They waited outside the band’s hotel overnight and befriended guitarist Johnny Marr the next day. That connection led Darmrong to follow the band on several tours over the next year and a half, taking pictures behind the scenes and onstage. Those photographs are the subject of a new book from Rizzoli Press, The Smiths, as well as a gallery exhibition that begins Friday at Studio 1469 in Columbia Heights and includes a talk and book signing on Saturday.

The Smiths — Marr, singer Morrissey, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce — broke up in 1987. Darmrong, who is now based in Maryland, talked with Bandwidth about photographing The Smiths at their peak while they toured in support of their 1986 classic, The Queen Is Dead.

Bandwidth: You were just 17 when you decided to follow The Smiths.

Nalinee Darmrong: I was a wee pup, yes.

What was it about the band that made you want to follow them around?

It wasn’t it was The Smiths that I was following. Everything kind of happened organically — my friend Tony got me into The Smiths’ music, then he got me my first ticket to my first show. And it wasn’t until I saw the live show that I was thinking to myself, “Woah, this is a really different band and I really like the energy.” I really had no preconceived notions of taking pictures of them or anything. So I went to the D.C. show, and I met Johnny, and he put us on the guest list for New York, which was two shows. My other friend had gotten me a ticket for Philadelphia, which was right after D.C., so it seems kind of kismet that I was supposed to go to all of these shows.

So right after New York they traveled to California, and that’s when I started taking pictures, I believe. But my love for The Smiths grew, I guess — I wasn’t that familiar with them until I kept seeing shows and kept learning about their music and their fans, and them. And just fell in love with them, just like everybody else did.

So you were more of a D.C. punk at that time?

Yes! I grew up in the D.C./Dischord punk rock scene, and was around D.C. a lot — the land of protest, and one thing that struck me about the first Smiths show I saw was the same energy. And I find it interesting that the Smiths are compared to a punk rock band now … and the time I wouldn’t have thought so, but then when I think if D.C. punk culture and the DIY culture of promoting yourself and [doing things] as you wish and not selling out … and just being there for the people, political messages, et cetera. So, I don’t see that characterization as being that far off.

So you weren’t taking photos until several shows into following them, right?

It was D.C., Philly, two New York shows — because that was just a whirlwind in itself, kind of an extended long weekend. And then Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and I think Mike Joyce — they all said, “If you want to come to California that would be amazing.” Johnny said, “I’m getting married … and we’re doing a civil ceremony, so if you guys could make it, that would be amazing,” and we were just so flattered that they felt so comfortable with us, and that they were just great people. We tried our best to make it [to the wedding ceremony] but we missed it — but we made all the rest of the shows.

What made you pick up a camera, though? Were you an employee of the band? When you started shooting, you got a photo pass, obviously — how did that work out?

So, I was not a photographer. The Smiths was the first band I shot extensively … I brought my camera and they already had gotten to know me a little bit, so they said, “Sure, just take your candid pictures,” and I guess they gave me a little bit of restriction at the beginning … I would get single photo passes for each show, but after California — I think it was about four or five shows — then Scotland was two months later, and they were like, “Let’s save some paper and money,” and they just gave me a photo pass. That’s when I got all the access to shoot wherever I wanted. … But yeah, I was definitely a novice.

Darmrong: “This is from outside the Clickimin Centre in the Shetland Islands. … If you look at the picture, they’re all quite young, they’re maybe a little tired from the ferry, and their style is understated but still super cool. … Everybody is smiling. And that’s another thing people have been saying about the book: Morrissey — since then — there haven’t been a lot of pictures of him smiling, and I guess I was fortunate to be there at a time where he smiled all the time.”

So you went to follow them on a tour of Scotland.

Yeah, it was a small tour, I think 10 shows. With friends … one of my biggest memories is crossing on the ferry from Inverness to the Shetland Islands — it crosses, like, three bodies of water, and everybody got sick but me, I have no idea why. So everybody felt this huge sense of accomplishment when we got there. … Everybody traveled to get to the same place by the same means, so it was just much more intimate.

What did your parents think?

So, I’ve always been a rebel. And I’ve always been pretty self-righteous, and in hindsight, 30-years-plus, I’m so grateful to them. I’m an only child, and I guess they always encouraged me to be independent, and they gave me some boundaries but they really kind of let me do whatever I wanted. So I pretty much begged to go to Scotland.

So it wasn’t the kind of thing where you were being paid by the band to shoot, so how did you afford all of this?

