The Bowery Electric Transforms into a Live Stream Venue

Hennessey

"Hey, guitar guy, move your guitar case away from the monitor, please," nudges Ehud Lazin, the multi-tasker running Hennessey's live stream at the Bowery Electric. It is five minutes before the band performs live to home viewers via the pay-per-view Veeps website. Lazin is joking with the somewhat tense musicians, helping them ease into the moment. The guitarist obediently moves his case out of camera range. "Let's be professional," explains Lazin.

Indeed, this is to be a very professional production. Hennessey will perform a 50-minute set on the venue's small stage, but instead of playing to a roomful of cheering fans, the indie-rock quartet will play to eight cameras and a socially-distanced sheltering-at-home audience. This writer is the only privileged person in the room who is not a member of the production.

At street level, all three doors to the Bowery Electric are locked. There are no signs outside indicating that live music is about to resume under the sidewalk. The downtown venue showcased multiple bands nightly on two floors until the raging COVID-19 pandemic grinded all social gathering to a sudden halt in mid-March. The club owners, including rocker Jesse Malin, temporarily refit the venue's purpose to a new age. Rather than keep the music club completely dormant, the owners began probing into the new live stream concert market. Thus was born the Bowery Electric Presents: Live Premiere Sessions, with Malin asking Lazin to bring his multi-camera set-up and take the helm.

Ehud Lazin

Lazin remains calm and in control. The 45-year-old videographer and photographer has been active for 16 years, filming projects including City Winery's One on One Sessions, Jesse Malin's The Fine Art of Social Distancing live streams, and Joseph Arthur's Come to Where I'm From podcasts. Lazin now rocks back and forth in his chair at a table in the mezzanine, staring at two large screens, his itchy fingers on a digital mixer, ready to cut, reframe and edit in real time everything that the virtual home audience will see. Out of view in an enclosed back room, Mark Lewis is engineering the vocals and instruments so that listeners at home hear a clean, clear, and balanced sound. This production is indeed professional, light years more advanced than the more prevalent DIY live stream from home.

Mark Lewis

The five-second countdown begins and at exactly 7:30 p.m. the musicians, wearing masks over their mouths and noses, begin playing the opening music. After a few bars of intro, lead singer Leah Hennessey, herself a film editor, actress, playwright, and creator of the underground web series Zhe Zhe, steps onto the stage, the glitter in her hair and eye shadow accentuated by the production's bright lights. This is a single release show, celebrating the release of Hennessey's dance punk cover of the Waterboys' "We Will Not Be Lovers." Prior to the performance, Hennessey explained to this writer that her stepfather, the New York Dolls' David Johansen, aka Buster Poindexter, challenged her about the wisdom of releasing a cover song as a single. She defended the choice by responding that her band worked diligently on the song and developed an arrangement that was uniquely theirs.

Hennessey tonight consists of vocalist Leah Hennessey, guitarist Malachy O'Neal, guitarist/synthesizer player Noah Chevan, and synthesizer player E.J. O'Hara, who programs the bass and drum parts. Although all the musicians had backed Hennessey at different times in the past, tonight is the first time they all play together. Hennessey herself is a fireball on stage, a flaming, energetic front person who is magnetic to watch and pleasant to hear. She also proved herself as a prolific writer, especially during this self-isolation period, when she wrote a song each week. Many of the songs selected for this performance were from Hennessey's forthcoming EP, but the evening also saw the debut of new song called "Death Wish."

The Bowery Electric Presents: Live Premiere Sessions launched less than a month ago with Murphy's Law. The venue books one or two bands each week, and each live stream can be replayed on Veeps for about a week. Local band Eck's Men will be next, performing on Monday, July 20. The live stream schedule is posted at https://theboweryelectric.com/events.