Take the Black River tributary of Lake Erie that cuts through the city, for example. Thanks to recent revitalization efforts, this river looks sparkly as can be, but in the early ‘80s, it was dubbed “the river of fish tumors” following decades of industrial pollution. Or picture the beaver-like creature I almost ran over with my car as it hobbled across a deserted Colorado Avenue at night beneath the yellow glow of a Dollar General sign. It was a bit nerve-wracking and creepy, but that bewitching, ephemeral image somehow brought me joy, and still does. I’m drawn to the ghostliness of this city—its past, present, and future wafting and coalescing in plain sight. Hit hard by the opioid crisis and struggling to adapt to a post-industrial reality, it faces a similar plight as many American towns, but there’s something uniquely magnetic about this place—like its cute, eerily frozen-in-time main street, accessible via Depression-era drawbridge—and I can’t help but root for it.
Lorain’s music scene has historically been overshadowed by its Cleveland and Oberlin neighbors. Perhaps its greatest and most influential export was Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. singer-songwriter Jason Molina, who grew up in a Lorain trailer park and bloomed from a devoted metalhead into a revered alt-country poet before his tragic passing in 2013. Locals still talk about Molina with pride—even in the same breath as the late, great Toni Morrison, also a Lorain native. But for a while, it’s been hard to imagine another cult hero like Molina springing from this Rust Belt town, in part because the lone popular venues like the Lorain Palace Theatre and concert series like Rockin’ on the River primarily book tribute bands.
But things are starting to change thanks to some hardy residents who are deeply passionate about cultivating their city’s art scene and building a brighter future for all. Among these figures are Jacob Konieczny, a tattooed, straight-edge, free-improv drummer; and Fr. Alex Barton, an openly anti-capitalist Episcopal pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Lorain. (I promise I’m not setting up a “two guys walk into a bar” joke, and not just because Konieczny is a teetotaler.) With Barton’s blessing, Konieczny hosts DIY shows at the church on nights when it would otherwise be empty, and seeing a performance there is one of the most rewarding and underappreciated live music experiences I’ve had in Northeast Ohio. Along with Konieczny’s wife Sophie Popiel and Amy Melena, Konieczny and Barton are also co-owners of the nonprofit Ship to Shore, which sells vinyl records, books, and coffee and seeks to foster deeper engagement with art, oneself, and the world at large. Ship to Shore is currently limited to pop-up events, but their permanent storefront will open in Lorain soon.
I first came across this gem of a community back in April 2023, when I saw an online flyer advertising a cool shoegaze show at this aforementioned Episcopal church. It caught my eye because I haven’t encountered other secular, non-classical concerts at Northeast Ohio churches. (For all I know, there could be a church basement somewhere that’s an if-you-know-you-know spot for local deathgrind, but I haven’t come across it yet.) The flyer advertised a show headlined by Midwife, a New Mexico-based singer-songwriter and self-described “heaven metal” artist named Madeline Johnston; and Nyxy Nyx, a Philadelphia shoegaze band; with support from Holographic Throne, Konieczny’s improvised drone and sludge-metal trio; and others. Much to my chagrin, I decided to attend a show at Happy Dog that night instead—in part because I’d seen the enchanting Midwife perform before, and maybe subconsciously, I wasn’t super jazzed about sitting in an unfamiliar church on purpose. Three months passed, and I saw another show flyer, this time promoting a gig with Philadelphia floaty drone-rockers Sun Organ and New York City noise-pop act Smile Machine, and I knew I had to see what was going on at this church.