I paid off my credit card for three years afterward, but I worked a lot in-between. I worked a couple part-time jobs, and I stayed with friends. There’s this whole Smiths community, as people know who have seen the band, who have traveled around, and I would stay with them or hostels, B&Bs, they were a lot cheaper back then, and they were quite affordable, and I just made it work.

Darmrong: “[Morrissey] was always smiling, always humble, ready to answer everybody’s questions, he didn’t rush off, he always took the time to talk to people.”

All I can say is that I really didn’t see too much of that. … I saw girlfriends and wives there a lot, which I thought was pretty cool, because the shows felt all-inclusive rather than, like, “When band’s on tour, that’s it.” So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, it was definitely a different atmosphere to shows that I’ve seen since then. I’m one of the house photographers for the 9:30 Club now, so I see all different kinds of environments, and have shot many shows since this time, and yeah, it was one of the more modest environments … everybody was pretty modest and humble and chill, and it wasn’t super “rock ‘n’ roll” in that sense.

What was your average day like? How much did you interact with the band by the time you were more of a fixture in their crew of people?

I would have to travel … I would have to find a place to stay … get to the venue … they were so kind — a lot of the times I would get to go to the sound checks, just hang and take my candid shots. Because if people get the book, they’ll see that there are a lot of candid shots of the crew and the cities. There’s one pic of Mike and Andy in the pool, and another one of them just talking to fans from an overhead shot, which I liked. I liked being a fly on the wall, but I always had my camera. … Then we’d go off to eat. Sometimes I was with my friends, sometimes I was alone, but I knew I would always meet up with people later. … And then it was the show, and all the energy was on, and I did my thing. Sometimes they were busy, sometimes they would hang out, it just depended on the evening.

Specifically more to the band members, is there anything that sticks out as your favorite memory? You may have been the fly on the wall, but a lot of these photos are pretty intimate, too.

One of my fondest memories [was at one of the first two New York shows], and I was in the front, and the fans were kind of pushing me up to get on stage, and the bouncers, these big dudes, were punching — literally punching me — to get down, and I didn’t know what to do. … and I just sat there levitated above the hands of these fans, and Morrissey saw me, I guess, and he, like, pulled me out of the crowd, and I just hugged him for maybe the whole song … I was just happy that someone realized the predicament I was in. It was great because the fans cheered, like in the back, but I don’t think they had any idea of what was happening. I was just so thankful for Morrissey for that moment, alone.

A memory of Johnny: I don’t remember what show, but it was later on, I think on the last U.S. tour … I was [onstage] dancing, and Johnny was just being his anti-solo, rock-god self, and he was just talking to me about the day. He said, “How was your day, Nalinee?” I was like, “It was lovely, I had a really nice cup of tea” — that’s why I worship him now as well as I did then, because he was just so smooth.

Was he playing a song?

Yes! He was playing a song while he was talking to me — and dancing. He was like, “You’re a really good dancer, Nalinee,” and I’m like, “You’ve got some moves, too, you’re totally cutting up a rug, playing the song, talking to me about my day.”

People that know The Smiths, there are probably lots of words that come to mind, but the welcoming you onto stage and hugging you, that sort of fits that theme of sensitivity, there was a lot of openness —

Yes!

You spent a lot of time around Smiths crowds in the ’80s. What were the characteristics of a typical Smiths crowd in 1986?

One thing I would like to say is that The Smiths always like to blur the artist/fan boundaries, artist/crew boundaries, artist/venue boundaries. They always encouraged crowd participation. At the end of all their shows … you had a chance to go onstage and hug them or dance with them. … Lately I’ve been talking to people that were at shows then, and it’s definitely this communal feeling — like we were there at this really special time, and we didn’t know how amazing a show could be until we saw shows after this. Because we were all quite young.

So by the time this was all over — the band, and obviously your opportunity to take photos of the band — you were still a teenager, you know?

18!

Was it a letdown to realize you couldn’t do it anymore?

Oh no, I was very happy to go home. In a way, I didn’t experience what they experienced, but I was quote-unquote on the road, as well. At the end, I helped clean up the tour bus — that’s what I did, I would like, clean up, or I’d help out as much as I could because they got me into all these shows. So I was really, really thankful, and I guess I’ve always been kind of like that. But I was definitely happy to be in one place for awhile. And just kind of enjoy the memories from the whole experience.

