Tour Without End Screening feat. The Blow, Macy Rodman, and CRICKETS
In tandem with Laura Parnes’s exhibition Tour Without End (2014-2019), Pioneer Works is very pleased to present a screening of the eponymous film with intermissions of performance by The Blow (Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich), Macy Rodman (with Matthew McAuley of BB TAY VEE), and CRICKETS (JD Samson, Michael O'Neill, Roddy Bottum), some of whom are featured in the film, which casts real-life musicians, artists, and actors as bands on tour.
Shot in real environments and situations, the core group of players in Tour Without End improvised based on semi-scripted scenes. Because many of these performers are legends themselves in the New York City downtown scene, they are archetypes playing archetypes. The movie revels in the sometimes hilarious—but always complex—band dynamics that the characters endure while touring, collaborating, and aging in a youth-driven music industry. As the players move in and out of character, blending fiction and real life, the film moves in and out of non-linear narrative and historical document that chronicles DIY music spaces in and around New York City—many of which have since shuttered their doors. Tour Without End ultimately expands into a cross-generational, Trump–era commentary on contemporary culture and politics.
The Blow is Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich. A shape-shifting entity, The Blow has taken various forms over time and manifests in an array of media, employing popular music as a vehicle for broader explorations. The duo works with sound recording, performance, installation, writing, video, and physical media, addressing and expanding upon the limitations encountered within each framework. Together they curate WOMANPRODUCER, a multi-platform archive of female, trans, and gender-nonconforming music producers, engineers, and sonic innovators. Their performances have been presented at The Kitchen, The Wexner Center, Artists Space, The Warhol Museum, On The Boards, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, as well as in traditional music venues such as The Henry Fonda Theater, Great American Music Hall, Joe’s Pub, and The Gramercy Theater. They live and work in New York City.
Macy Rodman is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, artist, and showgirl. Rodman’s newest album Unbelievable Animals came out August 27 via Shamir’s Accidental Popstar Records. The lead album single, electro-thumper “Love Me!,” premiered on PAPER and sparked further praise across Artforum, GLAAD, Jezebel, NYLON, them., and more. The massive, sugary, propulsive sound of the record—confession and heartbreak set to club-ready beats with 90s radio rock inflections—is the sound of reemergence, of rebirth, the return to the dance floor. Liz Phair, Faith Hill, Cher, Madonna, and more heroes of that era spiritually inhabit its tracks, where slick pop production and the sneering punk attitudes of Marianne Faithful and PJ Harvey mingle at the 90s New York nightclub.
CRICKETS is JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), Michael O'Neill (MEN, Princess) and Roddy Bottum (Faith No More, Imperial Teen/Nastie Band). The sound is an exploration of minimalism, a celebration of restraint, a rant of queer prose set to a backdrop barrage of guitar, synthesizer, and drum machine. The recording of CRICKETS was an exercise in stripping away the excesses of toxic masculinity from the studio. The songs were recorded live with no overdubs and the result is a sound that's intentionally barren, sparse, and emotional, and as quiet as it is loud.
Laura Parnes's multi-platform, lens-based projects craft darkly comedic narratives of trauma and repressed memory around mass-culture experiences and youthful rites of passage. Using historical, literary and popular culture-based references, she addresses issues related to cultural production and societal malaise. Her work has been screened and exhibited widely in the US and internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; Brooklyn Museum; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and NY and on PBS and Spanish Television. Recently she has had solo exhibitions at LA><, LA; Participant Inc and Fitzroy Gallery, both in NYC; and solo screenings at The Museum of Modern Art and The Kitchen, New York City. Parnes is a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, a 2014 NYFA recipient, a 2016 Creative Capital Awardee, and a 2021-2022 MacDowell fellow in interdisciplinary art.