YK: It’s ok we’ll do it again.
CW: I am so sorry.
MT: No it’s ok we didn’t get too far into it.
CW: Ok that’s good.
YK: Want me to introduce myself first?
CW: Yeah. Sorry.
YK: No it’s ok, you’re meant to have mess ups. My name is Yvette Koch and I’m, and when I was born or where I was born?
CW: Yeah, when, where….
YK: I was born in 1977 in Saudi Arabia and grew up from 1981 to 2001 in Florida. And I grew up in Fort Pierce Florida then moved to Gainesville to go to college. I started getting involved in shows when I was in high school and um, rented out a one room schoolhouse we used for local bands and would set up shows for local bands and do benefits. And um, and, we would occasionally get touring bands but usually bands didn’t come through small town Florida. ::Laughs::
CW: Yeah.
YK: Occasionally, occasionally we got touring bands.
CW: I guess could you introduce yourself briefly?
MT: Yeah. I’m Mike Taylor and I was born in Tampa in 1976. Pretty much everything she said except a different small town in Florida that no ones ever heard of and then moved to Gainesville to go to art school in 1994. And then moved to Providence in 2001.
CW: What brought you guys to Providence?
.
MT: I think I decided that it was just time to leave Florida. I kind of felt like I had personally hit the ceiling and um, just wanted to try something new and all the areas pointed to Providence. Having friends who had a house with an open room and a job that came open, that’s it I guess.
YK: I um, I wanted to move somewhere where I’d never been and I wanted to live somewhere closer to a bigger, a big city. And um, I applied to grad school and got in so that’s the only deal for me. ::Laughs:: Its pretty simple.
CW: Ok.
MT: And you got a sweet financial deal.
YK: Ixnay.
CW: Um, ok. First, Yvette I guess I had read that you were sort of involved with the Hive in the early days, could you um, would you mind talking about that a little bit?
YK: I can talk about it. I moved here and had been involved in a lot of starting up spaces in Gainesville.
CW: Yeah.
YK: We had started a record store in Gainesville that was a community space. And some people knew that. And they knew that I had also done a tour teaching women pelvic exams right before moving to Providence and came through Providence and so had some vague, vague notoriety coming here.
CW: Ok.
YK: And um, there were some friends that I had who were involved in the Hive right before the Hive split um, and the Dirt Palace began and The Hive began.
CW: Yeah.
YK: And they asked me if I could get involved with it when I was in my first couple semesters of grad school. They asked me if I could co-direct, which I think I did miserably. I didn’t have a lot of time. But, I left before the final decision was made to buy a building.
CW Ok.
YK: So I was only involved with the Hive for a little under a year.
Cw: Ok. And I guess just did that not being involved with it have anything to do with the fact that it was a feminist collective? Could you talk about that at all?
YK: Yeah I can talk about it. I was absolutely in support of it because it was a feminist collective. And when I feel like when we first moved to Providence it was really difficult to have the idea of having anything feminist. Or also it was really difficult for the women in town to have something that was women centered. And so I was involved with The Hive because it was a feminist project.
MT: Well is it fair to say, coming from like a subcultural background. Because you could get involved with lefty politics and talk feminism. I mean, right, is that kind of what you’re saying?
YK: Yeah. Yeah. But more subcultural. Right, yeah. To be part of a subculture and to claim being feminist it was very different from what I had encountered in Gainesville where every woman who was there who was part of a subculture called themselves feminist and there were definitely certain things around, like, around supporting women’s…
[5:01- 5:25 Waitress bring over drinks/ food.]
YK: So, yeah there were certain things that were uh, accepted around accepting women’s music and supporting women who were making artwork as well that were very different in Gainesville than they felt here when I first came. People were really trying to fight to be able to have that space and that’s what The Dirt Palace and The Hive were doing. The Hive I think has really been separated from any kind of subculture since then and that was one of the goals of people. I think one of the goals of The Hive when it became more of a nonprofit.
CW: Ok.
YK: I personally felt like it would just take forever to get a building and I really wanted to be doing things and so it just didn’t make sense for me to be putting my energies into getting money for a building.
CW: Right.
YK: But definitely people who were involved at The Hive took that on and have been trying to get a building since then.
