Rob DeRosa — who most of you probably know better as the manager of the Red & Black Café — has been a fixture in the Connecticut music scene for years. When he’s not chatting up student musicians, or roasting whole pork shoulders in the R&B kitchen, the Meriden native is busy digging up local bands to book at nearby venues or feature on his “Connecticut connected” WESU show “Homegrown.” DeRosa even has his own label, Thin Man Music, which has released the music of over 50 Connecticut bands in its seven years of existence.
Despite his years of experience with the local scene, when I asked DeRosa about the process for booking shows at the University, he was vague.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never booked a show at Wesleyan.”
While this particular lack of town-gown crossover may have perfectly innocent origins (after all, who would want to deal with University bureaucracy when you could just call up a local bar?), it speaks to the discrete, inward looking nature of Wesleyan’s music scene. As DeRosa points out, when student bands play shows, they’re usually relatively informal affairs carried out at on-campus venues, which are almost all student housing, from Eclectic to WestCo to senior houses.
“The campus music scene is insular,” DeRosa said. “If you’re not a student, you are completely excluded. Can a townie go to the dorms? Not likely.”
Wesleyan’s island mentality results in an artistic culture that is not only exclusive, but which, DeRosa says, runs the risk of stunting students’ artistic growth.
“When you play at the dorms, you’re playing in front of your friends,” he explained. “But you can’t just always play in front of the converted. Sometimes you have to convert some of those people yourself. Playing off campus is an important part of a band’s development. You can find out if you’re actually any good, or if your friends are just blowing smoke up your ass.”
It was, in part, out of these concerns that DeRosa’s most recent musical brainchild was born. It all started with the recent opening of Public Bar & Grill, the latest addition to Middletown’s Main Street pub scene. With its respectable stage and ample floor space, the polished, slightly Starbucks-ian Public is an ideal venue for live music. DeRosa originally contacted the owner to book some of his own bands, but after being told that Public only hosted cover bands on the weekends (all Thin Man’s acts are originals), he decided to take a different tack.
“I told him, you know, Wednesday nights are a big bar night for Wesleyan kids, and you need a way to grab a piece of that action,” DeRosa says. “I saw it as an opportunity to bring some music down to Main Street”
And so Wesleyan Wednesdays were born: a once-a-week music series at Public featuring Wesleyan bands.
“I tried to get them to call it Wes Wednesdays, but the guy didn’t quite get it,” DeRosa added.
The first WesWed will take place on Oct. 8, with Bottle Up & Go, a whiskey blues duo featuring Keenan Mitchell ’09 on slide guitar and vocals and Fareed Sajan ’09 on drums. The two will be accompanied this coming Wednesday by Lucas Carrico ’09 on saxophone.
The band, which Sajan estimates has been around since the 2005-2006 school year, has established itself over the last few years with a number of gigs at Wesleyan, Yale and various venues in Connecticut and New York. The band will also be opening for Man Man at the Heirloom Arts Theatre on Oct. 12.
According to Sajan, BU&G’s involvement with Wesleyan Wednesdays grew organically from the University’s informal live music network.
“My friend introduced me to Robbie, and Robbie told me about [the Wesleyan Wednesday series],” Sajan said. “We respected him immediately because he had a piercing. I kind of told Robbie about BU&G, but he said he had heard stuff about us and wanted us to play the first performance at Public.”
Given DeRosa’s hope that WesWed will help bridge the gap between the Middletown and Wesleyan music scenes, BU&G seems like an appropriate choice for the series’ debut; not only will they bring a University presence into Middletown venue, but the band’s off-campus experience may help to ease the path for future Wesleyan acts. DeRosa has also secured unofficial promises from Wesleyan alum bands like Bear Hands and Boy Crisis to play future WesWed dates.
DeRosa has several bands lined up for the next few Wednesdays (the Shade will play on Oct. 18, while a Wesleyan jazz group and Blink-182 cover band will perform the following weeks), but he hopes that more University bands will step forward. Performers will get a cut of the night’s profits and pre-show exposure on “Homegrown.” Interested musicians can contact DeRosa at thinmanmusic@sbcglobal.net, or chat him up while grabbing a Red & Black sandwich.
As for next Wednesday, DeRosa predicts that there will be a small cover, which will be offset by drink specials. For his part, Sajan promises a solid show, though he has a warning for anyone tempted to drunkenly shout “Freebird.”
“We will be forced to castrate them,” Sajan says. “We have gardening shears always. It
is a part of our ’image.’”
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