Built in 1904, Church of the Redeemer sits on the corner of Reid Avenue and W 7th Street, next to the recently shuttered St. John’s United Church of Christ and across from the main branch of the Lorain Public Library. It’s a small cobblestone castle-looking building with traditional red doors to signify a place of refuge. Inside, there are gorgeous dark wood arches adorning the ceilings and beautifully detailed stained glass windows at the rear of the church and behind the altar. In short, not the place you’d expect to hear ear-splitting guitar music. But one July evening, I entered the church for a show and met Konieczny, who hosts several gigs there each year, as well as events at other local haunts, like Monday night movie screenings at the Lorain Cinematheque, with help from multimedia artist Hiatt Hernon. We started chatting, and Konieczny mentioned that Fr. Barton reads Marx and loves jazz music, which was jarring to hear, considering the conservative Catholic parish I grew up in, but also refreshing.
All Church of the Redeemer shows are pay what you can, with a suggested donation that’s usually no more than $15, and there are drinks and earplugs for sale at the door, with an occasional warning before you enter the sanctuary that, “This is gonna be a loud one.” I kept going back to the church because of the unique bills, ranging from experimental music and shoegaze to folk and more, plus the even more unique atmosphere. Every time I went, I brought home transcendent memories—like Sun Organ’s performance in near-total darkness while cloaked in capes on a candlelit altar; or Kathryn Mohr’s quiet, transfixing solo set during a booming thunderstorm; or the Vyva Melinkolya show that was moved to the Lorain Cinematheque because the church lost power during a tornado, and attendees sat on the ground, couches, and even an exercise bike, huddling together to recenter themselves through music after a hellish day. You never know what’s going to happen at one of Konieczny’s shows, whether it’s a harp played with unconventional techniques you haven’t seen before or a set that’s delayed because a musician misplaced their weed—and also their car keys to retrieve the weed.
These genre-spanning bills that mix touring acts from around the country and the world, plus interesting local artists, are sorely needed in Lorain, but are even intriguing for those who make the drive from Cleveland, as the city still gets passed over for tours on occasion—especially experimental shows, though New Ghosts and Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) have made great strides in recent years. With only a dozen or so Church of the Redeemer shows under his belt, Konieczny has accomplished a lot. Among other acts, he’s hosted Leah Senior, an Australian folk singer-songwriter who’s previously performed at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which brought fans from Chicago to Lorain just for the show; Tatsuya Nakatani, the Japanese master percussionist who’s been touring since the ’90s; and Lia Kohl with Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Winged Wheel), two of the most exciting figures of the American contemporary experimental scene.
But don’t just come for the headliners—one of my most fond memories was discovering the music of Amber Pompeii, an Oberlin-based artist who performs folky piano ballads under the name Lady of Marshes. Pompeii plunked on the church’s own piano and sung with candid poise—her songs recalling the bouncy warmth of Randy Newman. Her track “Rust” left a big impression on me because not only was it timeless, poetic songcraft, but amusingly, it was also the first time I’d heard a track that yearned for Broadway, but was not referring to the Big Apple. Instead, it was a tribute to the picturesque Lorain main street of the same name. I knew I had to learn more about Pompeii and that song, so we connected over the phone to talk about her background and the community that Church of the Redeemer is building.
“I grew up as an only child because my brother died at a young age, and piano was a way that I learned to cope,” Pompeii said. “Before the internet, I was really bored, and I had a piano in my bedroom, so music was just a fun way to pass the time. Then I went to Cleveland State, and there were practice rooms for music students that were open. I was a full-time C student because I skipped so many classes just sitting at the piano.”
Pompeii is currently working on an album, with production from her partner Andy Cook—who currently plays in Columbus, Ohio bands Saintseneca, Superviolet, and Mukiss—and I sincerely hope “Rust” sees the light of day. “It just feels like an anthem in my heart honestly,” Pompeii said of “Rust.” “I wrote that song while I was gardening in Lorain. I just had that little tune in my head. It’s about Lorain, which is not actually my hometown, but I’ve always had connections to it. I lived in Vermillion when I was a kid, and my parents spent a lot of time on their little sail boat, and we left out of this dock right off the water treatment plant in Lorain. One of my best friends lived on Lake Avenue, and I spent summers there in my childhood. Lorain just feels so special to me, and the work that the Episcopal church and Solidarity Urban Farms are doing—it’s just really rewarding to work with them.”
