The Catskill Chronicle

ATP organizer Barry Hogan at Kutsher’s in Monticello.

By Jason Dole

Here’s the scene. It’s a Wednesday afternoon, late summer among the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. We’re in the lobby of Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, last of the Catskill resorts. Senior citizens meet and diverge, chatting with each other or on cell phones. Grandpa tells grandma “I’ll meet you down by the gym.” Another set of grandparents greets the grandkids as they drop by for a visit. A young mother checks her laptop.

Down the hall, a raging afternoon BINGO game slumbers along unchecked. A mild time is had by all. Smiles begin to break out.

Yes, it’s just another late summer afternoon at Kutsher’s. Or so it seems. Actually, at this moment, a rock concert is being created. Not just any concert, but a cutting-edge, ultra-hip weekend-long festival.

The families in the lobby don’t know. The folks at the BINGO game are unaware. But even as they relax, people are planning the coolest North American rock show of the year. It’s All Tomorrow’s Parties New York, and it’s coming to Kutsher’s. The Jesus Lizard, The Feelies, Suicide, Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Melvins, Dead Meadow, the Boredoms, Oneida, Black Moth Super Rainbow and (I still can’t believe) the Flaming Lips are going to play there. Yessir, right there in Monticello. Them and another couple dozen bands or so. And a comedy night with David Cross, Jon Benjamin and more. It’s a mighty weekend of entertainment, from September 11 – 13, until the Lips stop playing around 1:30 a.m. Monday the 14^th.

That’s why I’m at Kutsher’s, why I’ve brought you with me. We meet ATP organizer Barry Hogan in the hotel bar. It doesn’t seem to have opened yet, but it’s full of people. Key ATP personnel are talking with hotel staff. They’re crossing the I’s and dotting the T’s on issues like performance space and security. One band, Oneida, will need a room to themselves all day Sunday. A new lighting director must be brought up to speed. Stuff like that.

When the group moves on, Barry Hogan manages to break away for a quick chat in the lobby. While the grandparents shmuesn un kvetch, while the BINGO game rumbles low along the horizon, we talk about ATP NY. Barry talks about building the ideal “anti-festival,” rocking out resort-style, lobbying Sonic Youth, and all the acts he hopes to see if he isn’t to busy at ATP. Here’s how it goes:

JD: You guys have been at Kutsher’s before, and now you’re back again.

BH: Yeah, this is our second year. Last year we had My Bloody Valentine curate and this year we have the Flaming Lips curating. It’s the second edition of All Tomorrow’s Parties which is taking place here at Kutsher’s.

JD: How did you get started doing this? Why do you do it?

BH: We’ve been running the festival for about ten years. I used to go to big festivals like Glastonbury and Reading and I kind of got fed up with all the corporate sponsorship, the way lineups are put together and the bad sound, that sort of thing.

All Tomorrow’s Parties is kind of the anti-festival, in a way. It’s about treating people as you’d like to be treated, so it’s in more of an intimate setting, the sound is amazing, the lights are great, the lineup is incredible, it speaks for itself. …It’s just a collection of bands that you probably wouldn’t get to see in one place at one time.

In England we host it at a holiday camp (or vacation camp, as you say over here) and this is the closest thing that I could find to it. All the music is contained in one area and all of the fans and bands can stay. It’s a unique setting.

JD: You started at Butlins?

BH: The first camp we did was Pontin’s, and then we branched out to Butlins. They’re holiday camps in England. Families in the ‘30s and ‘40s couldn’t afford to go to to Spain and Germany or Europe from England, so they went to these camps and they brought the family. There was swimming pools and crazy golf and soccer and that sort of thing.

JD: Similar to families coming up to the Catskills from the City.

BH: Yeah, exactly! That type of thing. …In England, holiday camps are like an institution – and I don’t mean a mental institution. It’s more a case of, just a part of British culture, and I noticed in New York there’s a lot of families that used to get away, as you said, to get to the Catskills.

Funny enough, Kutsher’s was pointed out to us by Brian Schwartz, the manager of Dinosaur Jr. He used to come here as a kid and he just said, wouldn’t it be great to see bands like Dino Jr., My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth? Coming up here, it’s the perfect setting.

JD: It was amazing last year. It was like a really cool rock-n-roll summer camp.

BH: Yeah! I think it’s great because it’s not the sort of place all these young people would normally come to. In a way, it’s kind of ironic. It’s been described as “The Shining meets Cocoon,” but whatever way you want to take it, these amazing ballrooms have had so many historic acts play there.

It’s really great. It’s better than sitting in a field, which is the norm these days. People find a field, put a stage there, and put on an event, and they think that’s creative. With ATP, it’s like a whole weekend getaway. Doing it in a setting like this is what makes it an event.

JD: My first experience with ATP was walking into the Stardust Ballroom while Tortoise was playing one of their albums straight through [TNT]. This curved dark room with stars on the wall was full of atmospheric music.

BH: That’s the thing. This venue here has been hosting things like country acts and comedians and stuff. To have acts like Tortoise and The Meat Puppets and My Bloody Valentine is kind of what “makes it,” because you wouldn’t think in a million years that an act like that would play somewhere like this.

