Next weekend, on June 2, CAC will host The Revel in the Meadow, featuring some of the best talent New England has to offer. The Mallett Brothers and Suitcase Junket top the bill. Martin’s own band The Reconstructed plays a set as well, and the lineup also includes: Gretchen and The Pickpockets, The Soggy Po Boys, Young Frontier, and Tristan Omand. Food trucks, artisans galore: it’s a festival. We got to chat with Martin; it was great. You should be there this weekend.
RLR: Continuum Arts Collective supplies materials, mentors, and methodology. How did you come upon those three components of your mission, and how do you see them in relationship to each other?
ME: If you take any one of those aspects individually: sometimes somebody does just need oil paints or some brushes. They’ve come into art in their own way, they’ve had somebody mentor them and give them good advice or direction, and they just need the actual materials. Most students we serve live at or below poverty level. That’s not a requirement; there’s no financial form that you have to fill out. So some of the kids we work with do have means, but their parents aren’t artists or musicians and they don’t have anybody to turn to. The methodology part is all about methods and instruction.
One component we didn’t visualize when we started Continuum Arts is there’s a serious dearth of opportunities for students to play publically or to display their art publically. Over the last eight months, we’ve started hosting open mics and art displays. Students can read poems, or do whatever they want. We try to steer them away from basically doing karaoke over a backing track, but we’ve admittedly done that a couple of times.
But kids are growing up in an era of very litigious times, whereas you and I grew up in a time where people still hosted house parties, and those were my first gigs. Sometimes people’s parents would go away to Florida and Jimmy would have a party; other times, the parents were just down at the Elks Club having drinks. [Laughs] Obviously it’s great that it’s cut down on a lot of stuff but it’s really kind of robbed our country of one of the best kinds of Americana, these grassroots pop-up shows.
Our idea when we started out was that we would help existing artists and musicians; people who just needed a little bump. And then what we found is we had a lot of kids applying who had never picked up an instrument before.
We try to roll with the punches and I would rather base our process on actual experiences, rather than trying to think of what might happen. Because of that, it’s allowed us to be very flexible in nature, very agile. To give you an example, we had a woman in town donate all of her grandfather’s instruments to us. One of the instruments was a banjo and it worth a lot of money; when I opened it up, I knew I was looking at something special. And what hadn’t ever occurred to me was that people would donate instruments that were actually worth something. Now, kids have craigslist, ebay, google; so if they’re going to look up a 1931 Bacon banjo, they’re going to find that it’s worth between $2,000-$3,000, and their inclination to sell it, instead of using it, goes up. So I wrote the woman and thanked her but said I didn’t feel comfortable passing it on to a student. She wrote me back and said, “Martin, I know how much it’s worth. Why don’t you sell it and use the money for your instructional fund?” So, moving forward, we now have a by-law that states any donated instrument worth over $500, we contact the donor to get their permission to sell it to seed the instructional fund. Because we want to set kids up to succeed. And there are people who say, “I don’t care how much it’s much, I want a student to play it.”
RLR: Many non-profits constantly struggle to measure their impact and success–how do you think about that for CAC?
ME: A lot of the kids we serve have endured childhood trauma and I think that people can get confused about what our endgame is. Sometimes people think we’re in the talent-scouting business and we’re really not. The beautiful thing about art and music is it allows you to confirm your identity. One of the things that’s penetrated my brain over the last few years is the thought that somebody might be naturally an artist or musician, and they might never have that opportunity, because it really is a luxury when you think about it. So even if it’s just a little bit of relief that somebody gets– maybe they take guitar lessons for six months, and they decide it isn’t for them, but during that time, they learn the benefits of commitment, discipline, hard work. And they might find out that guitar isn’t their thing, but maybe they’re drawn to something else in the arts, or maybe they turn out to be a mechanical engineer, but it’s that modicum of relief that we can provide for kids that have been through trauma.
So to think about success, last year we had five kids that were at risk for not graduating from high school, and the guitar lessons we provided helped them graduate on time. Four of them donated instruments back to the program and we never asked them to do that. But the gratitude they expressed was success to me. We somehow passed along a very valuable life lesson to them. To be gracious is to open yourself up, and it makes you vulnerable and it makes you a better person.
We’ve had people donate cameras, but it seems like photography is kind of an elitist hobby. Most kids that get into it, their parents are shutterbugs. If you are worrying about where your next meal comes from, you don’t have a DSLR laying around your house. So most kids start off asking for a guitar, a bass, a drum set. We try to help them out with that, and whenever possible, we get them lessons. This year, we’ve paid for lessons for 45 different students, which is pretty sweet. And even if they find out it’s not their thing, they do find a part of their identity where they find out they’re actually a creative person.
RLR: Many kids learn how to play instruments on youtube today, but it sounds like you’re also really concerned with helping kids in relationships with peers and mentors.
ME: That hammers the nail, that statement. That is a huge part of it. In our generation, it’s not like we had more friends, but the relationships we did have were not based on artificial intelligence. I grew up in a very rural area and I attribute my imagination to that upbringing because if you didn’t have an imagination, you’d die of boredom! [Laughs]
RLR: Clearly the main function of an event like Revel is to raise money for CAC; how do you see it connected to your mission in other ways?
