- [Announcer] "Here's the Story."

[gentle music] - Once we all stopped reeling backward, I right away started doing little things on Facebook and Zoom and whatnot, and just performing.

There were groups set up for musicians just to play, and you could accept tips if you wanted or whatnot.

And I was just performing one night, and not paying attention to what people were typing in the chat, and somebody had said, "I just..." Sorry.

"I just worked a 12-hour shift at a hospital, "and a lot of people died, "and I have to go back soon, but this helped me."

Didn't expect that, and in the same respect, many of us were sitting there going, "Well, how do we help?"

So to think, "I'm just an ordinary person.

"I know I should probably stay home.

"So what can I do for my home?

"How can I help?"

And once we all got kinda bored with just doing things on Facebook, we realized we had to come together and build things like this to keep that essence of live music alive.

[gentle music] We have a responsibility.

If we're artists and we're worth our art form, it's our job to make people feel, whatever that is.

We need to find it in ourselves to give in different ways than we ever had.

And I think that's one of the things that we did hear.

A lot of it was accidental.

[laughs] We never really were prepared for all the complexities of these things.

I mean, it's literally throwing things at the wall, and whatever sticks is gonna be what we do.

Whether that's gonna work or not, I'm not sure, but we all do have to work together, and all those personalities kinda need to be set aside, and we need to figure out how to make this work.

- [Alec] Hey, Steve, thanks for having me today.

- [Steve] Where are you from?

- [Alec] I grew up in Mars, but I was born on Venus.

- [Steve] And what are your influences?

- [Alec] Mostly the large gas moons of Jupiter.

- [Steve] Okay.

- My name is Alec Fellman.

I make music under the name Insomniac Hotel, and my music, I like to explore many different types of music, and the idea behind the name Insomniac Hotel is that I have all these different rooms artistically that I would wanna explore, and I always work late at night, and I'm up till 2:00 AM, 4:00 AM, playing music and exploring the different rooms of the Insomniac Hotel.

- My name is April Centrone.

I'm a drummer.

Oh my gosh.

I'll be fine, I'll be fine, just it's a lot to say.

[April sighs] My name is April Centrone.

I'm a drummer and a teacher, and owner of 10PRL Film Studios and Event Space.

- My name is Jon Francis.

My music?

That's a hard one.

- [Steve] What makes it a hard one?

- I suppose I make music.

I think I more make sound than music.

I've always preferred different sounds, different tones, the way they make people feel, the way you can't really control them, like random sounds, like we can hear things in the distance, or if a heater kicks on and off.

To me, that's actually music.

[laughs] - [Steve] So you're saying you play sound, not music.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not like a studied musician or anything.

- [Steve] Were you in the high school band?

- No.

No, I didn't really get into music...

I mean, I messed around a little bit here and there.

- [Steve] What was the inception for you then?

- There was a little bit of, it was like a personal exploration.

It just kind of happened by accident really.

Just habit, I had a habit of finding really strange instruments, or using instruments in unusual ways, 'cause I really didn't have instruction on it.

[noise rumbles] See, that's what I mean, the unexpected.

- [Steve] That's music to you.

- It is.

- To me, it's interfering with this interview.

[Jon laughs] I'm glad you have a good- [noise rumbles] - It's only gonna be 45 minutes.

Don't worry.

- [Steve] It's the first time we've heard any sound since we started the interviews.

[Jon laughs] It's weird, it really is.

- I brought that on.

I apologize.

- [Steve] What sound or noise do you most enjoy, do you like the most?

Do you have one that when you hear it, you're just, "Ah, yeah."

- I do, and I'll try to make it through without breaking down.

But when I was maybe four or five, I remember being in church on the pew next to my mother, and my mother is not a singer.

She can't really hold a tune, but when it was time for everyone to sing, she sang out loud and strong, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

So it didn't matter that it wasn't perfect.

It mattered that it was something that came from her heart with conviction and devotion.

It was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard, still to this day.

So everything I hear, everything I try to do, I judge by that same standard.

