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Maternal
Flame
CA
mom on-stage and off, Caroline Isachsen—better known
as singer-songwriter Mother Judge—puts passion into her
open-mike night and creates a nurturing home for local musicians
By
Kate Sipher
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Leif
Zurmuhlen
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Punk-rock
youths Rory Breaker take the Larkin Lounge stage, which is
already set up for them with drums, amps, mikes and whatnot.
They proceed to make music of the quasi-deafening, raucous
variety—a surprising event, since this is an open-mike night.
Onlookers make a seamless transition from polite to rowdy,
and the band members have a blast entertaining the hell out
of an unsuspecting audience. They also offer a musical trailer
for a paying gig at Valentine’s.
“We
had a noise complaint that night,” laughs MotherJudge, the
hostess of the Larkin’s weekly Wednesday open mike. “But that
was so much fun.”
“Her
open mikes are fun from beginning to end,” Day Jobs front
man Rich Baldes declares. “Which is a rare thing. It’s very
unusual to go to an open mike and want to stay the whole night.”
Local music celeb Michael Eck concurs. “A lot of times, an
open mike is just about getting your number and waiting to
do your songs. . . . At this one, people go and they’re willing
to hang out the whole night. They’re there to see the whole
spectacle, not to just do their thing.”
MotherJudge, aka Caroline Isachsen, is busy on those nights,
even if she doesn’t seem it, making connections as she mingles
with fellow music makers and aficionados at the Lark Street
club. She finds out about upcoming gigs and various band member
migrations, and just plain old catches up. Even though the
open mike is a weekly affair, the cast of characters varies,
so she’s got a lot of folks to keep up on. And she only has
a few minutes to run downstairs to the bar, grab a drink and
catch a chat. She has to keep one eye on the stage so she
can hop on and introduce the next act. She provides witty
repartee (“She’s got stage banter for miles,” says fellow
musician Amy Abdou), imparts information about performers’
upcoming shows, shares in long-running jokes, offers practical
advice for the novice, and the like.
It’s a lot of information to keep in her head, but retention
is made easier due to the fact that Isachsen doesn’t just
gather it to deliver to the crowd. It’s information that she
cares about, that she wants to know about: where people are
playing, who’s planning what tribute show. She’s recites a
list of other open mikes in the area. For Isachsen, it’s not
about competition—it’s about community. It’s about getting
your sea legs, learning the ropes, sharing with others, and
collaboration. It’s the mother in her.
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Leif
Zurmuhlen
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Ed
Gorch often heads to the Larkin on Wednesday nights. His band,
knotworking, an alt-country, roots-rock ensemble, have gained
momentum since Gorch and bandmate Mike Hotter arrived in Albany
as a duo a little more than a year ago. The band expanded
upon their two guitars to include drums, bass, cello and violin—an
evolution that was helped along by Isachsen. “Everybody we
play with now, we found through connections with the open
mike,” Gorch says. And while knotworking as a whole (or in
parts) play the open mike often—many times to try out a new
tune, many times just for fun—there are times when Gorch heads
to the club sans band. “Rarely do I go there by myself and
wind up playing by myself, because there’s always somebody
there to sit in,” he observes.
Hosting an open mike is effortless only if you’re lazy, according
to Eck, a fellow open-mike host. He compares the job, at its
simplest—showing up at the club, providing a sign-up sheet,
introducing performers—to falling off a log. “But if you do
one that easily,” he warns, “chances are that it’s probably
going to suck.”
“I
think there’s a lot of talent in Albany but there’s not a
lot of places to play,” says Abdou on one of the night’s selling
points. “People drive, like, two hours to come to this open
mike. It’s that good. Just to be a part of the energy.
“Caroline
has an enthusiasm for other people’s music which is really
selfless,” she continues. “Caroline will take anybody and
prop them up and make them feel good and supported and loved,
just because they’re doing something that requires taking
a risk.”
“The
success of an open mike as an event comes down to the host,”
says Eck. “She’s fostered it into a living entity of its own,
and that’s very cool.”
“I’m
glad to be steering it—through murky waters from time to time,”
Isachsen says of the open mike. “But I just think it’s a very
spontaneous, real thing that is happening. I’m really proud
of humanity when I leave there because of that vibe.”
