Bill Crandall
Viaduct began as an arts salon in my house in Takoma Park MD. I wanted to connect artists and audiences, support local indie music and art, and center discussion around the role of the artist and the relevance of art for our times.
With the onset of the pandemic, I decided to take the salon outside as a tool for community resilience. “Roadside Attractions”, socially-distanced songs from the driveway, was born. A hyper-local model for live music in the COVID era. Artists confined to their homes were longing to perform, audiences were longing for that connection and resonance that live-streams don’t provide. By embracing the necessarily small - limiting mostly to an average of 20-30 nearby neighbors so far, who sit spread out across the street - it’s become a successful series with a range of top local acts. Recently we were offered co-sponsorship by the city of Takoma Parks arts program, which allowed me to pay the artists a decent honorarium. Which allows the events to become fundraisers for important causes, since artist pay is now covered.
Kamyar Arsani (R) and Huda Asfour
Supporting artists and their work already felt like a noble cause - now it feels like a modest bit of direct action: channeling money to struggling artists, providing arts as community sustenance, and now a final layer of supporting social causes.
One of the first artists we had, Kamyar Arsani, said the fledgling model was the first to give him hope since the pandemic started, that it felt like the possible beginning of a movement.
The shows are live-streamed from the Viaduct Facebook group page. The events are also listed on my site here.
This week’s driveway set is by Arsen Sumbatyan and his jazz quartet. In the early days of COVID, our neighborhood noticed the sound of beautiful trumpet melodies wafting from what seemed a near distance. This happened over many days, often for hours at a time. It was magical, like a clarion call to something better. Finally we discovered this guy sitting in the open hatchback of his car in the center of a desolate parking lot a few blocks away. It was Arsen, who lived nearby and said he would go there just to keep in practice.
It was like an act of poetic defiance against the current reality. Which is what I hope for the Roadside Attractions series, especially as daily events continue to turn more grim, in ever more ways.