How Was The Show - Jeremy Messersmith, The New Standards at The Ritz Theater

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The Electric Arc Radio show featuring The New Standards and Jeremy Messersmith at The Ritz Theater on 11/29/08

Jeremy Messersmith and the New Standards - Photo by Jenn Barnett (See Jenn's full photo set from the evening here.)

I’ve been listening to The Electric Arc Radio Show via internet podcast for a couple of seasons now. I even caught it on old-fashioned radio broadcast at one point on 89.3 “The Current.” But this month, I thought it would be interesting to see the show live onstage at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis and write about the experience as I had done a few years ago with one of the program’s clear inspirations, “A Prairie Home Companion.”

When I’d seen PHC, Garrison Keillor had joked that he wasn’t sure why people kept coming to see the show, that the show was definitely “better on the radio.” Perhaps it’s a voyeuristic tendency that draws people to be members of a studio audience. In any case, radio is a totally different experience live. (More on that later.)

Electric Arc Radio’s humor falls somewhere between A Prairie Home Companion and Saturday Night Live, leaning heavily towards the Saturday Night Live side in terms of raciness and a tendency for inside jokes that make the show even funnier for those in the know. Where a Prairie Home Companion makes use of listeners’ knowledge of the fictitious Lake Wobegon, a basic cultural knowledge of the real Twin Cities is a big help to understanding Electric Arc Radio’s context. Your out of town friends or newly transplanted Twin Citians might find themselves a bit lost.

Herbach, Steph, Jenny Adams and the Punk Poet Paul D - Photo by Jenn Barnett

After a few introductory remarks telling us that we should feel free to get up and get a drink if we so desired and let our cell phones ring as loud as we wanted (still not sure if these were jokes), the show opened with musical guest, Jeremy Messersmith performing his song “7:02.”

For the next hour and a half (which was about the perfect length) our only job was to sit back and enjoy ourselves. The stage in front of us at the Ritz Theater (the show has also taken place at the Women’s Club Theater in Loring Park) included just a row of folding chairs for the players, three or four microphone stands, a table from which Mike Brady would work his sound effects magic, a grand piano, and a drum kit. On this night we were doubly fortunate that in addition to Messersmith, Electric Arc veterans, The New Standards, were also special musical guests. (Incidentally, Jeremy Messersmith and the New Standards join up again Saturday, December 6^th at the New Standards annual Holiday Show at The Fitzgerald Theater over in St. Paul.)

Electric Arc Radio’s equivalent of Garrison Keillor would be Dave Salmela, who narrates the show from his seat behind the grand piano where he also provides musical accompaniment. As the show is acted out by the rest of the players - Jenny Adams, Stephanie Ash, Brady Bergeson, Mike Brady, Andy Sturdevant, Paul Dickinson, Kurt Froelich, Geoff Herbach and more - part of the fun is the awkwardness and unnaturalness of the dialogue, which if you have ever listened to radio shows from days of yore was one of their most endearing qualities.

What’s it all about? Well, the basic premise is simply- four writers live in a house. This month’s episode centered around house member Brady Bergeson sprouting a terrifyingly fast-growing ponytail that was resistant to scissors and the misadventures that occur as everyone tries to help him get it removed. It’s all pretty ridiculous and random. But that’s to be expected from a story that picks up where the last episode left off: Last time former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (who used a clarinet to regulate the global economy and lived in a tree house behind the writers’ house) had died.

Watching live radio is like being in on the joke. On this night, among other things, we were asked to visualize Jeremy Messersmith wearing Daisy Dukes when we could see for ourselves he was wearing sharp grey slacks and cowboy boots. You get to see things that go wrong which a listening audience will never catch, and you get to see things almost go wrong, which are a lot of fun in themselves. At one point a hand reached out from the wings and handed Dave Salmela a note. Dave read the note, instructing two audience members to report to the box office, prompting another member of the cast to say, “That’s not in the script!”

At its simplest, the Electric Arc Radio Show is just good fun and really, really worth the admission price. I encourage you to listen to some old shows in their archives at http://www.electricarcradio.com/listen/ (and on the Current's website here: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/electric_arc_radio/) if you have not yet heard one, and to support the project by attending a live show if you can.

Here are a few other highlights and moments of humor from this month’s show.

At one point, Brady Bergeson jokes: “There are certain people in St. Paul who will kill you if you cross them - Martin Devaney, the Hamms Bear mascot, Krista Tippet.” [Note: Krista Tippet is host of MPR’s “Speaking of Faith.” If you don’t know who Martin Devaney or the Hamms Bear are, you have not been to St. Paul.]
Jeremy Messersmith not only performed music, but was written into the script as a sort of a god, a cowboy-poet narrator in the style of Sam Elliot from The Big Lebowski.
The writers have The New Standards become part of the plot by having them play everywhere the action was taking place- the lobby of the Mayo Clinic, the parking lot at Bushmanov’s Technological Future World, the parking lot at Chicago Lake Liquors, and even Alan Greenspan’s treehouse.
Jeremy Messersmith did a memorable version of his song “Miracles” with the New Standards backing. Steve Roehm’s vibes accompaniment was gorgeous.
The New Standards sampled a bit of “Androgynous” by The Replacements, a song that is featured on their new disc, Rock and Roll.
The whole show finished with an attempted sing-a-long of “Last Christmas” by Wham (seemed like a few people didn’t recall the song as well as they might have) led by John Munson of The New Standards.