Scheduled to open in 2016, the museum has already added some remarkable music objects to its permanent collection, including J-Dilla’s production gear, chic dresses from En Vogue, a replica of Funkadelic’s mothership, items from Chuck Brown’s estate and a drum from protopunk band Death. (Bandwidth has done a lot of reporting on the museum’s music acquisitions. Catch up here.)

The newly acquired photographs come from the Eyejammie Hip-Hop Photo Collection, spanning images by a range of photographers. Music historian and former Def Jam publicity director Bill Adler assembled the collection, which showed at New York’s Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery between 2003 and 2007, according to the Smithsonian.

Julia Beverly, founder of Southern hip-hop magazine Ozone and biographer of the late Texas rapper Pimp C, posted on Instagram this week that more than 20 of her images are included in the collection. Her photos feature Southern rappers Lil Jon, T.I., Slim Thug, David Banner, Rich Boy and Mike Jones.

Here’s the list of images Beverly posted on Instagram (warning: some explicit language):

The Eyejammie photo collection will be part of the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts, curated by Rhea L. Combs. Now under construction on the National Mall, the museum is scheduled for completion in fall 2016.

Here are some images from the Eyejammie collection:

Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim, 1996 (Maggie Trakas)

Black Sheep with World Trade Center in background, 1992 (Al Pereira)

Run DMC (James Hamilton)

Eazy-E in New York’s Union Square, 1996 (Al Pereira)

All photos courtesy of the Smithsonian.

“I was just like ‘OK, this is a girl zine, this is gonna be great. I was being really sarcastic about it because I really like to focus on the inclusiveness of things,’” says Skeiky, who also works in food PR. “My ideal is always, ‘Why doesn’t every zine just have more female contributions?’”

But Skeiky eventually warmed up to the idea because Scharbach and Martinez had a strict rule: female-identified contributors only.

John Scharbach — better known as Crucial John, the vocalist of D.C. hardcore band Give — has spearheaded other zines before. He met Martinez, an artist and then-prospective American University student, at a Give show in her home state of Florida. He dug her art, so Scharbach advised Skeiky (an occasional Bandwidth contributor) to follow Martinez on Instagram.

Skeiky tapped “follow,” and out of this 21st century friendship, a 20th century zine emerged.

Skeiky took all the photos for Strawberry Dreams, mostly of live performances from punkish bands like Gouge Away, Downtown Boys and D.C.’s Sneaks and Priests. Martinez contributed a heap of drawings and a piece of writing, which opens the zine. Crucial John, the token man, handled layout and passed out the final product while touring Europe with Give.

“I think it’s important for everybody to consume media that makes them kind of uncomfortable.” —Farrah Skeiky

“I think it’s really good that [Crucial John] was part of this idea because he’s just being a really good male ally to women in the scene,” says Skeiky. “He’s setting a really good example — he’s not using his voice in the scene, which is a pretty strong one, to decide what should be in it. He’s using his voice [for] something everybody should be reading regardless of their gender.”

The zine’s founders stress that while Strawberry Dreams skews female-identified, they think everyone can — and should — read it. Skeiky points out that while cultural products created by men are considered open to all audiences, products made by women are often seen as specialized, or for women only.

“I think it’s important for everybody to consume media that makes them kind of uncomfortable,” Skeiky says, “because it means that you’re reading about something that you don’t know a lot about… or something that [makes you] realize you feel guilty [because] you haven’t given it much thought.”

Skeiky, Martinez and Crucial John plan to produce more issues of Strawberry Dreams this fall — with Issue No. 2 expected to arrive in the next month — and they’ll keep the finished product short and free of charge. After that, they may reevaluate both the zine’s size and cost. They say they’ve already been flooded with submission inquiries, so serious growth could arrive seriously soon.

The team’s distribution plan is a wonderful mix of old- and new-school: They distribute hard copies at shows, while folks with the digital PDF version are encouraged to email it far and wide.

The zine’s aesthetic is clearly influenced — like a lot of subculture right now — by the 1990s. But Skeiky and her partners (who have only been in the same room once, at a recent Ceremony show) want to go broader.

“There’s no denying that we’re not influenced by older punk zines, especially older riot grrrl kind of zines,” says Skeiky. “But we also recognize that there were a lot of things missing at the time from early riot grrrl zines, because that feminism was primarily for white women… and feminism can mean different things to different women.”

