Piecemeal: How One Man Remained Best Friends with One of the Underground Metal Scene's Most Enduring Icons

by Sharon Rexsmith, Staff Writer

An unassuming, one-story building sits at the otherwise barren corner of Post and Collins Roads, on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Two 18th-century oil-lanterns flank the entrance, blazing perpetual blue flames. Overhead, a small sign — illuminated at night by a low-wattage outdoor light — reads "BLUE LANTERN CAFÉ & GRILL." Stepping through the twin oak doors to enter this place is reminiscent of entering the cargo hold of a clipper ship: low ceilings, wood planks covering the floor and walls, and heavy wooden support beams evenly spaced throughout the spacious café floor.

At the far end, directly opposite the entrance, a bar is barely visible through the dusty light that filters through small, grimy windows. An old-fashioned bar, complete with brass rail, stools, and a mirror lining the wall behind the counter, no hard liquor can be found here. No liquor at all, for that matter. The bar has been retrofitted with refrigerators, coffee grinders, industrial drip-brewers and urns, and a state-of-the-art espresso machine. Where the bar abruptly ends, a refrigerated pastry case shines fluorescent light on an assortment of muffins, scones, and the like. A menu of colored chalk hangs above the wall mirror, advertising such colorful local beverages as the Grant Wood mocha and the Tiffany O'Donnell caramel swish.

For eight of its fourteen business hours each day, when you enter the Blue Lantern, you'll see staring at you from the behind the bar a large, bearded, bespectacled fellow, 6'4" and burly chested, his well-toned, vein-lined forearms bulging with each motion as he wipes the bar. He'll watch you approach with steel-gray eyes and an ever-present scowl.

"What do you want?" he'll say gruffly, unconsciously pushing back his bushy, dirt-colored hair with a swift hand movement. When you place your order, he prepares it quickly and with little effort, but he makes his burden and irritation known when he hurriedly pushes your mug across the bar and mutters, "Here."

But this gruff man has a secret: he is Carl Davenport, the proprietor of the most successful coffee shop in Cedar Rapids history. It's not the service that keeps the customers coming back. "It's the coffee," Davenport explains, swelling with such excitement that he nearly cracks a smile. "I spent three years researching coffee: how it's grown and harvested, the regions [where it can properly grow], the villages and people who do this professionally. I picked what I thought was the best — and I'm only working out of one store here, so I can be a little bit pickier than most places — and started paying them a premium to grow and ship it directly from Senegal, in West Africa."

The fact that, for a time, it was the only coffee shop in Cedar Rapids helped. "I started this business because they had built a Starbucks out to Iowa City, and until that time, very few people actually knew anything about coffee. Yeah, there were coffeehouses, and they were reasonably successful, but they were basically brewing Superior Coffee at a time when all anybody knew about was Folgers.

"I'm not saying Superior is bad," Davenport continues, spewing this information as fluidly as a fountain pen as he leads me past the bar and down a set of shaky wooden staircases to a poorly lit basement, "or Folgers or even Starbucks, but none of them are the best."

As Davenport shows me around his basement, where he stores large, green beans in enormous wooden crates stamped "LUMIÈRES BLEUES," until he needs to roast them in an enormous roaster he has installed, he goes into the origin of the Blue Lantern.

"This place was started in 1958 by a guy named Charlie Finn. He called it the Blue Lantern Pub, and he intended it to be, basically, a place where the third- and fourth-generation Irish-Americans could fraternize. Many of them had moved out from Chicago after World War II, opting for the serene, small-town life, but they had nowhere to congregate. The German pubs and Czech restaurants were a little unkind to them, even though, I mean, we're all Americans, right? It was weird.

"So he started this pub, and he ran it pretty successfully until his death in 1987, at which point his son, Richie, took over. Now, I was friends with Richie's younger brother, Steve, so we'd kinda come and hang around even though we weren't really supposed to.

