This story is published in partnership with Super Empty.
It’s hard to tell if, by Cicely Mitchell’s standards at least, I’m catching her on a busy day.
When I meet her one morning at Missy Lane’s Assembly Room—the jazz club she opened on Durham’s East Main Street last year, expanding on her considerable curation and event promotion bona fides—she’s just finished up a meeting. Forty-five minutes into our conversation, she has to hop on a Zoom call with Radio One Raleigh (K97.5, Foxy107.1) to talk about media coverage and sponsorship packages. As we part ways and make plans to re-connect in a few days, her next meeting is already walking in.
A week later, on the phone, I ask if even a modest reprieve will be in order when Missy Lane’s Block Party, her newest venture (an all-day street festival on Oct. 4th, featuring jazz/R&B heavy hitters like Donald Harrison Jr., Braxton Cook, Teedra Moses, and Bilal), concludes.
“Oh, it’s right back to work,” she says.
“The week after that, we have a pop-up with Fever to do the Edgar Allen Poe bar. And then the following week we have something, and the week after that is [NC] Central’s Homecoming, so we got a whole weekend of events for that.”
Though it sounds exhausting, it also comes with the territory. Throwing events is what Mitchell does (well, half of what she does — she’s a biostatistician, too). And over the years, she’s been known for one event more than any other: the multi-day, Durham-based jazz festival Art of Cool, which was acquired by promotions company The DOME Group in 2018, and which held its most recent installment in 2019.
In the eyes of many, the beloved 2010s cultural institution that was Art of Cool has long since died. But in reality, it’s suffered a fate that might be even worse: a suspended state of quasi-life, tethered to this realm by only a wafer-thin website that solicits newsletter signups with the foreboding call-to-action: “SUBSCRIBE FOR AOC:2023 UPDATES.” As of this writing, the festival’s penultimate Instagram post is an announcement about the outbreak of COVID-19.
Between the festival’s vestigial modern-day existence and the natural passage of time, it would be hard today to convey to a new Durhamite just how important, impressive and esteemed AOC once was — how much its culture of electric, high-profile collaboration on the stage and “what legend am I standing next to?” spontaneity in the crowd contributed to the heady sense of cultural possibility that suffused the Bull City at the time; how well its wide-angled interpretation of jazz (pulling in funk, soul and hip-hop) captured the artistic and unpretentious spirit that was making Durham a hipster darling in the national press.
“Art of Cool was a special moment,” says Mitchell. “It’s very rare to hear the same type of moment or memory from different stakeholders, but over the years I’ve heard the same memory, same moment where everybody felt like this is what Durham is about.“
Perhaps that’s why, when the club owner ran into trumpeter and AOC alum Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott) at last year’s Newport Jazz Festival and he suggested a re-launch of the seminal event, she didn’t take much convincing. Billed this time as a co-presenter along with Adjuah’s label, Stretch Music, Mitchell has re-calibrated the scope and grandiosity for greater financial sustainability (“I wish we would have started out much smaller,” she says), but the mission remains the same: expanding the audience for jazz music, and creating an ambiance that feels as warm, inviting, and familial as ever — even when the performers include GRAMMY winners and NEA Jazz Masters.
And this time, there’s one more preoccupation on Mitchell’s mind as well.
“I’m all about, on this next journey, expanding people’s minds, and place-making about the east part of downtown,” she says. “To get from the middle of downtown over to Ponysaurus [Brewing], you’ve got to pass by Weldon [Mills Distillery], you’ve got to pass by Missy Lane’s, you’ve got to pass by The Fruit.”
The advocacy is understandable for a few blocks which, even with the added presence of the jazz club the past 18+months, can remain a foot-traffic no man’s land — the kind of stretch that drivers pass through every day without even thinking about it.
On October 4th, at least, that won’t be possible. The road will be completely shut down. And Art of Cool, in a way, will finally be back.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
For those who don’t know, can you talk about how you got immersed into this world of music and curation, from Art of Cool to now Missy Lane’s Assembly Room and the upcoming block party? Is it something you always wanted to do, or was it a pivot partway through life?
When I went off to college, I thought I was going to be a math teacher. Then along the way, I did really good in statistics, found my way over to UNC-Chapel Hill, and then thought “I’ll just be a statistician for my career”—and that’s still part of my career. But then I met [trumpeter] Al Strong and we started working on Art of Cool together. And so I feel like both my career paths chose me and I just flowed with it. Once we started Art of Cool, I realized that I could do both, and that’s just how it’s been for almost 15 years.
