Since forming in 2010 in Philadelphia, Low Cut Connie has earned a reputation for celebratory live shows and songs that explore the lives of the outcasts and the forgotten.
There’s 2020’s “Look What They Did,” a somber ballad that recalls the best work of Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen, which examines the impact that gambling and power deals had on Atlantic City, a place that Low Cut Connie founder Adam Weiner loved in his childhood.
There’s also “Private Lives,” another song from the same year in which the singer celebrates ordinary people who find ways to rise above life’s mundanities, declaring, “The town freaks and the sleazies bring a tear to my eye.” There are multiple other examples in the band’s output: songs about parties, drag queens and the darker, quieter moments of existence.
What’s undeniable is that Low Cut Connie’s energetic performances, like the records, are about breaking down barriers. At least that’s what those who have seen the group in the live arena have said.
The realities of the music business in recent years are such that Weiner and his bandmates haven’t been able to hit some markets and so the film “Art Dealers” brings Low Cut Connie into some of those cities and towns (and, by October, into peoples’ living rooms when the feature hits streaming services).
Weiner, who co-directed the film with Roy Power, will be in Wichita on Sunday, Sept. 15, for two screenings at the Emily Bonavia Tallgrass Film Center, 120 E. First St. North, Unit 113. The first screening takes place at 4 p.m. with a second following at 7.
Weiner will also participate in a Q&A — with Spektrum Muzik’s Kirsten and Adam Phillips — and give a brief solo performance.
KMUW recently spoke with Weiner about the film, how Low Cut Connie’s success took him by surprise and the role that self-doubt has in his life and career.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did the idea to make a film present itself?
I’ve always been in love with film. When I first started out as a performer, I thought that I was going to be an actor or a performance artist. In 1998, I was in this program in New York called the Experimental Theatre Wing. I was involved with a lot of theatre and dance shows and little, short films and things. I kind of thought that my path was going to be either on stage or on screen. My music beckoned me over to another kind of career. So, I’ve always been waiting to circle back around to those media.
Then, in 2017 or 2018, we played a film festival. We played for Danny DeVito Day at the Asbury Park Film Festival. We did the afterparty for Danny’s event. There were all these film producers and directors, and they saw our show, flipped out, and said, “Somebody has to do a Low Cut Connie movie.”
We had a couple of different people interested, there was a producer involved. They started shooting stuff and, long story short, the pandemic derailed the project. That was more of a road documentary.
During the pandemic, I started to get this feeling of, “If we ever get back on stage with the band and if the people show up, we’ve got to capture it because we almost lost everything.” There was a period of time when we didn’t know if we’d ever get to do this again. When we did come back and when we did the first couple shows with the band, it was so cathartic. I’m used to my fans screaming and having a great time, getting sweaty, but I wasn’t used to the audience crying at my shows. We started to see these audience members weeping at our shows. Laughing, weeping, hugging. The level of emotionality was just so much higher, and I said, “We gotta do this now. We have to do this right now.”
So, we did it. We did it on our own, which was a crazy idea because I didn’t know if it would ever get finished. I didn’t know if anybody would ever see it. I didn’t know if it would ever get distributed because very few films do. Here we are, and it’s all happening.
I love that this is a performance-based film. There are those other moments, whether through interviews or other footage, where we do get glimpses into the lives of the band members. But there’s still a sense of mystique.
I wanted it to be a performance film. My co-director Roy Power and I are obsessed with a lot of concert films and performance films. “Stop Making Sense” is the gold standard of concert films. It’s kind of a high-concept concert doc. But there are other films, like “Paris Is Burning,” the documentary about the drag ball scene in Harlem in the ’80s. You wouldn’t think of it, but it’s first and foremost a scene about performance. You’re also getting the context of the performers and their lives, but the thrill is the back and forth between the stage and offstage. The stage and the street, basically.
I really wanted the film to be a performance film, to make people in a movie theater or at home on their home screen, feel like they are in the three-dimensional space with us, with all the audience members and the band communing. That was the most important thing to me, then, once we sort of executed that, and we captured this one magic evening, then I felt like, “Well, the performance could really resonate in a big way if we could deepen the story a little bit and show people a little bit of the good, the bad and the ugly of being a touring performer in 2024.”