CW: So I guess not wanting to put, maybe not wanting to put time into trying to get a building, did that sort of lead into starting up the Bakery. Like, um, well you had the building, but they worked within city government and stuff to get their space going and you guys just sort of…
YK: I wanted a space where I could live and do a lot of things out of one space. So it was very… I saw it as providing something that The Hive couldn’t provide for me. Um, but I also hoped that there were certain things that we could do that wouldn’t require as much red tape that we would be able to do at The Bakery that would supplement what The Hive was doing, and what The Dirt Palace was doing. When we first moved into The Bakery, I had all these lofty ideas about how we could have self defense classes for example.
CW: Ok
YK: In the big open spaces.
MT: And run a radio station.
YK: In The Bakery. ::Laughs:: And run a radio station. Run a pirate station. So there was definitely this idea that by having that space and being part of the space that there were certain kinds of projects I’d be oriented towards that I would just be able to do because it was right there in front of me in my house.
CW: Right, Ok. Before we start talking about The Bakery could you guys give maybe a brief history of those spaces at Oak and Troy?
YK: Mhm. Like a timeline?
CW: Yeah, I mean nothing too extensive, but, as far as what you know.
MT: The Munchhouse was first, and it’s on the Troy street side.
CW: Yeah.
MT: In actuality both of those buildings are one building on the blue print. It was built as a brewery in 1898.
YK: I think ’98.
MT: And, um, 71 Troy is a made up address. The whole thing was built as 244. The side facing Oak Street got refaced in the ‘50’s I think. That’s why they look different, but they’re the same building.
YK: Mhm.
CW: Right.
MT: The Munchhouse was first, it’s on the Troy street side.
YK: I think it existed for a year and a half, two years before we moved in.
MT: Something like that. And they um, they did shows and it’s where the band White Mice comes from.
CW: Yeah.
MT: And uh, James who works here was also one of the cofounders of that space. Then Brian Chippendale moved into one of the spaces, and so Lightning Bolt was practicing there. But, actually, I’m sorry but the Munchhouse was not first. There was a DJ there named Mike who lived on the third floor who’d been living there since 1996.
YK: Yeah, he’d been living there for a really long time.
MT: And they used to do raves all through the early ‘90’s. And I don’t remember his early, his DJ name, but he’s apparently one of the more famous rave DJ’s in the world.
CW: Ok, wow.
MT: He now works at a pizza place. Not to diss, that’s just the reality. They used to, the fourth floor of 244, actually the space that The Bakery was in, used to be a huge rave club. Like totally unofficial. Like all those people would get up on the roof and navigate traffic with headset mics. And it was totally covert, and they did a way better job of keeping it secret than we did.
YK: Mhm.
MT: Like our generation of events paled in comparison to the raves they used to throw there. So that has to be known.
YK: Mhm.
CW: Paled in size?
MT: Yeah. Providence had a big scene for that, like Atlantic mills used to have a huge rave scene.
CW: Ok.
YK: And then after that, the space that The Bakery was in was rented by an industrial design company. And people were living in that space as well when they were working on their company. But it was all recycled materials, furniture was made out of recycled materials.
MT: They’re the people that designed White Electric, and all of the furniture at White Electric.
CW: Ok.
YK: Mhm.
MT: So with the current generation that you’re asking about, the first people to take up the more punk, art school residence at Oak Street was The Sickle, on the third floor. They moved in a couple weeks before we did. And uh, we kind of knew each other from bands.
YK: Barely.
MT: Barely, I met one of them. And so when I heard that they got a space. Me and my friend Lee had been looking for spaces. And when I heard that they got a space, I called up this kid Chris Carr and I’m like “We’re coming to your space, we’re gonna look at it.” And it was his job to say “Yeah, that’s cool” But he went and told all his friends, including Brandon who’s washing dishes right now.
YK: Mhm. And what they ended up doing was going into the space where there were still all these walls that were built from the previous tenants who had really done a lot of work to get the space segmented and in better shape, and they came in and stole all the drywall. ::Laughs:: And stole them right before we could use it. So they just went in and they actually broke a gigantic hole in the wall that was soon to be my room and um, crawled in and took all this drywall out there, took all of these great supplies that you had seen the first time you came through, in the meantime before we could move in.
CW: Ok.
