BMP (Buffalo Music Players) Episode 44: Sage Enderton

Sage Enderton, aka Skenderton, local poet, video artist, DJ and more, visited the BMP podcast to talk about her experience in the Buffalo scene.

She loves to collaborate, loves who she collaborates with and loves Buffalo. Always the creative, she also talks about the struggle with that and capitalism always lurking.

If you want to listen to a genuine artist, listen to this episode. With a clear idea of who she's become after years of experimenting with art and writing, Skenderton really pulls at the entire ball of string in understanding who she was as well.

As always follow us on Instagram @buffalomusicplayers for new episodes and blog posts.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Um BMP podcast if you are just no more than this way well be welcome to even get keep and we all got a way of helping us there we go everybody got to be quite honest I don't got a job looking there prospect Joe for the park I'm not designed on too pretty for present but talking off the dome I've been a mega kill if the rocking can do it I sure can I've never fought the school so I've got the upper hand if the rogue can do it I sure can I've never fought the school so I got the upper hand the B and B pocket is the B and B pocket This just then a double scoop of bad news Man life just isn't letting up I feel like the walls are closing in and I don't have a way to stop it I wish there was somewhere I could go someplace where I could just get away from everything and just be creative There is the Buffalo Creative Workshop Who said that the spirit of creativity I heard you play and I followed duty the healthy okay in the Great Arrow Building on Elmwood Avenue use our space our art supplies and equipment to your heart's content let us hope you beat back the stress and feel centered again Wow that sounds great I'll check it out always remember if the world has your creative spirits in a rut come to the Buffalo Creative Workshop for a pick-me-up more about Buffalo Creative Workshop can be found at Buffalo.creativeworkshop on Instagram good morning good afternoon good night BMP listeners this is Benjamin Joe and I'm Max and with us today is a very special guest um Sage Anderson also known as Genderton is sitting with us at Panera Bread on 765 Elmwood Avenue in case you guys ever want to go and come in and catch a pod we're usually here right about now.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Oh Sage would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_06 2:50

Yeah um hello my name's Sage um I'm a local I would say writer first and foremost or poet maybe is more apt um and also I DJ um and I consider myself a visual artist and a musician and uh I guess multiple disciplinary is really the term I'll go with there.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Wow. Wait when did I did you go to school for this kind of thing?

SPEAKER_06 3:14

Not not necessarily no um I just went to above state for undergrad. I went I got a BA in creative writing. Um but I I feel like I've just always been a creative artistic person. You know I know a lot of you know everyone draws as a kid but um not me I hated drawing I just couldn't stand it. Uh but I you know I just always felt that pull to writing especially in in fifth grade I started writing poems and I had a teacher who you know was able to say hey you're kind of good at this oh and you know you don't always hear that when you are creative as a kid you know you don't if you hadn't had someone to motivate you or push you to pursue that would you? Um so I you know I got really lucky having someone to push me to pursue those things because I I stuck with it. Um you know I all I wanted to go to school for was writing. I didn't want to go for science or even just English. Like I I had no interest in those things. Not not in math meeting no no um I do I'm average at math I would say but not you know nothing special. Well you gotta figure the beats per minute like yeah that that's definitely an adjustment um because I also I actually know very little about music technically I was in chorus and chorale and uh you know I was like a theater nerd in high school I did musicals and everything but I I can't read music I I really don't know music theory well but if you play me stuff you know I can I can know my part and a play or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Um you got timing and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 4:46

Yeah at least uh you know a shred of it internally hopefully um but I also just love music and I I've always been a freak about it you know I'll pick one or two songs that are my favorite songs or I just can't stop listening to them and I'll I'll play it over and over all day. I won't listen to anything else.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Is that a Spotify playlist you got going on?

SPEAKER_06 5:08

Just of what I you know my whole life like I could take a record and I would just listen to the same record over and over most of the day.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

What was the first time that that happened to you?

SPEAKER_06 5:28

Like what was the first song that made you be like I want to listen to um I feel like I started to really repeat stuff when my dad started taking me shopping for records at um when I got record theater on Main Street when I was still wow um where do your dad yeah shout out Jared um and I was looking through the discount bins and I found Leslie Gore California Nights which is like a uh like ballad kind of swing jazzy um like 70s kind of album I I actually don't know it might be 60s or or something else um but it's so good she's a phenomenal singer um and I would just listen to it over and over and over and over that whole album was like perfect to me I was just obsessed with it.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

That's really cool. That's really cool. You uh now I you do a little bit of DJing. Yeah yeah and we talk a little bit off micro just to let you know. Um but you were saying that you um you started out with somebody else somebody else like got you into it.