[bright music] - So I lived in Brooklyn for 10 years, and I moved back down to this area after having grown up here two years ago, and it was difficult musically, culturally, to say the least.

Just compared to Brooklyn, there is just not as much going on.

There's a lot of rock music.

There's a lot of Jersey Shore suburban rock bar bands, but there's not as much avant-garde, experimental stuff.

So when I heard that this place was opening right down the street, and it was right around the time my brother and I were starting to perform and do... We have a projector at home, and we're just jamming and doing these big visuals.

So when we heard that this place was opening just down the street, we came here immediately, and we had this idea to do kind of a monthly or biweekly sound journey with visuals, and I also play a antique set of Himalayan singing bowls.

And so we developed this program, and we had two or three shows here, and people came and they brought yoga mats, and we had a beautiful visual and it was about an hour long.

It was half improvised, half kind of planned, because to come up with a completely improvised hour every two weeks is a little difficult.

So it was half improvised, half planned, but it was just me doing the sound.

[ethereal music] - Oddly enough, the first time I came here, I saw Alec performing, and it was just an overwhelming space.

There were people painting.

There were people dancing.

There was yoga.

There was group meditation.

There was music.

There was all these things, so I was like, "Yes.

"This feels like home."

It's like that, anybody who's ever done anything artistic, you always, it's that, "We'll put on a show in the barn and we'll charge a dollar "and we'll all be millionaires, "and my mom will bake cookies."

That's what this is.

- So right here we have our quarter cyclorama, as you can see.

12 foot high by 22 feet by 20 feet with full light grid, and this is for professional film and photography.

It is the same kind of setup that you would see in New York City or Philadelphia in film studios there where you have a grid where professionals can hang many of the types of lights that they typically use for their sessions, and we also have some lights of our own.

The mission of 10PRL Film Studios and Event Space is to create a safe and inclusive art center in the Jersey Shore, to also raise the bar, raise the level, encourage a renaissance of experimental art, of arts on the fringes, of art that maybe has not yet been explored or embraced to the level that we'd like to see on the Jersey Shore, for example, that touch of New York City or that touch of Europe or that touch of other places around the world.

The mission for 10PRL is to be that hub of culture, of inclusiveness, to welcome people of all races, religions, orientations, genders, ages, and abilities.

10PRL's mission is to welcome all of the arts, music, dance, theater, black box, experimental work, visual art, exhibitions, concerts.

10PRL opened January 1st, and only a couple months later, the pandemic hit and we had to completely close mid-March.

That was just when we were really gaining momentum and having these beautiful events, filling the space with audience, with vendors, and then we had to close for three months like many others.

Luckily, if you can say, as a film and photo studio, we fit a certain criteria in New Jersey state.

We were allowed to still stay open as a production house.

We were allowed to have smaller groups shoot here, record here, so we were able to continue our business.

So we pivoted very heavily to focus deeply on our film and photo element.

- For April to have the vision to keep this going, she very easily could have shuttered the doors, but I think she recognized that there's a need for this, that people need a space like this to create, to not feel alone, to find hope, to kinda go forward.

You need a community space.

There's a lot of time for introspection and doing things, coming up with new ideas, new ways of doing things, but when it's time to present those, you need a whole team of people.

It takes a village to raise an artist.

- We believe the pandemic also gave way to an even more intense desire for content creation.

So producing music videos, photography beautiful for Instagram and whatnot, live streams became very important to the community.

[ethereal music] - I'm playing a modular synthesizer.

I'm playing a couple other digital synthesizers.

I have some microphones on stage, and I have a coconut shell and some leaves, and I'm playing all these instruments together and also looping them and recording little snippets of them and playing them back.

And also what I like to do is create loops of different length, so when they play together, they never quite repeat the same.

So what I like to do, especially playing with someone like Jon who plays guitar, it's easy for him to be in the foreground.

The music I make is almost all background.

It's kind of like this amorphous cloud.