It's not an easy gig. I wanted people to see a little bit of that. I hope we’ve struck the balance well, but I want people, as you say, to get a taste but still have a bit of mystique left on the table.
You mentioned something in the film that I hadn’t realized: Low Cut Connie was something that happened when you were 31 and you were at a point of thinking, “Maybe I should pack it in.” How did it feel when all of the things you’ve done, this was the one that took off?
I’m still as shocked as anyone because I gave up. I gave up on myself, and I gave up on any idea of having an arts career. I was always doing a million different jobs, but they were jobs to support my performing dreams in my 20s. I was a secretary. I phone banked. I worked in a vintage clothing store. I nannied. I homeschooled. I was an SAT tutor; I was a piano tuner. At night I played piano in gay bars and restaurants and all kinds of things. But it was all in support of trying to make it with my music, which I failed to do.
At age 30, I took a more serious teaching job. A little more serious. A little more regular work. The idea was that I was going to be a weekend warrior with my music. I was sad about it, but I accepted it. And, actually, Jedd, I enjoyed teaching. I wasn’t upset about teaching at all. It’s something I actually miss now. Of course, when you take your foot off the gas pedal and stop trying, sometimes amazing creative things happen.
That first Low Cut Connie album was an absolute lark … that I didn’t think anyone would hear. I didn’t care if anybody heard it. I didn’t care about trying to get signed to a label or a manager or an agent or touring at all. It was just making the music just to make the music. It sort of took off. I certainly didn’t become a household name, but it slowly took over my life. I was little bit begrudging about it for the first few years because I did get sucked back in, and I did go into debt, and I did go backwards in my responsibility progression of being an adult. [Laughs.]
I am now more appreciative of the fact that I have people that care about my music and my performances because it happened to me late, really late. I’m in my 40s now. The people that really care about my music, that play it at their weddings, first dances and funerals, and people who play my music in hospitals for people who are ill, people who watched out [online shows] during the pandemic, people who come to our concerts, it means the world to me now. Now I really appreciate it. So, now I really like the fact that it happened for me late. I think in my 20s, I wouldn’t have had a good perspective on it.
Something that I appreciated about Low Cut Connie from the start was that this was not music that was necessarily reflective of a specific moment in time. And, lyrically, I thought, either “I know these people” or “I know this experience.” It seems to me that that’s what most people embrace about the band.
I don’t love a lot of biopics, but one that I truly love is “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” [a movie about] Loretta Lynn with Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones. I think that’s one of the best music films ever. In that film, there’s an awesome scene where Loretta Lynn becomes really famous and these women who are middle-aged housewives are running up to her, crying and saying, “I feel like you’re singing directly to me. I feel like you’re telling my story and you’re singing for me.” There’s no greater compliment for a songwriter, singer, performer, whatever, than that. Just somebody feeling like they are part of that music. That it speaks directly to them.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that because there’s a lot of music that I love that makes me feel that way. There’s a lot of performances that I’ve seen where I feel like I’m with them; I’m with the band or the performer. I do aim to connect with people, listeners in that way. I had a skewed vision of certain people I’m attracted to and subjects I’m attracted to, and it tends to be people who are on the margins. They don’t get a lot of attention in media.
I think the fans that we have are such an amazing, diverse, weird coalition of people. They’re all in different walks of life, but they all say that same thing that they feel a little bit seen in a way that they don’t through other music. Pop music is designed for mass consumption and by nature it’s generic. I want everything I do to be the opposite of that.
You’ve mentioned that you have imposter syndrome. Does that ever go away?
I don’t think so. I think Prince probably had imposter syndrome all the way to the end of his life. So many great performers do. It’s a motivator. Like I said, I gave up on myself and didn’t believe in myself and then things happened. I kind of answered the call and worked hard and tried to do great things to try to make good things happen, but that doesn’t mean I always believe in myself. I’ll give it my best. You know, you always have to have something to prove and a lot of times it’s to yourself and you need voices of doubt to motivate you. Sometimes they’re external, sometimes they’re internal. So, I think it’s OK to have a little bit of self-doubt. It pushes me forward anyway.