SPEAKER_06 6:34

Yeah shout out your kind of thing yeah we um we started as a duo um so Jamila Nicholas um another really talented DJ in Buffalo um she you know got me interested in it in the first place and it was just fun you know I I wasn't thinking about it and it was just I loved music and it was so cool to be able to listen to a song and say this other song can totally go into it and and to execute that. So we DJ'd a lot together initially when I was starting out and I I probably would have never picked up a controller if it weren't for her. So you know I owe her a lot in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

What were some of the shows that you guys did together?

SPEAKER_06 7:17

We did some pretty small stuff. Our technically our first gig was a New Year's Eve party at her house. Oh no that was pretty fun um but then when Dike Knight Buffalo was starting out um the very first dike night was at I want to say it was Community Beer Works when it was still open the garage door that pulled up and opened um we threw the first dike night there and opened filled up the bar pretty good. So you're part of history yeah it's part of the lore here yeah yeah there there's some lore in there um you know I DJ like Pride Parade a couple times um which is you know that's a crazy setup where like on the back of a pickup truck and there's a generator and you're trying to fit all of the gear and it's always like a mess. Um but you know just a lot of like party stuff. We did a a wedding once I remember or like a a birthday party or something uh like a very big Italian family. So you know there's there's like work gigs, you know it's like you can make money doing this. Um it it can be viable financially but then there's also just a lot of gigs that you do just for fun and and to be in it, you know like I love that.

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Yeah you seem like a very like all or nothing type of person.

SPEAKER_06 8:28

I guess when you really love something you really love it and then when you can't yeah I could be a little black and white with it. Um but I don't know I mean life's about balance it's about finding the grade um I have done a lot of shows also just because I love the people that I get to work with. Yeah um so I don't know if you know like Lavender Room at all Jared Jar is you know she's a fucking excellent friend. She's a crazy good organizer. I have no idea how she's accomplished everything that she has. Um but I also owe her a ton of my shows like we've collaborated to do events all the time and and just you know of course I want to play a show or play a DJ set because I love you and I love to like do your events and do these parties and um you know sometimes work is simple. It's just like you get to work with people that you admire and you like what they do and when you don't have to play you get to listen to them play great fucking music or whatever. You know it's it's just an enjoyable experience. Like Buffalo is really rich in talent and art and talented people making art all the all the time um and to just accept it in any way and be in it in any way is like that's incredible. Like I love that that's my life.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I mean um just back up a little bit are you from Buffalo?

SPEAKER_06 9:48

I am yeah well okay technically I was born in Lockport I guess I work in Lockport.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Oh Buffalo is that it's very beneficial like Buffalo.

SPEAKER_06 9:59

But no I've I've lived in Buffalo my whole life um I grew up like canal side Buffalo when it was still you know HSBC parking ramp and I I don't even remember what used to be at the boardwalk over there but I I just remember that I lived there before it was anything really developed.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Um right back when there was Thursday in the square. Yeah yeah oh my god yeah square by library yes yeah have you seen any glocks?

SPEAKER_06 10:26

Any Glocks? No because I call it Glockport. Oh wow that's awesome. I just know I know Bafghanistan I didn't know Glock port's really good.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I have a funny story about a guy in a Glock in Lockport but I'm not gonna go mention now maybe we'll put it on our Patreon page we can think about that. Well what do you think about I mean you you just told us about like making oh your living I mean I assume that you have a regular job as well but like the gig and the sidework I'm sure go a long way in keeping everything together. I mean how would you tell someone t how they would get involved in doing something like this because I know so many people that just like dude I would love to go and like just make music or like spell poetry.

SPEAKER_06 11:08

Yeah I mean you just have to do it, you know I think part of it is yeah yeah and um you know it's personal motiv well I don't know if motivation's the word I want. I I went to school for writing and so for three years it was writing poems because I had to and because I had to turn them in for a grade and they were judged every single week. And I did it and I graduated really good. I got really good grades. I've always been a freak about you know doing well quote unquote um but then I finished college and I had horrible burnout. I felt like I couldn't read any books anymore. You know I could devour like a two three hundred page novel in a day or two and I didn't want to pick up a book at all. I didn't want to write poems anymore. And so people I think get discouraged because they end up in similar kind of situations or at least feelings and being an artist is so I always compare it to like a digestion kind of cycle you know the the digestive system you're spending time not creating all the time you know sometimes it's like a a hibernation period and you're just kind of gestating and and digesting and thinking about things and you don't write any poems and you don't write any songs or you don't go out and find gigs. Um but then you just hit some point where everything's done and it's you pick up a pen again or you figure out you're gonna download this software and start learning how to produce um which if anyone knows how to please hit my line. So you know it's it's a process and it's tough to make money doing it too. You know it's I I can say I can't you know that can't be my main job or my only job. Like I I can't make enough money doing that. Nobody seems to do that. Yeah I mean nobody seems to make enough money at all anymore. Well some people uh but you you just have to push you know and you have to self-market and that's hard to do too like I feel like I suck at at marketing or promoting myself or like whatever the fuck that means. It's like I hate you hate the idea I hate the idea that I'm a product that I have to like sell to people. But you are you know this is a service I can provide you. I can play the music for your wedding or your party or this and I and I have to sell myself to you.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