Entertainment value and social atmosphere aside, Isachsen’s
open mike also serves as a virtual classroom to nurture budding
performers, and she uses these nights to teach some people
who aren’t savvy a thing or two. Perhaps her many years in
the mommy seat—she has four kids of her own, ranging from
a toddler to a 22-year-old—have helped hone her fostering
abilities. Onstage at the open mike, Isachsen discusses such
things as what makes a good press kit, how to tune a guitar,
and how to set up gear.
“There’s
a real mother-hen aspect to it,” says Eck. “She will go up
and tell a new act how to make themselves better onstage.”
Baldes echoes that sentiment: “She makes a person who’s a
beginner feel that they’re welcome to come and play, and that
they’re appreciated.”
Back at the Larkin, another band, Nysm, take the stage. Isachsen
rallies crowd support as they work to get set up. “Give ’em
a hand,” she booms, demanding audience support. After the
applause dies down, Nysm continue to tweak and tune, creating
a silence from the stage that lasts a bit too long. “Dead
air,” Isachsen hollers from the audience in an attempt to
speed up the process. “Dead air.”
Isachsen (then Caroline Johnston) came to the Capital Region
from Latrobe, Pa., in 1986. “Thanksgiving night,” she recalls,
noting with irony, “I went to eat dinner at the Larkin.” The
daughter of music-loving parents, she grew up playing piano
and singing in the choir, but it was a Harry Chapin concert
she attended as a young girl that first put certain stars
in her eyes.
“The
whole storytelling song structure appealed to me,” she says.
After the show, she went home and composed her first song.
“It wasn’t that great, but I wrote it out, and finished it
and worked out the music for it.”
While attending a music camp in New Jersey, Isachsen further
solidified her musical fate after an appearance by a female
singer-songwriter-guitarist led her to an epiphany. “I was
totally blown away by this performance by this young woman,”
she recalls. “She was a couple years older than me.” Isachsen
went home, pulled her brother’s guitar from the closet—a beautiful
blueish Silvertone that hangs in her house to this day—and
went to town. “I started teaching myself,” she states. “I’ve
never moved away from that love for the storyteller-songwriter.”
Isachsen cut her teeth in the music business on the open mikes
of Pennsylvania. “People were so generous,” she recalls. “That’s
how I learned to tune my guitar. How to put my own strings
on.” Sound familiar?
She came to Albany—“I live here by choice,” she says of the
city she loves—with the intent of laying down her guitar for
a bit. “I was trying to be more of an office person. I had
two kids to raise, and I was trying to be serious about that.”
But in the back of her mind was her love of music. She found
herself at some open mikes here and eventually immersed herself
in the music community.
“She
used to play the open mike at QE2,” remembers Eck. “She was
much more of what you would think of as a folkie. She sat
on a stool and played an acoustic guitar and sang in a tremulous
voice. She was a lot more genteel than she later revealed
herself to be.”
But Isachsen was determined to rock a bit harder than that.
“I really wanted to break out of the folky mold,” she says.
Isachsen found herself the hard-rock, “metal tinged” group
Barretta (“I got to wear really good, tight leather skirts,”
she says). That grew into Stiff Kitten, who developed into
the Siren Sisters. “It was never supposed to be a band,” she
says of the Sisters, “but [QE2 owner Charlene Shortsleeve]
kept giving us gigs, so we kept showing up. Pretty soon it
was really a band.”
“Siren
Sisters were cool,” remembers Eck. “Then they had sort of
a roving band of minstrels. And that’s what morphed into,
eventually, MotherJudge and the Urban Holiness Society. The
same kind of thing, like a trashed-out country.”
Through the Urban Holiness Society, Isachsen met her partner
in life and music, Sten Isachsen. “He’s the best guitar player
I ever hired,” she relates, touching upon an important point.
It’s out of her band-hiring process that she acquired the
moniker MotherJudge, slang for a brothel proprietress. When
the Siren Sisters auditioned guys for their band, the women
demanded the men drop their pants “and show us the goods.”
The resultant facial expression would seal the deal and entertain
the gals.
