Barn-raising: it?s a metaphor Doria Roberts evokes early on, halfway through a brisk set that serves as the kickoff to her Farm to Ear tour, a canny blending of music, food and activism in tandem with Chef (and wife) Calavino Donati. Barn-raising, as Doria tells the audience gathered in the Atlanta home of environmental activist Laura Turner Seydel, was an occasion for a community to come together and literally build a barn with a neighbor. But for Roberts, the term means something even more expansive: it?s a chance for her, Donati and other activist peers, to raise consciousness and standards in matters of urban food culture?and also raise a little musical hell while she?s at it.
ATTAINABLE SUSTAINABLE?
The Farm to Ear Tour, which is set to travel through Philadelphia, New Jersey and other areas of Roberts? upbringing in the Northeast in October, will combine the music of Doria Roberts (and other musical compatriots) with the food of Calavino Donati, and carry with it a message of sustainability, food access and food production for local communities. The tour has its origins in Urban Cannibals, an urban grocery Roberts founded with Donati in 2009. An East Atlanta deli/bodega with a declared mission of making the ?sustainable attainable,? Urban Cannibals is filled out with the organic specialty foods and groceries typical of many high-end emporiums located in wealthy suburban neighborhoods. But after that, similarities are few.
Its founders view the store as a gateway to health and quality food for the decidedly lower middle class/poor clientele the store serves, and for Roberts, it?s a first-hand education on the realities that have motivated a new sense of activism. ?I am on the learning curve here,? says Roberts after her performance, her wife and friends breaking down the makeshift kitchen in Seydel?s storage room. ?Calavino has been dealing with food for twenty years, while I?m the activist?but I?ve always done activism through my music, whether the topic is women that are in danger or homeless children. So when I started working with her on Urban Cannibals, I noticed that there?s so much waste in the food industry. It?s crazy!? In her search for avenues in which she could donate the excess food that came as a byproduct of Donati?s successful restaurant venture, she learned there were children literally around the corner going to bed hungry on a routine basis.
It?s not just hunger that Roberts and Calavino were inspired to address, but the access to quality foods that the poor have often bypassed or been priced out of attaining by the market. For the activists, this has meant a two-pronged approach to their struggle: first, learn what, when and how much local farmers are producing; then, bridge the gap between local farmers and a largely untapped demographic of consumers and grocers. It sounds simple, but it can be a struggle in communities where grocery store profit margins are defined by the cultural inertia of cigarettes, booze and lottery tickets.
?Those other things?the lottery, the alcohol?the yield is greater, and you?re talking about people who need to make a living,? she says. ?It is what it is. The community is not necessarily feeding it, but that?s what the community has, and so by default it feeds those types of things.?
Roberts wishes to avoid stigmatization, however. ?I grew up in those kinds of neighborhoods, and when I was living there it didn?t seem like a problem,? she explains. ?We were just living our lives. I don?t want to exploit that part of it; I do want to show that people are changing the way that these places look. I want to showcase the Healthy Corner Store Network (healthycornerstores.org). They?re trying to change these corner stores that have the 40s and the lottery tickets, and they?re trying to empower them to bring some healthy foods to the front so it?s not all about candy.?
FARM AID, URBAN-STYLE
To that end, studying local food production markets and then sharing information with interested retailers, consumers and community activists will help in the culmination of their cause: Infusing urban communities with the ?can do? attitude that comes from barn-raising their way to their own food production. Getting the ball rolling is the goal of the Farm to Ear tour.
?Politics is the art of the possible? as the aphorism goes, and if that?s so, the food spread Donati provided for Roberts? show should go a long way to rallying food lovers to her cause: Freshly baked breads, delectable spreads, main courses that include a mouth-watering apple BBQ brisket, an eggplant parmesan, and mustard greens lasagna in a Santa Fe smoke buttermilk sauce?all made cheaply and efficiently by Donati from ingredients bought through local food providers.
The satisfied smile on Donati?s face as she served eager show attendees was that of a woman who knows how to do it her way. ?When I was 17, I started my first business,? Donati says. ?I was traveling the country in a van, and I would cook everything on a George Foreman Grill out of a cooler. I would go out on the jetties and get my own mussels, dig for my own oysters and clams, and create these big feasts with my grill and Coleman stove.?
