I will start this piece by disclosing the fact that it will probably be even more boring to read if you have never seen the movie that is
American Movie .
You see it all started a couple of weeks ago when my friend Sean and I went on this little road trip to Milwaukee to witness the 10th anniversary screening of Mark Borchardt’s
Coven. The event was called
Covenigma and it also featured a viewing of the aforementioned legendary cult classic
American Movie as well as a few bands, some fire-twirlers and homemade BBQ (of which we didn’t eat). (Not because it looked gross or anything, but because we weren’t hungry). (For the record, the food looked delicious and everyone was raving about how good it was).
Anyway, I guess I haven’t written anything about this trip because it was just such an overwhelmingly surreal experience that it’s been hard for me to sit down and put it into words.
First off, on the way to Milwaukee we found this place called the Cheese Castle:
I’ve never seen so much cheese in my entire life. It truly was a castle of cheese. They also had statues of knights in full battle armor and plenty of summer sausage to go around (if you know what I mean). The sign on top of the place was massive and I really wanted a t-shirt with that logo on it, but all they had were these really lame shirts with the name of the joint embroidered on it for like $25.
Once we got to Milwaukee we made our way to the Hilton downtown where we got a great deal for a room through the
Pricewire.gov. The weird thing is Sean had only been to Milwaukee once before in his life and it was for a wedding like ten years ago or something. Turns out he stayed at the very same hotel. Needless to say, this previous knowledge came in real handy when it was time to find the bar downstairs.
The day of Covenigma was filled with keen anticipation:
We were eager to meet all of our favorite
American Movie characters live and in the flesh, nearly thirteen years after they made the movie.
We rolled into the parking lot of the Times Theatre and within thirty seconds we were greeted heartily by a cigar-wielding Mark Borchardt who thanked us for coming like he had known us for years. Awesome!
As we turned the corner we saw Mike Schank flanked by his new wife and Mark’s graying excitable Swedish mother. Wow! It was so insane to see that these people actually existed.
The theatre was great. It had that olde worlde charme and it was really smart how they had ropes going from the front of the place around to the side parking lot so you could legally bring your beer from the inside to enjoy some of the sunshine and parking lot activities going on outside.
Here was the schedule:
One of the definite highlights of the day included a blind-folded acoustic guitar performance by Mike Schank. In this picture he is being hectored by the trouble-maker Kenny Keen:
At one point after losing the sash he invited his wife to join in on a song he said they had recently written together. Here’s a bit of that:
Afterwards we got some pictures with Mike:
He kept telling us this story about how the legendary six-string virtuoso
Steve Vai had sent him an autographed picture once with a request that Mike send one of himself in return. But, Mike said he never did because he didn’t have any pictures of himself except the ones that his Mom had in her photo album at home, but he didn’t think he should take one of those.
Inside the
Fire Sirens were neon hoop dancing to
Square Wave’s "Pagan Whore". This is when my buzz really started to kick in and boy was it perfect timing. Check it out:
And just when things couldn’t get any more fantastic along came the pastel-drenched enigma that is Sir Robert Richard Jorge. He was still as vibrant and charming as ever as displayed in this photo I took with him inside the theatre (the slight haze you see in the air is from all the smoke machines(!!) they had going during the band):
Then, there was this really amazingly awkward Coven “Q & A” which just kind of turned into Mike telling unrelated stories:
Some place in Milwaukee made this cake with Mark Borchardt’s likeness on top. Towards the end of the evening (after the fire spinners) we all dove in. It was decent.
Then, after everyone filed out of the theatre, we made one final round of goodbyes which yielded this picture with Mark -- after which I obviously slipped him a copy of the
Buffalo Corpse CD with our blessing to use the music in any of his upcoming projects.
The rest of the weekend we spent exploring the various nooks, crannies, record stores, restaurants and bars about town. And just to bookend the trip properly we stopped at the Cheese Castle on our way back home.
We've received word that
Covenigma 2 will take place around Halloween. Who's in?
Black Francis
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