Solidarity Urban Farms is a nonprofit co-founded by Barton and Jim Goforth, and it’s one of several outreach programs supported by Church of the Redeemer and its community members, like hygiene and emergency food pantries. It utilizes eight vacant lots around the city to grow fresh produce for locals to purchase, provides food for the church’s weekly, free meal services, and runs family-friendly programming like art activities, games, and cookouts. Once you start unraveling this Episcopal church’s sprawling connections, it becomes clear just how important it is to the city’s well-being and sense of community. Pompeii has worked with Solidarity Urban Farms for two summers and has also volunteered for the church’s hot meal program since 2020, which is how she first met Konieczny.
“We were both volunteering for the Thursday night community meals, and when I got there, there was music playing—I think it was Fela Kuti,” Pompeii recalled. “I was like, ‘Who is in here listening to this?’ And it was Jacob in the kitchen doing dishes. Jacob and Sophie are so real and wonderful and positive and magnetic, and I just instantly wanted to be around them and work with them … It feels really unifying to be doing cool stuff together in a place that doesn’t get a lot of support or attention, you know? I also think Jacob seems to be living with a mission in mind, so it’s easy to align with that.”
The night I saw Pompeii perform at Church of the Redeemer, she also brought out guest vocalist Jenna Smith, who happens to be the Community Outreach Coordinator for Solidarity Urban Farms—the community that surrounds this church feels deeply intertwined like few others and not just invested in the future of their city, but the spirit of that city. For eight years, Pompeii ran a brick-and-mortar tea shop in Ohio City called Cleveland Tea Revival, which garnered a loyal following, including Barton, before he was assigned to Redeemer. Since the storefront closed in 2023, Pompeii scaled back operations, but still sells organic tea blends online and rents a work space at—you guessed it—Church of the Redeemer. Pompeii even brewed tea for showgoers at one of her recent church performances.
As I went to more Church of the Redeemer shows and ran into the always amiable Konieczny again, he’d share local Jason Molina lore, enthuse about the next show he was planning, and attempt to explain what his band sounds like to a metal novice like me. But it wasn’t until I interviewed Konieczny that I got a fuller picture of what drives him. We convened at a Ship to Shore pop-up in a one-story brick building—which will soon serve as their full-time shop location—near the dead end on W 10th Street and just a stone’s throw away from the church to talk about his upbringing, DIY ethos, and vision for Lorain.
“I lived in Lorain when there was not much for anyone to do,” Konieczny said. “My childhood was just a lot of going to the parks, which was pleasant, but there were no gathering spaces or real efficient programming or anything like that. Basically, there was a joke between people my age, growing up, that Lorain was just bars and churches.”
Konieczny’s parents weren’t musicians, but they listened to a lot of music, which left a formative imprint on him. However, Konieczny didn’t have a go-to hometown venue to further explore that interest. “There were never local shows around Lorain when I was growing up,” Konieczny said. “I was always going out to Cleveland at the Grog Shop, or Peabody’s when that was a thing. It was very much something that I saw as a big-city thing—not something you could have within your own community—when I was younger.”
It wasn’t until Konieczny experienced DIY house show culture firsthand at Cleveland’s Plymouth House that something clicked for him, and he realized that it wasn’t just videos online of beloved hardcore bands performing in distant places from decades past—anyone can start a scene with like-minded people and a little know-how. A few years ago, Konieczny started a Facebook group for friends that lived all over, many of whom were musicians, and they put on a concert event in Akron called Dollarfest in 2019, which was Konieczny’s first taste of DIY show organizing. Konieczny then applied what he learned to pursue his ultimate objective of creating more live music opportunities in Lorain.