“When
I started my own group, some friends of mine and I were looking
for the right name,” she remembers. A friend came up with
the expression MotherJudge, and Isachsen heartily agreed.
“Oftentimes as a band leader you sort of have to evaluate
the goods, you know. See where everyone fits in,” adding that
it’s also a tribute to her maternal role. “I just can’t get
away from it. I’ve been a mother so long.”
Isachsen took a break from her own music career (one that
has yet to supply her adoring fans with much recorded material:
“There’s a Siren Sisters tape out there that can be found
at fine yard sales all over the Capital District,” she says,
adding that she also has a cassette release, Wooden Bootleg,
that she hopes to put on CD) prior to launching her open-mike
night at the Lark Tavern in 1999. “I was feeling really uninspired
and kind of exhausted,” she says of the days leading up to
it. “My personal life was really satisfying, but, for whatever
reason, my musical self was kind of dry,” she says. So she
decided to do the open mike to get back in touch with people
and to fine-tune some of her skills. “I wasn’t getting better
on guitar. It was kind of a rough spot for me.”
She approached the Lark Tavern’s manager, and he gave her
Mondays, which, due to the football season, became Tuesdays;
eventually, she landed on Wednesdays. “That was when it really
clicked,” she says. “I really knew that it was taking off
when I looked out and it wasn’t my friends.” She was
surprised to meet people from all over the country on those
nights, people who came because they read a listing in a newspaper.
When Isachsen tossed around the idea of leaving the Lark last
summer, she found out she didn’t have to go far. Adrian Cohen,
then-manager for the Larkin Lounge, approached her about bringing
the popular event to the Larkin. “She actually, literally,
saved us,” recalls Cohen, who is now the talent booker of
the club. “Things were really tough. And I went over to the
open mike at the Lark Tavern, and I was like ‘This is really
cool. I wish we could have this, or something like it.’ ”
Isachsen migrated up Lark Street to the Larkin, and the event
continued to gather steam. “It was really popular from day
one,” says Cohen. “If it wasn’t for Caroline, I don’t think
we would have been able to stay open the summer.”
Singer-songwriter Rosanne Raneri, visiting from her new home
in Boston, takes the open-mike stage, and wows the Larkin
crowd. After the former Capital Region resident plays her
allotted two songs, Isachsen makes it known that she desperately
wants to hear a third, then demands the audience mimic her
enthusiasm. They scream, they whistle, they pound their palms
together in an effort to urge Raneri to play longer. But Isachsen
becomes distracted by someone in the crowd, and Raneri exits
the stage, not giving in to the pressure. When Isachsen’s
gaze returns to the stage, Raneri is standing directly in
front of her. Her disappointment is evident. “She’s a shit,”
our host says with equal parts anger and love. “Give it up
for Rosanne Raneri.”
The newcomers are as important as the scenesters to Isachsen,
and she works hard to make them comfortable onstage. “There’s
something so poignant about when someone gets up there and
says ‘I’ve never played in front of people before,’ ” she
claims. “You can just feel the tightness in their throat,
and you just get that little thrill with them. . . . I just
think it’s really this moment in time that has a specialness
to it.”
“She’s
busy enough to say ‘I’ll see you Wednesday,’ but she doesn’t
do that,” Gorch relates. “She makes an extra effort to go
out, or to support a band that she’s heard at the open mike
that she enjoys.”
“I’ve
really come to learn to live in the moment, and to love where
I am right then,” Isachsen says, offering some insight into
her desire to commune. “Oftentimes we forget to look at what’s
beautiful right in front of us. The open mike helped me develop
that. I really love those two songs, and watching that person
for the first time, or for the 50th time, and sharing that
with them. . . . It’s given me this peace and balance I was
really lacking before we went down this little road, this
journey.
“Every
once in a blue moon Metroland will ask about what’s
the state of the scene? What’s going on? What’s up with this
music community?” Isachsen notes. “I’ve always felt like it
was there. It’s always been there. . . . And one of the greatest
aspects is that the open mike, for whatever reason, has created
this little hub, to make it visible. To give it a home, a
place to settle down into. It was always there—maybe we just
needed a hub.”
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