“Band mom” Rachel Taft Feeds the Scene in Baltimore

Feed the Scene’s Rachel Taft with Sick of It All (photo provided).

Within an hour of meeting Rachel Taft for the very first time, Protaganist guitarist (and Less Than Jake stage manager) Brian Forst found himself in her car, eating the best chocolate cheesecake cupcakes he’s ever had in his life.

Forst now holds the honour of being the touring band member that has been fed the most times by Taft, who’s spent the past three years housing and feeding bands at her home in Baltimore, Maryland.

Coining her project Feed the Scene, Taft has spent countless hours around her various part-time jobs helping out bands when they come through her town. And while she does take donations, she pays for the majority of the costs herself.

Now, instead of dreading the road ahead, musicians like Forst relish the thought of Taft’s hospitality when they pass through her city.

“It makes me look forward to passing through Baltimore and anywhere in a two-hour radius,” says Forst, who’s now been fed by Taft a record 15 times. “I know that regardless of which band I’m touring with or playing for, Rachel would come through with some elaborate meal or bag of treats that would make my mom want to send her a thank-you card.”

From grief comes motivation

When Tafts’ mother passed away suddenly five years ago, she turned to the music of her favourite bands to cope with the loss. The bands that inspired her with their positive lyrics planted a seed for her to do something that would give back the same good vibes to the scene that she loved so much.

Using a small amount of inheritance left to her by her departed mom, Taft launched Feed the Scene in the summer of 2011 and started putting up bands and making them home-cooked meals when they passed through Baltimore on tour.

“I realized that I wanted to take what my mom left me and do something positive with it and help foster that creativity that helped me during that hard time,” says Taft.

After feeding the guys from Less Than Jake and their stage manager Forst, as well as some other bands that were passing through town, Taft understood how much of a need there was for touring bands to have a meal and a place to shower and crash.

“The first couple of bands that came and stayed with me were very confused,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘You want to have us over for dinner? On purpose?’”

The money from her mom quickly ran out, but Taft plowed onwards, launching a Kickstarter in 2012 that raised $6,000 to buy enough bunk beds and mattresses to sleep eight people. In addition, she rents out rooms on Airbnb when touring bands don’t need them and works up to six part-time jobs to make all of the ends meet.

“I hadn’t initially thought of it as something to do all of the time, I was just feeding the people that I thought were awesome,” recalls Taft, “but when I really looked at it, I decided what a needed thing it was, and that it was way more fun at the time than a real job, because I wasn’t working at the time when I started.”

The reviews are positive

Unlike Airbnb customers who can give whatever reviews they want, bands that receive free hospitality aren’t really in any position to complain about a hot shower, place to crash and whatever food gets put on their plate when they stay at someone’s house.

Still, the kind words from many of the bands that have received Taft’s hospitality over the years is overwhelming. Buffalo’s melodic hardcore band Pentimento have stayed with Taft four times now and, according to drummer Mike Hansen, they can’t imagine going to Baltimore without spending some time with Taft.

“I can’t tell you how much she’s helped us when we’ve been on tour, so it’s been a really cool experience knowing Rachel,” says Hansen. “What she does in offering bands that kind of comfort is incredible. Being on tour for six weeks or seven weeks, you don’t really get too much of that home vibe. So what’s she doing is beyond incredible.”

Taft’s motivation in doing Feed the Scene comes from a big heart, her mothering instincts and a chance to socialize with people from all over the world.

“I’ve always liked taking care of people and I don’t have children or a husband,” she laughs, “and I get to meet a lot of people that way; people who I otherwise wouldn’t know at all, and some of them have become very dear friends of mine.”

Hansen credits the generosity of people like Taft, as well as most independent promoters they deal with, for the solidarity prevalent in the DIY punk scene. He says Pentimento are treated well on most of their tour stops, but it’s projects like Feed the Scene that make them have even more faith along the way.

“There’s a lot of blind trust involved with staying with people, but from our experience it’s been nothing but great. People are so willing to welcome you and treat you like a human being and maybe never realizing the impact it makes,” say Hansen. “Something like getting fed or taking a shower can wash away weeks of bullshit. Whether it’s the bad mood that you’re in, or the tour isn’t going so well and you’re bummed out about it… little things like that can bounce you back and get you back on the horse.”

Feeding all of the scenes

In Taft’s first year alone doing Feed the Scene, she fed and/or housed over 170 bands. Now up to an astonishing 374 bands, musicians or festivals fed and/or housed since she started doing this three years ago, Taft has become an integral part of the punk scene, not to mention her local scene in Baltimore, which she hopes is becoming more of a destination spot for bands.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that there were other, like-minded people in different cities doing similar projects, and she began connecting with people like Erica Moilanen and her husband in Austin, Texas.

“About four years ago my husband and I were discussing turning our little bed and breakfast into a non-profit,” says Moilanen. “I started doing some research on the subject and found Rachel Taft.”

Knowing that touring can be expensive for independent bands, and that they often need a place to crash, Moilanen and her husband decided they would help out in any way they could.