And when things are right, and this cloud is just kind of slowly moving and morphing and changing and creating this frame for someone like Jon to play within and without, and just kind of explore.

To me, maybe it's like I think of it kind of like I set up a few ecosystems.

So this performance with Jon, I probably had five or six different little ecosystems where I can create sound.

So the leaves in the coconut, and that was going to a looper that I can change the pitch and reverse and put different effects on.

So that's one ecosystem of sound, and then I had another synthesizer and my modular synthesizer.

So it's kind of, there's a feedback system going on where I'm listening to what Jon's doing, to what I'm doing, or really what's coming out of my instruments, which, there's a certain amount of randomness inherent to what I'm doing, and also programmed.

I mean, some of the modules and the algorithms I'm using have inherent randomness to it, which is what I like.

There is a lot going on, and that's what draws me to making this kind of music is because there's so many risks.

So many things can fail, or everything could be working, but it's one cable, or the loops just don't work out right, or when I'm looping Jon's voice, it didn't work out right.

So there's tons of risk built all over the place, and to me, that's the challenge, but also what's exciting.

So every time Jon and I play together, it's completely different, completely different.

- So it wasn't really so much rehearsing together prior as just getting to know each other, and the way he could record little bits of what I was doing and incorporate it into something he was making was always overwhelming.

[laughs] I mean, particularly for me.

I had no idea what was going to come next, and I'm just trying to get through.

[laughs] But it was inspiring.

It changed how I would have played it.

I played completely differently each time than I would've, and it's overwhelming, and you just have to, whatever you feel is what you gotta give back right away.

Don't have time to really think about it.

We were changing things literally up until the moment we were getting ready to play, and I get this type of blinder thing where sometimes I'll just start hitting buttons.

[laughs] I don't know what it's gonna sound like.

So there's sometimes happy accidents, and you have to work with it.

It's like an honor almost to be in that environment.

There was all these people standing around expecting something to happen.

[laughs] You don't wanna disappoint.

We really just kind of went with it and trusted each other, and that was a big lesson for me, to just listen to somebody, let go, and hope it all works out.

[laughs] [tranquil music] - [Steve] Why is the visual work of Maria important to the full feeling of what we've witnessed in her [indistinct] - The interesting thing about her visuals is that she started as a musician, and she started making visuals to supplement her audio performances, but they've become so strong that she has a huge demand for her visual work.

She's an amazing musician as well.

So it's kind of like she was present for some of the rehearsals that Jon and I had, and we sent her some recordings from some rehearsals that she wasn't there for, and, yeah, so that's all stuff that she developed and she showed me kind of what she was thinking about doing, and her work looks amazing.

- Having her come in also not really knowing what we were going to do and just kinda going with it.

She went out and got some video and sounds from the ocean, and put that behind some of what we were doing, and it really affected the performance.

I couldn't always see what was going on, [laughs] but there's just something about being a part of the whole thing.

[tranquil music] - Nature is a big part of me that always inspires my art and the music and visual-wise because I grew up in countryside.

[calm string music] - [Steve] What makes a good source for visuals?

For you, what makes the best source of visuals?

- So the fluid, like a water flow, does make it so beautiful, [laughs] and anytime I use the fluid system, it makes it really pretty, and also the combination of the different noise.

There already is great software that mathematically, all the noise are... How do I say it?

Note systems are in, and if you combine them together, then it creates more complex shapes.

It was great because I loved their music.

I love ambient music, and I love what both of them are doing, so it was really easy for me to feel or add my taste in there.

- [Steve] How did that happen?

How did the idea to create that together... - So I've known Alec, and also I joined a distant duet that Alec and Jon had a first project together, and I was the second one as a musician, so I knew Jon's work as well, and Alec invited me to do a projection for their shows.

That was so a pleasure to work with Jon and Alec.

We didn't get to practice so much together, but effort with the three of us, but I love whatever Jon's doing with the bow and guitars, and crazy, all the guitars.

With the combination of two creating and feeling the sound that it's like right there, [laughs] is really, really, was inspiring.

