Project #14 The Strings Attached Project

***The Strings Attached Project provides weekly music lessions, guitars and community performance opportunities to St Louis youth ages 5-17. The project cuttently has 23 students involved, learning to sight read music, play guitar and work in small ensembles. The project uses American roots music as its study genres with an emphasis on St Louis music history. $520 will help fund "A) a recording studio day with youth as an educational field trip, make recordings and later dub in professional St Louis muscicians as backup players for the youth. The recording "Eternal Songs" would be released as a CD and download to help fund this ongoing project. and B) to help fund the guitar "awards" wherin youth involved in the project for at least one year, who have good practive habits and a willingness to give back to the community throught performance are awarded witht the guitars to keep." Thank you Kevin Harris for hosting one of the most - i'm gonna say it - magical Sloups. Everyone one in attendance was in love with the dreamy ambiance at Floating Laboratories. Kevin - Sloupers want to come live with you - that's ok right? The Fountain on Locust brought us a delicious delicious black bean soup and told us to pass along that the Fountain does burlesque bingo the 1st Thursday of the month and side show spelling bee the 3rd Tuesday. So. Now you're in the know. So stay tuned for April - it's going to be an all Black Bear Bakery affair. Be sure to remember your black bear hats for next time.

Soup #14: Cuban Black Bean on the River

Sloup Sunday is upon us again, all the trees say so.

The Fountain on Locust is going to bring a huge batch of their vegan black bean that we can't wait to try. Check out their recent press for a Polish pickle soup. Yum.

And we're taking Sloup down by the river and ever so slightly off-road at Floating Laboratories, winner of the RFT's best underground club award of 2010. Click on the link for directions, hand-drawn map to follow.

We'll snag some awesome bread from Black Bear Bakery (they're gonna host April's Sloup!!) and meet you there. BYO refreshments, puhhlease!!

Project #13: Sonic St. Louis

David Weinberg won $540 and promises that: "The Sloup grant would fund a project called Sonic St. Louis (SSL). I would use the grant money to purchase digital audio recorders and hire a local web designer to build a website. The recorders would be available for the public to borrow to make recordings in and around the city. All of the recordings will be posted online to a sonic map of St. Louis where you can listen to the recording that was made in that location on the map. If for instance, you wanted to record the sound of Soulard barkers hawking produce or a memorable karaoke moment at The #1 Most Fabulous Room you could borrow one of the recorders. Or, if you wanted to interview your great grandmother about her famous gooey butter cake recipe or the time she hurled a rotten tomato at president Coolidge in Forrest Park you could borrow a recorder. If you wanted to hide the recorder in your breast pocket and surreptitiously record an especially juicy secret in order to exact revenge upon your employer/ex-lover/former best friend, I would not pass judgment. In fact, I would lend you a recorder."

We are so amazed by the other proposals this month, and they got such even steven votes, that there may be straggling future posts about their staggering beauty, so keep your eyes peeled, and always feel free to contact us to make connections with anyone you met at sloup... we'll help you track the world down.

We turned one years old today, and we are feeling pretty good. Los Caminos gave us a chocolate cake, and Amanda Goldblatt gave us a birthday card! Labeebee's lentil soup was perfect. Seriously. Do you understand? You know when soup is like perfect? Like mom-perfect and shit? OK. We'll revise this tomorrow. We love you.

NEXT SLOUP: March 27th. The Fountain on Locust makes soup @ Floating Laboratories!!

Soup #13: Labeebee's @ Los Caminos, Birthday Style

Guess what? It's been a year and it's our birthday. Wow. Does our "wow" ring true? We hope so. Please don't miss Sloup #13 and all its tender beauty. Labeebee's Mid-East Cafe is surprising us with a soup from the secret soup society, Black Bear is blessing us with their overabundance of bread, Los Caminos is hosting with their usual effortless killer combo of sophistication and warmth, and you are staying too long too late and you are not surprised when the dance jamz come on real loud. We like presents. presence.

We are serious about your Sloup applications. Make them soap opera face. Make them lose importantly and win gracefully. Make them talk.

After Sloup #12 at CAM, we don't know what to expect. Except goodness.

Help Us Help You

Hey artists with proposals in your hearts,

Spit em out and send em in, but please note: We'd like to receive your one page proposal (including any images) to be sent as a PDF thingy. That way your formatting will hold and we can all smile about it!

Cool! Thanks!

oh... and... this just in: Labeebee's Mid-East Cafe is donating February's soup. If you haven't tried their falefel yet, you're probably just too busy applying to Sloup.

PROJECT #12: A Collaboratory for Edible Ideas

Eric Woods and Kim Wardenburg will:

"collaborate with Carlos Dominguez of Latino Americana Restaurant, as well as Ana Rivera of El Chico Bakery and other participants from the neighborhood, to serve up the "Printmakers' Special"—a taco meal complete with edible, printed tortillas inspired by the people of Cherokee Street!"

They will receive $1210 toward this project. Whaattt? We ran out of Clara of Local Harvest's amaaaazing curried sweet potato soup and sssttttiiilllllll people paid to read the 11 incredible challenging insipring proposals for things that can/will happen in STL and to vote on their favorite.

Thanks for the awesome bread, Black Bear Bakery..mmmm mmm.

And thank you to the Contemporary Art Museum for fostering this explosion of energy in support of the vital arts communities that are crackling right here right now.

SLOUP is officially growing like crazy. Please email us if you want to volunteer to work the next Sloup, and keep submitting these killer proposals. Kill us dead. We will try to provide enough soup. Now we know.

We love you.

Next SLOUP: February 27th, 6 pm @ Los Caminos

Sloup #12 Sunday January 30th - 2-4 pm

Hey Sloupers -

Sorry for the confrusion - This month's Sloup will be in the afternoon (as opposed to the usual evening time)
2-4 pm, this Sunday, January 30th
at the Contemporary Art Museum.

Storm the Contemporary!