YK: So it was pretty funny.
MT: So the other space on the third floor, next to The Sickle, below The Bakery, actually was a big mystery. But people had been living there for years and years and years. But someone that worked for the police department. And they were growing drugs, and pirating pornographic movies.
YK: And had motion detector lights on their front door. They had a peephole.
MT: Yeah
YK: And were never seen except occasional peeps of seeing someone come out, in and out of the door quickly.
MT: And when they moved out it was the middle of the night, and they left everything behind.
CW: Oh wow.
YK: Which we then went in and also got.
MT: And took.
YK: We got an [sic], extremely interesting machinery.
CW: Wow.
YK: Secrecy.
MT: The first floor was always churches. It was two separate churches.
YK: The first two floors when we moved in were churches.
CW: Were they both Spanish speaking churches?
YK: Mhm. So the first two floors on both sides were churches. It was pretty amazing. I mean, they were out, probably later than we were, you know, it could be two o’ clock in the morning and we could hear church people coming out of the building.
CW: Wow.
MT: I’d say for the most part we got along with them.
CW: Ok.
YK: Yeah, I’d say so too.
MT: Cause they were illegal. And they knew it. We had that in common.
CW: Right, ok.
YK: They put a lot into trying to bring the spaces into better shape too. Putting in new walls. Putting in stoves. They ran community kitchens out of the churches. They um, they did free meals out of the churches. So you know, I remember giving them our stove, because we had a stove sitting around that had been there or something. But they did free meals out of there and we were giving them this stove so they could do more. And they did other things too, just like free drop offs and, they were just like a community center in a lot of ways.
MT: Yeah there’s like zero bureaucracy with those places. So they just take you into their congregation cause they’re a social group,
CW: Ok.
MT: I mean, like we were.
YK: Yeah. I think it was a Dominican Church. Ok.
MT: Ok.
YK: And then there was also down the street there was some, it was a Nigerian church.
MT: Across the street is the Seraphim and um, what’s, Seraphim and Charity [Sic].
CW: Ok so I guess, is there a story behind, you’ve sort of told it, like how The Bakery came about. But what made you decide you wanted to live in this type of place?
YK: Well you and Lee were looking for a place together, um.
MT: It’s the same answer anyone would give, you know, just, if it’s available, and it’s cheap, and its secretive. That’s all.
YK: I was living in an apartment [Sic]. I’m a real control freak about certain things, and I really wanted to make everything myself.
CW: Ok.
YK: I also have a predilection towards like, wanting to take things that are unused and wanting to turn them into used things. So I had these fantasies about that and fantasies about taking garbage and making it into usable material. Which I kind of laugh at, but I think it’s really important still.
MT: We were doing shows out of the house that we, the house we both moved into when we first moved here was over on Smith Hill on [Sic]. They would do basement shows. The people who already lived there were doing basement shows. And it just so happened that the last show we had there I ended up going to court for, for a noise violation. So we had always been looking for a place to do like, bigger shows that weren’t bothering neighbors, and to practice, and to build things.
YK: I used, I lived in a house that was called the [Sic] House that didn’t last for very long, but um, I would say like, 12 to 15, or more different people during that time, used that house as some kind of transitional space. Either they were just moving to town, and a lot of those people still live here. Either they were just moving into town, or were moving out of their house and were in a transitional time in their life in what they were doing. But it was a really rickety old house on [Sic] over near here. Yeah, like I said a lot of those people are still around. And I really wanted a lot more space because it was like, I lived in an attic room that had a pitched ceiling, and it was freezing. There just wasn’t a lot of space to do things in the house that I could see that were possible if we had more space.
CW: Did you guys look at the Bakery as some sort of like, collective living experiment? Or a…
YK: Probably not in the beginning
CW: You were just basically looking for space to live and work at the same time?
MT: The ideals that come with being involved in any sort of, I don’t want to pigeonhole and just say punk rock, because other people do it, but any kind of like, taking control of your life and your own being. I never wanted to be so grandiose to say it was a collective. But we did have house meetings and everything was mutually owned. Like as far as anything in the kitchen, like foods and things like that it was pretty much, it’s the only smart way of doing things. There are two kinds of households, whether you live in a warehouse or an apartment, the kind where everybody shares food and the kind where people steal each others food. So, you just got to be open about it. And most of what we owned was dragged in from the trash anyways so it’s stupid to worry about that stuff.
