John Kelley and Jon Gary are creatures of the local rock scene.
It’s a night job.
But we’ve caught them on a sunny Thursday morning, sitting at a table outside Java’s (or, Cure) at the Rochester Public Market. They prefer the calmer Thursdays versus the bustle of market Saturdays. They are regulars here. Kelley is sipping a black coffee; Gary, a cortado (espresso mixed with an equal amount of steamed milk).
Both have held what you might call “real jobs.” Gary has published a book of his cartoons, which seem much weirder that The Far Side, and worked for Twitter until 2018. Through persistence, in recent years both men have managed to cobble careers out of music. Writing songs, playing in a handful of bands. Gary is a longtime member of another local band, Woody Dodge. “Like Jon,” Kelley says, “I’m fortunate enough to be focused on my own creative endeavors all the time.”
On this particular morning, they’re focused on planning video shoots for the first two singles from the upcoming album “Who’s Gonna Save the World?” by their band, Kelley’s Heroes – they’ll be filming people attending a show at Abilene Bar & Lounge on Tuesday, August 29. Admission is free, the doors open at 6 p.m.
The crowd footage? That’s you. No nudity, please.
One of the songs is “Don’t Pass Me That Bottle.”
“That is what made us think about primarily filming that first video at Abilene,” says Kelley, who grew up around here, played in bands in Austin for 25 years, then moved back to Rochester a few years ago. Abilene, a club he knows well, “just seemed like the perfect place.”
“Who’s Gonna Save the World?” carries some big ideas.
As Gary explains, the title track is “related to movies and representation and casting, so it seemed appropriate to have some of the scene be in a movie theater.” What they characterize as “the dramatic part” of the video will be shot in a home theater that’s posing as a full-sized theater (there are budget considerations here).
“There were a series of fantasy TV shows that came out, like ‘Rings of Power’ and ‘The House of the Dragon,’” Gary says. “And they made diverse casting choices. And there were people online, trolls, who were complaining about this. Like, the books didn’t have them being dark skinned. And of course, this is nonsense, right? Utter nonsense.”
Right. Over the years, Shakespeare’s “Othello” has been played by James Earl Jones, Richard Burton, Raúl Juliá and even Patrick Stewart, captain of the starship Enterprise.
Most of us living in the 21st century – or the 24th century, where we find Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise – accept casting as not about skin color, but as a matter of who will represent this character the best. Except …
“At least on the right, the Fox News sphere, these things came up,” Gary says.
By “these things,” he means race. Kelley and Gary envision a world where race is not a measure of its people. An understanding, Gary says, “that the default vision of hero isn’t the white guy.” The title track of “Who’s Gonna Save the World?” meets this issue had on.
“I also read in an Atlantic article, called ‘Fear of a Black Hobbit,’” he says, “which I thought was a great title for an article, and it was basically about the same thing. It kind of spurred me on.”
Also, the 2023 version of “The Little Mermaid,” which starred singer Halle Bailey. Some people couldn’t accept a Black woman in the title role.
“We talk about Superman,” says Gary of the band, “we talk about ‘The Little Mermaid’ and all that, we like to put it in perspective. It’s not like we’re obsessed with superheroes or anything. This is the only song that even glances on that. But, it was something that spurred us on.”
So what spurred on “Don’t Pass Me That Bottle?”
“That’s one I wrote right in the depths of Trump America,” Kelley says. “‘Don’t Pass Me That Bottle,’ it really takes aim at the people that declared everything is a media problem.”
The “bottle” is an allusion to Jonestown, the Guyana-based cult led by Jim Jones, who in 1978 led more than 900 people to their deaths, many of whom drank cyanide-laced fruit drinks. Blinded by a madman, “just passing this fantasy as reality,” Kelley says. “You know, drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Another track, “School’s Out,” is a response to last year’s shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. That was just 10 days after 10 people were murdered at a Buffalo grocery store. “There’s a number of songs that are ejected right out of the news,” Gary says.
In news closer to home, Kelley wrote a song for the new album, “Calamity Town,” which reflects on violence in Rochester, “right under our noses, people living in fear, in fear of their lives, all of the time,” he says.
Kelley and Gary are not ghouls. Just curious. “Penny’s Notebook” is an observation of people in coffee shops, quietly writing in notebooks. Penny has lists of people who owe her money, lists of her visions for the future. “‘Penny’s Notebook’ is classic Jon Gary power-pop,” Kelley says.
The two met after Gary saw Kelley perform in a Neil Young tribute show. They approached each other cautiously at first, but soon enough were writing together. Kelley’s Heroes is now a five-piece band, with Jim Conner on drums, Dan Ho on guitar, and Josh Pincus on lap steel.
It’s dangerous work. Kelley and Gary have done a lot of biking together as well, which included a crash last year in which Gary broke his arm. That shut down his bass for a while, but the two continued to drink coffee Thursday at the market, and write songs.
“Too many songs, in a way,” Kelley says. A craftsmanship with no end in sight.
“I sort of consider myself a refugee from technology,” he says. “In our line of work, you make your own retirement. There’s nothing graceful that happens with what we do.”
Jeff Spevak is the senior arts writer for WXXI/CITY Magazine. He can be reached at (585) 258-0343 or jspevak@wxxi.org.
This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2023.
