Here’s the secret to rock and roll.
“You pick your band name first,” Jimmy Filingeri said, “and then it becomes whatever it becomes.”
Filingeri is the bassist of Rochester’s The Fox Sisters. A rock band now well beyond that process of becoming whatever it becomes. It is a real band, and a good one, named for the infamous, ghost-rapping, fake spiritualists of Western New York.
And the bands of “Rock the Locks! Upstate NY Rock & Roll Showcase,” are real as well… to varying degrees. While The Fox Sisters are not a part of it – their next show is Aug. 21 at Lux Lounge – Filingeri has helped organize what’s been referred to “as a summer camp exchange program.”
Over the next month, nine bands will play six shows in three cities:
In Albany at No Fun on July 8 (Thee Isolators, Evil Things and The Burkharts) and August 5 (Aweful Kanawful, Jazz Goons and Low Spirits).
In Buffalo at Nietzsche's on July 7 (Aweful Kanawful, Jazz Goons and Low Spirits) and August 5 (The Abyssmals, Flavour and Safety Meeting).
In Rochester at Lux on July 7 (The Abyssmals, Flavour and Safety Meeting) and August 4 (Thee Isolators, Evil Things and The Burkharts).
When it comes to the Rochester bands, “I had plenty to choose from,” Filingeri said. “It was a matter of availability.”
He calls Harmonica Lewinski “the most popular, original band in town that isn’t Danielle Ponder, Mikaela Davis or Joywave.” The fact that there’s plenty of room for argument with the assertion that Harmonica Lewinski is the most popular band in town actually proves Filingeri’s point. Rochester has dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of them, ready to rock the locks. This is a talent-rich city.
Lux Lounge will feature the Buffalo and Albany bands, as the three clubs do not play host to their hometown players.
“It’s intended to be sort of a cross-pollination thing,” Filingeri said. “I think Upstate gets short shrift to New York City and other bigger places. Where I think there’s a lot going on up here — all the bands need to work harder to get any sort of recognition than they do if they’re in the bigger city. There are bands in New York City that get elevated by the fact that they’re there.”
And the nine bands playing “Rock the Locks!,” are “just as good, if not better," he added. “They have a foundation of rock and roll. I don’t think any of them are too similar to one another.”
Although, Filingeri concedes, “I suppose all of the bands have retro influences.”
“Rock the Locks!" is an attempt to showcase Upstate talent and the spirit of rock and roll.
"It’s not meant to be a retro thing, which all these events get labelled as," Filingeri said. A label he seems to both reject and embrace.
“Just playing instruments and making mistakes seems to be considered retro these days," said Filingeri, who considers retro to be more of a jump-off point. “There is no fakery here. There’s no ear pieces or click tracks or monitors or backing tracks or anything like that.
Retro, rebellion, it’s all rock and roll. Filingeri’s father, Vincent, likes sports. And when Jimmy Filingeri was growing up his house was pretty music-free.
"As a result, I love music and hate sports," he said.
Not exactly a family rift the magnitude of the Grand Canyon. Social motivations come in all sizes, all dramas. The bands of “Rock the Locks!” have their own identities, their unique histories. Aweful Kanawful — a play off the old motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel — was Austin Lake’s bedroom project; he’d record all of the parts himself. Now it’s a real, five-piece band.
Music sensibilities, and fashion sense, evolves. The Jazz Goons, Filingeri said, “tend to dress cowboy-ish, but they do not sound the least bit cowboy-ish.”
One retro aspect that applies to “Rock the Locks!” is the shared history of Buffalo, Rochester and Albany. Cities connected by the Erie Canal. And “Rock the Locks!” apparently owes its theme to sports-loving Vincent Filingeri, who took his young son on tours of the surviving canal locks. As an engineer, he would explain how the locks worked. “My dad was obsessed with it,” Jimmy Filingeri said. “So I liked it if my dad liked it. Anything of local history is of interest to me.”
Although, admittedly, “I can’t say I know much more about the locks than I learned in grade school.” So the Erie Canal as inspiration might have its limitations, if this “Rock the Locks!” thing stretches to Horseheads.
“I’d like it to be annual, I’d like to include more cities,” Filingeri said. “We’ll see how this one goes. We’ll see if people show up, see if anyone cares, and maybe try it again next year.”
Jeff Spevak is senior arts writer for WXXI /CITY Magazine.