The life of an itinerant food forager with a limited arsenal of culinary equipment prepared Donati for the austere environment of urban living?and with a business plan that was, frankly, plumb crazy, she made her way work. ?My first restaurant?it made no sense on paper. It was in a horrible neighborhood with crack and hookers and neighboring properties selling for seven thousand dollars. People were, like, ?What are you doing?? But it made sense to me. And I had ten years?an amazing run.?
Ironically, it was moving to a better neighborhood and a more solid business plan ?on paper? that did her in. After her second restaurant concept closed, she made her move with Urban Cannibals, armed only with her partner, Doria, her trusty George Foreman, two hot pots and a bunch of old pallets. ?Honestly,? she smiles, ?I am pretty much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person. If it feels right, then I do it. If it feels wrong, I don?t. But luckily, I had worked in a van and on a Coleman stove, so I was resourceful.?
KNOWING HER STAGE
Much of what Roberts and Donati plan to do on this tour is, well, unplanned. A tour with this many?and this unique a set of?working parts is unprecedented. The Farm to Ear tour is still a work in progress, and the Atlanta event was a trial to figure out logistics as much as anything. ?This whole leg of the tour is to work up a prototype,? Roberts notes. ?Let?s see how this works, see how long it takes, the nuts and bolts of it.?
Her stage set took place promptly at the appointed show time and with little ceremony. A veteran of the late ?90s scene at Atlanta?s acoustic showcase Eddie?s Attic (she was a songwriting shootout winner, a prize-winning alumni alongside the likes of John Mayer, Shawn Mullins and Jennifer Nettles), Roberts is a woman who knows her room. Her first order of business upon taking the small stage in the bonus room of the Turner Seydel home is to remove the mike stand festooned with shimmering foil flowers. ?We won?t be needing this?, she said as she beamed a broad and welcoming smile to the intimate audience of a couple dozen.
Flanked by framed images of Captain Planet (a cartoon produced by Turner Seydel?s father, billionaire environmentalist Ted Turner) and the burbling of a humble little fish tank to her right, and the reassuring and musically sturdy presence of cello accompanist and Blackeyed Susans bandmate Okorie Johnson to her left, Doria launches into a nine song set that draws on her own music?including tracks from her most recent album, Blackeyed Susan?and a folk traditional inspired by her hero and mentor, Odetta.
Admittedly, her set doesn?t include ?a lot of happy songs,? but her penchant for alternate tunings, the sometimes frenetic Dave Matthews-styled picking arrangements, and her winning personality help her music avoid the trap of the sometimes dour, mopey singer/songwriter archetype.
Seeing someone with the guts to evoke Odetta in her performance is a thrill in itself. The silky strands of Roberts? voice may only approximate the yearning resonance of the godmother of folk music (a challenge with which any mortal voice would struggle), but mimicking Odetta isn?t the point. Instead, Roberts brings the spirit of her mentor (she toured with Odetta in 2003) to life in her own style: one part epically traditional, another part contemporary Eddie?s Attic troubador. It?s a style that fits Roberts well.
Plus, it?s the style that adorns her most recent release after several years time away from the studio. Blackeyed Susan was a Kickstarter-funded labor of love to pay tribute to Odetta. It?s not enough that Roberts crammed the disc full of originals and a pair of folk classics like ?Car Car? and ?Waterboy?; she maintained allegiance to her principles of sustainability and reuse with the packaging. The disc (sans jewel case) comes tucked inside a wooden box, packed with an organic tea, honey stick, a necklace made of recycled jewelry, and a piece of seeded paper that is meant to be watered and placed in soil inside the cd container so it can have a second life as a small box garden.
It?s a creative angle that reveals perhaps better than anything that sustainability is a passion that Roberts has dwelled upon intensely?not just in the food she prepares with Donati, but in the music and activism she has made her life?s calling. In their minds, it fuses two essential cornerstones of living into one: food is how you live; music is why you live. Come on out and they?ll tell you?and feed you?more.
The Farm to Ear tour hits Princeton, NJ, on Saturday, October 6th. Dinner begins at 6pm for $15, music at 7pm for $10; $25 for both?RSVP at urbancannibals@yahoo.com. (Bring canned food items for $1 off the new CD for every can you bring up to 10 cans. To learn more about Farm to Ear, visit http://www.facebook.com/farmtoear.)
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