YK: When Mike and Lee started to get the spaces, and they were looking for warehouse spaces. And then they got this space. And so you know at first it was going to be just the two of them, you know they were looking at spaces that had no windows and just being like “Whatever, we’ll just board ‘em up in the wintertime.” And then they got this space, and it was like $1000, and there were two of them, it was 5000 square feet, and they were just like, do you want to move in. And so you know it wasn’t intentional in a lot of ways, in terms of what we did. I didn’t have a bedroom for quite a few months the first, when we first moved in, and that wasn’t because it was impossible to have a bedroom, it was just cause I didn’t want to because there were three of us in a space that was gigantic and I just, had room to sleep on a mattress and wouldn’t even see anyone. And so they asked me to move in, and there wasn’t any kind of plan for the collective or anything like that. And um, I think as more people moved in, as certain people moved in, like with Maura or other people who moved in in the beginning, those people were more inclined towards wanting things that were collective. So having house meetings, sharing food, cooking for each other, those kinds of things, but we never really had house meetings where we sat down and talked about events we were gonna do or anything like that. It was more just like each person would do their thing. So, I’m doing this and you can benefit from having it around or you can not care at all or you can hear me DJing out of my bedroom, and you know, cause that’s what I want to do, or, I’m going to throw a dance party and this is the night its going to be. But it wasn’t really intentional in a lot of ways. We just had shared values that come out of being in the same group of people.
MT: Its just more consideration than anything, like, if you’re going to book a Deerhoof show and three hundred people are going to show up, it should be ok with the housemates.
CW: Ok.
MT: And we would also clear it with, once people moved in next door, we would ask them, but then they started doing shows every every night. So the kind of inter-space consideration started to falter, and that’s when it kind of blew up and became more of a free for all.
YK: But I have to say like, I probably, as much as…
MT: Hated living there by the time you moved out. ::Laughs::
YK: ::Laughs:: No I loved living there by the time I moved out. I hated living there at times when I lived there. But probably more than some people, but the same as others wanted to have certain kinds of projects there. So it was like, definitely on my mind, seeing the space, being like, we’ve got to have a roof garden or we’ve got to have a fireplace garden. We’ve got to have window gardens. Like we have to be able to grow food in this space. And it, develop this idea of being in an industrial space and trying to make it, you know, I hate the phrase greener.
MT: I’m sorry.
YK: I hate the phrase greener.
MT: Ok.
YK: So trying to make it something more like, something where we could have the outdoors inside.
CW: Right so more natural basically?
YK: Yeah. So trying… this fantasy of like, trying to create that in my living environment. Also wanted to have a library, and so we had a library. You know so there were things like that that we did do that were more…
MT: I wanted a room full of leaves, so we had a room full of leaves.
YK: Yeah. Wanted a bike workshop or something, so eventually we had a bike workshop. You know, those are the things, but, it wasn’t, there were some people who would do things more intentionally and there were some people who would do things where it was like “This is what I’m doing, and accept it.” So it was good.
MT: And also it was the time when um, in our space there, was how much over a year?
YK: Maybe it was a year and a half.
MT: It burned very hot and fast. So each of the spaces began to take on their own character and if you had characterize each one as being any one thing, then The Sickle became the younger, more art school, like hardcore shows. Like straight up hardcore shows.
CW: Ok, yeah.
MT: Like they’d do Armageddon shows there. And then ours was like, more maybe, politically dogmatic, or uh…
YK: Or we would cook food for people. Like more “community oriented.”
CW: Right. So when you had bands coming through you’d cook for them and keep them there.
MT: Yes.
YK: Mhm. And we would cook for people who came through or whatever. Or, we would…
MT: Yeah. Knowing that you have a fantasy situation, and sharing it.
CW: Yeah.
MT: And then the Pink Rabbit just started doing shows every fucking night. Like seriously.
YK: And their thing was just like “We do whatever the fuck we want.”
MT: Yeah.
YK: Anytime.
MT: And they were our friends.
CW: Ok. ::Laughs::
YK: No I liked them.
