The Monarch Review is throwing its second-ever fundraiser on Oct. 18^th from 6pm-11pm at Café Racer. Reading will be comedian Brett Hamil, Poetry Northwest’s Matt Kelsey, poet Doug Nufer and Juggalo aficionado Craven Rock. Performing will be JMASS and The Great UM. Below is a conversation with all the participants for the event in which we talk about Café Racer, inspiration, family, being underfunded and much more!

Jake Uitti: Caleb, you’re one of the editors of the Monarch and you’ll also be playing with the Great Um for the fundraiser – what is the vibe you expect for the night and what does the opportunity to host and play at Racer mean for you, specifically?

Caleb Thompson: I’m excited to share the stage with some of Seattle’s most talented people in a venue that has fostered so much creativity over the years. I think of Racer in much the same way I think of the Monarch–it’s a place where outsiders and weirdos can get together and make cool shit happen. It’s a crazy, fucked-up world out there, and I find that it’s easier sometimes for us to feel hopeless about effecting any change. We see so many terrible things in our FB feeds: Ferguson, the Middle East, Epidemics in Africa, Putin, the list goes on…and we can’t do much, it seems. But on a local level, where we’ve got the music, we’ve got writers and comedians and painters, this is where we can change the world. This is where we can create profound joy and laughter, where we can inspire hope and love. That’s what both the Monarch and Racer do for me, and that’s what I want to share with people.

JU: Julia, you’re no rookie when it comes to Racer – what does the place mean for you? How does it inspire your music?

Julia Massey: My relationship with Racer really began after the shooting that took place there in 2012.  Friends of mine had already developed many warm connections through the place, and I had attended a show or two, but it was in the wake of that tragedy that I had time to reflect and say to myself, “Hey, there is a magical community that exists over there and I want to be a part of it.”

It was fitting that my first lengthy experience with the Racer as a venue was as a member of Darla Benson’s Violent Femmes cover band “Nice Garçons.” I had never taken part in a cover band, let alone played bass or drums on a song. After weeks of practicing the set and reviewing the performance art portions, I ran into Bones, a cook and one of the many treasures at Racer, and he hugged me (barely knowing me, mind you), thanking us for having our show there. The big night proved to be something straight out of a scene in Twin Peaks. Not the creepy ones, but the ones that make you fall in love with David Lynch – it helped too that Darla was our director, but Racer was most certainly the muse.

Since that time, I’ve had a humbler approach to my music, realizing more and more that art isn’t about me, it’s about community.

JU: Matt, you’ve been working with Poetry Northwest for some time, you’ve also curated events at the Blue Moon and been a contributor to The Monarch. What’s one important part about Seattle culture you hope to illuminate on Oct. 18^th with your reading?

MK: Seattle’s a brave, bold city. Not only do we heal and rebuild (consider our venue), thereby demonstrating a collective emotional fortitude that one usually associates with the word “brave,” but we dare to take (often unpopular) social and creative risks. We allow same-sex marriage. We legalize marijuana. We increase minimum wages. We invented Grunge. We erect a library that looks as much like a tribute to Alice in Wonderland as it does an educational and informational institution. We build all-poetry bookstores. We build planes and needles and sculptures, and blow wacky colored glass. We hire oddball geniuses like Pete Carroll and Richard Sherman to guide our sports franchises. I once watched nearly a thousand French maids take the field in Capitol Hill’s Miller Park just so they could break the world record for most maids gathered in one place.

We’re game for just about anything, Jake. Seattle’s “love and need are one,” and its “work is play for mortal stakes,” as Frost would have it. On the 18th of October, we’ll all play together, in bold and life-affirming ways, and I’ll do my best to abide by the risk-taking spirit that governs us.

JU: Brett, you’re charged with infecting the place with a little humor – what about the night will be funny?

Brett Hamil: What’s funny about a benefit night at a funky, locally-owned cafe for an independent arts & lit journal?

The sheer pointless absurdity of it all, that’s what. The wild-eyed, heedless frivolity of the whole shabby endeavor. You mean to tell me these people put serious effort into making a thing that has no corporate partnerships, no social media strategy, no advertisers, no overarching 5-point plan for fiscal success? Do they even have a demographic market analysis? A “branding message”? A goddam Klout score, for fuck’s sake?

They don’t?

HAHAHAHA. COME ON.

No, wait…that actually sounds amazing. Please sign me up.

JU: Doug, I know your poetry for its intricate linguistic prowess. What do you have in store us – what nuance, what daring?

Doug Nufer: A poem consisting entirely of punch lines from Borscht Belt jokes, a demented Perry Mason diatribe riddled with the subjunctive, a line-by-line homophone tour where phrases sound alike but mean different things, and a Spoonerism/ inversion translation of two first pages of a double novel are what I’m working on for the show. I’ve done much of this here and there, but I don’t believe there will be many at the show who have heard these pieces, and even people who have heard them may hear them in different ways. I’m especially interested in doing this for Brett, as I’ve thought of subjecting the punch lines to an open mic comedy club gig (it seems like an honest thing to do), and the double novel piece sounds like the double-talker stand-up comics who used to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. Experimental or formally inventive poetry often gets branded as difficult or obtuse, but I’ve found that audiences respond very well when I play around with language, especially if I throw myself into a role and fiddle with the material.

JU: Craven Rock, I’ve saved you for last! You’ll be reading from your recent book about the Juggalos. Can you give us a sneak peak into what story you’ll be pulling from? The juicier the better!

CR: Well, I’ll be pulling a couple small stories I wrote about my experience at Gathering of the Juggalos where 20,000 of them hold a Bacchanal of nakedness, drug abuse and wrasslin’ –only 1/3 of which I participated in. I could pull from my hellride experiences on the Love Wagon or trying to escape the heat with the ‘los by dipping into the greenish and lukewarm waters of Hepatitis Lake, or maybe I’ll talk about seeing Gallagher tripping balls taking in the Drug Bridge in walleyed wonder.

For more information on the event, click here!