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ph_logs2025-12-14 06:18 pm
deepbluerevue) wrote in ph_logs2025-12-14 06:18 pm
Whoa, Tillie, Take Your Time | Grace Holloway | Open
Who: Grace (deepbluerevue) and Open
What: Performances and rehearsals around Pumpkin Hollow
When: December 1st to 19th
Where: Pumpkin Hollow’s performance venues and other
All around Pumpkin Hollow, on community boards and lampposts, fastened with tacks and wheat paste, you’ll find neatly-printed flyers with drawn illustrations of singing faces, microphones, and music notes. (If you’re familiar with Gerry Keay or Mayor Poe’s art styles, you’ll find the illustrations familiar.) The text reads:
There aren’t all that many venues in Pumpkin Hollow, so it’s pretty easy to catch a show by a woman who seems to be gunning for every gig she can grab.
Grace Holloway appears at every gig in a tidy peaches-and-cream ensemble, a snug jacket over an ankle-length dress and dainty pumps. Atop her coiffed updo, she wears an unidentifiable hat. It might be a cloche, but it’s hard to say. Though she doesn’t have jewelry and her cane is utilitarian, her makeup is always done perfect: red lips, brown eye-shadow, black mascara, lined brows.
At the Oak and Iron or La Veritable Dragon Rouge, you’ll find her perched on a tall stool, singing alone or with a local fiddler, performing tunes easy to eat and chat over. She goes for an hour or more without any sign of vocal fatigue, which might be surprising if you’ve seen her put away a pack of cigarettes. Balancing her attention seems to come without any effort at all, catching the eyes of people in the audience with a wink one minute, and diving deep into a song’s feeling in the next. The numbers range from down-tempo to mid, seamless and smooth, usually finishing with an up-tempo march.
At the Empty Pockets, her numbers get a little more attention-grabbing, her crowd-engagement a little more energetic. She talks in between each song, joking with the audience, teasing the loudest listeners, good-naturedly heckling the few people leaving for other engagements.
Regardless of the venue, after she’s finished her set and bowed to scattered applause, Miss Holloway will usually vanish into back halls for some ten minutes before reappearing with the smell of smoke on her jacket and a glass of water in her hand to take a seat and people-watch. She looks content, and perhaps a little like she’d welcome company — or inquiries by instrumentalists.
[For Grace’s range, think Sheryl Lee Ralph’s voice performing Bessie Smith’s oeuvre. You can find an example on Grace’s journal, or the linked Silent Night cover on the TDM!]
In her free time, Grace tends to be found downtown — often at the Empty Pockets or the Oak and Iron, as if she doesn’t spend all her time there already. If she’s meeting someone for a chat — say, to catch up, or to talk about starting a music group just for fun — she’ll likely be found at the Empty Pockets, saving a seat at a table.
[Wildcard! Got other ideas? Put ‘em here!]
deepbluerevue) and OpenWhat: Performances and rehearsals around Pumpkin Hollow
When: December 1st to 19th
Where: Pumpkin Hollow’s performance venues and other
Tillie Brown was a dancing fool / Spent her time in a dancing school
All around Pumpkin Hollow, on community boards and lampposts, fastened with tacks and wheat paste, you’ll find neatly-printed flyers with drawn illustrations of singing faces, microphones, and music notes. (If you’re familiar with Gerry Keay or Mayor Poe’s art styles, you’ll find the illustrations familiar.) The text reads:
To all Instrumentalists resident in Pumpkin Hollow
GRACE HOLLOWAY
SINGER OF THE BLUES
Seeks Musicians as Fellows In Performance
In Particular those with experience in Accompaniment
Desired Instruments:
• Piano • Clarinet • Cornet • Trombone • Violin • Alto Sax • Baritone Sax • Tuba • Upright Bass • Drums •
OTHER INSTRUMENTS POTENTIALLY WELCOME
Contact
GRACE HOLLOWAY
By sending stone or posted mail
Or attend a performance by the vaunted chanteuse at
• The Oak and Iron • Empty Pockets • La Veritable Dragon Rouge •
All Inquiries Welcome
December 16:55
When the band would play / Tillie would start right in to sway
There aren’t all that many venues in Pumpkin Hollow, so it’s pretty easy to catch a show by a woman who seems to be gunning for every gig she can grab.
