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Photo by Jason Thrasher
Call it a comeback: Pylon Reenactment Society play Orlando this week
Athens, to paraphrase some singer somewhere, has so much to answer for — in
the annals of alternative rock. For a few halcyon years in the 1980s, the Georgia college town was ground zero for adventurous guitar pop, birthing a scene that included R.E.M., The B-52s, Love Tractor … and Pylon.
Though never quite reaching the commercial heights of their better-known pals, Pylon’s angular, brittle, but deeply groovy and buoyant sound has become an inextricable element of the DNA of modern indie music. Pylon released their influential debut album, Gyrate, in 1980, a perfect Southern answer to the post-punk grooves of Gang of Four and Siouxsie and the Banshees; all razor-sharp precision pieces led by the exuberant and commanding snarl and scream of frontwoman Vanessa Briscoe Hay.
Pylon carved out a niche as an oft-copied cult act — though they did play big shows opening for U2 and R.E.M. — before disbanding in 1991, later regrouping in the early 2000s to record for tastemaking label DFA. The death of guitarist Randall Bewley put an end to the original Pylon, but Pylon Reenactment Society is an utterly charming successor. Members of Casper & the Cookies support the inimitable Hay on a romp through the Pylon catalog — and, of late, some new material.
As part of a run of upcoming dates that includes shows in Jacksonville, Memphis and Nashville, Pylon Reenactment Society returns to Orlando on Friday, Aug. 30. It will be their first Central Florida date since a concert at Thornton Park’s Veranda in 2018 and before that, the Beach Club around about 1990 or so. Singer Hay remembers a surreal moment at an early show in Fort Lauderdale where, sitting outside the venue, she spotted a plane in the sky towing a banner that shouted “PYLON TONIGHT.” (Local promoters, take note of this hustle.) “I just cracked up,” she laughs. “Why didn’t I have my camera with me?”
As you may have now surmised, Orlando Weekly had the singular honor of an audience with the iconic Hay, wherein we chatted about past, present and future matters Pylon Reenactment Society.
PRS was originally intended as a one-off, a live happening as part of Art Rocks Athens in 2014, but it quickly became apparent that there was some alchemy at work. The event’s curator, Jason NeSmith, reached out to Hay, wanting to include Pylon’s music in the proceedings. Although hesitant at first, she worked with NeSmith to put a band together. NeSmith studied hard on Bewley’s unique guitar techniques and they did the gig successfully. Hay promptly “put it on a shelf and forgot about it,” but things weren’t over yet.
“A year later, [NeSmith] was like, ‘Hey, we’re doing it again, and we could give you more time this year.’ So we played longer, opening for [B-52s singer] Fred Schneider’s solo project The Superions. Some friends of ours, [Denver indie-rockers] Dressy Bessy, heard about this, and they were about to do a short tour in North Carolina and in Georgia. And they said, ‘Would you like to open for us?’And I was like,‘Somebody wants to see this? They’ll pay to see this?’ But I told them we would. Then after that, we just continued to get offers to play. It organically grew into a writing project. I had, you know, previously been involved in a writing project with Jason and Kay Stanton and Supercluster, and so we just couldn’t help it. We started writing songs. Here we are, 10 years later, we just put out an album [Magnet Factory],” recounts Hay.
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Photo by Christy Bush
Call it a comeback: Pylon Reenactment Society play Orlando this week
“So the idea wasn’t just to continue the Pylon process, it was also a fun thing for us to do. Getting to write with these creative people and perform. With the name, we wanted to be sure that we differentiated ourselves from Pylon. I had the idea to call ourselves the Pylon Reenactment Society. Because the third time, we were having to relearn all of our music and we were jokingly calling ourselves at practice the Pylon Historical Reenactment Society. So I shortened that down a little and that’s where the name came from.”
Hay looks back at a now 45-plus-year “career” in music with a mix of understated surprise and deep gratitude.
“I never could have foreseen this. It’s been very therapeutic for me, and it’s been fun, you know, all the craziness and changes that life brings — to be able to still connect creatively,” she marvels. “In the 1980s, bands didn’t have much of a lifespan beyond five years. I never expected people to continue to have interest. But there were two things that happened in the mid-to-late ’80s after we disbanded. The first was that R.E.M. recorded ‘Crazy’ as a b-side for one of their singles, andt hat rekindled interest. The other thing was Athens, GA: Inside Out [the 1986 Athens scene doc], that brought focus back to Pylon. Otherwise, I think we would have been in cut-out dustbins all over the country, 99 cents.
“In 1988, after I had my first child, R.E.M. started talking to [Pylon members] Michael and Curtis and Randy — I wasn’t going out a whole lot at that point. They were like,‘Y’all need to get back together. We think the world’s ready for you now.’ Well, they might not have been ready, but we sure had fun.”
Despite the tongue-in-cheek appellation “Reenactment Society,” PRS is a living and breathing creative undertaking with new, younger fans dancing to all points of the Pylon discography.
“I think the kids have always gotten us. When we play around the country, I see our audience. They’ll be people that are my age, and down somewhat younger into their 40s, and then I’ll see almost an equal-sized group of high school- and college-age kids who just discovered us,” she says.
“I love that energy. I don’t dance as much as I used to; I spend a lot of my energy just getting sounds out there. But the music itself inspires movement. The audience dances for me. I live vicariously through them.”
You have your gyrating orders, Orlando.
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