Venice Gas House Trolley is the sound of a new creative generation that believes imagination is liberation. The band is jazzy, jammy, funky, and tribal with spoken word poetry and heavy grooves. VGHT's music is packed with psychedelic soundscapes and boundary exploring arrangements that whimsically deviate from the norm yet still provide enough hooks and thick grooves to keep audience's heads bobbing and feet moving.
Paving the way for a whole new genre of music, VGHT mangles musical boundaries and interlaces shared storytelling and poetic vibration into a communal and collective consciousness that unifies the ancient and future as one. The Trolley's appearances include festivals such as The Tall Tree Lake Music Festival (Goreville, IL), The Muddy River Jam Fest (Woodstown, NJ), The Overgrown Music & Arts Festival (Belmont, NY), The Michigan Peace Fest (Lacota, MI), The 40th Annual Midwest Harvest Fest (Madison, WI) and over 400 performances from Wisconsin to New York City.
Adam Gregory Pergament
Adam Gregory Pergament, a two-time finalist for Best Artist (Other) in the Annual Madison WI Area Music Awards, is a Spoken Word performer who has bridged the gap between poetry and music. His dynamic style of Rock and Fire Flowpoetry combines rhythm, musicality, and a highly condensed depth of poetic language. His delivery on stage makes him one of the most unique and riveting performers on the Midwestern musical and artistic landscape. Adam speaks shamanically through poems of Asian Gods and Goddesses, tells Cowboy stories of the American Wild West and the Railroad Age, and poetically rants and rages about both Love and War. He has performed over 550 times in the USA with Rock and Roll bands, Jazz musicians, and as a solo poet. In 2009 he was a finalist for the MNSWA "Urban Griot" International/National Performer of the year alongside other poets such as Leonard Cohen and Saul Williams.
His current projects include Venice Gas House Trolley (a "Cerebral Groove" band consisting of voice, electric bass, and drums) and Rock and Fire Flowpoetry (spoken word with vocal effects and loops). From 2006-2008, he led and taught Chime Collective Big Band weekly improvised free flow musical and poetic workshops at The Madison WI Center For Creative And Cultural Arts. He was also the first ever "Poet-In-Residence" at the King Club (voted Madison, WI's #1 nightclub in 2007). In previous incarnations, Adam has played catcher for the University of Minnesota Baseball team, spent five years backpacking throughout Asia and India, earned a Master of Arts Degree in Languages and Cultures of Asia and studied for seven years in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Buddhist Studies Ph.D program. He has performed with such notables as Hanah Jon Taylor (Chicago's Artists For The Advancement of Creative Music) and Vincent Davis (Roscoe Mitchell Quartet) and Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown's Original Funky Drummer). He has opened shows for The Steve Kimock Band, Cornmeal, Groovatron, Buck 65, Claude Coleman, Jr of Ween. He has also appeared on festival billings with The Jerry Garcia Band and Indigenous.