Claying Thoughts Pottery Studio

Claying Thoughts Pottery Studio
A84, A-Block, Jal Vayu Vihar, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
http://www.clayingthoughts.com/
Claying Thoughts Pottery Studio is not the kind of music venue you stumble upon while bar-hopping downtown. Located at the end of a gravel lane off County Road 12 in Brevard, North Carolina, the working ceramic studio converts once a month into an intimate listening house where pots, percussion, and poetry share the same breath. By day, owners Matt and Leah Hicks make Mediterranean-inspired tableware on treadle wheels while records play softly in the background; by night the clay-dappled tables are pushed aside, forty folding chairs appear among the kilns and glaze racks, and the three-chimney wood-fire kiln—nicknamed “Minerva” for her rumbling drone—becomes the most unlikely bass drum in the Blue Ridge.

What distinguishes the room acoustically is the 26-foot cathedral ceiling of pressed tin, rescued from a dismantled tobacco warehouse. It behaves like a vintage reverb plate. Maple floor joists, still sticky with slip, transmit a warm, tactile resonance to un-amplified acoustic guitars; audiences swear they can feel the wood vibrate underfoot when a cello plays in open-fourths tuning. Lighting comes strictly from 60-watt bulbs suspended in handmade porcelain sconces the color of clotted cream; their paper-thin walls glow, turning each fixture into a miniature Chinese lantern. The result is a soft amber halo that focuses attention on the performance zone rather than the mismatched chairs.

Unlike most pottery studios, the air never smells of sulfur or burning plastic; the Hicks fire only in reduction with local hardwood, so the room carries a faint, sweet aroma of maple and hickory that folds around musical overtones the way a good pre-war spruce top folds around a chord. During sets, Matt quietly feeds two-foot lengths of seasoned applewood into a small rocket stove behind the glaze bench, letting the crackle provide ornamental texture beneath finger-style guitar, much like the fire scenes in ancient theaters used to underscore monologues.

Repertoire gravitates toward warm-blooded roots music—Appalachian modal banjo, Scottish fiddle, neo-chamber folk, and spoken-word cycles. Because the room holds barely forty people, singers step away from microphones and, instead of monitors, listen for the pitch-shifting echo that rebounds off wet clay bats resting on nearby racks. On the first Saturday of May, they host a collaborative set: the band brings raw stoneware clay; midway through the final tune, members throw four vessels on wheels while the music sustains an A drone. When the wheel stops, Leah swiftly incises the date and set list on the still-spinning forms, inviting ticket holders’ thumbprints around the rim. These “concert bowls” are fired and mailed back as keepsake reminders that the art of listening is itself a hand-formed act.

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