Grace Holloway appears at every gig in a tidy peaches-and-cream ensemble, a snug jacket over an ankle-length dress and dainty pumps. Atop her coiffed updo, she wears an unidentifiable hat. It might be a cloche, but it’s hard to say. Though she doesn’t have jewelry and her cane is utilitarian, her makeup is always done perfect: red lips, brown eye-shadow, black mascara, lined brows.
At the Oak and Iron or La Veritable Dragon Rouge, you’ll find her perched on a tall stool, singing alone or with a local fiddler, performing tunes easy to eat and chat over. She goes for an hour or more without any sign of vocal fatigue, which might be surprising if you’ve seen her put away a pack of cigarettes. Balancing her attention seems to come without any effort at all, catching the eyes of people in the audience with a wink one minute, and diving deep into a song’s feeling in the next. The numbers range from down-tempo to mid, seamless and smooth, usually finishing with an up-tempo march.
At the Empty Pockets, her numbers get a little more attention-grabbing, her crowd-engagement a little more energetic. She talks in between each song, joking with the audience, teasing the loudest listeners, good-naturedly heckling the few people leaving for other engagements.
Velvet, Ambrosia, and Silk [18+]
At the brothel, she seems to have fun pulling out her more ribald repertoire, bouncing classics like Need A Little Sugar in My Bowl and Empty Bed Blues off the lavishly appointed parlor walls.Regardless of the venue, after she’s finished her set and bowed to scattered applause, Miss Holloway will usually vanish into back halls for some ten minutes before reappearing with the smell of smoke on her jacket and a glass of water in her hand to take a seat and people-watch. She looks content, and perhaps a little like she’d welcome company — or inquiries by instrumentalists.
[For Grace’s range, think Sheryl Lee Ralph’s voice performing Bessie Smith’s oeuvre. You can find an example on Grace’s journal, or the linked Silent Night cover on the TDM!]
There ain't no use to hurrying 'cause you wanna prance / You've got all night to do that dance
In her free time, Grace tends to be found downtown — often at the Empty Pockets or the Oak and Iron, as if she doesn’t spend all her time there already. If she’s meeting someone for a chat — say, to catch up, or to talk about starting a music group just for fun — she’ll likely be found at the Empty Pockets, saving a seat at a table.
You don't know what to shake when you shake / What to break / Whoa, Tillie, take your time
[Wildcard! Got other ideas? Put ‘em here!]
no subject
"Some things seem to be universal, darling," Anzu says, warmly. "Know'st thou, my bridegroom and I rather despaired of meeting other Jews here, too. But we really needn't have worried, nu?"
He's on something of a fishing expedition here, trying to figure out if one of the surest assumptions of his life prior to this sojourn applies here – more out of curiosity than anything. At least within the confines of Vsemlada and most of the Occident, many of those who look like him are likely as not to be Jewish. The further Westwards one moves, the less that assumption holds, which is why Myrdinn had tried to pass him and Eli off as being vaguely Occidental, born in a foreign land, educated in the Rhineland.
no subject
(Well, that’s not completely true. There had to’ve been congregations in St. Louis back in the ‘30s, that’s just maths, but if there were any Jews in the Hooverville, she doesn’t remember meeting them. Rapture might’ve taken a dim view of public religious groups, but those shiny golden early years were full of friends and acquaintances throwing shindigs for Passover and parties for Purim, neighbors holding the Sabbath when she lived in the Athena’s Glory building. A couple times, friends extended invitations to hang around at minyan, and of course she went. There were fewer Jews in the Drop when she first got booted there, then more and more as things got worse uptown.
Fewer celebrations too, she realizes, as the Family got tighter-knit, these past few years. She hadn’t thought about it at the time. Hadn’t thought much about any of the narrowing. When was the last time she went to adjust Isidore and Josef’s heating on a Saturday?)