N.C. band is ‘Mad’ about government
March 9, 2006 by Contributed By Ashley Beebe
Filed under Out & About
Little girls and stuffed animals will be exchanged for ukuleles and social satire at Farm 255 this Saturday.
Mad Tea Party will play “vintage music from the 1920s and 1930s with a hint of rock ‘n’ roll – we call it vaudeville folk rock,” said Ami Worthen, vocalist and ukulele player for the band.
The trio comes from Asheville, N.C., and includes three-part harmonies between the members: Worthen, Jason Krekel (guitar, fiddle, kazoo) and Lora Pendleton (bass).
They combine their retro sound with commentary on the world today.
There are songs discussing consumerism and materialism, the most recent presidential election and the government’s response to the Katrina disaster, Worthen said.
But the audience shouldn’t expect to be bogged down by the music’s heavy message.
“We have a political message, but it’s very much (enclosed) in humor and fun,” Worthen said. “The best way to eradicate evil is to bring more joy into the world.”
Farm 255 will be the band’s first time playing in Athens.
Although the restaurant usually features local musicians, it likes “to give a home to touring bands who are looking for a place to play,” said Olivia Sargeant, managing owner and chef of Farm 255.
Farm 255 is a restaurant devoted to supporting agriculture in and around Athens by serving locally produced and organic food.
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It houses a bar that’s open five nights a week and features live music most nights, Sargeant said.
It has a variety of music.
Some nights there is jazz, and other nights the restaurant features DJs. And sometimes there are bigger name local bands like Modern Skirts and The Whigs, Sargeant said.
Mad Tea Party can expect to see an assortment of Athens’ local audiences at the restaurant.
“For dinner we’re all over the map,” Sargeant said. “We get professors, notable people visiting the campus, older folks, families with little kids and sorority date nights.”
Farm 255’s menu is as varied as its customer base.
The food is “Mediterranean with a Southern drawl – as we continue to refine the audience, we're dipping into more Southern stuff,” Sargeant said.
Because of the nature of its food supply, the menu changes almost daily, she said.
Most restaurants create their menu and then buy food based around it, but Farm 255 does it the other way around, she said, instead basing its menu around what foods are available.
The restaurant works in conjunction with Full Moon farm, which is housed on land that is run as a research farm in conjunction with Carl Jordan, a senior research scientist with the University’s Institute of Ecology, Sargeant said.
Farm 255 also buys heavily from six local farms and purchases some food from around 14 more. All of the restaurant’s meat is hormone-and antibiotic-free. Its beef is grass fed and pasture fed, Sargeant said.
The restaurant was created by six partners, all of whom are under 30, Sargeant said.
“We want to develop a local food system to support small-scale family farms, which are a dying breed,” she said.