When you opened Missy Lane’s, did you go full-time with music and curating or are you still managing the two careers?
Oh no, I’m still managing the two careers at this time. It feels like I can still do both, but it’s getting to the point where a choice has to be made. I’m really, really excited about expanding beyond just the club and being able to do the block party, but also helping Biscuits & Banjos and building out my consulting work. We just re-launched the music series that’s at Brightleaf [Square], so I’m taking on more clients to build a full portfolio in order to transition at some point.
At the announcement event for Missy Lane’s Block Party, you described it as a “do-over” in reference to Art of Cool. It struck me that rarely are people vulnerable enough to use those words, which could make something from the past sound like a regret or a failure. How did you come to that word choice?
Well, selling [Art of Cool] I will say, was a bittersweet choice for me. The economics of festivals are so crazy. At that moment in my life, I needed to take a break and re-group. And so it’s always been one of those things where it’s like if I got to do it all over again… the original festival concept of three days and multiple stages and taking over the entire downtown, that was the major goal. We swung for the fences the first time, and then once you give it to people on that level, you have to continue. So I don’t want to call it a regret, but I wish we would have started out much smaller. And so that’s why I feel like the block party is a do-over where it’s like this is what it should have been in the beginning, so that we can grow it and grow it organically and with more financial stability.
As far as what you liked about AOC the most, I’m wondering what you want to re-capture about it that we haven’t had in Durham since it went away.
It’s more like something you can’t buy. Art of Cool was a special moment. And so with the first [Missy Lane’s Block Party], being able to invite some of the people from the first few years that still remember Durham—how it was, and how that time was—it’s very rare to hear the same type of moment or memory from different stakeholders, but over the years I’ve heard the same memory, same moment where everybody felt like this is what Durham is about. Seeing all types of people, all different races, come together and just enjoy the music… downtown was buzzing, and it just was a special time in Durham.
The players love to come, the bands love to come to Durham because most of the time when they do play on large stages for jazz, I mean to be very honest, they’re not playing to a Black audience. So that was one of the big things that they loved about it, is that it was a very diverse audience. They loved Black Wall Street and learning about the history of the music in this area. And so that’s what I thought was very rare about the festival. You could feel the love and familiar bond between the bands, and now there’s a mutual respect that has grown over the years.
Part of the reason why the block party is coming back, at least as a re-imagining of Art of Cool, is because of Chief Adjuah and how excited he was. When we reconnected at Newport [Jazz Festival] last year, he was excited to see me, he was excited to hear about what was going on with the festival. I told him that we sold it, and then he came to [Missy Lane’s] earlier this year, and that’s when it set in motion. He was like, “No, we should relaunch it and make some calls.” And here we are.
That Durham energy you’re talking about from that moment in time—in the wake of the pandemic and other factors that took some of that away, have you started to feel the city getting back to that place?
There have been many signs that show that vibe is coming back. I was happy to see that Joshua Gunn [new director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development] is coming back home. It’s just little small moments where it’s like, “OK, it’s all coming back together.” Even hearing just this week about the theater on Parrish Street that’s opening up [arthouse cinema Skin and Bones Theater]—that gives me hope.
Durham NEXT is forming as an entity [and] on their agenda is festival funding. There are these glimmers that show that we’re moving in the right direction, [but] it has been slow because of the pandemic. All cities had a moment of pause, and I would think that all cities are trying to re-imagine what their cultural art scene is going to look like moving forward because everything was kind of wiped clean.
The Block Party is billed as an evolution, or continuation, of Art of Cool—but also something new and different. How have you approached a project that feels like it’s partially a homecoming and partially a debut?
It’s fun—we tried to get as many alums back as we could for this first lineup, and it’s about legacy and storytelling. At the time I, was a young presenter, I didn’t have much experience putting on a major festival, and those bands took a chance on me, just like I took a chance on them being very young in their careers. And we got lucky [laughs], and some of those people went on to become somebody, even though we knew that they had potential to be that very early on. So it is kind of a reminder to “Trust The Curator” — that’s our calling card. You’re going to see people that you don’t know, and that’s OK, because 10 years from now you’re going to say, “Oh, I saw them when they were coming up, and then now I can see them in a big stadium.”
The lineups at Art of Cool were pretty squarely jazz-focused at first, and then over the years, there started to be more and more hip-hop and R&B, and it felt like it really came to represent a pretty expansive definition of the term or genre of “jazz.” How are you approaching that mix this time around, and also how does it maybe differ this year from how you might approach it in future years?
