Homecoming King

By Robert Quigley /// published in the December 2008 issue

Baxter Clement has been rehearsing a lot lately, but not in the unheated 10-by-10 room on the top floor of the Music Building in Hell’s Kitchen, where his old band, The Blondes, Inc. — Clement and Bill Brittelle and Joel Morales and Sean McMorris — used to practice from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every morning before work. Nor has he been rehearsing during off-hours on the stage at his (and Bill’s and Joel’s) old workplace, Sin-é, the Irish bar/café/rock club on Attorney Street where Jeff Buckley recorded his first EP and where the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Blondes, Inc. played early shows. He couldn’t have, because Sin-é shut down in 2007 when the million-dollar condos took over its Lower East Side neighborhood. The club occupies a certain sentimental place in Clement’s heart, and he was saddened when it shut down. But right now he’s miles away from expensive condos, New York, the scene and all of that.

Baxter Clement is about 500 miles away, in fact, in his hometown of Southern Pines, North Carolina, population 12,433. An instructor by day at the music school he founded here, the Sandhills School of Performing Arts (SSPA), lately Clement has been busy rehearsing for his role in the musical comedy Plaid Tidings, about a fictional Four Freshmen-esque harmony group called the Plaids, all of whom wear plaid jackets, who are brought back from the dead by a mysterious force to perform in a holiday concert. Clement, who plays a member of the quartet named Sparky, describes the style of the show as “holy shit, this is corny and campy and your grandma might be cheesed out by it.” “I just laugh at the idea of all of my punk friends from New York going to see stuff like this. Like, me dressed up in a plaid jacket, with my hair combed back and combed over…you know, thinking about Richard Lloyd and all those guys I toured with coming, they’d just laugh and laugh about it,” he says.

If Clement sometimes comments on the goings-on in Southern Pines from a certain knowingly urban vantage or lets the odd swear word slip more casually than Southern decorum might allow, he never condescends to the town. This is where he’s chosen to be. After 15 years away from home for one reason or another — boarding school at the North Carolina School of the Arts, college at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, a post-collegiate classical guitar fellowship at the Mozarteum conservatory in Salzburg, Austria, and eight years in New York City — Clement came back to Southern Pines in 2006. “It’s like — what’s that guy’s name? Jimmy Stewart! It’s like Jimmy Stewart’s town with like a bunch of weird liberal people in it,” he says. “It’s like It’s a Wonderful Life, but kind of groovy.”

Southern Pines, which is located in the Sandhills region of North Carolina, is something of an anomaly among small Southern towns. It’s fairly wealthy, the average education level is high, and many of its residents are transplants from the North. The region is most famous for its golf: there are roughly 40 golf courses in Moore County, where Southern Pines is located. One of them, Pinehurst No. 2, ranks year after year as one of the top ten courses in the United States. Aside from golf, the region is home to a myriad of stables and horse farms, a thriving resort scene, and a major hospital. Unsurprisingly, Southern Pines remains a popular destination for retirees. But it’s not the kind of place that draws many 33-year-old post-punk rockers from New York.

In a recent-past life, Clement lived in the Village and played guitar, sang, and wrote songs for The Blondes, Inc., a post-punk band he had formed with his fellow Blair School of Music alum, Bill Brittelle. Brittelle was the band’s keyboardist and shared vocal and writing credits with Clement. He recalls that when he and Clement first met in college, a friendship seemed unlikely. “We really didn’t like each other when we met. We really didn’t get along at all. Baxter was ROTC when we met, and I was kind of in a hippie phase,” he says. “But eventually we started hanging out and playing music together.”