The ethereal red glow of the stage lights at the Basement in Northampton illuminated John Allen, Celtic-infused punk rock frontman of Big Bad Bollocks, a staple in the Valley’s music scene for decades, as Allen stood by a microphone addressing a crowd of more than 30 people in the dimly-lit basement pub on Saturday, Aug. 24.
But Allen wasn’t about to start singing, nor did he have any instruments or bandmates by his side. This was the first in a planned quarterly series called “Northampton Slam: Blarney in the Basement,” in which storytellers and writers are encouraged to share their own tales whether personal memoirs or fictional stories and of course, “bollocks, so long as it’s good bollocks,” Allen told the crowd.
Allen, an author who published a 2013 memoir titled “Marmite Cowboy,” about his early life growing up in a small English village during the 1960s and yearning to move to America, shared a personal story from a forthcoming second memoir, which was about his formative experience at a rock show in 1964 while on vacation in the seaside resort town of Blackpool, England.
He recalled going to see a show hosted by comedian and actor Dick Emery, which featured a musical guest, British rock and roll band The Dave Clark Five, playing to the high-pitched screams of teenage girls, including his older sister Judith, then 13 years old.
“I covered my young ears fearful the racket might render me immediately like our next door neighbor Old Tommy, who lost his hearing in the trenches of World War I,” Allen, 62 of Northampton, read in self-reflection on his youth. “Gingerly, I uncovered my ears allowing increasing proportions of sound to fill my head. It was more than just the drumming, guitars and shouted lyrics. I swirled in a reverberating whirlpool of pulverizing siren-song as every girl on the balcony, indeed the entire theatre, let loose their primal inner beings. My own sister had fallen into the delirium.”
Throughout that evening, other storytellers and writers took to the stage. There was Grace Ganssle, a writer from New York City, who shared a story titled “Canned Goods” about the absurdity of growing up during the Cold War and her father’s obsession with stocking their family’s nuclear shelter, which she told with dry humor, imitating the members of the family.
Another storyteller, former WRSI 93.9 The River disc jockey and radio host Johnny Memphis, shared a story from his own life about being picked up by the Philadelphia Police Department for eating a cheesesteak on a porch during the 1980s when he was in college. When the officers asked him what courses he was taking he told them, “Witchcraft, Dissent and Heresy, and Modern African History.”
Another food-related story was shared by James McDonald, 63, of Northampton and co-host of Blarney in the Basement, who waxed poetic about his love for grilled cheese.
“At the start, the chef puts a knob of butter, which responds with a sizzling welcome,” he explained. “Then two slices of square white bread are taken from the long clear bag from the grill. These are not the first slices to be taken today. Fresh, soft, and raw, they are laid on the grill to start browning. Slices of pale American cheese are laid carefully on each piece of bread. This is when the alchemy begins … Amidst the noisy distractions of eggs frying and bacon being pressed into blistering submission, the heat slowly works on the bread and the cheese. It turns soft to crust and solid to liquid. Magic.”
Earlier that week, McDonald and Allen spoke at a nearby bagel shop down the street from The Basement about their love of storytelling and hopes for the monthly story slam.
McDonald, artistic director for The Impress Group, a graphic design company for books based in Northampton, said that for him sharing stories with one another means that people are more connected in our age of constant screens, whether that’s computers or cell phones.
“So much of what we do nowadays is so compartmentalized by our gadgets,” he said. “Although we are communicating with each other, we don’t see those people or hear what they sound like. We can meet the people who are telling the stories, have a face to them and hear what their voice is like. It just feels like a nice human experience.”
Allen, a high school visual arts teacher in Springfield, said he was often in trouble in school for talking in class. And despite being disciplined by a cane, that didn’t stop him from telling stories.
“If you’re compelled to share your experiences through stories, I think it goes as far back as that for me,” he explained. “I’ve always had a desire to write; I just never knew what to write. I used to sit around when I was in was 10 years old. I remember writing a book about pirates.”
It wasn’t until he started writing songs with Big Bad Bollocks that he found an outlet for his love of storytelling.
“All my songs are story songs. They have to fit in two and a half minutes or three minutes,” he said, adding that his memoir is also an extension of his auto-biographical songs.
And further south in the Valley, in the city of Springfield, Dan “Storyman Dan” Lynch has been organizing a monthly story swap through his group — Springfield Storytellers — for at least two deacades.
It takes place every third Friday of the month at 7 p.m. at 1000 Wilbraham Road in Springfield across from Duggan Academy. Typically anywhere between a handful of people to more than a dozen attend. On Aug. 16, there was a packed roster of more than 14 people who shared their stories.