Normally, our formula is we’re going to have a legend, and that legend is then going to help lead us down a path of who’s pushing the genre now. And so we have that legend, and [this year] that’s Big Chief Donald Harrison Jr. Old heads know him for being in The Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey and playing with Terrence Blanchard and other NEA [National Endowment of the Arts] Jazz Masters. Big Chief is also an NEA Jazz Master, which is like receiving a lifetime achievement award, like the top award that you would get in jazz, unless you get a Kennedy Honor or something like that.
We lead with that, but also there’s a documentary out about Notorious B.I.G. and his influences, and Donald Harrison Jr. is one of those influences. So that’s a connection to hip-hop. And I’m always trying to figure out, again—the goal is to expand the audience for jazz. You can’t just have a bunch of jazz luminaries up there and expect young people to know who they are.
“I’m all about, on this next journey, expanding people’s minds, and place-making about the east part of downtown. Because the west part, that’s the part everybody knows. It’s something about as soon as you cross over South Roxboro Street, like you’re not in downtown anymore, but then you remember you are because you got to Mezcalito somehow.”
And then also of course, Big Chief is Chief Adjuah’s uncle, and that’s how Chief Adjuah got his start. He would go on tour with his uncle at a very young age, and that’s how he became the jazz phenom that he is now.
We wanted to have a lot of family. There’s the family reference between Chief and Big Chief, but then also there’s the partnership with Chief’s record label, which is Stretch Music. Some of the people that emerged out of Stretch Music—whether the record label or whether [they] just had played in his band before—are on this as well. Braxton Cook used to be a side man to Chief Adjuah when he was formerly Christian Scott.
[He’s] played Art of Cool twice and played Missy Lane’s once. So there’s just that kind of camaraderie that you’re going to feel when you see them on stage at any given time. Most of these people who play know each other, and I like booking like that. There has to be some sort of camaraderie between the bands so that it really does feel like a homecoming. Something very warm, like a true block party.
Going back to what you said about the scale of Art of Cool in the past and how maybe you bit off more than you could chew, how has that influenced your approach this time around? On the horizon, can you imagine expanding past this one-day format, or do you want to keep throwing them at this scale, with these block parties in the street?
I like one-day—for one, because the DOT is probably not going to let us shut that block down for two days. But it’s a very large block, and so it definitely has room for us to grow. And then if we were to expand beyond the footprint because it’s just too big one day, I mean, I’m still thinking we would add another venue on that same day. You could go maybe one more city block if you wanted to.
“You lose the authenticity of the event if you just bring something from outside and plop it down. Durham is one of those cities where it’s just like, we really want to feel something authentic.”
I’m all about, on this next journey, expanding people’s minds, and placemaking about the east part of downtown. Because the west part, that’s the part everybody knows. It’s something about as soon as you cross over South Roxboro Street, like you’re not in downtown anymore, but then you remember you are because you got to Mezcalito somehow. And so I’m just trying to let people know, in order for you to get from the middle of downtown over to Ponysaurus [Brewing], you’ve got to pass by Weldon [Mills Distillery], you’ve got to pass by Missy Lane’s, you’ve got to pass by The Fruit. There’s urban life that’s happening downtown, and this is about placemaking.
We talked about the difficulties of getting support and resources for something in NC when there isn’t a big mainstream artist or large corporate entity heading it up. You’ve had as much experience with this as anyone, from major artist-backed events like Rhiannon Giddens’ Biscuits & Banjos, to your own more grassroots efforts. What do you think that hurdle is, and how do you try to navigate it?
I think there’s something, I don’t know who said it within hip-hop or what have you, but it’s hard to get love at home. And it doesn’t matter where you’re from. I hear most artists say they get more love outside the city than they do at home. So I think for some reason, that just happens with most cities. Most cities look to other cities as the city that they want to be like. And because of that mentality, different stakeholders seem to think that as well.
So they think, “Oh yeah, we’ll [be able to] fast-track what we’re trying to do, if I have this big shiny thing come, or court something from out of town, or jump on the bandwagon of an outside artist being very popular,” instead of developing what is already showing promise and proof of concept here. I don’t know if that happens just in “second cities,” or small cities that are trying to become big cities—but Durham already has some really dope festival concepts, and we’re not even just talking about the stuff that I’ve done. I mean Black August In The Park has used pennies to make such a huge impact. I think somebody said they’ve turned dust into diamonds.
We need to be able to continue to support those kinds of local festivals that then become regional and national festivals. Because you lose the authenticity of the event if you just bring something from outside and plop it down. Durham is one of those cities where it’s just like, we really want to feel something authentic.
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