ME: For these first few years of 501(c)(3), we’ve piloted some thoughts, ideas, and processes at Noble High School and they’ve been the main benefactor of our program and now we’re ready to spread out. When you get your 501(c)(3) status, they ask you to identify specifically the area and population you’re going to serve. Initially, we thought: “Maine,” but Maine’s a big state, so then we thought we’d hone in on York County and that in itself is pretty big. And we’re hoping this event helps raise awareness throughout York County.
One of the reasons we went out and got The Mallett Brothers, outside of the fact that they’re a phenomenal band, they are as big as it gets right now in Maine, and we thought it would draw people in from other parts of the state who would come in and see what we’re about.
What inspired me to play was when I was eleven, my brother Mike had a guitar and he was at one of my parents’ backyard parties, and there was a campfire going and he had his guitar out. And I saw him playing, and I was like, “Damn! I want to do that and I am going to that, because I dig this.” So it is that exposure piece that a lot of kids are missing.
And I think that there’s this huge pendulum swing right now with all the social media, and people living lives predicated on seeing what others lives and not feeling good enough. And of course there are some benefits to being able to go on facebook and see what your friends are doing; but the real gist of life is we are social creatures and we are meant to interact with each other. I wrote an article last year on digital fasting and I think there’s this idea of this campfire song thing that happens where kids are encouraged to fast digitally. I think moving forward with Revel there could end up being an aspect of that.
And in this day and age where everything is so politically charged, I think that our mission and our programs seem to be a common denominator. I’ve never heard anybody say, “Well that’s stupid,” about what we’re doing. [Laughs]. And while there might be arguments about music and art, at least you’re arguing about art and music!
RLR: As you started planning Revel in the Meadow, how did you think about curating the list of artists who would perform? You said you tried to get the Malletts to draw from Maine…maybe that was true for the Soggy Po Boys too, from New Hampshire?
ME: A lot of these bands have done benefits for CAC in the past; the two new bands to us are Suitcase Junket and The Mallett Brothers. I think my own personal taste got in the way a little bit. [Laughs] But what these bands all have in common is that they are all authentic; they’re not carbon copies of something else, they all write songs from the heart, they all write songs that are based on experiential living. There’s just nothing disingenuous about it. And because of that, all the bands that are a part of this do all belong in the same bucket.
And none of the bands that we signed on think they’re somehow above it. The fall of the record industry I think has been beneficial, in some ways, because there are very few bands that are making millions of dollars anymore, but there are many more people making a living. So it makes people more approachable.
RLR: Your band, The Reconstructed, is playing the Revel. For readers who are new to you guys, can you give a little background?
ME: Yeah! We all come from different musical backgrounds, we’ve all been part of bands that brushed against the ceiling of making it, whatever that means anymore. There’s this agenda-free spirit that we’ve created that I really dig.
When you’re just writing songs for yourself, I think that’s where the real magic is; you’re not writing for an audience, you’re writing for each other. I think the bottom line of this whole thing is that music and art that are intrinsic, that doesn’t have a commercial prerogative is just focused on making the best albums you can is really special. I think more great music exists right now at this moment than there ever has been, and I feel really lucky to play with the people I play with. We play with our songs a lot: we take ‘em and deconstruct them and put them back together and see where they fall.
RLR: You’ve been working on a new album, from what I know. Anything you can share?
ME: I’ll tell you what excites me the most about the new album. I’m the type of person who thought I’d never own a house. And now we have a two-story barn where we write, rehearse, record, and arrange. To me, there’s something really cool about writing all the songs in that space, arranging them together, rehearsing them together, and then closing the deal with actually recording them in that space. And the space sounds great the way it is–people spend thousands of dollars on acoustic treatments and stuff, and this is just wood.
RLR: One of the things I noticed on your last album, Chorus of the Dawn, is it just feels like there’s a lot of space in the songs and they can go in many directions. They don’t feel stuck at all. A lot of albums don’t necessarily give as much permission to artists to do that–how did you all think about that now and then?
ME: We actually recorded that record twice. We did it once in pre-production and just recorded live, and came really close to releasing that. But there was too much instruments crossing and bleeding in and out of channels. When we decided we’d erase it and restart, you touched upon something that’s true for us as a band: we don’t freeball it or just improvise a song, but you can play with them.
The Soggy Po Boys were here last year for my fiftieth birthday party and they did a version of “Dark Like Ink.” I don’t know how to read or write music, but they arranged it. Some students pulled me aside and said, “We want you to sing a song.” Normally, we go with “Million Dollar Bill,” by Dawes, but they said, “We got something else in mind,” and when they went into it, I just about jumped out of my skin. They even took all the guitar solos and transcribed to horns. It made my life! But what we’re getting at is the songs are accessible in a lot of different ways because we didn’t go with this rubber stamp and one particular sound. So it is possible to move these songs forward and we’re still in love with all of them. Naturally, as a band, we want to play our newer stuff, but now that we’ve developed a catalogue, we can go back and pull those songs in and they don’t sound like strangers. They feel like they belong in the same room as the new stuff.