“I grew up thinking that my goal in life was to move away from Lorain and live anywhere besides here—like many other people who grew up in this town,” Konieczny said. “Once I started meeting a lot more people who actually had roots here and goals and ambitions for what the city could be, I started thinking, ‘If I did stay here, what would I want to do to be part of that?’ At the time, Fr. Alex, myself, my wife Sophie, and Amy were trying to get the foundations of Ship to Shore as a business set, and I had mentioned my desire to bring more music to the city, because for lower-production, smaller artists and people trying to make a living off of their own art, there was no space for that. I wanted to promote the art that’s local to Lorain, Elyria, Cleveland, Oberlin, whatever, but also bring touring acts to the city. One day, I was chatting with Alex about how I wanted to do these shows, but I didn’t know where we could host them. Alex just mentioned, ‘You could always use the church if you wanted to,’ so we did exactly that.”
Although there have been challenges to hosting shows in the church, like tailoring the sound to specific performers without a typical venue PA system, Konieczny now has the luxury of artists reaching out to him to book shows, due to the positive response so far and likely the majestic, one-of-a-kind setting. In fact, Konieczny almost booked the acclaimed American avant-metal band Liturgy last year, which fell through due to tour rerouting, and though he knows it’s a stretch, he’s thought about his dream church show act. “This is probably way out of the scope and they also might break some things, but I would love it if the band Sunn O))) was ever able to play—the drone-metal giants,” Konieczny said. “I don’t know if the church walls would hold up, but that would be crazy.”
It’s heartening watching people create the things they want to see in the world, rather than be paralyzed by pessimism, and Konieczny is definitely in the former camp. He doesn’t want kids who grow up in Lorain to feel like certain experiences are only attainable in bigger cities. “I know young me would be very excited to actually have shows here, instead of begging my parents to drive me to a show and have them come along and listen to the garbage I was listening to,” Konieczny said. “A kid can potentially just walk up the road and donate five bucks and maybe get to see an artist they already like or find something new. I hope to give young folks a lot more sense of a community with what we’re doing here.”
As it turns out, that Midwife show flyer was actually the first show Konieczny hosted at Church of the Redeemer, and Holographic Throne’s first ever show, too. After Konieczny first met Johnston during Midwife’s U.S. tour with The Body and suggested she play at the church, the two forged a friendship. Over email, Johnston describes Konieczny as a “compassionate” and “very open-minded” community builder, and she fondly remembers her Church of the Redeemer gig as one of the “best shows of the tour,” filled with candles, harpsichord, “palpable energy,” and “the push and pull of seeing something unexpected in that environment.” Johnston also empathizes with Konieczny’s mission to bring art to places off the beaten path, having grown up in Santa Fe.
“Everyone should be able to see live music!” Johnston said. “It sometimes can feel easier to make more meaningful connections in small towns, too—you get to reach a different audience. As someone who grew up outside of a major city, the touring bands who came through made a lasting impression on me and deeply shaped my trajectory. It’s cool to think that my band could hold that place in someone else’s life.”
From volunteering at Solidarity Urban Farms and prepping and cleaning at the church’s Thursday dinner service to organizing shows and working on Ship to Shore, Konieczny is invested in Lorain’s future—not to mention the house he and Popiel bought in 2023. But not everyone in Lorain shares his optimism for a solidarity-based, community-oriented way forward.
“Not to generalize, because there are a lot of older folks who do come and support us and love what we’re doing, but the general consensus of older Gen X and Boomer-aged people in Lorain seems to be that this is a hopeless place that can never have anything, so there’s no point in even trying to support,” Konieczny said. “It’s this thing of we either need to do things the way they were done 40 years ago and that will fix the city, which is something that can’t happen because the economics of the city have completely changed, or we need to stop doing anything and give up hope. But there are a lot of younger people who grew up with the people who have that mindset, and it’s either turned into a ‘get out of here if you want to make it’ mindset, or people who are very committed to actually making the city a vibrant place for people who live here or want to come here. I’m glad to be in the latter group. There are a lot more of us than people realize.”