How do you kind of like um how do you kind of like uh allow that for yourself like that you have to do that product. Like how how do you just accept that you know what I mean like I mean it's tough.

SPEAKER_06 13:45

It's um but you know it's like for every time that I have to do that there's gonna be even more opportunity for me to do the stuff that I want to do. You know it's scary to say okay I'm gonna do this gig for this thing you know you get a list of songs that you have to play and and you have to kind of be someone that you're not or like perform something. Yeah yeah but you know there are so many times that we have to mask and it it can be awful but you know you kind of pull through out of it and then there are these other things that you get to have um you know me and um dirty Wi-Fi Bree and um Chango we've all started this like head first series of events that we're doing and the whole goal of that is just to to play whatever the fuck we want, you know it's like to not have an occasion that somebody else needs us for and to experiment because art and music is experimental and it's fun and it doesn't necessarily have to be what everybody else wants and what you're gonna get a lot of the time or what you can get a lot of the time. So you know you just have to be comfortable stepping outside of your comfort zone and and choosing yourself, pursuing yourself um but I guess also accepting that you know sometimes you have to kind of play that role um at least if you want to make money at you can't be yourself all the time.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Yeah you have to like not be yourself so you can be yourself.

SPEAKER_06 15:11

Yeah yeah I mean you know I never wish that upon any of the people I know upon my creatives you know I I so bad. Yeah yeah yeah it's it's tough. It's tough out there right now.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

I really dug the uh um poetry that you got on one of your Instagram pages. Thank you. Yeah I think you call it confessional and I was like oh I guess it is but it was just especially like the question mark in the middle of of the stanza like right there. Like like it flowed so well. I I wanted to ask you like how how your sense of rhythm and like you know in in spoken word affected like the the writing of it or if you've always like just pictured a voice that just happened to be written down.

SPEAKER_06 15:49

I guess I used to do a lot more kind of performative poetry. A lot of the stuff I started as a teenager um I was doing like spoken word and and performance pieces and slam poetry and stuff. Everything was really song-esque rhythm based and and I was thinking about all of these rhymes and and how I was gonna say it um and I feel like that got sort of quieter the older I got and I started to just write more what I was thinking about and I wasn't really writing them to perform them in front of people. But then I had this resurgence too recently I I did start writing some pieces again where you know I took them to like Aroma open mic and you read it out loud for the first time and it's like oh my god I am writing like I'm 15 again I'm writing slam poems.

SPEAKER_05 16:38

Um how'd you feel about that? Were you like you came home again kind of?

SPEAKER_06 16:42

Kind of yeah I used oh man I used to get ragged on by some of my friends for being like this embarrassing slam poet when I was a you know just a kid yeah yeah and you know what if it comes back as an adult that's fine. But I feel like so much of what I'm writing about is is in one way or another whether it's performed to an audience it's a voice it's a conversation it's kind of like an inquisition like I'm searching for answers always and trying to make sense of things. Um I had a professor tell us to follow our obsessions I I've taken that very literally and then he went around the new the room and and told all of us our obsessions um and he pointed at me and he said you are obsessed with wounds whatever whatever that may be um and I think he's right so I just I keep writing and I keep having questions and picking at things and picking at wounds and from from like the poems that I read from you it seemed like your poems uh just were like about growing out of things or like growing into things.

SPEAKER_05 17:43

Yeah the pain that that kind of brings so I can kind of understand what he was talking about with like wounds and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah kind of talk about that grief process when like something's ending or something's beginning I thought when I write it.

SPEAKER_06 17:55

This is it's interesting to hear about your writing from an outside perspective. I feel like I'm always I'm looking for more of that. I never got enough of it and it's it's nice to hear like the different things that people pick from that and and what they think that poems are about. Sometimes you write and you're like I have no idea what this poem is about but I wrote it and now it's out there and it's in the world. Um and then maybe later meaning kind of takes a hold.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Well you must be doing pretty good and you've got a couple um uh chat books published by uh bottle cap um publishing yeah just the one um where do dead girls wander girls 2020 where'd you get the title book?

