Wes Hartley

Episode 9: The Wrong Color Purple
6.24.09

The Band: Wesley Hartley
Wes: Vox, Guitar



A word to the reader:
My "w" key is broken. It won't capitalize with the left shift key, and I'm untrained in hitting the right shift. The Artist's first name will no longer appear capitalized.

The Scene:
wes greets us at his South Portland apartment where he lives below another musician, Chriss Sutherland. we're led into his living room, a spacious arty area dominated by a great TV monolith in the middle: a hulking Zenith sits unplugged on a cabinet on the cushiony carpet. A Left Pedestal Desk sits in a bay window with a typewriter and a sewing machine on top.

Treasures abound in the room, transistor radios in every corner, a small grey CRT television sits on a shelf in front of rows of books. One wall is covered in wesley's art. On another wall hangs a floor to ceiling collage of band photos culled from Rolling Stone when they were still hard, cutting and new. There's some blank space at the top.

"Mandy's Dad made that," wes grins, "He stopped when The Beatles broke up."

wesley leaves us to set up in the living room, pushing a box of guitar equipment out of the way. He's copying lyrics onto plain printer paper from his computer screen while we examine his house. The space he shares with his lady, Mandy. His artspace. The kitchen. The bedroom, recently painted with the wrong shade of purple.

we meet the cat, Charlie - named after local meteorologist Charlie Lopresti. She snakes between our feet and goes out on her cat missions.

wes is the lead voice of Dead End Armory, but he has been performing solo for longer than that. He doesn't do it much, maybe three times a year. Every time he performs it is a unique and singular experience.

The treasures around the room, the old radios, the televisions, they have become part of wes' music. They add an ephemeral quality, a transience to his music. Performing the same song in the same rhythm, hitting the same notes at the same time isn't enough to create the same song because of his radios and TVs, his background noise channeling dead American noise.

wes sets up three transistor radios, one tuned to an empty channel, buzzing static in the corner. Another catches a baseball game and the third squawks in and out of silence, belching spanish in fragmented syllables. He turns on the little grey Cathode Ray television and the clock blinks insistently that it is 12:00.

Some things will never die as long as there are artists out of time. wes is such an artist, if you took a photo of him it'd look in place in just about any of the last three decades.

He picks up a toy helmet and presses is down over his hair, "Is this going to be too goofy?"

He takes it off and puts some sort of wisk-like thing on his melon instead.

Absurdism.

Of course, that popped off two songs in, but whatever, it was for The Moment anyway.

wes' solo acts often have that sort of unplanned charm to them. He confesses to sometimes not knowing what he's going to do in a show until he just does it. It's a disservice to say wes is a jester, but it is not honest to say there is nothing fun and ridiculous in his music. I mean that in a serious way.

His latest music channels America handily. He uses a lot of simple, country chords the day we record him. He tunes in radios and televisions, his treasure collection is a testament to the Great American Habit of collecting and gaining. And America can be a kind of ridiculous country. with the radios and TVs, wes is catalyzed by the American spirit, running it through his cheap guitar and his shrill-yet-meditative voice.

watching wes nail a song and get it absolutely how he wanted it is great. He wears it, grinning afterwards and looking around to see that everyone else heard the same song he just heard.

we break for a moment, wes moves to the couch and picks up a lazer pointer. Charlie perks up. wes zigs it and zags it across the floor, Charlie in hot pursuit. He leaps halfway up the wall to get that little dot. Charlie loves that impossible red point.