‘Poughkeepsie Live’ director Raj Sirohi selects the flow of images heading out to Channel 6. (Photo by Steve Hopkins)
A Little Night Music
Every Thursday evening for the past 20 years,
‘Poughkeepsie Live’
has provided a prime
television showcase
for regional musicians
By Steve Hopkins
You may have spied the dynamic duo of Kristine Conte and Raj Sirohi driving around downtown Po’town or Kingston in their Time Warner Cable 6 news-mobile, chasing the next breaking story. Or you may have seen them dutifully interviewing someone at an event such as the massive Walkway Over the Hudson opening a few weeks ago, Kristine the on-air reporter holding the Cable 6 microphone in somebody’s face and Raj wielding the heavy shoulder-mounted video camera. Besides being a news reporter, Conte is a sometime anchor and full-time station manager for Time Warner’s Poughkeepsie-based Channel 23 public access station, and Raj handles the videography and camera editing for Kristine’s roving reports, sports and other original programming.
I have been friendly with Raj since the early days of his stint at the station, when I was dating his sister. I remember rattling around with Raj to do taped segments for breaks in the show; I did a Bill Moyers-style ramble around the Dutchess County Fair in 1997, sampling all the nasty carnie food and verbally sparring with the Guess-Your-Weight guy and the featured performer that day, Louise Mandrell. On another occasion Raj dragged me out to Lime Rock to videotape me nearly killing myself trying to drive a Dodge Viper around the track at 190 m.p.h.
That was also the time that Raj began work on his real passion, directing and producing a live, half-hour music television show featuring local and regional bands. It was called Poughkeepsie Live, and I remember designing a little rectangular black-and-yellow logo for the show on my old Macintosh Performa, that for some reason is still used today. The set was Spartan even by local television standards, and Raj was always hounding management for equipment to make the show better.
The show, now in its 20th year, has graduated into a slick, professionally run weekly labor of love. Kristine, Raj and upwards of a dozen unpaid volunteers, most of them with day jobs in the local TV industry, gather at the now smartly appointed, well-equipped studio to make another hardworking band look and sound the best they can on the small screen. YouTube and other Internet sites are now littered with clips from the show, used by bands to promote themselves. Every decent, touring local and regional band and singer/songwriter from the Little Creek Band to Dallas Fisher to Ratboy has been on the show at least once, along with bigger acts with Hudson Valley ties like Pete Seeger, John Hall, Burning Spear and Melba Moore.
A crew of three camera people encircle the amply lit stage, and Kristine and Raj guide the show through its paces, she hovering over the proceedings at the macro level, keeping an eye and ear on the big picture, and he sitting before a bank of monitors, calling out a complex, free-associative real-time menu of camera cuts, angles, pans and close-ups. Somebody watches the time, somebody else handles the graphics at Raj’s direction, the show’s smooth host, Michael Dell, tries to elicit some verbal patter out of his guest, blues singer and guitarist Bobby Kyle, commercials are cut in and out, and then the band goes back and fills out the last 10 minutes. What looks seamless on the small screen at home is really a finely tuned symphony, as lovely to watch as listen to.
The Bobby Kyle Band keeps the blues alive on 'Poughkeepsie Live' on September 10, 2009. (Photo by Steve Hopkins)
“The thing about the show is the crew,” says Sirohi, as we wait for tapes to be made and the band to pack up before everybody repairs to the Nuddy Irishman for beer and nachos. “I stand by the crew. The show itself is a music show, so when you’re watching it at home, you see the bands and hear them playing. When you’re here watching the show in the studio or in the control room, or in the green room, it’s a whole ’nother show, because of them, and how they work together. The crew are people who have been friends of the show for nine years, 10 or 15 years. And they’ve been coming just because of the fun process of the show. The crew are all volunteers, and all friends. Everybody gets along. Everybody knows each other. Everybody works in non-related TV jobs.”
“The best part about the show for me is that it brings together people to put something out that could never get done without everybody,” says Raj. “The show is not about me, it’s about the people … the crew. It really is a well-oiled machine. Everybody has their positions, everybody knows their jobs, everybody has their skill sets. And over the years some people rotate jobs, cameras, positions …” Someone interrupts with a message. Raj shifts into a supervisory mode again, this time directing the after party.
“OK, let’s go. Now it’s time to go for a beverage.”
Yes, it is. Thanks, Raj and Kristine, for letting me come by and take an updated look. You’re doing a great job, keeping live music on the airwaves and in people’s faces in this era of disembodied, antisocial little performances on computer screens and in headphones.
Don’t ever stop.
Poughkeepsie Live goes out in real time to 200,000 subscribers on Time Warner Cable Channel 6 at 7 p.m. on Thursdays. Rebroadcasts happen at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, 9:30 p.m. on Fridays, and 9 p.m. on Mondays in Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Sullivan and Greene counties. The show is also shown on Cablevision System Channel 21 on Fridays at 9:30 p.m. in Dutchess County and parts of Putman and Ulster counties. For more information, visit www.hvmusic.com/poklive.
A A memento from John Hall's pre-congressional-era appearance on the show adorns the studio wall. (Photo by Steve Hopkins)
