MC Quixote

Gavlyn Plays Kilby Part 45

This is how I got into Gavlyn: It was a Saturday night in Salt Lake City and my dad had to go to Park City for the weekend to take care of three Labradoodles named Mighty, Moe, and Jack. My dad would get called to stay up there whenever this rich couple with the doodles went out of town. Apparently, Moe had some type of anxiety disorder and he couldn't leave the house.

There I was, a Saturday night, 19 years old, and I couldn't even figure out how to spend this weekend of total freedom. Something in me wanted to push the limits of this freedom, yet there was a part of me that was scared to cross that line into uncharted territory. Hmmm, it's funny how the "freedom" was pressing on me.

So I started combing the web, searching for the possibility of doing something interesting. The movies at the artsy cinema didn't look that great, there wasn't much going on at Spy-Hop (this multi-media nonprofit space for young people), and then I saw that Gavlyn was playing at Kilby (this cool all-ages venue). Hmm? Who's Gavlyn?

So I hit up the internet and I'm surprised Gavlyn doesn't have a Wikipedia entry (maybe that's not cool now). She did have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed (her last entry I saw was something about how this lady next to her on a plane smelled like peanuts). Maybe she was flying into Salt Lake?

Then I started going through her YouTube videos. Eureka! The first video I hit was, "This is What I Do". It's set in a gritty, urban, strip mall kind of East LA environment. The video starts off with Gavlyn on some freeway overpass with this ever-present chain link fence background and a horizon of buildings. Something about the sunlight, the sky, and the cityscape that lets you know she's in L.A.

She has this hard, yet cheeky grin and she starts flowing in this way I've never seen. It's like she contains an ocean of confidence with a glimmer of vulnerability. She has this rough edge about her. You can see it behind her shameless smile that shows she didn't grow up with the luxury of braces as a kid.

This was a new kind of MC style I hadn't seen yet. Her flow was like a word marathon. She just kept spittin', and all the while, she's got her words running at top speed, with these rhythmic twists and turns, perfect stresses, and a masked kind of melody.

Underneath all that vocalizing, there's this terrifyingly beautiful unconscious message of,

"I've seen too much and I'm back from the dead to tell you about it in this song."

At this point, I was ¨in¨, but out of curiosity I moved on to one more of her songs called, "Staring Problem"; that sealed the deal. No video, just the music, a minimal sample of a piano or a harp just hitting a few strings, then Gavlyn coming out raw, hard, and defiantly uncensored. I knew I had to do what I could to go see her live.

I braved all the elements to make my pilgrimage to see Gavlyn, and it wasn't easy. I was kind of scared to go alone to a show in the industrial part of Salt Lake with no idea what kind of crowd an East LA, MC Chica was going to draw.

When I got there, I was a little disappointed to find a small group of teenagers lingering in the interior space that looked kind of like a corrugated junkyard. I ask the door guy if Gavlyn was going to play, cuz I thought the size of this crowd meant she'd canceled. He said,

"She's not here yet, but she's on her way." Then, the door guy said,

"It's kind of late, so, I'll let you in for free." Hmmm, I didn't really know what to do, and I ended up doing something kind of stupid. I said,

"If she shows up could you give her this $10?" He said,

"Sure." I tried to make it clear that I wanted this $10 to go directly to Gavlyn, which he probably just pocketed. Later, I realized I could have just handed her the money myself.

Anyway, I ended up sitting around this fire-pit in the middle of the outdoor courtyard at Kilby. I just sat there staring into the fire. Then some creepy guy asked me,

"Why do you like the fire so much?" and I kept staring into the fire. Finally, I said,

"It's like a memory of the sun." Right then Gavlyn literally rolled her luggage in through the courtyard. It was her, pulling a huge pink suitcase with black and white plaid on it and I thought,

"Wow, a high maintenance girl." My bad for prejudging, looking for a flaw, seems more like I'm flawed. Anyway, it turned out to be filled with her merch.

I kept watching her through the windows of this old makeshift shed that was used for the bands to be able to sell their goods. I watched her pull out some records, CDs, hats, hoodies, t-shirts, signed 8x10s, and some sweatbands. Each of the items had the large, shiny, silver letters, "GAV", printed on them. Then, I saw her one roadie, a girl even younger than her, steppin up to "man" the table full of Gavlyn merchandise.

I couldn't keep my eyes off Gavlyn. There was something about her take-charge attitude present in every move she made. I want some of that, to be like that, strong and determined with a graceful finish.

Abruptly, she turned on her heels, and started moving through the courtyard brushing right past me. She continued into this other, larger, wood shed where the music happens. I couldn't believe it was really her. I mean, there were only about 25 people who came out to see this show and she had her hustle on like it was a huge venue. I was under her spell moving from the fire pit into the rustic music shed.

It looked like she hadn't set up yet. I mean, all that was up on stage was a plastic folding-table with a small laptop computer on it and a mic on a stand in front of the table. The Kilby sound guy plugged a chord into the laptop, and that was all the setup required, the mic was already plugged in.

Gavlyn seemed to have a little nervous energy at first, but it all left when she went up to the mic and said,

"Is Salt Lake City in the house? I said, is Salt Lake in the house?"

The small but devoted group of high school-aged fans screamed back.

She pulled the mic out of the stand with an,

"I'm taking control" kind of attitude and began pacing around the small stage. When she'd arc around and face the audience, she looked like some kind of wild feline with long, bouncy, brown curls. As she fronted the crowd during this circular prance, she had her head tilted down and glared at each and every one of us through the tops of her eyes, just below her eyebrows, almost looking through her brow. She had now taken total control of everyone in that room and she knew it. I've never seen someone come out with that strong of a stage-presence.

She took it down a notch and assured us,

"This thing is gonna happen. I know I was a little bit late, and I don't where my DJ is, the last text he sent was from Vegas, so he's MIA, but Salt Lake City, we're gonna do this thing!" The small crowd gave a riotous sounding,

"Yes, we're in!" and I had a shameless smile from ear to ear, shouting, jumping up and down, reveling in the whole scene.

She went back stage for a few minutes and then came out with her phone to her ear. I wondered if she was on the line with her DJ. She continued working things out with the Kilby sound guy and then she put her phone in her pocket, walked behind the laptop, typed in a few things, and then I saw this cheeky grin on her face. A microsecond later, boom! The beats were kickin' and screamin' through the speakers hanging from the ceiling. Gavlyn floated up to the mic, she was now completely in her element.

The devoted crowd was entranced with the whole ritual. She started spitin' words with the same power I witnessed earlier, a combination of strength, determination, and grace, but there was a difference from when I saw her walk in. It was as if her whole being was charged with her art, her creative prowess, she was electric, a lightning bolt, flashing, sounding, and moving through everyone present. I kept dancing, screaming, jumping up and down and smiling this huge smiley-smile.