A pop-up, street-side gallery in Waterbury is a tribute to live music and inspires an impromptu rock and roll guessing game. Both are sweet and dandy.
The art hangs at 14 South Main Street: 19 photographs of rockers fill the storefront’s windows. Shot by two Vermont photographers, the performers are singing, playing guitar, vamping it up with the crowd, jumping in the air or kneeling down. All the images but one were shot at Vermont shows.
The improvised game — call it Name That Musician — is fun, free and playable 24-7, just like rock and roll.
Here’s how to play: Go to Main Street, look at the photos and identify the performers. Take as long as you want. Some are gimmes; others might stump you. As reggae star Jimmy Cliff sings: “You can get it if you really want / But you must try, try and try, try and try / You’ll succeed at last.”
The poster-size prints went up last month, hung by restaurateur Eric Warnstedt. A music lover and aficionado, Warnstedt can see the photographs from his office above Prohibition Pig, his brewpub across the street. Most people see them from the street.
Brian Jenkins, a photographer who lives in Jericho, shot 16 of the photographs. He calls the location “amazing.”
“It’s actually something that I’ve always wanted to do — have large prints on display in a window setting,” Jenkins, 47, said.
I came upon the photographs in early August when I was driving through Waterbury looking for a favorite sight: a poster of Miles Davis wearing a tank top, bending back, playing his trumpet. The image had filled a window at 14 South Main Street for a few months. It was gone.
“Where’s Miles?!” I texted Warnstedt.
“MIA,” he answered. “Replaced by Grace.”
On the building’s south-facing wall is a shot of Grace Potter playing her Gibson Flying V guitar. It’s hard to tell where her boots end and her pants begin.
Jenkins took the photo in September of 2015 at Grand Point North, Potter’s music festival on the Burlington waterfront.
“That Grace shot is one of my favorites,” he told me in a phone call. “It exudes rock star.”
Hanging near Potter is a photo of Willie Nelson playing at Shelburne Museum. The image and two others were shot by photographer Ben Hudson of Shelburne. Trey Anastasio is holding his guitar high, pointing it to the sky in a photo by Jenkins. In another by him, Cliff is wearing a yellow T-shirt with his own name on in it. (No more giveaways here; go to Waterbury and play the who’s who game, fair and square!)
Jenkins first photographed Potter in January of 2005 at Nectar’s. He was a bartender at the Burlington nightclub for 14 years and had access to bands for his freelance photography work. “I love music, and I love going to see live music,” he said.
Jenkins specializes in shooting sports and music — live-action settings that are constantly changing.
“It’s a very fast-paced environment,” Jenkins said. “You have to really anticipate what’s going to happen to get a good shot. I want the viewer to feel they’re right there in the action.”
Music and sports gigs dried up in the pandemic, and Jenkins lost freelance work. He’s been the photographer at Beta Technologies, the South Burlington-based aviation company, for two years.
“I love it,” he said.
Warnstedt is a longtime supporter of Jenkins’ work, the photographer said, starting with the purchase of a Flaming Lips print. In April, when Jenkins was sick with COVID-19, he got an email from Warnstedt asking about concert prints for the Waterbury building.
“I was thrilled,” Jenkins said.
Warnstedt bought the rights to the prints for that purpose, according to Jenkins. Working with suggestions from Warnstedt, Jenkins chose photos that he thought would fit well in the windows.
“I love them all,” Jenkins said. “It was so hard to narrow it down to a few shots.”
A few weeks ago, Jenkins was in Waterbury to eat at the Reservoir, a restaurant on Main Street. He was pleased to see the photos in place.
“They look so awesome,” he said. “I’m honored.”
The photographs conceal a construction project in the building, giving rise to a second guessing game: What’s going on in there?
The Widespread Rumor — not to be confused with Widespread Panic — is that Hen of the Wood is moving from its original location on Stowe Street to Main Street. Warnstedt, founder and co-owner of Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, opened the restaurant in 2005 in a former grist mill. He declined to comment on a possible move. But he did say the prints are his and that he hung them in the windows on Main Street.
To quote the Charlie Rich hit, “Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.”
View Brian Jenkins’ and Ben Hudson’s rock photos at 14 South Main St. in Waterbury.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Pictures From Nectar’s — and Other Venues”
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2022.
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