MT: We didn’t hang out on a day to day basis, but like, there was hardly anyone in the building there…. There was one space that were complete outsiders, but that’s a different story. There were more people from the dance club type of things who were just very opportunistic.
YK: Mhm. And didn’t give a shit about hiding that they lived there.
MT: And were trying to like, profit by throwing raves and stuff. They would hire security. Like we’d come home and there’d be security up in front of our house, but that’s a different story.
CW: So you guys weren’t like profiting from shows?
All laugh
MT: Hell no.
YK: No
CW: No I know. So it was sort of…like community, helping people coming through is what the money is going towards.
MT: Right.
YK:Mhm
MT: Mhm
CW: Ok
YK: Also there were probably a lot of shows that we brought through that nobody gave a shit about except for us…
CW: Right.
YK: And a very small group of people other than that. And so there just wouldn’t have been anywhere those bands could’ve played. Because when there were times that we couldn’t do shows those bands just didn’t get shows, they’d just come here and visit. And so…
MT: Right.
CW: Did you guys bring up like a lot of bands from Gainesville?
YK: Yeah.
MT: Not a lot.
YK: Well I would say friends who were on tour, they would definitely stop through.
MT: Yeah.
YK: Hey Brian.
[Pause in Interview]
CW: Ok, it’s recording again. I guess could you guys talk about what kind of art you were involved with. Were you involved with some screen printing stuff? You’re a painter, right Mike? Are you also a musician?
MT: Yeah, I guess so, yeah.
YK: I’m a horrible screen printer, I try. ::Laughs:: I every once in a while will try and um, mostly for some pointed thing, like I have to make a flier for something. Most of what I like to do, is like, draw. And not for any… I honestly have a hard time doing it for anything because I’m really private about it. It’s kind of like a…. I don’t know what it is, like a word processor or some kind of meditation thing, or something, it’s just a way to focus. And so, I draw. But, most of what I was doing was trying to get it to look like…get the space to look where I felt like it was sustaining some kind of inspiration for me while I was working out of grad school. And then, I also was learning how to sew. Most of it was me learning how to do different things while being there. So learning how to sew, and making things for whatever. And silk screening and drawing.
MT: Yeah we had a really good sewing room over the course of all tenants there. There was someone that did mostly kind of sculpture, like Maura. There were two silk screening studios. There was for a short time a luthier lived there, and so we had a cello repair facility.
YK: And had all of these like, very impeccable looking people coming through bringing their basses or their cellos, and looking very uncomfortable as they walked through the space to the air tight room that was climate controlled because these are like, seven hundred year old instruments that are getting repaired in our space.
MT: There was a semi sound dampened recording area where bands played, or where bands practiced. Then there was the common space was where shows actually happened. We eventually built a room, there was a dark room for drying screens. So Providence is a pretty fortunate place to have a confluence of forms where often the flier would be better than the show for which it was created.
YK: Mhm.
MT: And…which is fine, because they live long. The fliers, they stick around. That’s the flier for the first show at The Bakery.
YK: Yeah. And that was also…I guess to give you a sense of what I think was more…what our shows were like that was a little different. That was a show that had Florida bands, including….
MT: This Bike is a Pipe Bomb.
YK: Then someone who we knew from Florida whose now in The Kills. ::Laughs::
MT: ::Laughs:: I had forgotten.
YK: It was just weird that The Kills….
MT: I’m definitely not [Sic]
YK: It was horrible. I mean the show was just bad.
MT: I liked it.
YK: I loved it.
MT: The show was great….Did you say the show was bad?
YK: No I’m saying that the way that it was with The Kills playing, it wasn’t bad how they were playing but it was like, just weird how people were like “This is not something I’m used to seeing.” In terms of that style of music, that style of stripped down rock. Were they really into it being rock?
MT: Yeah. Good.
YK: I know, I know.
MT: And there was a vegan cake bake off.
YK: Yeah and that’s what I was going to say, so there was a cake bakeoff.
CW: Is that where the name came from, the name of The Bakery?
YK: No.
MT: No but we just came up with that and we decided that we had to have a bakeoff
YK: Right.
MT: For the first show.
YK: So we would have things like food involved…The cakes were awesome, people went all out and made these amazing, beautiful cakes. There ended up being a cake bakeoff and a foodfight.