"That only lasted a few months, 'cause one of the first things Richie did was drastically change the atmosphere of the bar. By this time, most of the Irish had integrated into Cedar Rapids, and they didn't really need a so-called 'escape.' The numbers were dwindling, so Richie took advantage of his own main interest: the burgeoning music scene around here. A lot of people were forming garage bands, including Richie himself, and there weren't all that many places to play, so Richie set up a little bandstand that was basically six inches worth of cordwood stacked up and nailed together, and he started booking his friends to play.

"That kinda took off, and it kind of became the big metal bar in the C.R.-Marion area. Metal was big at the time, so that's what most of these bands played. They were mostly high schoolers or college students, just fucking around, and most of them were pretty awful. As the metal scene kinda died, the clientele disappeared. Grew up, got jobs, whatever. Nobody was playing, nobody was drinking, and they started jacking up insurance and licensing fees for bars, so Richie had to sell.

"That's where I came in," Davenport continues. "By 1999, after working for awhile, I had a pretty hefty sum tucked away for college, and when Richie started talking about all his problems, I started thinking. Now, look, not many people actually get too far out of this place. I've been fortunate in my life to have gone all over the country and to be generally aware of what goes on in the Outside World, so to speak. I knew that coffee was a big deal, and I thought, 'Maybe instead of going to college, I should just cash in.'"

Davenport first bought the rundown bar at a very low price, then put it aside. He spent years researching every facet of the coffee industry, with help from a supportive, coffee-loving group of friends in Seattle, Washington. When the Blue Lantern was finally ready to reopen its doors in 2002, a Starbucks had already become an institution in nearby Iowa City. "People were getting tired of driving an hour for good coffee," Davenport explains. "But the fact that, even while complaining about it, they'd still do it — that told me I was onto something."

He was. A year later, the Blue Lantern was a Cedar Rapids institution, eclipsing Cosmic Bowling at the Cedar Rapids Bowling Center as the town's most popular attraction. Three years after its opening, it remains extremely popular — and extremely lucrative.

"There's not much overhead," Davenport explains. "I hired a few people, I keep it up to code, but we're not competitive. We don't advertise, we don't raise or lower prices — we really don't have to. We just sell coffee, and people love it.

"At the risk of sounding like a braggard, it's nice to run a successful business. I get up in the morning, and I like the fact that I'm going to go to work and make money hand over fist. I know I won't have to worry about money pretty much ever. I paid cash for this damn building, and I've made enough so far... Let's just say that if I were to buy one decently big house on every continent on Earth, except maybe Antarctica — I don't think they have too many houses — I'd still have enough that I'd never have to work another day in my fucking life."

But he will. You might be asking yourself at this point, "Sharon, you're a staff writer for Hardchord, the premier underground-metal magazine in the Pacific Northwest. Why did you just devote two three-column pages to some rinky-dink café owner in Iowa?"

"Yeah, I know Girth McDürchstein," Davenport told me. "We actually have been best friends since we were three." Does that answer your question?

I sat down last week with Carl Davenport, after he gave me a tour of his shop and a lengthy explanation of his background, to discuss with him the man behind the semi-mythical rocker/performance-artist who fronts legendary metal band Abysmal Crucifix. I felt the details of Davenport's recent life enrich the secrets he has divulged. Read on for a complete transcript of our candid interview.

Hardchord: I want to thank you for talking to us. First, I can't go on with the interview without asking you about Girth's mother.
Carl Davenport: [laughs] Of course not. For those of your readers who don't know, and at this point there are only a handful of people who do know, Girth's given name is actually Matt Phillips. It's kind of complicated how it got started, and it's not really important, but the long and short of it is that I am, right now, engaged to Girth's mother, Rosalind Phillips, née Kleinermann.

H: And how did Girth feel when you told him?
CD: We actually kept our relationship secret — from everyone, not just Girth — for about five years. But you know how word travels in small towns. It's one of those things that everyone knows but nobody talks about. But since Matty — Girth, I mean — since he wasn't here, he didn't know at all. He came for a visit, very short visit, just about a month ago. That, in itself, is a pretty long story, but that's when we finally told him. And with it out in the open, I finally popped the question. I mean, why not? I love her.