- I don't think an artist can really, unless they're making some sort of commercial art for commercial reasons, which is fine.

It's not something I do because it doesn't interest me, but artists can't live outside the times and the context and the environment that they're in.

I mean, I think some of us maybe strive to be in the future a bit.

Something I do, and in terms of following sound and trying to imagine what future sounds will be are the last remaining mysteries of sound.

But yes, I don't think an artist can live outside the context, so absolutely what we are doing is of the moment, is current.

But I think, to answer your question, we wanted to do something a little bit brighter, a little bit darker, more mysterious, and so we set up those parameters, and then him and I kinda just feed back.

I try and really listen to what Jon's doing and then kind of play off of that, and, yeah.

[tranquil music] [Jon speaks in foreign language] [Jon speaks in foreign language] [Jon speaks in foreign language] [Jon speaks in foreign language] - [Steve] Is/was the music that you guys played that day reflective of the times and what you're feeling going through and what we all collectively are going through?

- Yeah, all of it was.

I mean, the song "Hard Times," it had been 10 years since I performed that, and it's still relevant, but for different reasons.

[calm guitar music] ♪ Let us pause in life's pleasures ♪ ♪ And count its many tears ♪ ♪ While we all sup sorrow with the poor ♪ ♪ There's a song that will linger ♪ The lines in that song are about human struggle.

Whether it's people going hungry, people being poor, or people being sick, it's still the human condition, so it's still very relevant.

And I was thinking about that while I was singing how poignant a song like that is.

So it wasn't just, "Oh, let me just pull this out "'cause we're going through hard times," but lyrically, it makes us stop and think about, while we're ordering stuff online, waiting for our packages to come, there are people that don't have anything, and there's people that are sick and there's people that need help.

- I never heard this song before Jon brought it to me, and it's not a dark song to me.

It's quite a happy, cheerful song [laughs] because it's a direct confrontation with life, with the hardened reality of life.

It's not running away from it, so to me, it's a positive thing.

I never got a dark feeling from the song.

[laughs] ♪ 'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ It's timeless, and you wish it wasn't.

It's a condition that has nothing to do with party or politics.

I wish...

It's like it could have been written 2,000 years ago, and it still probably would have been just as relevant because things, people struggled and people looked down on other people, and it's just...

It's kinda sad in a way, and it's, for some reason, it's kinda hopeful too that this is humanity, and we have to work it out.

♪ Oh, hard times, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ For may days you have lingered around my cabin door ♪ ♪ Hard times, come again ♪ ♪ Come again no more ♪ - [Steve] How is the meaning of "Hard Times Come Again No More" different to you now than it was 10 years ago?

Is it, or is it the same?

- Then, it was, gee, these are hard times.

I'm struggling.

Now, I'm more looking at it more removed of saying we're all struggling.

Before it was, depending on what side of the struggle you were on, it could be taken differently.

Now we're all struggling in the same way, and people deal with it differently.

To me, it doesn't really matter your political opinion or your economic status if it's reaching us all across the globe.

It's beyond a struggle in one city or another city or during a depression.

This is global.

- [Steve] A universal cry.

- Yeah, and we've- - [Steve] Alec and I were talking about how the song is a conversation that you're having with, actually having with hard times.

- Yeah.

That's a good point.

The song, "'tis the song, the sigh of the weary."

I immediately thought about my friends that are nurses having to continue, having to move on, but almost having no will left or energy, and continuing to push forward, and being exasperated enough to say, "Just get outta here.

"Enough hard times."

- [Steve] Many days, many days.

- "For many days you have lingered outside my cabin door."