MT: There was like an Ewok Village cake.
YK: I remember Jean Cousins whose now studied architecture at RISD made this amazing sculptural cake with this really thick icing and it looked really beautiful and it looked like this giant building, it was beautiful. But, so there was a cake bakeoff and a food fight, and then these really eclectic bands that were just like from all different walks of our lives.
CW: Did things like that really foster a sense of community there?
YK: I don’t know.
MT: Yeah I want to be really cautious how we talk about that, because, I’d like to say yes, but that’s, its not even a loaded word anymore, it just doesn’t really mean anything.
YK: Right.
MT: I mean it was a de facto community because seventy something people lived there and when we got evicted…we got evicted together. So when I see any of those people I’m way more prone to stop on the sidewalk and talk to them now. But at the time, I spent just as much time being psyched as I wished they’d all fall down the stairs.
YK: And that we were just there in our small corner with nobody else living around us or something.
MT: Yeah. And towards the end we kind of stopped doing shows because everybody was doing so many shows and it was always loud. There was a junkie living in our elevator.
CW: What was living in your elevator?
YK: A homeless kid who was a junkie. Who had severe…he just had a lot of stuff going on. He would like spray paint the elevator and lived in the elevator shaft on the first floor.
MT: And it just got insane. Like, kids shitting where they ate, to the max, like…
YK: Yeah.
CW: Like in the other spaces you mean? Kids who lived in the other spaces?
MT: Yeah. People would move in, fill the space. It just got to the point where people took advantage of the cheap rent. Like, tons of people moving in from the suburbs who kind of weren’t respecting the secrecy or the history.
YK: I mean just what we were saying about the kids who had raves for years and they had directions and all these things. And if you go to this space at that time there were just bikes strewn out on the sidewalk, in front of the building. Where its obvious if you look, or if you look at this one space that was people who nobody was really close to in the building, but they had their clothes hanging in the window.
MT: Yeah.
YK: You can’t….obviously they’re not geared towards the longevity of that space or of that building, or towards the “greater good” at all. But, we stopped having shows because it was just feeling like too many people, too much chaos everywhere.
MT: Yeah because if your building goes down it’s not just the building but it’s that way of life. That way of life is on the wane here.
CW: Yeah.
YK: Mhm.
MT: Like after we got evicted the firemen went and searched Atlantic Mills.
CW: Was it the lack or respect for the secrecy you guys were trying to have that led to the evictions eventually? I didn’t want to talk too much about the evictions, I figured you guys wouldn’t want to but…
YK: I don’t know. I mean there are all these theories about why. And it could’ve been decided from the beginning. You know, we used to have fights in our space about how long we were going to last. And so how set up should we have things be? How permanent should we have them be? Did it matter if this wall was made of cardboard or if it was made to be able to stand, because chances are we could be evicted tomorrow or we could live there seven years. And so it always felt like we could get evicted anyway and there was some thought that maybe the landlord was looking for…knew that…he stuffed the place in the most ridiculous way. Gave residential leases, and obviously commercial space and there was some thought that maybe the landlord was doing that just so that eventually he could have a call get made and then get everyone evicted and have made a ton of money in rent at the same time.
CW: Yeah.
YK: And he’s a fuck. So I wouldn’t be surprised I mean he’s a slumlord. He owns a….
MT: His name is Walter Bronhard, he lives in Fall River, Massachusetts. He’s a chiropractor.
YK: He’s a chiropractor. And he owns the Midori Spa which is also…has been written up for having sex work out of massage therapy, or masseuses. Oh but to get back to your question about community, because I feel like I have a different thing I think about it. I mean, I think that a lot of people feel this way, where you’re in a music scene, and you really want things that are happening that are what comes out of the music, but, don’t want it to just happen through the music. Because especially if you’re around it for years and years, there’s, what happens is you reach this crescendo with shows, right. So you’re enjoying being around people and all of these bodies together. But at the same time it’s hard to have sustainable connection, or maybe you can’t have that in a crowd anyway. But, I definitely lean towards the people who say that they want to be able to have open events that aren’t music as well. And so, I don’t feel like, I don’t know what community is. I can say that it’s hard for me to figure out what it means. But I know that we did try to have things that weren’t just music.