Northeastern Pennsylvania has certain fixtures that have always been part of our area, or seemed like they always have been: the Susquehanna, Steamtown, “the mall,” Old Forge pizza and the never-ending construction on Interstate 81 certainly come to mind. For a while there, it even seemed that the hole on Northampton Street was a permanent part of downtown Wilkes-Barre, but now it’s a movie theater that was a major player in getting the city back on track.
This Thursday, Jan. 17 in downtown Wilkes-Barre, a new fixture begins in NEPA. The Weekender, along with Prairie Queen Records, will present Fixture, a monthly original music series held at Fuse in the Midtown Village. The inaugural show features The Moneynotes and Orner Brothers.
The name came about while Weekender Editor Michael Lello, who organized the event with Bill Orner of Orner Brothers and Prairie Queen Records, was flipping through a dictionary.
“I like how it refers to a lighting fixture, with light being something positive, and also the other meaning, as something with staying power,” he said. “As in, a fixture of the community.”
Fixture focuses on bands that might not normally play the bar/club scene, especially in the Wilkes-Barre area.
“This is a chance for them to play places they wouldn’t usually play and maybe play in front of audiences that tend not to go to all-ages venues like Test Pattern or Cafe Metropolis,” Lello said.
Making sure Fixture would be held in Wilkes-Barre was a main point for Lello.
“I didn’t want to do something that was already done — when these bands do play bars and clubs, it’s generally in Scranton,” he said. “So replicating that and giving it a name in Scranton really wouldn’t do much. I think this is a chance to bring these bands to Wilkes-Barre on a consistent basis.”
That’s something that Bill Orner agrees with.
“A lot of folks from Wilkes-Barre come see shows, but a lot don’t,” he said. “It’s so close but so different. This is part of our plan to get ourselves a little bit more visible in the public, [and] we need Wilkes-Barre too. A lot of people just don’t go down to Wilkes-Barre or up to Scranton, you know, because of the ‘Scranton/Wilkes-Barre turnpike,’” Orner added with a laugh.
Though this inaugural Fixture — and the second that will feature The Sw!ms acoustic and the Charles Havira Band on Feb. 7 — include notable Scranton-based acts, the showcase won’t just be relegated to bands from that city. First and foremost, Fixture is about bands with all- original sets.
Lello hopes to eventually see our entire region have the thriving indie scene that Scranton is becoming known for. Especially with bands like Lewis & Clarke hailing from Delaware Water Gap, Wilkes-Barre’s A Strand of Oaks and even The A-Sides — who might not have been from the area but were on Scranton’s Prison Jazz Records before getting signed to a major label.
“It would be cool if it became NEPA being put on the map for that, so instead of saying ‘We’re Scranton’ or ‘We’re Wilkes-Barre,’ we’re all kind of one,” Lello said. “From my experience, the bands don’t look at it that way, but the way the business has been structured, it just worked out that they do play in Scranton because there’s a little scene that books their own shows.”
Though there might always be that old adage that “there’s nothing to do in Wilkes-Barre,” Lello hopes people realize that even though it might never be a big city with a big city music scene, there’s still many cool things to do in NEPA. .
“I hope there’s some consistency to it, so if people know that the first Thursday of the month, if they go to Fuse, they’re going to see some really cool bands,” Lello said. “Even if they’ve never heard of them, they know that, based maybe on some other people that have heard them, consistency is the main word.”
The mythology of the Moneynotes
Formerly known as Dr. Horsemachine and the Moneynotes, this eclectic band is made up of Mike Williams, Coleman Smith, Pat Finnerty, Mike Quinn, Jeff “Setty” Hopkins, Brian Craig and Roy Williams. The members, playing instruments that range from guitar, drums and bass to washboard, mandolin, fiddle and trombone, also moonlight as their alter egos Proud Ric Finn, Mid Chocolate, TrailBoss, Norge, Expired, Checkers and Rocket. The band recently changed its name to just the Moneynotes — sort of.
“The Dr. isn’t as directly involved with us anymore,” explained Expired. “We figured we’d change our name to kind of reflect that. He’s still more of a silent partner and we’re trying to make the name be more open-ended so it can vary between ‘and the Moneynotes,’ ‘The Moneynotes,’ just ‘Moneynotes.’”
Though not the Moneynotes’ first gig — or last — in Wilkes-Barre, Expired is looking forward to kicking off Fixture.
“It’s nice to be getting out of just playing Scranton,” he said. “We’re not familiar with the area very much, and we’re looking forward to getting out and seeing some new venues. It should be a lot of fun with the Orner Brothers who we also kind of share some other members with them.”
With these two bands, it isn’t rare to find members playing sets with each other on any given night, something many bands might not be open to.
“It’s very unique and interesting,” Expired said of that ability to moonlight between bands. “Everybody’s interested in playing music and looking for all sorts of different outlets.”
Despite being such a large band with several songwriters, the Moneynotes’ writing process is a team effort.
“The Dr. used to mail letters to us directly or notes, kind of anecdotes with no specific songs, just an idea, and the band would work off that idea,” Expired said. “[There’s] generally four or five people working on a song now.”
Even with Dr. Horsemachine’s absence, the band is currently working on its next album, the follow-up to last year’s catchy “This Year We Hunt,” but the band currently doesn’t have a release date.
“The work is going along pretty nicely,” Expired said. “We’re hoping to have some kind of finished product by the summer. I’m not sure if it’s in the cards yet or not, but it looks that way.”
Prairie Queen and ‘Wine’
Based in Scranton, Fixture’s co-presenter Prairie Queen Records is home to The Minor White, The Moneynotes and The Orner Brothers. According to Bill Orner, who runs the label with Mike Stalter, Prairie Queen is in the process of signing two more acts to its family.
The Orner Brothers — featuring the non-brothers Jay Noble, Bill Orner, Ian O’Hara, Roy Williams, Brian Craig and Coleman Smith — will begin working on their own album in February, with a tentative springtime release.
“We’ve been working on tunes for a while,” said Orner. “We actually started the recording process at the end of the summer, but everybody got real busy and we just let it fall. Now we’ve decided we’re just going to go into the studio and knock it out in a weekend.”
Orner was a member of The Can’t Help Its as well as the popular, late Mighty Fine Wine, though there really aren’t many similarities between the latter band and The Orner Brothers.
“It’s much more relaxed — we don’t play nearly as much, like a quarter or an eighth of what we used to,” he explained. “[Mighty Fine Wine] used to play four or five times a week, now we’re lucky if we play two or three times a month.
“We don’t have to worry about bringing 200 people to a club on a Friday night because we much more prefer to play to 50 people or 20 people that are actually going to listen as opposed to the 200 that are there just to get drunk.”
Orner relishes the fact that Prairie Queen is so close-knit and he and his bandmates can mingle with the Moneynotes and the Minor White — it’s just another creative outlet for them.
“Nobody plays the same kind of stuff,” he said. “Each individual person gets to do their own thing.”
He recalled that at a recent gig, Roy Williams played in three different bands on the bill.
“He played three completely different sounds and played three completely different instruments.”
w