‘The 78 Project’ at the ACME Screening Room
By Anthony Stoeckert
SOUND is all the rage these days. Audiophiles praise the wonders of vinyl, and Neil Young says your iTunes captures a mere fraction of the music that’s created when musicians make records, and has developed what he says is a better music player, which he named Pono.
Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright have a music-capturing obsession of their own, one that predates vinyl albums. Since 2010, they have been filming musicians as they record public domain songs to 78 rpm lacquer disks.
Mr. Steyermark and Ms. Wright each had experience in the music business — he worked in movies as a music supervisor, she was a music journalist — and they were interested in how Alan Lomax traveled around the world in the early part of the 20th century, capturing musical performances on a disk recorder manufactured by a company called Presto.
So they came up with the idea of web series, called The 78 Project, which shows musicians (including Rosanne Cash, Richard Thompson and Marshall Crenshaw) as they play a song that is recorded by a Presto machine. These performances can be viewed at www.the78project.com.
Seeking to take the project a step further, Mr. Steyermark and Ms. Wright decided to hit the road, and film performances by musicians from around the country. Their travels have resulted in a film, The 78 Project Movie, which made its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film festival, and is being shown at Lambertville’s ACME Screening Room in Lambertville, Nov. 7. The filmmakers will be at the screening and will participate in a Q&A session.
”After a year of doing a series of webisodes with artists in and around New York City, we felt like we wanted to go and travel across America and make a feature-length film that would show context for our project,” Mr. Steyermark says. “And also take viewers on this experience, this journey where we would go around the country and visit with artists from seemingly different cultural backgrounds, different musical backgrounds, and show how we’re all connected through music.”
The filmmakers had experience working with musicians in New York who they were confident would be able to create good music in one take. They began working with those musicians for the web series, and as word about the project spread, they heard from musicians who wanted to participate.
By the time filming for the movie came along, Mr. Steyermark (who directed and co-produced the movie) and Ms. Wright (who co-produced) knew of musicians from around the country who had expressed interest in participating. They also left room in their schedule so that musicians they met along the way could record a song for the Presto.
The film includes performances by The Reverend John Wilkins (filmed in Como, Mississippie), Louis Michot, Corey Ledet & Ashlee Michot (Arnaudville, Louisiana), Victoria Williams (Los Angeles), John Doe (Fairfax, California), Dawn Landes (Brooklyn, New York), Holly Williams and Chris Coleman (Nashville, Tennesse), John Reilly & Tom Brosseau (Pasadena, California), and many others.
It’s hard not to compare the recording method in this film using a machine that was designed in the 1930s, to today’s digital world, but Ms. Wright says she and Mr. Steyermark aren’t fanatics about old-time recording methods.
”It’s about these truly momentous performances that result from the process,” she says. “We give each artist one take and it’s three minutes because it’s a 78 and everything has to be performed to one mic. So the experience creates this incredible level of focus. They’re really thinking about their performance, and really preparing… It really makes for a definitive and momentous recording, it’s about what happened in that three minutes in that room for that person.”
While watching the movie, you’ll likely notice Ms. Wright holding a brush onto the disks during recording. That’s an important part of the recording process, which involves a needle carving into a disc, creating the grooves. During the carving, lacquer peels out of the disk like a thread. The brush keeps the thread away from the needle, so that the needle doesn’t get clogged.
”It’s seemingly very simple to just brush that chip away,” Ms. Wright says. “But sometimes the chip can be different and it comes flying in different directions, and I’m sitting there constantly trying to stay vigilante and not let my nerves get the best of me, and keep an eye on it. Sometimes things happen, sometimes the chip does get under the needle, and sometimes — I’m just going to say it — I accidentally brush the needle trying to get the chip out from under it. It’s a very nerve wracking but simple concept.”
Mr. Steyermark notes that while it is a simple task in concept, it’s a vital part of the process, and it requires focus and fearlessness.
”And Lavinia has that,” he says. “It’s interesting because Lavinia never actually gets to see the artists record because she has to be so focused on the needle. That always kind of blows my mind, that these records are being created and she has to focus so intently on it. If she looks away, it could all go awry.”
Another important aspect of the film is talking to non-musicians, such as a Presto expert, and archivists who work at the Library of Congress. At one moment, we see an old, beat-up record get restored, and watching that process is fascinating.
Something unexpected, according to Mr. Steyermark , was how much fun some of those experts were to be around.
”They’re real characters,” he says. “You think of archivists and historians as these sort of dry figures. We never wanted to do a straight sit-down interview with them. So we get them in their world, going through the records and the archives and the papers, showing us the machine or the tubes or whatever. These guys are really the caretakers of our country’s cultural heritage.”
Watching the film is not only a lesson in how music was recorded long ago, and how that process contrasts with the way music is recorded today, it’s also illustrates how differently we watch things today compared to years ago. Since the 1980s and the rise of MTV, filmed music performances have been filled with countless cuts, and the YouTube world has created a scenario where people watch short videos — one after another — rather than a longer piece.
The recording sessions in the movie are about more than just the recording. We see the filmmakers and musicians talking before the music, making small talk, about music and the Presto. And the camera often lingers after a song has been recorded, letting us watch the musicians and filmmakers banter about what just happened.
”We wanted the audience to share the experience with us,” Ms. Wright says. “The sessions were intimate, all the people we worked with were generous enough to invite us into their homes, and to really share of themselves with these performances. We wanted people who came to see the movie feel that same connection and be part of those moments.”
The 78 Project Movie will be shown at the ACME Screening Room, 25 S. Union St., Lambertville, Nov. 7, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $15; www.acmescreeningroom.org