A breadcrumb-like trail of fliers for the event led storytellers to a small boardroom of the Springfield Teachers’ Union Offices where the story swap takes place every month.
Lynch, a 75-year-old resident and a retired Springfield Public Schools special education social studies teacher, said his group was born out of seeing storyteller and musician John Porcino perform during the Pioneer Valley Music & Story Swap in Amherst.
He and a friend, Charlie Peck, 68, of Springfield, ruminated on the possibility of starting their own group, which now has a dedicated core group of storytellers attending every month.
“It’s the oral tradition,” Lynch explained. “I just love the concept. I hate all the digital nonsense that we live in today and this is an escape from it. It really is. You sit with each other and you look each other in the eye and you talk. I like that a lot. I’ve learned a lot by telling stories and I’ve also started writing. I’ve written about 50 stories, personal remembrances mostly.”
The group of storytellers that meet every month in Springfield tend to be middle aged or into their retirement years. Lynch said he’s unsure whether older people have more stories to share about their life or just have more time on their hands being retired, but believes that everyone, regardless of age, tells stories in their day to day life.
“I think older people see the value in it more than younger people,” he explained. “Very young people like the traditional children’s tales and many parents read them to their children. And then you get to a period where it’s not cool … But we’re all storytellers. Those who label ourselves as such are just open about it.”
But Lynch is amazed by the reaction he’s received from younger audiences at the weekly Tuesday night open mic at Bishop’s Lounge in Northampton, where he generally stops in every other week to tell a tale.
After he’s told a story, he often has younger people coming up to him telling him how much they’ve connected to his story and the two end up having a great conversation.
During the Aug. 16 story swap, attendees told a mixture of personal stories and fictional tales ranging from comedic to tragic and inspiring to whimsical. Jonathan Wilkinson, a resident of Chicopee, told a story about when he used to be a clown for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1978 to 1979.
“There were 28 clowns in the show when I was there,” he recalled with a chuckling grin. “There was actually a boss clown. His name was Steve La Porte. And the boss clown is kind of a lousy job. What you are is a liaison between the management and the rest of the clowns. You have to exercise a little discipline to the clowns.
He continued, “If you weren’t doing your job well or if you were late, he’d have to come down on you. All the stuff went through him. It was a tough job. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted it. He’d been in the show for about five years and was actually married to another clown named Terry.”
Wilkinson said La Porte came from a one-industry town in Oklahoma where everybody, including the boss clown’s father, uncles, and brothers, worked at the same mill. La Porte left town to join the circus where he took pride in his work.
“His makeup was spectacular,” Wilkinson said of La Porte. “My makeup would take me 15 minutes if I was leisurely. It took him well over an hour and you had to do this every day.”
Years later after leaving the circus, Wilkinson discovered that La Porte won an Academy Award for best makeup as a makeup artist for the 1988 supernatural-driven comedy-horror, “Beetlejuice,” directed by Tim Burton.
Anush Dawidjan, a resident of Springfield and Miami, Florida, recalled her experience visiting two churches in Rwanda that were the sites of genocide, while backpacking across East Africa in 2014. She was accompanied by a 20-or-so-year-old Italian man named Romeo, with both going to the sites together for fear of going alone. At one of the churches more than 300 people were murdered.
“It was horrible,” she explained. “It leaves a stain on you that you will never forget. And then we arranged for transport to go another 30 miles to go to the other church. There’s bloodstains on the floor. And I remember Romeo grabbing me and saying, ‘This is so much worse. We studied this in school and I knew that people were killed.’”
She continued, “I was very blessed that I had a young man with me who I could cry with, who I could hug, because this is about the depths of inhumanity that you can have. You need to share that with another human being.”
On the ride back, the two were still reeling from the experience. Other passengers on their minibus didn’t understand why they were crying, but as soon as they mentioned the church the entire bus fell silent as everyone else began to cry, she said.
Many of the people on the minibus were locals who lost family members and friends during the genocide two decades prior.
“For me this is one of the most humane experiences I’ve ever had and I’ve been all over the world,” Dawidjan said, with a slight tremble in her voice.
But these aren’t the only storytelling groups in the Valley. There are several more, including The Amherst Song & Story Swap, which takes place the first Saturday of each month at the Nacul Center (592 Main St.) as well as “Unbuttoned: An Evening of Spoken Word” at Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton on the second Tuesday of each month.
For more information about Springfield Storytellers visit www.storytell.trade. You can also find out more about Blarney in the Basement by visiting www.iheg.com/basement_main.asp.
Chris Goudreau can be reached at cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.