H: Was this something you foresaw happening when you were a child?
CD: Uh, no. She was always kind of a MILF, but that's really not something you actively think about. I mean, seriously, what kind of question is that?

H: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to —
CD: No, it's not a big thing. I just —

H: I think we can just move on, if it's all right.
CD: I'm sure that's for the best.

H: If you haven't seen the new Abysmal Crucifix websites, Girth has openly admitted that this recent trip to Cedar Rapids has formed the basis for his new album.
CD: Girth McDürchstein's 'The Return.'

H: That's right.
CD: I can't wait to hear it.

H: So you follow his music?
CD: Of course. Um, little known fact — although I am proud to see that he's stuck me into the latest band bio — I used to play with him. Although he says on the website that Abysmal formed in 1992 — which is true in the sense that we started calling ourselves that then — we actually played all through high school in various styles and under a different name about every month.

H: What was it like working with him at such an early age?
CD: Weird. He actually learned a lot from our other member, [bassist] Robin Kelley, weirdly enough. It was kind of a yin-yang McCartney-Lennon thing. He would come in with these just insane 15-minute... basically, symphonic movements. Instrumental, with that basically "here's the main themes, followed by the development section" — and by that he meant "stop playing while I shred for eighty years" — "then back to a reprise of the themes."

What Robin added was, basically, condensation. She'd say, "Look, this can go faster" or "We don't need a solo there" or "We can cut out that entire chord progression." She'd write melodies, they'd usually do lyrics together, so instead of this overwrought crap, we had decent, three-minute rock songs. With her out of the band, it's interesting, because he knows how to make a decent rock song, but every once in awhile he just goes off. I mean, look at the last album, this "Love Song of Gregor Samsa." Fuckin' — that song could be five minutes, easily. It's twice that.

H: And this development took place over what time period?
CD: This was about '89 to '92. After high school, they had pretty much gotten their songwriting dynamics down. We also had a shorthand, so they could pretty much just come in with their songs and tell me how they wanted it drummed. We kept going while they went through college here at Coe. I had to work, saving up, you know, but I was still here, so we'd go around playing for extra cash. Summers, we'd go out touring across the country. It was a lot of fun.

H: Why did he leave?
CD: He tells everybody he wanted to be famous, and we — specifically, Robin — were standing in his way. That's partly true. It was kind of a crossroads moment: we could go with Matt to LA and try to make a go of it, or we could settle into our lives. I dunno, that might sound like the easy way out, I guess.

H: In the sense that you didn't try for major success?
CD: Yeah, I mean, I can't necessarily speak for Robin, but I pretty much felt like this band thing was something fun I did in high school and what should have been my college years, but there comes a time when you just gotta face facts. We weren't going anywhere. I mean, yeah, Girth's cut these records and supposedly he's all famous and underground and shit, but he's really not much more successful than we were back in the day. He just has a reputation now.

H: You mentioned this only being a part of the story.
CD: Yeah, the other half is the dirt you've probably been wanting since you first emailed me about this stuff. I'm gonna lay it all out for you: Robin and Matt were in love, back then. Like, head-over-heels. Like, we were in a band together but I felt like a third wheel all the time because they were just ridiculous about it. I think this was a lot of the reason why their music jelled so well. They had this instinctive bond. It was kinda creepy — that whole finishing-each-others'-sentences shit.

H: And what happened?
CD: So he proposed. She accepted, of course, and they started planning the wedding. I really have no idea what happened, but about two weeks before the wedding, he just... disappeared. He left a short note to Robin, so we knew he wasn't dead or anything. But yeah, I think his belief was that "settling down" with Robin would mean giving up the band. He made a choice, and that's fine.

Incidentally, none of us heard from him for six years. Six fucking years — can you believe it? I stumbled on his first record at a used store about three years after it'd come out. I contacted the label and got the rest of them. Then a few years later, we finally heard from him. He had just gotten thrown in jail — fuckin' jail, can you believe that shit?