“We decided to make easy meals that feed a lot of people,” says Moilanen, “but our focus hasn’t on the food as much as making sure bands have an opportunity to have a safe place to stay, a healthy-ish meal, laundry, showers and internet. It’s fun and we love music, so it’s perfect.”

Taft found out there were several groups of people in North America that were doing projects similar to Feed the Scene, perhaps not as official, but with the same sentiment all the same. It got her thinking that maybe this was something that she could network across the country, like a less activism-based Food Not Bombs. When a promoter in the Philippines reached out to her, Taft started a trial chapter overseas.

Forst, for one, thinks having a national or international network of Feed the Scenes is a very solid idea. “The majority of touring bands don’t get catering or a budget to buy dinner every night. We’re usually very frugal and very hungry,” says the touring guitarist and crew member. “So the idea of having someone open up their kitchen and their home for you to feast, and possibly sleep in a freshly made bunk bed, is really a dream compared to the Taco Bell grande meal and Walmart parking lot that usually ends most nights on tour.”

Members of Pentimento enjoy Taft’s hospitality (photo provided).

You can call me what you want, but don’t call me late for dinner

What do you cook for a bunch of touring musicians who have probably been eating from convenience store, to shitty backstage rider, to convenience store for the past several weeks? Answer: Anything and everything.

Taft learned how to cook when she was in college; her mother sending her weekly recipes over the internet.

“They started out really easy,” recalls Taft, “that way I couldn’t screw up. And then it progressed into harder recipes and I learned that way.”

Sifting through different band members’ various dietary needs, Taft keeps her meals simple and easy to make. She also tries to rule out as many things as possible along the way.

“I always ask bands, ‘What foods do you hate?’ Because I don’t want to spend money on foods that they hate, that would be stupid,” she laughs. “You basically have to reverse engineer a dinner that you can make it all work with the same recipe. Because I like everyone to eat a variation of the same thing, so no one feels like they’re being rudely slighted because they have a different diet.”

Forst has eaten more of Taft’s food than any other touring musician and can attest that she knows her way around a kitchen.

“It’s no secret that her cupcakes are one of my favourite things. I usually get two bags from her. One for right away and one to hide in my freezer,” he says. “She was also the first person to feed me polenta; I’ll never forget that because it looked like it should taste like mashed potatoes, but it definitely didn’t.”

While Taft’s not making the most complicated dishes because her time is limited, especially now that she’s working so much, she does like to give everyone a home-cooked meal from scratch.

“Between her stuffed brisket, blue cheese mashed potatoes and basement refrigerator filled with beer,” says Forst, “there’s not one bad thing I could say about her food.”

“Hey, band mom!”

It’s a term that Taft has heard countless times since starting Feed the Scene, but she doesn’t think being called “band mom” is offensive at all. In fact, she considers it a loving term of endearment.

“Oh, people call me the band mom all of the time,” she laughs. “And, considering I’m only 33, and I’m not old enough to have birthed any of them so far, I like it. I appreciate the term. I’ve also been referred to as ‘punk rock mom’ and a lot of younger, local band people in Baltimore call me that.”

Hansen and the guys in Pentimento remember when Taft came up to them at their first show in Baltimore, on their first ever US tour, and offered them hot meals, showers and her place to crash at. Now, after staying with her a number of times, the band thinks back on times at her place the same way they would a family holiday. And sometimes that includes extended family from France.

“There was a French band staying there at the same time as us one time, as well as some other bands we were on tour with, so we’re in her house with 30 or 40 smelly, sweaty, disgusting dudes,” remembers Hansen, “but Rachel not only accommodated, she took care of all of us, offering the showers and the food and everything.”

Hansen thinks back on the trip fondly, saying it was a great chance to notice the commonalities amongst touring bands, regardless of where they were from.

“It was just this really incredible bonding experience. You get around the dinner table and you just get to talking and realizing we’re all doing the same thing, no matter where we are from,” he says. “Everyone just wants to hang out and be human beings, and being there at Rachel’s place was just a way to catch your breath and make you realize you’re doing a great thing by being a band on the road. And Rachel is just kind of mothering the whole pack of us. The slice of home never really rings true until you’re in a situation like that.”

And in some cases, a bed to sleep on and some home-cooked food can make a huge difference, maybe not between life and death, but sometime pretty close.

“We had a band come through early last winter and one of their members was not feeling well. He didn’t know what was wrong and they only had a couple of days from home so he was going to wait it out and go to the doctor when he got home. Because they were feeling bad, I made them chicken soup,” recounts Taft. “When he got home he sent me a message and said that he had a horrible case of pneumonia and he’d lost 30 percent of his lung capacity. His doctor said he would have been seriously ill and it could have been really bad if it wasn’t for the one night he stayed here and he had a bed and was able to sleep for eight hours, and had a meal. He was like, ‘Thank you for keeping me alive,’ which was pretty humbling.”

Taft is able to succinctly sum up her enormous efforts running Feed the Scene for the past three years with a completely fitting metaphor: “It’s sort of like a tour hug.”

Hansen, having been on the receiving end of that affection a number of times while passing through with Pentimento, laughs, wholeheartedly agreeing with the comparison.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s exactly like a tour hug.”