Steve Rashid, an Emmy-nominated composer and music producer, has written music for shows on the History Channel, Animal Planet and A&E, among many other television channels.
One day in the middle of January, though, the 52-year-old ran out of ideas. He sat in Unicorn Cafe, 1723 Sherman Ave., trying to overcome his writer’s block.”So I focused on the guy who worked behind the counter, and I tried to make up a story about him,” said Rashid, who received his master’s degree in music composition from Northwestern in 1982. “I thought, ‘What if that was a scene in a movie, and I had to write the score for that film?'”
What started as an experiment has evolved into Rashid’s newest project, Cafe Underscore , a digital collection of musical portraits of ordinary people in coffee shops.
The process is simple: Rashid sits in Unicorn Cafe, and if something strikes his interest – a haircut, a conversation, an article of clothing – he envisions a movie scene for the person or situation and writes music to accompany the scene. He will then approach the person, explain his project and ask for photos of the person to put in a photo slideshow online along with the music.
The online gallery at cafeunderscore.com has seven musical features so far, ranging from Unicorn Cafe employees to romantic couples to NU students. There are seven other projects in the works, and Rashid’s songs are available for purchase on iTunes.
“I come from a family of artists, and I think of it like a quick sketch of somebody I see, trying to get a sense of who they are in a few lines,” he said.
Centering his projects on people at Unicorn Cafe was no coincidence. Rashid has been a regular customer at the café since it opened in 1992 and knows almost every employee and regular at Unicorn.
“When we don’t see him, we’ll send out an Amber Alert like, ‘Where is Steve Rashid?'” said Communication junior Kellye Lopez, who has been working at the café for almost two years. “He left for a week to go on vacation and didn’t tell some of us, and we were getting so worried.”
Lopez has also been the subject of one of Rashid’s sketches and made the final music product her ringtone. The song is a fun and lighthearted melody to reflect her bubbly character, Lopez said.
Rashid’s pieces are often accurate musical depictions of his subject’s personalities, said Val Loughney, Unicorn Cafe’s general manager.
“It’s really funny because I know a lot of the people he’s writing about, and the music does capture their personalities,” Loughney said.
Rashid used Loughney and her boyfriend as the subject of his musical portrait on couples in cafés.
Rashid said he’s not going to make the songs into a CD because he wants to add to his pieces and sees this gallery as a “digital experiment.”
“As a music producer, I’m very well aware of the impending death of CDs, so this is a good attempt to see what happens when I don’t make CDs and just try to promote and market something absolutely online,” he said.
Rashid is not sure of Cafe Underscore’s future and is trying to promote the Web site to get his music out to listeners. He is also stepping outside of Unicorn to develop musical portraits of people from cafes around the country.
The project highlights people-watching as the common thread among cafe patrons, Loughney said.
“Everyone in that cafe is watching everyone else whether the other people know it or not,” she said. “It’s really cool that he not only acknowledges that but makes something out of it.”[email protected]
