Have you ever dreamed of injecting sludge metal into chamber music, or reuniting your favorite avant-garde all-women ’90s band for a primal feminist scream, or bringing a huge crowd in the SF Symphony’s cavernous loading dock to tears with a gentle tone poem? If you can dream it, Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews of contemporary duo The Living Earth Show can do it (musically, at least).
All of these fabulous moments happened within the last few months, courtesy of one or both of the duo. The first: Percussionist Meyerson programmed this year’s brilliant edition of SF Performance’s PIVOT Festival, whose “Legacies” opening night included himself, guitarist Andrews, and powerhouse vocalist Tanner Porter performing works by the Sleeping Giant composers group and their students. These ranged from Andrew Norman’s electrifying setting of a reading of California’s 2023 AB1780 bill forbidding legacy admissions in universities (chilling in its emphasis on the words “higher education” and “independent institution” in this censorious and anti-intellectual climate) to Rohan Chander’s hardcore phrasing in “stones don’t lie.”
The second saw Meyerson and Andrews presenting a reunion of local avant-cabaret trio the Qube Chix, including composer Pamela Z, at their groundbreaking performance venue Roar Shack, which was a little like witnessing Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk go Riot Grrrl at Club 57. (Don’t miss Diné composer Raven Chacon’s ensemble Lazyhorse at Roar Shack Fri/13). And the third came with Andrews taking the stage during the February edition of SF Symphony’s immersive Soundbox series, curated by plucky violinist Alexi Kenny, for local composer Dylan Mattingly’s “Goodbye Sonnet,” which set his deceased father’s poetry to gorgeously ruminative music.
All this, and I haven’t even mentioned their upcoming shows at Knoxville’s awesome Big Ears Festival, their hope to take “Legacies” on tour, their multiple bands, or the heartrending, ultimately healing album they’ve created with punk legend Lynn Breedlove as Trust Me, centering on the brutal murders of Breedlove’s father and stepmother by his stepbrother in their Grass Valley home. It’s called Why I Like Dead Guys. (More on that later this month.)
“We like to stay busy, which we are,” Meyerson laughs over Zoom. “And honestly, that’s such a great thing, that we can be doing all this at a moment when support for classical and contemporary music, all the arts, is on a precipitous cultural decline. It’s great to show that there’s this whole world of forward-looking composers and musicians going on while everything else seems to be spiraling.”
In fact, that spiraling has helped germinate inspiration, Meyerson says, if you can set aside the whole World War III stuff happening. “A lot of things about this time feel unprecedented. You can see that as an open question of what happens next, and you can try new things and take new risks. In the face of full-scale destruction, people are still creating. Things are different: It often takes a tremendous amount of time and expense to mount traditional classical and many contemporary productions. Right now you need to embrace being agile and open.
“The way of doing things that I was taught in school, or how a lot of us grew up imagining in terms of cultural production, that just doesn’t exist. So we need to explore. I think that’s really energizing for people who make art.”
The Living Earth Show has been presenting multimedia productions since 2011, from grandly scaled spectacles like film-music-dance hybrid Lyra with post:ballet—Meyerson is the alternative dance company’s music director—to stripped down gigs as a duo on guitar and drums. There’s also the TLES production company and Earthly record label in there as well. The duo took a giant step forward in 2024 with the opening of Roar Shack in SoMa, transforming an old meat-market nightclub into an experimental performance venue, now into its second season.
While San Francisco has had a few bar-type venues over the past 25 years the hosted regularly contemporary and experimental music events—I’m thinking of the old POW! bar on 6th Street and Amnesia in the Mission, not to mention larger space Gray Area—Roar Shack is specifically dedicated to these, and it’s mighty refreshing, considering the Bay Area’s deep experimental pedigree. But it’s more than just a place to showcase avant-garde performances with a cute wine bar: It serves to help artists develop their ideas, as well.
“Doing Roar Shack has been so much fun,” Meyerson said. “It’s one of those things that’s really been changing the way I look at art and art-making in San Francisco, and in general. For instance, the importance of incubator spaces and small venues. Artists can be free to try things detached from the big institutional models we have—they can let loose. The Center for New Music, CounterPulse… Thee Parkside is part of that, Bottom of the Hill is part of that, which is why it’s so sad to see them go away. Where can bands just get crazy and see what works?
“Small venues, incubator spaces are such vital pieces of cultural civic infrastructure. But as classical musicians, we were taught that those were irrelevant to us. We were always pushed toward getting big grants for big multimedia, multidisciplinary productions. The results would go up at a university or something like the Yerba Buenas of every other city, and be done four times, and then be done forever. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, takes years of our lives—as the only way of doing things, that seemed crazy to us, which was one of the reasons we started the venue.
“We’re not just looking for new work, we’re looking for new ways of working,” Meyerson said. “And so far, Roar Shack has led to some of the most innovative work I’ve ever seen. We get to collaborate with people whose work we love. We get to be ‘out there.’ And I think we’re helping redefine what it means to be an arts organization and our responsibility to our city. We’re centering all this cultural exploration in San Francisco. Back in, say, 2023, it was easier for us to play in the Netherlands than here.”
The non-profit Roar Shack presents several shows during its seasons (pay-what-you-can), and hosts other events on the side. It’s been helpfully supported by city and other grants so far. When asked if they would ever consider becoming a full time contemporary performance space like (Le) Poisson Rouge or even Joe’s Pub in New York City, Meyerson replies, “That would be terrific and we’re definitely ambitious. However, one of the things that has opened my eyes to the other side of the business, running a venue, is how incredibly tight the margins are. I don’t know how people manage to do it, especially in San Francisco, without help from somewhere.”
Roar Shack has also pushed there duo musically. “We started out like [contemporary ensembles] Bang on a Can, Eighth Blackbird, Sō Percussion—that world of commissioning a composer, and making repertoire, and being on the performance circuit. That process felt kind of stifling to us, and maybe contrary to our values in all sorts of ways. We always want to be doing the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing. Roar Shack frees us to do that. And I hope it inspires others to start their own thing.”
“Our guiding questions has been, is San Francisco a city that produces culture, or just some place where it’s consumed?”
ROAR SHACK LIVE!: LAZYHORSE a quartet performance by Raven Chacon, The Living Earth Show, and Mali Obamsawin, 6:45pm, March 13, Roar Shack, SF. More info here. Follow all of The Living Earth Show’s shenanigans here.
