MoonSpoon's Day Party at the UMS This Saturday Will Feature a Surrealist Show & Tell, 'Blind Date' Performances, & More

At last year’s UMS, we threw our Brunch with a Beat Day Party and brought you bands like Church Fire, déCollage, Erin Stereo, Mirror Fears, Retrofette, and Whiskey Autumn. This year, we’ve partnered with Moon Magnet Studios to bring you yet another danceable day party at the three-day fest called MoonSpoon this Saturday, July 28th from 12PM-4PM at the Irish Rover. Though the party will feature plenty of musical performances, Moon Magnet is spicing up the style of this event and bringing a ton of fun activities to the mix. We sat down with Moon Magnet’s Reed Fox to chat about what you can expect Saturday:

Reed! What is MoonSpoon?

Long Spoon is a collective label that Denver artist Laura Goldhamer cohered with glorious pals from Denver bands like Paper Bird and Eye & the Arrow. The collective came together while Goldhamer ran a Denver DIY arts and community space called “Brooks Center Arts: Underground Tea House.” Goldhamer created the DIY space in the basement of a historical church in Cap Hill in 2007, and coordinated numerous concerts, art shows, spirituality classes, and other progressive cultural events until its close in 2009. In 2008, Long Spoon released a compilation of Colorado artists, which features such Denver greats like Nathaniel Rateliff and Ian Cooke. Long Spoon ultimately influenced me to form Moon Magnet. Laura Goldhamer and I are now uniting to explore MoonSpoon, an overlap of old and new ethos!

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Cool. The noon slot on the day party is a “show and tell.” What is that? Is it what most of us remember doing back in elementary school?

Imagine if you had five minutes to show off anything you wanted. This is your chance to show us your closet dance moves, let the crowd name your new goldfish, cast a shadow puppet or show off your third grade painting or poem. You could perform an impression, read a diary entry, rap, shows us your oddities/collections, draw live with crayons, DJ from your phone, say a joke, or do some karate! Message us and we'll give you a five minute slot to peek through the space time continuum and share anything you want with the world. You can also be anonymous and present from behind our silver curtain. There will probably be a makeshift shower with a lot of reverb if that makes you more comfortable. Actually there probably won’t be. Every 30 minutes we'll take a field trip to the bar in our imaginary airplanes. This is surrealist show & tell, a harp strung with barbed wire, a morphological echo: your lobster telephone.

Following “show and tell” is a Blind Date meets Whose Line Is It Anyway gameshow at 1pm. What are the rules?

Blind Date was one of the most memorable and enjoyable shows Moon Magnet’s thrown over the past five years. Last time it featured members of Other Black, Ancient Elk, Ghost Tapes, Rubedo, Twin Flame Medicine, and Retrofette. This year, I’m sure it will include some of the same people and more. Come get your heart broken! A curated group of musicians will be randomly paired to play a song together. Each song has a time limit to keep their date from getting too steamy- get a room already will yah! Dice will decide how many artists play together on any given song. Everyone in the audience will write on a piece of paper what they want the next song to sound like and a few submissions will be pulled from a hat for each song. No dater will know who they are forced to "play" with until their names are pulled out of a goblet, hence the term blind date. Just wait for the speed dating round!

Sweet Sally! Tell us about Laura Goldhamer's Folktron-a-thon Y2K slot at 2PM.

Folktron-a-thon started between 2009 and 2010 as a somewhat organic open mic which flowed from one person playing a few tunes and friends/acquaintances tastefully chiming in with spontaneous sonic support. Even though it was gently facilitated by Goldhamer, rather than a sign up list, it smoothly transitioned from one song leader to the next. The first Folktron-a-thon was in 2009 but was instead called “Folktron-a-thon 2005,” and thus this year we chose to nonsensically and non-chronologically call it “Folktron-a-thon Y2K!” We will encourage friends to come prepared to perform a song or two, and sit in with others on whatever instrument is available to subtly lend help to the song.

What’s going to follow Y2K?

My solo project Poppet will be playing a special set, ‘surprises are foolish things.'  It will be a step away from my usual routine, and so an experiment. Anything can happen (but should not be expected). The only certainties are organized sound, perfect intervals, and a performative element.”

Meep Records will also be involved with this day party. What are they bringing to the show?

Meep Records is run by Adam Baumeister. He makes lathe cut vinyl records for musicians and vinyl enthusiasts. They make perfect gifts for holiday presents, your band’s album release party, and custom mixtapes for your significant other. He’s made hundreds, thousands of records and is bringing a gaggle of them to the day party. He also cut 20 limited edition déCollage records with our new single on stained glass 7” records. Plus, they’re square! This will be the fifth record I’ve printed through him and they always sell out quickly so come check them out!

How can people who want to join in the fun get more involved?

Message me or comment on the Facebook event if you have a talent or object you’d like to show off at the “Surrealist Show and Tell” or if you want to perform in our “Blind Date!”

Stay tuned for more announcements about MoonSpoon from us and join our Facebook event for the day here.