SPEAKER_06 18:33

Um I think I stole it from a book somewhere I I haven't written down but I remember flipping through a novel and I feel like there was a line asking something about where does someone wander or this phrasing of where do you dead girls blank um and that just always stuck with me and I'm very twin peak. Yeah it is kind of Lynchian um I'll have to look up the actual origin of that hopefully I haven't violated any copyright agreements is David Lynch like a big influence on you because like in one of your poems you can talk about Mahalan Drive and stuff oh yeah yeah I'm I love film in general I mean I've watched a shit ton of movies to be totally honest. And Lynch is definitely a favorite Maholland Drive is up there um yeah Twin Peaks um but also just a a ton of stuff there's um this old Korean thriller called I saw the devil and that's like one of my top movies ever it's like easily in the top five and it's at this point kind of uh you know it's just kind of a gory um almost average sort of like detective crime story but there there was just something about it that I loved and was obsessed with and I wrote several poems also about that that movie and the ending of that movie. How many times did you watch it?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Uh a couple dozen minimum dozen within how time span uh a little bit longer maybe like a couple years at this point but okay so once every couple months to get the watch in it's a revisit for sure yeah well um as we all know on this program we asked our guests to go and pick out a local artist or band that they would like to highlight so that we can play one of their songs and we did ask uh Sage here about it wondering what she's come up with.

SPEAKER_06 20:23

I'm sure no one will be surprised but my my pick is gonna have to be Fish by Headbutt. Yeah yeah new release even bigger better stuff coming uh you know in the next couple months from them but um Headbutt is very near and dear to my heart and they're really really talented and working really hard and I think they've just got killer shit coming out. They're gonna be big I think so listen to their music now while you're still early and it's still like cool.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Alright let's listen to Fished by Headbutt the bringer of life the bringer of unimaginable joy the cause of catastrophic destruction knowing that you have something so powerful wouldn't you want the best To take care of it? Pardon me for saying this. I am just a humble announcer. But if I had a coochie, I'd probably get it waxed at Cheyenne's Waxing Studio on 830 Elmwood Ave. You have power in between your legs. So why not have it taken care of by the best?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

And we are back. So uh Sage, um, as a how old are you, Sage? I'm 24. 24 years old. Jack Brower. Shout out Fox uh listening. Um in uh anyway. Um you probably had a lot of challenges in your life coming up to being 24, but you've also probably had a lot of support in your in your life when I was 24. And I was wondering how that how that support, and that you can throw in the challenges too if you like, but uh being in the buffalo scene, a poetry scene, um the open mic infrastructure that we seem to have here in our city.

SPEAKER_06 22:57

Yeah, I mean I got really lucky. Um I I kind of was just writing on my own for a few years and just it kind of felt like that nerdy, lame kid who was like writing poems in fifth grade. Um, but one of my teachers in eighth grade told me about the Just Buffalo Writing Center. Um, and they were really early on into programming. Um, there is still a really heated debate among me and another alumni about who went to the very first workshop. I will stand that it was me. Sorry, Carson.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Um for the next part, I get his part of the case.

SPEAKER_06 23:35

Yeah, okay, okay, all right.

SPEAKER_05 23:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:37

Um so I I remember showing up and it was a playwriting workshop with Neil Wexler, and I was the only kid there. And that should have totally discouraged me. Like I feel like a lot of kids, a lot of 14-year-olds would walk into a room to be like, I guess I'll go to this workshop about my you know, this interest that I have, and then it's just you and like this random kind of man talking to you about playwriting. Wow. But it it was just exactly what I wanted at the same time, you know. It was like I only ever got to talk about it really with like an English teacher or someone who was kind of like, you know, I'm going to school, and I just really loved talking about literary analysis and like the poetry unit. So having access to a workshop in this space where that's just all it was. Like it, you know, the focus was every single week you were doing something different. You were writing prose or you were doing flash fiction or um we would like do yoga and then write poems. Um, Max Weiss came in and taught comic book workshops, and those were like some of the first things, like drawings and end comics and zines that I ever made. Um, you know, I started writing songs, like it they they had phenomenal programming, and I got really, really lucky to just kind of stumble into them right at the start and like absorb that as they got bigger. Um, and it has given me a ton of really good opportunities. Like I've met Patty Smith, you know, I I've seen like Curry Temple. Yeah, yeah. Um, they bring in a lot of really incredible writers for their Babbel series every year. And the young writers program at Just Buffalo usually had access to a sort of um a a talk with the the author before Babbel. Um, so you'd get to sort of see this even more intimate kind of moment with a writer and ask them questions and and listen to their practice and what did they do as a writer. Um so I got really fucking lucky. Like I had crazy opportunities. Um I was reading Kleinhands, I was excuse me, I was reading poems on stage at Kleinhands when I was like 15. And, you know, not a lot of people can say that necessarily. Um so they definitely gave me like a platform that I, you know, then getting older, going to college, becoming an adult, um, I could walk into the the real world, the rest of the community and the writing community. And I was already known, you know, I had people who were like twice my age being like, Oh, I know you, you read it this thing. I like I love this poem. And that that feels crazy to have access to as a teenager, um, and to be then encouraged to to stick with it and to keep writing and to find even more parts of that community and that scene. Um, you know, I was going to the the Cafe Aroma open mics for a while, um, sort of fell off. I gotta get back to it.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Um I think I've seen you there a few times.

