Pinnstock

Pinnstock Music and Arts Festival (2007/2008)

Pinnstock 2008 was the second-annual music festival thrown by Roe Pressley, on behalf of Marcus Lendway and Steve Johnson Project Productions. It took place Saturday, Sept. 13, at Club Underground in Northeast Minneapolis (or "Nordeast").

Performers included two of the best-loved acts from the first year, Face Candy and Ill Chemistry (see First Annual, below). New on the Pinnstock roster were Abzorbr, The Bill Mike Band, and DJs Jimmy2Times and Plain Ole Bill. (Note: Jimmy2Times played the first year as Carnage's DJ. The 2008 act was a collaborative turntablism/mixing set between him and Plain Ole Bill.)

The venue is in the basement level of the Spring Street Tavern. The main space upstairs featured DJs spinning electronic music from 10 p.m. to close. The lineup included the kid Wicked, DJ Skroller, DJ Function One, DJ J. Winder, and DJ Jeff Henry.

In addition to continuing the Pinnstock tradition (see History), the event coincided with the launch of MillCityScene.com, an online news publication and community for the Minneapolis / St. Paul hip-hop scene. The publication is edited by Pinnstock promoter Roe Pressley.

Planning for the event was hectic, says Pressley. The original plan was to do the festival outside at Harmony Park, site of Minnesota's annual Harvest Festival. It soon became evident that the cost of doing it on such a large scale, compounded with the risk associated with the 1 1/2 hour distance from the cities, was too great. Pressley and the SJP Productions team then bounced around, courting various venues that would be closer to, or within, city limits. But their most promising prospect ended up falling through after two weeks of planning. The managers cited that they were out of extended-space permits for the season, which would have allowed them to have music and serve alcohol in their parking lot.

Club Underground was one of the last options. But Pressley expresses delight, rather than regret, that they ended up doing it there.

"It was kind of like fate," says Pressley. "Because when the 13th came around, the whether was really not festival-friendly. We would have had a terrible turnout. And the atmosphere at Club Underground is really great, really intimate, more in the vein of what Pinnstock is supposed to represent in the first place."

His only regret, he says, is that he had to cut back the original lineup, trimming out such acts as Big Quarters and Madison's The Crest, among others.

"We'll make it up to them next year," he says.

The First Annual Pinnstock Music and Arts Festival on September 1 and 2, 2007, was the first installation of this multi-genre music festival and took place in Ojibwa, Wisconsin. Music headliners included Face Candy (featuring champion battle-rapper Eyedea, of Rhymesayers fame), Dessa and Turbonemesis of Doomtree, Ill Chemistry (featuring Carnage the Executioner and Desdamona), DJ Jimmy2Times, and Sandman and the Band.

The purpose of the festival, as stated by organizer Roe Pressley, was to celebrate the life and legacy of his best friend and musical partner Marcus Lendway (aka Bobby Pinn, hence Pinnstock), who died suddenly in 2007 from a ruptured aneurysm in his spleen.

The music also featured performances from The Hyde Brothers Band, which included Marcus's father, Mark Lendway, on drums and vocals. Other performers included Mason Jar Mary, Simply Us and the 2 Sides of We, jGreen, Bear 'n' Arin feat. Dejahn, DJ Swee2th, DJ Teddy, jism&dropsie, Kyle Peck, Renegade Carnival Music, The Butchers, and Bob Hobbs.

The festival was invite-only for the extended friends and family of the Lendway and Pressley families, and the friends of the artists performing. It featured two days of music and two nights of camping. There was also a birthday/memorial service on September 1, which coincided with Lendway's birthday. The birthday song was song, and cake was served to all the guests--one a regular birthday cake, another chocolate-habañero (Lendway was particularly fond of cooking with habañeros and other hot peppers).

History

Pressley and Lendway had been best friends since kindergarten. Pressley cites Lendway as the main inspiration for his picking up the guitar and getting into music. Late in high school, Pressley began delving into turntable-based music in the form of house and techno. As he progressed, he got more interested in turntablism due in part to a growing interest in local rap music, including artists on the Rhymesayers label.

Meanwhile, Lendway's diverse passion for music was leading him in a similar direction. But where Pressley's passion revolved around scratching and beat making, Lendway's lifelong talent at writing pushed him into writing raps, which were often highly personal and greatly critical of status quo society. They recorded a 6-song sampler in the summer of 2005, using nothing but a desktop PC, a Roland MC-307 Groovebox, a DJ mixer, a stage microphone, and Cool Edit 2000. Collectively, they called themselves 2th & Nail, a reference to Pressley (DJ SweeTooth, or Swee2th), and Lendway as the "Nail" (why exactly he was the Nail is not clear). Lendway later took on the stage name Bobby Pinn, after one of their songs of the same name. They called their sampler "Letters from the Free World" and distributed it only to their network of friends and family.

In 2006, the duo reprised some of the songs from the sampler and recorded a number of new tracks to accompany them. In September of '06, they completed their 17-track debut, entitled "Simple Answers". (the disc itself carried the subtitle, "...for strange people.") The subject matter travels a spectrum of themes and emotions, ranging from the trials and tribulations of love, to the inherent darkness and mystery of the dream world, to the lies perpetrated by President Bush in the lead-up to and execution of the Iraq War. The sound, though often raw and minimally produced (a sign of the limited technology and budget available), is also widely expansive, ranging from boom-bap-style beats to stuttering staccatos, to mellow, airy ambiance and harmonic melodies.

Unfortunately Lendway died before the two of them were able to work out any distribution or sales deals with local record stores, which is something Pressley says he is still planning to do. Copies are available only through Pressley, the Lendway Family, and record stores The Metro and The Works in Arcata and Eureka, California, where Pressley attended college at Humboldt State University. Pressley hopes it will soon be available at Fifth Element in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Their second album (currently untitled) is in the making; Pressley hopes to have it done before this year's Pinnstock but has made no guarantees.

References

http://www.pinnstock.com (official website)
http://www.myspace.com/2thandnail
http://www.minnerapolis.com