Hard copies of Strawberry Dreams are available at Joint Custody, Upshur Street Books, Smash Records and Meats & Foods. To get a copy in the mail, email your mailing address to strawberrydreamsfanzine@gmail.com. The zine’s second issue is forthcoming.

Strawberry Dreams Fanzine: Issue No. 1

WAMU is licensed to American University.

The Silver Spring photographer has been shooting photos and video of the contemporary go-go scene since 2010, and he captures conversations with D.C.-area musicians with a new web series called Locally Grown. Py’s videos live permanently on YouTube. His newest photo show, on the other hand, is one-night only.

Py plans to share and discuss some of his go-go images Monday, Aug. 17 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C., just in time for the late Chuck Brown’s birthday. The godfather of go-go would have turned 79 on Aug. 22. One of Py’s images can be found at the Chuck Brown Memorial in D.C.’s Langdon neighborhood.

The photographer says his presentation will be more than just a random collection of band photos on a screen.

“The photo talk is really designed for people who are somewhat familiar with the go-go culture but haven’t really been into the go-go culture,” Py says in a phone call. “I talk about the music of go-go and how it is distinctive and unique to Washington D.C. How it is a big part of the culture for African-Americans who have grown up and lived in D.C.”

But he has his own side of the story to share, too. “I speak to my adventure in go-go and my work with many of the bands, especially my work with Chuck Brown,” Py says. “A very personal adventure.”

Capturing go-go

When Py calls his photography a personal adventure, that’s important. He’s spent time in places, and with people, who are crucial to the go-go scene. He hung out at clubs such as Tradewinds, the now-shuttered Maryland go-go hall. And he worked as one of Chuck Brown’s official photographers in the final year of Brown’s life.

In 2009, Py was just another local shooter who had photographed old-school D.C. rock acts like The Nighthawks and The Slickee Boys. Then in 2010 he saw Brown perform at the annual National Capital Barbecue Battle on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. He took some photos from the crowd and got hooked.

“So I started shooting [go-go groups] Bela’dona [and] Da Mixx Band, and worked my way up to Rare Essence,” Py says. “I kept sending my work to Chuck and [his manager] Tom Goldfogle, and within three months I was onstage with Chuck shooting his shows. I quit my job and pursued this for two years.”

Between the summer of 2010 to 2013, Py went out three or four nights a week and came home at 6 a.m., he says. He enjoyed crossover-friendly go-go gigs, but he tended to prefer the late-night shows that attracted genre devotees.

“It’s much more interesting when the audience is engaging at eye level with the band,” Py says, “and the lead talker is talking about those people’s lives and what is happening that week, and whose birthday it is, and the guy who just got out of jail after 20 years and gets to come onstage and dance with the band. You don’t see that at the Strathmore Hall show.”

Py’s presentation at the library, which he’s shown only twice before, will include images of gigs by The Backyard Band, Team Familiar (formerly Familiar Faces), Suttle Thoughts, Be’la Dona, Da Mixx Band and Rare Essence in addition to Chuck Brown.

But Py isn’t shooting as much as he once was. He still regularly hits Silver Spring’s Society Lounge to see Team Familiar play its Sunday gig there, but he’s slowed down his go-go photography. He’s working a day job again, for one — and he also found himself in an artistic rut.

“For the most part I stopped shooting go-go two years ago,” Py says. “You can’t shoot the same thing over and over again and still have it be creative.”

So Py has channeled his love of documentation into his YouTube show that serves a similar purpose: to record D.C.’s music culture.

Locally Grown

Py has a green thumb. “I have a very beautiful — I call it a ‘yarden,” he says. “It’s no longer a garden, it has taken over the entire yard.”

Sunday afternoons he invites musicians to his backyard jungle. He grills up a meal and switches on his video camera for a chat and a performance. “Grill, garden and grooves,” he calls it.

This summer Py is recording 10 to 12 programs of artists playing in his garden. Each show runs for 15 to 20 minutes and features local musicians from go-go and roots bands performing original material and answering Py’s questions. He handles the entire production, from setting up microphones to interviewing artists to editing tape. He likes it that way.

“I decided I didn’t want to wrestle with cell-phone photographers in clubs for a position to video,” Py says. Plus, he’d been inspired by NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts, a series of live performances filmed at the cluttered desk of All Songs Considered creator Bob Boilen.

