All Things To All Musicians

An Artistic Incubator Grows In Brooklyn

- Robert Baird

SATURDAY NIGHT IN HIPSTER BROOKLYN . . . YET there could have been actual sawdust on the floor. Inside National Sawdust, a youngish crowd, many clearly ready to party, were shuffling, some were full-blown jitterbugging, while onstage the Lost Bayou Ramblers, a progressive young Cajun band who’d at first seemed a bit awed by their futuristic surroundings, were slugging beers, sawing a fiddle, squeezing an accordion, and generally finding their groove.

On another visit to the Sawdust, the inestimable Nels Cline, who uses more guitar effects than he’s had birthdays, was teamed with Cibo Matto keyboardist Yuka Honda in a duo they call Cup. This was avant-garde, wildly experimental jamming, with Cline occasionally bellowing into a microphone. As a friend later remarked, it was music that really didn’t need an audience.

During yet another visit to this relatively new restaurant, bar, and performing and recording venue, after a delicious meal of hot fried eggplant and grilled Arctic char with almond butter, sprouted lentils, garlic, and yuzu koshu, I witnessed a more restrained Cline playing edgy, spare jazz with tenor and sopranino saxophonist Larry Ochs and drummer Gerald Cleaver. According to a printed event calendar I picked up outside, upcoming shows would feature improvisational electronic musician Four Tet and multitalented avant-garde musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The idea of a multipurpose art venue such as the National Sawdust is always alluring, but the actuality has often been less thrilling. No matter how sexy the lighting or how respectable the vin ordinaire, multipurpose rooms designed to be used as performing spaces and recording studios are often neither fish nor fowl—more likely, it’s a recording studio with uncorrectable sound problems, or an awkward, uncomfortable concert space or both.