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\tRecently, Jack Callahan pointed me to the phrase “The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is The Highest Form of Art”—the title of a piece of conceptual art by California-based artist Tom Marioni. Jack had recently emblazoned this quote on an illustrated poster made by Queens, NY-based illustrators Carlos and Miguel Cevallos and the phrase has since stuck with me. I too think that drinking beer with friends can be the highest form of art. The beers shared after an experimental music show are often where the discourse, the arguments, the magic, and the darkness really go down. There is something both hallowed and luciferian about these post-show beers—how they can eclipse the show itself, how they can lead to lifelong aesthetic misunderstandings, or friendships. More, I couldn’t think of a better phrase for what it feels like to know Jack Callahan and Jeff Witscher as people, let alone their music. 

\tIn 2019, I organized the New York City premiere for Jack and Jeff’s piece What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. Jack, Jeff, Alec Sturgis, myself, and many other young and pioneering artists had recently convened at the Neo-Pastiche: Changes In American Music festival in Asheville North Carolina—somewhat of a summit that showcased some recent actions in various experimental music circles paired alongside historic works. After the festival, The New York City ISSUE show felt something like an epic homecoming—a kind of institutional validation for epochs of marginal and intense discourse that had been happening previously at the festival. I’d like to think the title of this LP ISSUES makes a nod to this show; but, I know it’s likely a celebration of the ISSUEs we all have with music in 2022 … and certainly before that too. That, and the classic 1999 Korn album. 

\tJack and Jeff are *provocateurs* and *pioneers* (*said in a Matthew McConnaughy voice*) who have produced far-ranging work under various monikers. Recently they’ve used primary descriptors such as “Music Art” and “Sound Music” as formal headings that re-assert the simplicity of their own respective practices. What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth is an intersection of these individual approaches—a savage showcase of both narrative and music’s destinies to “go nowhere but here”—to remain on this earth and be understood—or not understood. It is a testament to all that is fleeting but also a reminder that “if you’re reading (hearing) this” … you are still within this world. Begun in 2017 as an idea, the piece consists of a series of prompts given to selection of interviewees (Madalyn Merkey, Asha Sheshadri, Colleen O’Connor, Nihal Ramchandani, Daren Ho, and Josh Haringa) whose responses are recorded. The piece is organized from this material with each staging being one of many possible realizations. The work itself examines the banality of the “human drama” in the 21st century, taking the familiar Q&A format as its basic form and functioning as an expanded generative interview between multiple speakers—both human speakers and technological speakers. When taken as a whole, the piece is an unhinged, overlapping narrative of contemporary life. 

\tThe piece synthesizes qualities and tensions between Jack and Jeff’s solo works and compositional approaches: both of which resist, celebrate, and subvert the complex and dreaded musical “narrative” in different ways. For one, in plenty of conversations Jack and I have had about “narrative” in music, it’s clear to me that he actively detests it. Instead, he stalwartly dons a formalist approach—intently resisting narrative and regularly seeking to compose self-generating compositions that produce themselves at the genesis of their namesakes. He’s recently done this on 2018’s Vocoder (released on Arnau Sala and Ivy Barkakati’s label Anòmia) and 2019’s 106 Kerri Chandler Chords (released on Nick Klein and Miguel Alvariño’s label Primitive Language)—both literal, formal considerations of their own making. The pieces effectively accomplish exactly what they set out to do; and, through their titles and composition, a listener can expect exactly from the piece what they will inevitably hear. In this gesture, Jack demonstrates how composition can “display how it manipulates its audience,” defiantly relinquishing authorship as well as any semblance of narrative—flattening himself as the composer, his use of a technology (Vocoder) or his use of a source material (Kerri Chandler’s chords). And yet, narrative so clearly manipulates us in complex and often opaque ways. We are driven to tell stories, participate, commune, and converse about and around music as much as we are driven to simply listen to it. Maddeningly, these things plunge us into the discourse of experimental music and often “steer its ship” so to speak. Yet again, “the act of drinking beer with friends is the highest form of art.” I think What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth is Jack’s confrontation and attempt to subvert this kind of narrative in sound—taking it on like a boxer and attempting to tame it within his modular, matrixed compositional approach. Like a Kerri Chandler chord, the “beer after the show” becomes a formal element of the piece. 

\tJeff, on the other hand, obviously relishes in narrative—especially how they can become unhinged and form complex, deranged, radiant stories. His recent works like “Cinco'd\" feat. Paul Balance & friends (released on the Nina protocol) or his album Approximately 1,000 Beers (released on his own imprint Salon) present narratives amalgamated with musical elements and spoken texts sourced from written, found, surfed, and wrecked texts. Raiding all genres to both clarify and disorient, Jeff regularly communicates everyday thoughts and sentiments in tandem with each other—hybridizing and deepening narrative into something nearly unassailable and uniquely expressive. It’s clear Jeff takes pleasure in finding sound-text relationships that remain utterly open to interpretation. In his vision, a country song about Cinco de Mayo becomes a staging ground for a new kind of motivational music; or, an incident at a Dodgers vs. Mets game becomes a devastating and strangely emotional album closer. Jeff is a master storyteller, showcasing open narratives that free-wheel and diverge into as many cryptic associations as possible, ambivalent to but also keenly understanding music’s affect. His music represents an anarchy that can withstand itself, that can bend with the pressure it puts on itself. It stands strong, proudly displaying its own form as a kind of expected chaos. I think this teaches us something about musical narrative—that through its opacity and through our regular inability to clearly communicate with each other … something special and expressive emerges. 

In this way, What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth sits squarely at the intersection of their respective practices: Jack’s matrixed and formalist organizational approach hybridized with Jeff’s way of presenting mysterious yet somehow still illuminating narratives alongside each other. The union causes the tales told by the interviewees to cascade and develop further. The piece is a true experiment in the modularity of our common drama, sharing sensibilities with radio art, A.A. meetings, group therapy sessions, formatlist and fluxus generative poetry experiments, or Robert Ashley’s television operas—all operations that express tension between inner monologue and group communication. It shows us both narrative and music’s destinies to “go nowhere but here.” The greatest story ever told, the greatest beer sesh with friends ever had, the highest form of art ever made, will never be revealed because just like “What Happens in Vegas Stays In Vegas,” this music—and our stories—will stay on earth; and what happens on earth stays on earth.

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