JD: Do the different ATP festivals, like in England, Australia, Europe, do they each have their own personality or flavor?

BH: Well, each event is curated by an artist. So, for example, in Australia we had Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In England we’ve had everyone from Sonic Youth to Mogwai to Shellac. The thing about ATP is that you’re inviting a curator, one of these artists, and they’re picking all their favorite bands. So, it’s like making a mix tape for your friends.

…It’s like picking through your record collection. It’s what’s personal to the curator and it’s not about what’s hot on MTV or VH1, or what Spin magazine thinks is good.

JD: …Or artists paired up because they’re on the same label.

BH: Exactly. You get agents saying, ‘you’ve got this headliner, so you need to add this other band that I have.’ And we’re like, no, it’s what the curator wants, and that’s what dictates the lineup. We’re pretty militant and we’ll stick to that. Otherwise, it starts to take away from what the curator wants. We want it to remain true to the event by honoring the original concept.

JD: You do a comedy room on the Friday night of the festival. Last year, Patton Oswald curated it and this year you’ve got David Cross. Do you do comedy at other festivals, or just here?

BH: No, the first time we did it was last year. I’m a big fan of what Patton does and I knew he was into cool music and, obviously, he’s released records on Sub Pop. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce the comedy element. If you wanted to go away from the music, you could go and check the music out.

We tried to get David Cross last year but he was unavailable. So, it’s really great that he’s the curator this year.

JD: That really ties into the history of the area. The Catskills were the gateway to America for a lot of comedy, especially a lot of Jewish comedians. Now, here you are bringing comedy back to the Catskills.

Yeah [laughs]. I know. Obviously, as you said, there’s the historical Borscht Belt comedians and stuff. It would be great to get Don Rickles to come back and do something. God knows if he would, but it’s really good to have people like David Cross. He’s got Eugene Mirman and stuff like that, so it’s good. It adds another dimension to what ATP is all about.

JD: You also do the “Don’t Look Back” series on Friday night where a band plays one of their albums all the way through.

BH: …What we do with Don’t Look Back is we pick favorite records of ours and we ask the artist to perform them start to finish. The very first one we did was Iggy & The Stooges doing Fun House, and we’ve had Belle & Sebastian doing If You’re Feeling Sinister, Gang of Four doing Entertainment, and the list is endless. We’ve even done Ennio Morricone doing Film soundtracks he put together.

The only bad thing about it is, it seems to have started a trend. It’s like every dodgy band from the 80s or 90s seems to think “I’m going to jump on that bandwagon and do albums.” You’ve got bands like The Mission and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. …There have been some bad ones out there, they’re like albums that no one cares about. All the albums we’re doing, we think that they’re classic records that people should definitely get to see.

JD: I saw Sonic Youth do Daydream Nation in Brooklyn for its 20^th anniversary. Was that part of Don’t Look Back?

BH: Yeah. …I’d been at them for years, trying to say ‘oh, you’ve got to do this record.’ At first, they were kind of a bit hesitant, and they’re like ‘that seems like a lot of work.’ But in the end, they got so into it that they did it for us at the Pitchfork Festival, we did a tour in Australia, we did it in England, we did it in Spain, across America, and as you said, in McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn.

It was great. For me, it was like a dream come true. I remember bunking off school to buy that record. To be able to present it like twenty-odd years later is a great honor.

JD: It was really cool to see them do that in New York.

BH: Oh definitely, yeah.

JD: What do you want local folks in Sullivan County to know about All Tomorrow’s Parties, especially people who may not know any of these bands.

BH: I guess you kind of need to be into music that’s a little left of center, alternative stuff. If you’re into anything from Sonic Youth to the White Stripes, ATP is probably something that would appeal to you. You might only know The Flaming Lips or Iron & Wine or the Jesus Lizard, and you might think ‘oh, I only know a few [bands].’ But if you’re willing to invest into a ticket, you’ll probably walk away discovering so many things you’ve never heard of that will become part of your record collection.

It’s kind of like a sense of community. I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘brand,’ but whatever we do we strive to have quality over quantity. The music that we present is stuff that we believe in and it’s records that we buy and we think that people should be listening to. We’re not going to be at #1, there’s no chance of that, but this festival is an intimate setting for some great music. For anyone who comes, I think it will open their eyes as to how festivals can run.

JD: It takes a lot of work to put on a festival. If you can take a break, which performances do you want to see?

There’s so many different, great things on. One of the things that I’m really looking forward to is The Boredoms. They’re doing their 9-drummer set called “Boadrum,” and that’s opening Sunday.

There are a lot of great things the Flaming Lips have picked from. No Age are going to perform Husker Du and their guest vocalist is Bob Mould. He’s playing guitar as well, I’ve heard, so that’s going to be a treat for a lot of people. The Jesus Lizard… we did some shows with them in England and they were beyond amazing, as you might imagine.

There’s a lot of good stuff, everything from David Cross to Animal collective. We’re really fortunate to have Panda Bear, because he never plays. Whether I get to see any of it? [laughs] That’s anybody’s guess, but as much as I can, I will.