Perhaps the most literal mark of Konieczny’s commitment to this work is the radio tower tattoo on his lower right arm, a nod to Ship to Shore’s logo. The building that houses Ship to Shore was originally a radio broadcasting terminal that communicated with ships on the lake, and more recently, it was a woodshop owned by Church of the Redeemer parishioner Everett Query. Knowing that he would retire soon, Query offered the space to the Ship to Shore team, and he also helped them renovate it, in addition to designing their logo and planning to build their sign.
“Everett is such a wonderful handyman,” Konieczny said. “We’ve all had a hand in it, but there’s been so many things that we’ve mentioned the idea of, and then we came back and Everett was 75 percent done with it and asking how it looked. We’ve repainted all the walls and repainted the floors as well. Some of the light fixtures got replaced, and then we—and mostly Everett—built the book shelves, as well as all the display shelves that are on casters. Plus, the main record bin was actually made from old pews that the church was getting rid of.”
Ship to Shore’s co-owners help out in all aspects of the business, but they also have clear specialties that make for the perfect team. Konieczny sources the shop’s new and used records, Popiel makes the coffee drinks (she managed a café for many years), Barton curates their book offerings (he reads an average of three to four books a week), and Melena (also the Farm and Flower Manager at Solidarity Urban Farms and a cook for the church’s community meals) takes care of the accounting, taxes, and anything numbers-related. And crucially, any extra funds generated by Ship to Shore and Church of the Redeemer shows will be funneled into the free meal program.
When Konieczny envisioned their record section, he wanted everyone to be able to find something they love, but he also wanted more far-out listeners to be satisfied as well. If you flip through the bins at Ship to Shore, you’ll find releases by everyone from Albert Ayler and King Tubby to Taylor Swift and Songs: Ohia, as well as past Church of the Redeemer performers. “Obviously, we want a sustainable business that sells records, and also I don’t want to be a snob,” Konieczny said. “Beyond that, too, I’m into a lot of weird, obscure music, so I do want that stuff to shine through as well. They’re not the big sellers, but even with these pop-ups, we’ve had people walk in and be very surprised at some of the stuff I have—stuff they didn’t think they would see on a shelf in Lorain ever. So that makes me feel happy, like ‘Yeah, I have the cool stuff, too!’”
Fr. Alex Barton also loves cool stuff, and quite unironically sees it as a manifestation of God—one of the most profound takeaways from my chat with him beside the shop’s bookshelves. Barton is entering his eighth year at Church of the Redeemer and his third year as a pastor there, but he grew up in Baltimore with an Episcopal priest father and a spiritual director mother. “My entire family were big readers and super curious and creative people,” Barton said. “Every Christmas, we would exchange books from a very young age, and then the theology that was a part of it was always expansive, open-minded, a little bit on the intellectual side, and a little bit on the ‘How do you put it into practice in real life?’ So those things have always grounded my sense of family, self, church, and community.”
Barton lived in Cleveland for a spell before he went to seminary in New York City, and he fell in love with the area, but didn’t know much about Lorain until he was assigned there. “I think there are some things that are observable about Lorain from the very beginning that remain true,” Barton said. “It’s a post-industrial city, and there are a lot of people who have lost faith in the systems of governance and social service and are not the most hopeful … We live in a false dichotomy where a lot of angst and energy are put into things that are not solutions to actual material problems, and those material problems also are made to diminish peoples’ sense of self, where poverty becomes a moral failure, not just a systematic failure. Addiction becomes a moral failure, not just a systematic failure. I think my politics absolutely influence my ministry because I feel more confident about being present to the actual issues at hand, and not how we’re being told to view them.”