[calm guitar music] [Jon humming] [calm guitar music] [Jon humming] ♪ Let us pause in life's pleasures ♪ ♪ And count its many tears ♪ ♪ While we all sup sorrow with the poor ♪ ♪ There's a song that will linger forever in our ears ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ 'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ For many days you have lingered around my cabin door ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ As we seek mirth and beauty ♪ ♪ And music light and gay ♪ ♪ There are frail forms fainting at the door ♪ ♪ Though their voices are silent ♪ ♪ Their fleeting looks will say ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ 'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ For many days you have lingered around my cabin door ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ 'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary ♪ ♪ Oh, hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ For many days you have lingered around my cabin door ♪ ♪ Hard times, come again no more ♪ ♪ Hard times, come again no more ♪ - [Steve] Is it possible that despite it being very challenging right now for artists, that because it's the nature of the life of an artist to overcome and often use the hurdles, the things that stop us, for inspiration, that in this time period that seems so difficult, it may actually be artists that are best equipped to live and to tell us what's happening?

- These are very good questions, and I do agree that it is a hard time for the artists.

Maybe, I hope not, but maybe some people stopped making art for some reasons, but I do believe that art or music wouldn't go away, can't go away with this.

It's been here for a long time, and also it was already here before we existed, I think.

But for culturally speaking, a lot of music venues and then art galleries or museums are suffering, so I have no idea what is going to happen, like you all are, I believe.

Before in the visual level, I can't never quit making art or music.

- [Steve] No matter if there's a pandemic, you'll always be doing it?

- Yes, mm-hmm.

- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

As an artist, despite what I said earlier about whether you're feeling it or not feeling it, as an artist, if you have the courage to make the art whether you're feeling it or not, to confront that, that's something special, and I really feel for people right now who don't have a hobby, who don't have a creative practice, who go to work every day, they come home, maybe they have a beer, they have a drink, they sit down, they watch TV.

It's those people's lives who have been interrupted by coronavirus.

They can't go out to the bar.

Their entertainment systems, their lives are broken.

Before coronavirus, I just made music.

I have a few friends.

My life didn't change that much.

I think for artists, in a way, we are definitely more equipped for this because we have an outlet.

We have somewhere to pour our heart into when it's breaking that doesn't necessarily involve inebriation or just depression and despair.

It can be a distraction as well, at least you hope it's a healthy distraction.

I truly believe artists are the canary in the coal mines.

So when the artists are screaming, then people need to pay attention.

When the artists are silent, you need to pay even more attention.

- My natural answer would be this.

Throughout history, the artists have been the people to really inspire change, inspire renaissance, inspire hope.

And it's true, without strife, without the struggles that we experience, there also isn't that catalyst to create.

It's those things we grew up with, the pains, the hard times that we experience on an individual level, also on a community level, maybe on a worldwide level, the things we suffer, and that is our palette to create beautiful music, art, dance, theater.

That is what furthers the conversation.

That's what creates progress.

And a town without arts is missing essentially the soul, because the soul is expressed through art.

The expression itself when we say, "I feel moved," so what is moved?

What does that mean?

Something has actually moved.

Emotion has moved, and what moves emotion?

So often we talk about grief and the ability to move grief.

What can we do to move grief, or what can we do to move depression or anxiety of all the things we're going through?

There has to be an artistic spark, and we all have that in us.

So an art space and an arts community is the core to healing a community, to inspiring a community, to bringing back the soul and the heart of a community.

- We may not realize how well-equipped we are.

Like I was saying, everybody's trying to find what their purpose is during all this.

We're not doctors, we're not nurses, we're not first responders, but we can respond in our way, and we're given an opportunity now to figure out what that is.

There's a lot of pent-up artistic energy, and I think we're starting to see a release of that through different ways.

We're hoping against hope that we will be back on stage the way it was.

That may not happen for a very long time, so we still have a voice, and we still have to find a way of using it and getting it out there and helping people.

So yes, we are uniquely situated to relieve suffering and pain during a really difficult time, but we do need all the other people behind it.

We need people that know how to push the buttons, how to do marketing, how to do all the stuff that we generally don't know how to do as musicians.

We're all coming together to do that, to keep the arts alive, all of them, whether it's acting, whether it's performing.

Anything artistic has now a whole new set of problems that faces it.

We still have the same things we had to say, and now we have more, so let's figure out how to say that now with a different voice.

[gentle music]