“I don’t play bass,” said local musician and Jitter Bus Cafe barista Rachel Kosa, a bass guitar strapped securely to her shoulder. She then proceeded to rock out for a full set with her band All the Pretty Horses.
The band’s lead singer, Austin Traver, along with several others in the Grand Avenue coffee shop-turned-venue, was one of the Fussy Coffee workers recently laid off with only a few days’ notice when that Science Park cafe closed earlier this month.
Thursday’s set was part of a fundraiser show at Jitter Bus Cafe for those former Fussy employees. The event raised a total of $2,200, to be split evenly among seven former Fussy workers to help them stay afloat as they navigate their sudden job loss.
The audience went five rows deep. Jitter Bus had removed all their furniture from the cafe space for the occasion, setting a vibe with low mood lighting and simple digs. In the backyard parking lot, the Jitter Bus itself (the storefront’s mobile counterpart) was open for business, and the crowd flowed easily between the indoor and outdoor spaces for a house party feel.
The show, as well as the community behind it, was the local music scene’s response to the manufactured uncertainty of a gig economy. For many artists in New Haven, being a barista is more than just a day job. It’s a connection to a network of people who keep the city humming. If the system is going to screw them over, they’ll use their shared experiences for good.
Kosa’s entire house is full of ex-Fussy workers. As she rattled off the names of her friends living on each of the three floors, I recognized them as people who played music that day, manned the doors, or helped organize the event. Kosa herself used to work at Fussy Coffee but left before the cafe’s final days.
Former Fussy Coffee assistant manager Abby Bruckman, known to her fans as Angel Moss, invited the night’s listeners into her world with her gentle voice and sticker-adorned guitar. It felt like storytime, and I couldn’t wait to circle up.
The audience watched, attentive and hushed. Angel Moss’s melodies grew into a spell everyone kept unbroken. She took the crowd from delicate, heart-rending high notes to more talky, frank, folk moments, singing, “If I ever lose you, say that you’ll miss me.” She called it the worst performance of her career.
“That’s not true, I’ve never seen a bad one,” said Kosa as All the Pretty Horses set up to play. She usually plays keys, but Traver made a special request for bass that night. One arm wrapped in clear plastic and black medical tape, she delivered.
Underneath the plastic was a forearm crisscross tattoo, reaching down to Kosa’s elbow. If it looked like fresh ink, that’s because it was. In fact, the only way it could have been fresher would be if artist Rex Morris had come out from their tattoo tent to lay down lines between songs.
As it was, Morris was set up in the cafe’s backyard, ready with their tattoo gun, sheets of example designs, and a long list of customers. I recognized their textured linework not only in the new creations they made that day, but also as healed tattoos on people in the crowd.
Kosa knew she had to sign up quick to guarantee her spot. She had barely gotten her tattoo wrapped when it was her band’s turn to play.
All the Pretty Horses built up tension through repetition, the way a neighborhood dog barks. They flooded the cafe with sound for a few glorious seconds, then returned to their progressions. Traver kept it gritty with a husk in his voice and the occasional dirty guitar slide.
Then the band entered a self-described “quiet and sad” part of their set. Traver christened the transition with contemplative guitar and vocals as drummer John Zaccaria and Kosa rested. Traver’s voice took on a rich, multi-layered quality and I scanned the ground for a vocal effects pedal before realizing what I was looking for was to the side all along; Kosa was at the mic, adding subtle harmonies so aligned I hadn’t guessed they were coming from another person. Zaccaria came in with slow, momentous drums, raising the stakes in a steady incline until the song cut, leaving the audience floating in its afterglow.
That’s a song you won’t find on Spotify; it got taken down due to a bit of copyrighted Miles Davis. Audience members who wanted to listen offline had to go to the merch table for one of the cassette tapes Traver carefully recorded and hand-drew individual cover art for. He taped the album over existing music, meaning any given cassette might have a snippet of Bruce Springsteen or orchestral pieces at the end.
Hard at work making pizzas for the hungry listeners was videographer Sal DeFelice, who’s been working at the Big Green Truck for four years and is close friends with the “Fussy crew.” He heard about the fundraiser show, looked at the Big Green Truck’s schedule, and saw it would be a slow day. He asked owner Liane Page if he could bring one of the company’s pizza-making trucks to the show.
Page did him one better: she donated the food for the night, meaning all the money made would go to the recently laid-off workers. DeFelice, a one-man band at the mobile oven, slung fresh pies all night. I praised his ability to do it solo.
“It’s for my friends,” he replied, shrugging. If he ever lagged, he knew they would understand.
The same held true for the musicians inside the cafe. At one point, Traver forgot his lyrics and abandoned a song as the crowd cheered their encouragement. “It’s on the tape!” Kosa shouted.
For the final set of the evening, Zaccaria switched drums for guitar and vocals as the frontman of band The Knife Kickers. Pasquale Liuzzi went all out on the drums. Their previous drummer was none other than All the Pretty Horses’ Traver, watching from the crowd as he wound down from his set.
The band stunned the crowd with explosive, high-energy segments followed by near-silence, all resonance dampened to make way for steady threads of sound as the dust settled. In some moments, Zaccaria screamed into the mic, leaning his whole body forward. In others, he allowed a slight lilt into his voice, softening the vocals as Liuzzi hit a slow waltz. Pickle-maker Stephen Friedland kept the bass coming through loud and clear.
Sometimes music feels effortless. That’s not what I found at the Jitter Bus Thursday night. I saw musicians try really hard and dive into the dissonance of elusive expectations. I saw them put themselves down. And then I watched their worries get stomped into oblivion by the loving community around them.
There was a heavy resonance to the volume of the night’s cheers. Fellow musicians and workers supporting each other, celebrating each other, and listening to each other’s music — it was more than something nice. It was how the community had decided to survive.
The effort was laid out for everyone to see, and in a way this felt like the whole point of the night. Not a clear path forward or a magic solution from a generation constantly tasked with solving issues created long ago, but a promise to not be afraid to try.