Barton holds political discussions with community members through the church’s book club, whose selections have included everything from “super church-y” reads to James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power and Linn Marie Tonstad’s Queer Theology. Ship to Shore also fulfills Barton’s desire to have a space where people can reflect on and learn about the interconnected issues at play in their community and beyond. “There are a lot of ways to digest what’s going on in modern America,” Barton said. “We talk about institutionalized racism and classism and poorly defined understandings of the fluidity of gender—all of these social ills that are a reality and very contemporary for us—but another part of it is that we don’t have as much space in which we can also connect and carry each other through these things. So much in our life is either overtly or subtly telling us that we don’t matter, and also overtly or subtly disempowering us from actually engaging as community members. So a huge part of my philosophy in building a church or community is to bring people together in all their complexities and give them some kind of poetics to interpret their life in a way that allows them to see that they matter.”
This philosophy also aligns with Barton’s decision to let musicians bang away at their instruments from the parish’s altar, even when resulting in a strident cacophony. “I’m just really curious and interested in how we can expand our minds, because if God is real, or whatever God may be, we believe that God is love and beauty—these things that are in everything and part of every daily life experience—so musical expression, writing, and poetry, all those things flow into that,” Barton said. “I think one of the real gifts of our tradition is, unlike a lot of Christian traditions, we’re not really afraid of secular society, and we don’t necessarily draw such a clear distinction between ‘This is church, and this is the secular world.’ Because I don’t think God would either. I feel fairly confident about that [laughs]. So worship on Sundays, this is a particular expression of church, but so too are meals on Thursdays, so too is shoegaze music on a Saturday night. They’re all expressions of church, and we really should be challenging people to find God in all of it. Personally, I don’t listen to that music [laughs]. I listen to other not-usually-found-in-church music, but I think it’s been really fun. I also think it’s really cool if we get people who would never step foot in a church to step foot in a church and maybe think this isn’t a shitty place.”
While speaking to Konieczny and Pompeii, both mentioned their hesitancy to befriend a priest, as they have their own misgivings after growing up in the Catholic Church. But now, they talk about Barton as if they’ve known him their whole lives and vice versa. When earnestly asked how he would describe Konieczny, Barton initially replied, “Well, I make fun of all his tattoos and his long hair, and the fact that he’s straight-edge, even though he looks like an alcoholic biker.”
A pretty good zinger, especially coming from a young, bespectacled priest who looks like an elementary school math teacher. (I kid, I kid.) Eventually, Barton answered, “[Konieczny] is very thoughtful and also politically to the left. He’s willing to show up for things, and I think he has a really good understanding of the complexity of people, which I think is one of the more important things for doing this type of work. We have a lot of people who have a lot going on, and they’re in different parts of processing and dealing with things, so you’ve got to have a higher level of empathy, and a higher level of seeing that is not just about me. I think he does that well, too.”
Along with the efforts of this constellation of inspiring people, there are other flickers of promise for Lorain’s art scene in establishments like the cocktail bar Speak of the Devil, which hosts DJs and musicians and has held author events through Ship to Shore, and the eclectic jazz club and self-declared “chill spot for the grown and sexy” Jazz on Broadway—again, not the Broadway you’re thinking of, but it is right behind Ship to Shore—as well as ambitious nonprofits like Black River Innovative Artist Residence (BRIAR) and FireFish Arts, both providing all-ages programming and opportunities for artists of many mediums.
Last summer, during the annual FireFish Festival, a mural was painted inside an intersection in the South Lorain neighborhood where Konieczny grew up, depicting the fusion of Polish, Puerto Rican, and Ukrainian cultures that brings life to that area. That colorful mural is as much a part of Lorain’s story as the shuttered steel mills and idle construction vehicles, or church pews full of black-clad punks and bunches of deep purple elderberries flourishing in a once-abandoned lot. Lorain contains multitudes, and above all, to me, it feels like warmth. I feel a rare calm when crossing over the riverfront Charles Berry Bridge, and I even broke into a perverse giggle when driving past several deer crossing signs on a one-lane road, and three cars loudly cut me off because I wasn’t speeding with a death wish. As a westsider who resides 30 miles away and an agnostic, I may be on the outside looking in, but if I’m properly applying Barton’s principle, I think God lives in Lorain.
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This article appears in Jan 16-29, 2025.