H: This was the scandal involving him —
CD: — and the dead bodies at that hotel. Yeah, that's it. It's weird. None of us really saw that coming, not even Rosalind, but he started writing to each of us regularly, and we all wrote him back except Robin. It kind of reinvigorated our friendship, which was nice. Then his father passed away while he was in jail, which was pretty traumatic for him. He stopped writing to Rosalind, and that shook her up.

H: Why did he stop?
CD: He blamed her for the death. It was a ridiculous thing, and we actually got that resolved when he came out here, thank God. I mean, it's a heart-attack; what could she have done?

H: I'd like to talk to you specifically about the music now.
CD: Okay.

H: On the initial release, Star Sex, more than half the songs were co-penned by Robin Kelley. Were these songs you used to play?
CD: Yeah.

H: What was it like, to listen to an album of somebody you know, hear drumlines that you yourself used to play, but you weren't the one performing?
CD: It was kind of weird, obviously. Like an out-of-body experience, I guess, but not too severe. You get used to it after awhile, but it's hard, even now, to listen to that album without tons of memories of that time flooding back. Some good, some bad. It's a bittersweet recollection.

H: What is your favorite Abysmal Crucifix album?
CD: Delightlah! No question. I know there was quite a bit of fanfare about his leap forward, lyrically, with The Hedge, but I just thought it was too much excess. I mean, it's a good listen, and the lyrics are definitely a cut above, but I just think there's way too much self-indulgence, where to much reliance on "old-Girth" instincts, with the ridiculously long songs, nine guitar solos on every song, you know what I'm saying?

H: And Delightlah! is kind of the antidote to that.
CD: Sure. I mean, ignoring The Hedge, it's the Abysmal record with the most songs, and yet it's the shortest. It's only about 40 minutes for 13 songs, and they're all pretty much gold, or at least silver. Lyrically, I mean, I don't care about that so much. It's Girth — his mind is constantly in the gutter, so I kinda got used to that by the time we were 13. But it doesn't surprise me that this is the one record he put out that actually had a single on the charts.

H: What did you think of the controversy surrounding the release of the You Can Touch It for a Quarter sessions? [In 2000, former Abysmal Crucifix drummer Tommy Janofsky released these sessions commercially without the knowledge or willful consent of the other band members. — ed.]
CD: You mean, on the rare occasion I actually think about it? [laughs] I dunno, it is kind of an asshole move to take something that was so obviously incomplete and rush it to market. And as I understand it, he basically stole the incomplete tracks, no matter what shape they were in, and mixed and mastered them. I did pick up a copy, out of morbid curiosity, and to let Girth — who obviously couldn't run out and buy a copy at the time — know what was going on. But really, it's just an awful, awful release.

H: Would you have any interest in seeing Abysmal go back into the studio to complete the project?
CD: No.

H: Why not?
CD: This isn't Smile. This is an asshole drummer who stole recordings to make money. Girth has to move forward. And really, it wasn't the type of album that's going to haunt him for 30 years. It was just another Abysmal record. The Hedge, for better or worse, is 10 times what Quarter would've been.

H: After the incident with Tommy Janofsky [Abysmal Crucifix's former drummer — ed.], did you ever consider returning to the band when Girth needed a drummer?
CD: Not once. I was never asked, and while it might have been fun for awhile, it's just not something I'm interested in doing at this stage.

H: You've mentioned a certain amount of wealth. Essentially, you can do whatever you want at any time. Would you ever sell the Blue Lantern and go on the road with Girth?
CD: No.

H: Even if —
CD: What is your obsession with me rejoining the band? You've never even heard me play! Besides, his new wife is drumming for them now, and she's quite good. Way better than me, at any rate.

H: I didn't mean to offend you.
CD: You didn't.

H: I think I did.
CD: No, you really didn't.
H: I apologize sincerely.
CD: Are we done yet? I haven't shown you the roaster.

H: One last question: How do you think Abysmal Crucifix went from playing a tiny hole-in-the-wall like this —
CD: Hey!

H: Sorry — to being one of the most talked-about groups in the underground music world.
CD: I really don't know. Piecemeal?

H: Piecemeal?
CD: Yeah, you know: one step at a time.

Reprinted from Hardchord Magazine, holiday (December/January) edition 2005.