Py has taped Locally Grown episodes with musicians including keyboardist Marcus Young from The Chuck Brown Band, Esther Haynes and Hokum Jazz, Frank “Scooby” Marshall (aka Frank Sirius) from Team Familiar and The Chuck Brown Band and guitarist Genevieve Konecnik (aka Genny Jam), formerly of Be’la Dona and now with Pebble to Pearl.

Py usually wears something outlandish on his show — a tie-dyed shirt or a loud thrift-store sports jacket — and his enormous, phallic microphone adds a goofy, public-access feel. Occasionally, Py’s dog Bebop will wander into the frame.

The photographer says he’s “extremely uncomfortable in front of that camera,” but he sticks with it. “As a kid, I wanted to be a game-show host. I grew up on The Gong Show.”

Py admits Locally Grown hasn’t racked up many views online, but he’s happy with the project, and he suspects his guests are, too.

When go-go artists join Py in his “yarden,” he asks them to play original music — not covers, which many go-go acts play live. He also sometimes asks them to collaborate with people they haven’t worked with before.

“A certain joy comes out,” Py says, when musicians are doing that kind of thing. Take Claudia “Kool Keys” Rogers from Be’la Dona and Salt-N-Pepa’s band. She’d only met bandleader and violinist Chelsey Green once, briefly, but their dual performance on Locally Grown felt authentic.

It was the kind of creative chemistry Py wants to capture on his program.

“I put [Rogers] in a situation that she was a bit uncomfortable with, but afterwards she thanked me,” Py says. “It allowed her to be an artist.”

Chip Py shares and discusses his go-go images Aug. 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C. Free admission. The library also hosts a Chuck Brown tribute Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. The Chuck Brown Band plays a Chuck Brown Day concert Aug. 22 at the Chuck Brown Memorial in D.C.

Peoples Drug

Swimsuit Addition

Teen Liver

Young Trynas

The Sniffs

Pinkwash

Joy Buttons

“When I first started [shooting], I had the cheapest camera,” he says—a Canon 60D that he used with a “bootleg flash” and a battery pack. Shooting five shows a week with his heavy equipment, the 26-year-old photographer began to feel pain in his right arm. It got scary a few months ago when Andrade was traveling back home from a show at Tenleytown’s Casa Fiesta. “My whole body started shaking,” he says. “I thought I was going to die.”

Andrade sought medical help and physical therapy. “I had to take a lot of medicine,” he says. Eventually, the pain receded. He soon invested in a lighter, more expensive camera.

Now, Andrade gets to show off the work that almost put him out of commission: Tonight the photographer opens “IN MY EYES,” an exhibit of his concert photography, at The Coupe in Columbia Heights. It’s his first solo show.

The exhibit features a few dozen images of 11 D.C.-area bands, including Chain & the Gang, Dudes (shown above), Olivia Neutron-John, Warchild, Give and Baby Bry Bry and the Apologists.

“I fell in love with hardcore music when I was 17 years old,” says the Alexandria native. “Bad Brains’ Pay To Cum changed my life.” Later on, the photography coming out of D.C.’s hardcore scene didn’t impress him. He felt more drawn to the work of photographers like Pulitzer winner Lucian Perkins—particularly his visceral images of a young D.C. punk scene, like the ones published in the 2013 book Hard Art DC 1979. “I decided to take it upon myself” to start shooting hardcore shows, Andrade says, aiming for a similar look and feel as Perkins achieved in his work.

Andrade has been shooting punk shows for two years—still a newbie by most standards, but his work stands out as some of the best in the scene. He’s now a familiar face at shows. Though, it helps that he doesn’t have a lot of competition at the tiny events he chooses to capture.

“When I go to these house shows, it’s like, two photographers,” Andrade says. When he recently shot a show at Rock & Roll Hotel, there were too many photographers there for his taste. He prefers the little gigs—where he can get right in the pit and shoot the kids. That’s where he says he finds the best shots.

“Lucian did a great job of documenting not just the band but the crowd,” Andrade says. In Perkins’ photos, you don’t just see the band—you see people in the audience, like Alec MacKaye, who would go on to become influential in their own right. “The crowd for me is half of the battle because they’re just as important as the band.”

Even after a couple of years—and who knows how many shows—the photographer says he still gets antsy before a shoot. “I always get super nervous,” he says. Why? 

“I don’t know—I’ve done this a million times,” Andrade says. “I guess it means I’m still enjoying it.”

“IN MY EYES” opens at 6 p.m. tonight at The Coupe. The show is on view to Sept. 1.