Mike Massey of City on the Make on Music and Arts Education
photo by Jeff Henrickson
How did you get into making music, and how did arts education (or lack thereof) affect you and your music?
All of us in City on the Make grew up in South Minneapolis. My first experience in “making” music was with Mischa. We made a rap tape in seventh grade called People Eaters. Before that I took guitar lessons (side story: shout out to Bill, Mike and my cousin Matt for taking me to get my first guitar) at Abe’s Music Shoppe on Nicollet, and when they closed, I sort of started listening to too much Wu Tang to continue playing the guitar. Mischa however, stuck with it. You can kind of tell. Anyways, we made a rap tape called People Eaters and it was absolutely terrible.
As Mischa and I were pushing cassette tapes at Anthony Jr. High, Colin and Stephen were getting schooled in music at Ramsey Jr. High, where there was an emphasis on fine and performing arts. Colin and Stephen have been playing music together since they were like seven. In this lies the origin of what we call the “no look pass.”
High school comes, all of us get to South High, start a funk band with a bunch of other friends called Public Access and play shows in church basements and coffee shops, and putz around with that. Eventually, through the goings on of life, our consistent group shrank down to the four of us. I had moved away to Milwaukee for my first year of college and came back to find these guys playing in their basement regularly again. So we started playing rock and roll.
Now we play some rock and roll. And try very hard to keep both People Eaters tapes and Public Access CD’s suppressed.
Well, as stated, Colin and Stephen were brought up in the public schools under dedicated teachers (Tom Wells is a very fine fellow indeed) and because of this, have some formal training. It’s not a stretch to say that this band wouldn’t exist were it not for people like Tom Wells and the programs and incentives that made Ramsey a fine arts-public junior high. And on the other hand, I never took a music class in school, but despite that, always found some way to make music with my friends with what was available. So our backgrounds go both ways and meet in the same place. There is always possibility for creativity, especially if it develops early on in life, or in the progression of one’s identity. Programs like Ramsey’s music department are very vital to our conception, as are things like the Walker Art Center’s Teen Programs department. They give an outlet to youth, who through no fault of their own are restless. Arts Education gives agency to kids to both discipline and expand themselves, instead of write them off or judge them for their reactions to their environment. It’s important to be exposed to new ideas as you grow up, and equally important to have people, not just family but also people out in the rest of the world, who believe in you as more than just a nuisance or a liability.
I also want to express the importance of all ages shows at the time we were growing up. Places like Eclipse Records on Grand in St. Paul, the Foxfire Lounge, Bon Apetite, 7th Street Entry All ages shows and Intermedia Arts. All Ages shows were much more prominent in the late 1990s than they are now. Without these, I don’t know if I or we would have ever developed the drive and desire to perform and contribute in a live setting.
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