SPEAKER_06 26:36

Yeah, I I'm a little bit of a regular. Um Benjamin runs the the open mics, Benjamin and Justin, and they're excellent. Um, and Ben was also somebody who was teaching me slam poem workshops when I was like 15.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Um Ben Brenton.

SPEAKER_06 26:52

Shout out Ben. So it's all it's all just a big circle. Um and I definitely feel lucky to have had, you know, this sort of just I got swept into it and it was at the exact right time.

SPEAKER_04 27:05

Um I don't think I yeah, how is like your overall experience in school? Because you seem to have like really supportive teachers and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 27:12

I definitely got lucky. I went to Elmwood Village Charter, shout out Elmwood Village. Um I feel like they went a lot. They I mean, I don't know. I feel like I went to regular school for the most part. It didn't feel any different being a charter school, it was smaller. Um but I definitely got really lucky because I had a lot of really wonderful teachers um who when I showed signs of wanting to do this or being creative or blah blah blah. Like there was always encouragement for that and for kids who wanted to do those things. It was always, you know, you totally should and you can and you're good at it, so you should do that. Um and that made me also want to do good in school, you know. Like I I felt like something more personal towards these people who were teaching me, like, you know, I wanted to make them proud, and so that made me want to learn and like enjoy learning and want to do really good. I've definitely failed some science tests though, for sure. Um physics, not a friend.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

I think it was trigonometry that got me.

SPEAKER_06 28:14

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Very hard. Yeah. I still can almost solve the diagram theorem from scratch the way that they solved it before they had this diagram theorem to go and do all the work. Oh man. Um, but it's directly after that, you're completely lost. Anyway. Um, what are your plans now? What what's going on?

SPEAKER_06 28:32

Um, God, I don't know. I mean, sky's the lemon, I guess, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:36

That's like those uh DJ collective shows coming up.

SPEAKER_06 28:41

Yeah, we we don't have a date set yet, but I think we're hoping to do one maybe April or May, kind of that time. Um, yeah, there'll definitely be more dance parties in the future. Um I've been sitting on some poems for a little while, so I definitely want to kind of collect those into something.

SPEAKER_05 28:59

Um Have you ever thought of like maybe like combining like the DJ set like for the drop?

SPEAKER_06 29:03

Like, I so I have thought about it. I uh I DJed a poets prom for just Buffalo, and I I did not have enough time to bring the idea to fruition, but I wanted to find audio of some of the kids' favorite poems like being read aloud, and then just put those vocal stems over kind of like minimal like instrumental songs. Um so I'd still like to do that in some way.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, it should be. That would be very cool.

SPEAKER_06 29:31

Yeah, I think. I mean, I also I I feel like I've put out some writing. Um, I do a a shit ton of zine making. That's probably my biggest visual art form.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Um where can we find these zines?

SPEAKER_06 29:44

Um around, around, I would say. Um usually there's a zine fair at Just Buffalo every year. I believe this year's Zine Fest is still in the works. Um but you know, I've always got them on me too. Sometimes I'll sell at the the market at Bidwell in the summer and have stuff. Um, but I'm also trying to get in the habit of just keeping them on me and taking them and throwing them places and just like leaving them for people to find. Um to remember to write like identifiers on them because I'm really bad at I have like a business card, but like no name.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Um probably seems like a good idea.

SPEAKER_06 30:21

Gotta get I've gotta get a little more careful with it.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Alright. Well, um, thank you. Thank you so much for coming in.

SPEAKER_06 30:28

Thank you for having me. Yeah, it was excellent to meet you. It was excellent to follow us.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

And um, that's the end of our episode, folks. Um, hope you enjoyed yourself. Make sure you tune in for more great interviews on the BMP podcast, Buffalo Music Players. Thanks.

SPEAKER_05 30:42

May the sauce be with you guys.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

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