Karen Ponzio Photos
Myles Bullen.
Strange Ways was the place on Monday night not just for your holiday shopping needs, but for your live music needs. The Pitkin Plaza storefront hosted four acts that started the festive season off right with plenty of fun, friendship, sharing, and caring. It is all part of owner Alex Dakoulas’s goal of making his downtown location, with its open side room, into a hub for shopping and gathering.
The first live show, according to Dakoulas, was three months ago and featured Milahroy, and it is something he is hoping to do more of in 2023. The space is already hosting two regular weekly events. Thursdays are dedicated to customization of clothing with heat presses and sewing available for patches, while Saturdays are dedicated to a variety of pop up artists selling their wares.
“We want it to be a flexible space,” said Dakoulas. “A big aspect of moving to this spot was to be able to have these events.” Those include not only more live music, but a queer mixer in February for Valentine’s Day.
But for Monday night it was four acts: New Haven’s own Folk Punk Dad and BlueRaspberry (a duo consisting of married couple Will and Cecelia Parker) as well as Chris Conde from Brooklyn and Myles Bullen from Portland, Me.
Folk Punk Dad was first up and mentioned how excited he was to be playing not only with his wife, but with his friends Chris and Myles.
“Today is the first day we are all in a room together,” he said. Each one had played with the other before, but never all three at once.
Parker came right out of the box with a song that invited everyone in and set the tone for the night.
“We’re all a little awkward, know that you’re welcomed here,” he sang. “No matter where you’re at, know that you belong.”
Many sang along with Parker, whose melodic and catchy songs dealt with serious subjects like mental illness and alcoholism, but in a way that made them highly relatable and even comforting. He said that he hoped his singing and talking about these subjects “lessened the stigma.”
“If you’re struggling, help is out there,” he said.
He encouraged those struggling to talk to someone; they could even DM him if they wanted to. He offered hope and even healing, in lyrics like “I could destroy a wall with a baseball bat, but I’d rather hug you.” It was hard to not smile throughout the set as many kept singing along and searched each other out for their shared connections.
Chris Conde was next, announcing with a big smile that they typically “rap over noisy beats and take my clothes off,” but for tonight were going to play an acoustic set (fully clothed) with their guitar. Conde was a revelation, moving seamlessly between rapping and soulful vocals. Their songs included one exploring the struggle to stay sober and another about “not making good choices.” Like Parker, they also encouraged those struggling to “reach out for help.” The crowd was mesmerized and some (yes, one of them was this reporter, yet again) were even teary eyed, including Conde.
“Were you expecting to feel so much?” they said, only half joking. “I wasn’t.” But it was hard to imagine not feeling a multitude of emotions after Conde’s set, which brought some of the loudest applause of the night, including expressions of love and encouragement from their friends Parker and Bullen.
“I felt like that whole set was just for me,” Myles Bullen said with a laugh, after noting that he had always seen Conde play guitar at home but never at a show, and was always eager for them to do so.
Bullen rapped and sang during his set as well, sometimes with backing tracks and sometimes with ukulele. He also performed spoken word poetry and fielded answers from the audience to questions he posed, then added their comments into a song. Audience participation was a part of Bullen’s set throughout, whether he had them singing along to the chorus of “I Am Not For Everyone” or the chorus in his song about the apocalypse that said “when this whole world burns we’ll still be friends.”
Bullen spoke and sang about addiction and grief as well, and like the others offered hope and connection in a loving and peaceful way. Even his final song, “Not Dead Yet,” which he said was a “confession” about processing thoughts of death “in a healthy way,” became a communal experience as he got everyone up on their feet to dance if they wanted, and sing along with such lyrics as “I wanna die eating ice cream. I wanna die by a lake. I don’t wanna live forever, maybe just to 108.” By the end the crowd was singing in unison, and he added “I wanna live feeling grateful. I wanna live having fun,” which was exactly what he got everyone to do in that moment.
The final set of the night saw Parker come back to the stage with his wife Cecelia as the duo BlueRaspberry.
“These are songs about love and mental illness,” Cecelia announced, and once again the music remained upbeat while the lyrics explored struggles and their solutions.
The duo’s positive messages brought a wealth of applause from the crowd, especially their fourth song, which Cecelia said was about “Panera bread and religious trauma.” The song’s lyrics found the couple having an existential crisis after seeing a billboard that asked if they were going to heaven and hell when all they really wanted to do was grab some food. They ended with their single “Like This,” a song about struggling. It began with the lyrics “I don’t wanna live like this,” with the two eventually realizing “I don’t have to live like this” and exclaiming “I can do what brings me joy over and over again.” It was a delightful way to end what felt like the beginning of something wonderful.
