As you will see if you look at the liner notes of our upcoming album, Unknown Cities, the cover art, “Dream City (variation 3)” is by Minás Konsolas. Anna and I met Minás and Peggy Hoffman after we moved into the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden, at 3626 Keswick Rd, across from the Royal Farms. I won’t get into any Royal Farms stories right now (though I do with some rigor in a short story I wrote called “Miles Davis has a Theory on Art”), but our former house at 3626 Keswick has its own tales and absurdities, including a roommate, Fritz, who used another roommate (a fellow musician and serious cook) Jon Carroll’s $200 sauté pan as a cooler for a six pack of Natty Boh beer. Fritz filled the pan with ice to the brim, shoved the beers in the ice, spilling some on the kitchen floor (if it wasn’t for the science of melting, the ice would be there to this day), brought the pan upstairs to his room, and soon, as per excess of weed, beer, and whiskey, passed out. By the time Anna and I got to the house that day, Jon was angrily searching for something. “Whatever it is,” I said, “I’d check Fritz’s room.”
“What would he be doing in his room with my—” But before Jon finished, he realized, and went upstairs. He soon came downstairs with his pan, full of icy water, and five empty beer cans floating in it—the sixth can still in bed with Fritz. Jon had been furious, but now coming down the stairs, he couldn’t help laughing. Fritz’s subsequent exit from this living situation (he moved in with some professional roller derby chicks as his next stop in life) is what allowed Anna to move in, a strange creation for our first apartment together.
But I digress. And not only do I digress, I digress rather early in a piece that’s supposed to be about Peggy, Minás, and their wonderful eponymous Hampden boutique, Minás.
Minás was the loveliest shop on Hampden’s The Avenue, an avenue with many shops indeed. The downstairs of Minás featured groovy new and used clothing, literary and novelty books, jewelry by local artisans, amusing knickknacks like Space Robot Destroy ™, and original artwork, some of it, of course, by Minás himself. The upstairs was a gallery and performance space, and at one point my first college writing teacher, Sam Ligon, came through town on tour from his new home of Spokane, WA and did a reading for his short story collection Drift and Swerve upstairs.
Fritz actually came to that reading, and at the after party, he said something to the effect about Sam’s collection: “I wish I could write like that.” But he was too busy filling pans with ice, drinking beer, and just being Fritz to really be bothered anyway.
Two states, two college degrees, four houses, and ten years later, Anna and I receive the masters for Unknown Cities, our sixth album together as Joy on Fire (as well as another two as Three Red Crowns!) and this is a cause for celebration; except we don’t have an album cover, and without a cover, we don’t have an album, and without an album, we don’t have—and I can feel myself ranting and raving and driving Anna crazy as I now write.
Pacing in Anna’s office, thinking about what should be the cover of an album that used to be called Red Wave but is now called Unknown Cities as per a lyric by our lyricist Dan Gutstein in our song “Unknown City,” I see, framed in glass on the wall of Anna’s office (under a painting by Anna of our cat Funz; under a print of the cover of our second album Fire with Fire*) a small blue and red depiction of a city. This is not “Dream City,” but it is by Minás, and Anna bought it at Minás ten years ago, and, like I said, it’s up on our wall now, and it reminds me of those Baltimore days when, with Anna at class at The Peabody Conservatory of Music, I’d take a break from The Nameless, the novel I was working on at the time, and I would walk down The Avenue to Minás.
Sometimes, Minás would be the only one in Minás, and we’d talk—art, politics, literature, sports…except I don’t actually ever remember talking about sports with Minás in Minás, so scratch the sports. I bought a belt there once. Eventually, the buckle came off, and it is now a toy for our cat Funz. But it was Anna who bought the little painting all those years ago, a 4”x5” print from his ArchiteXture series, and I’m so glad she did, because even though it’s not “Dream City” and we ended up not using it for Unknown Cities, it led us to “Dream City (variation 3),” such a beautiful cover by Minás for our album!, and do you think this is all a dream anyway, Fritz?
Unknown Cities will be released on Procrastination Records November 15th, and we’ve got a bunch of upcoming shows if you want to buy one in person and come check out some of our new songs!
- (10/29 secret barn show in New Hope, PA, hit us up if you want details)
- 10/30 – Mill Hill Basement, Trenton, NJ
- 11/6 – Prototype 237, Paterson, NJ
- 11/7 – Rhizome DC, Washington, DC
- 11/27 – Trenton Social, Trenton, NJ
P.S. Minás, the shop, closed in 2014; Minás, the painter, is still working; his most recent series, A Place under the Moon, is currently at the Gallery at Manor Mill in Monkton, MD until November 14th, you can see more info about that and Minás’ work here.
P.P.S. Fire by Fire album art by Bruno Gabrielli Thank you again, Bruno, for your wonderful mandala.