The Unintentional Groupie
Confessions of a Young Photojournalist
Words & Photography by Katie Sikora
When a strong-minded and enthusiastic mother tells you to find her son, it’s usually best to listen. “Go find George.” The instructions given to me via Facebook message suddenly rang into my head again, two months after moving to New Orleans. The Wildes were family friends of family friends, although we all did become slightly closer when I began attending the same middle school as their eldest son, Dexter, even though we only overlapped for a year. George is his younger brother, the middle child, and the person to which their mother was referring when instructing me to track him down. He had completed his undergraduate degree at Tulane University and was still living in the city and working as the guitarist and acting manager of his band, Sexual Thunder! (the exclamation point is a part of the name, not a marker of my excitement). Remember those aforementioned intermediary family friends? Well, I distinctly remember scoffing at that name with their son on one of my last days living in Chicago, before I would pack a significant portion of my belongings into a Jeep and drive fourteen hours to my new home in the swamp. It is an absolutely ridiculous name and I whole-heartedly questioned why anyone would name their business that up until the moment I saw them play.
George Wilde remembers the morning before our first meeting because when his girlfriend asked what he was doing that day, he answered confusedly with something along the lines of, “I have to go have coffee with a girl I don’t remember because my mom told her to find me.” We left that meeting with plans for me to shoot photographs at Sexual Thunder!’s upcoming show and to carpool back to Chicago together later that summer, a trip that would bring Dexter out of party retirement and involve George accidently putting his hand in my dress. I realize these anecdotes are seemingly unimportant now, but they are clues revealing that we were building a friendship. Or I guess I could just say that. We were on our way to becoming close friends.
You are most likely thinking that the following story is going to continue to be about Sexual Thunder! and its members. That’s what I thought, too. I originally set out to follow and profile the growth of this band and the moving pieces within it. However, the story you are reading today has become a personal commentary on my ethics as a journalist and whether or not compromising those journalistic morals was worth it. I entered into my relationship with Sexual Thunder! to get close enough to them to write a story, but over the course of two years of knowing and working with them have gotten so lost in their world and their family that I am now unable to write any story except this one.
In short, this is not a story about Sexual Thunder!, this is a story about me. It has been nearly two years since that initial cup of coffee and it has taken me until now to be able to sit down and write about the things that have happened. I will preface what you are about to read by saying there will be personal opinions, there will existentialism, and there will be rhetoric. If the last sentence made your eyes roll, I suggest you stop reading now and watch Netflix. The new season of Peaky Blinders is pretty great.
In both original songs and some damn good covers, Sexual Thunder!’s music explores sexual freedoms and the celebration of sexual expression in funk
form. I shot my first show for them, a “back-to-school” show, at The Howlin’ Wolf in the CBD, and admittedly felt so cool. That’s all I can really say. I shot another show a few weeks later when they opened for fellow local band Yugen at Gasa Gasa in Uptown, followed by their album release at One Eyed Jacks in the French Quarter. In those first three shows, I experienced everything you think you know about the music industry when you know nothing about the music industry: green rooms, free drinks, attractive people, cheering crowds, costumes.
But also I had an in. I had a connection to a group of people that were comfortable enough in their beliefs about love, passion, and happiness to sing about it. After that third show, I joined the band and their friends back at what was known as the Thunder House.
For me, it would later become ‘the house,’ a place where our entire group of immediate and extended friend family would show up unannounced and could expect to find something you (sometimes desperately) needed: a party, coffee, cuddling, a meaningful conversation, and music. Always music. It was a safe place and the people who lived in it made me feel safe and loved. Spending time with them made me feel like I was a part of something and that felt good. Making friends with them felt really good.
From that feeling came a desire to spend more and more time around the boys and so I approached them about following each of them more closely as part of a photographic study on their lives. As a journalist, I have created written stories, photo stories, videos, and audio slideshows, but in this case, I was not yet sure how I wanted to approach Sexual Thunder! as subject matter, so we just called it “the project.”
The want to spend more of my time around this group of people gave way to said project, which in turn required me to spend more of my time around them. It was magical and moreover, it gave me importance. I was on a mission now, the first time I had pursued anything artistic and photographic since moving to New Orleans.
Quite honestly, some part of me wonders if there was nothing really there and that’s why I never defined where my work was going. I’ll never truly have the answer to that. But throughout the process I just kept thinking that if I got a little bit closer something would appear. I interviewed each band member separately as a starting place, but all that really did was give me background information on everyone and the band — although, at the time, that was exhilarating to me. With each show I went to (which was every one of them; aside from one instance of a prior commitment and one instance of being out of town, I had never missed a Thunder show until this February) I was feeling something build. But it wasn’t a story, it was a friendship, and my inability to distinguish the two messed with my head. Don’t get me wrong, I could write for days about the character and the beauty of George, Dillon, Adam, Rob and Ari, and their support for me. But as far as the project went, I never had clear words for what I wanted to achieve, and that was an issue I didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t register. They were passionate, I was passionate; I thought I was onto something important. But whenever I put pen to paper, the factual information, at least in a journalistic sense, was nothing special. And in waiting around for the story to present itself to me, as though sitting on the floor at rehearsal for the tenth time in a row was miraculously going to reveal something it hadn’t before, I fell for them.
I’d like to stop here and say that I thought and still do think to a certain extent that getting closer to your subjects can be a good thing. It provides you with more access to intimate moments, and with more access comes better information. I’ve done a fair amount of research on the elements of journalism and I am not the only person who has views in line with my own.
Depending on the size and nature of the community being covered, potentially problematic relationships are almost inevitable. Some have even suggested that greater involvement with the people being covered makes for better journalism: the public now expects their local press to be a good neighbor, with that role tied to characteristics of public journalism such as caring about and understanding the community, reporting on interesting people and groups, and offering solutions to local problems. (Eksterowicz, Roberts, Clark. “Public Journalism and Public Knowledge.” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. Poindexter, Heider, McCombs. “Watchdog or Good Neighbor? The Public’s Expectations of Local News.” The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics.)
The New Orleans music and arts community is a small and intimate being. Everyone plays with everyone else, everyone works with everyone else, everyone knows everyone else. There is something inspiring about this, because the collaborations that are coming out of this city are unparalleled, in music and otherwise. But with that comes an increased difficulty in separating personal and professional, and I do believe I fall victim to walking that line.
“How close is too close?” is a timeless and somewhat dangerous question for journalists because there doesn’t seem to be one perfect answer. The project was never something I was hired to complete and never something I would deem as “hard-hitting,” but becoming close to my subjects led to becoming friends with my subjects, which would make it impossible to write an objective story if and when it finally came my way. That said, there are some schools of thought that say that doesn’t necessarily matter.
When the concept [of objectivity] originally evolved, it was not meant to imply that journalists were free of bias. Quite the contrary. In the original concept, in other words, the method is objective, not the journalist. This point has some important implications. One is that the impartial voice is not a fundamental principle of journalism. Rather, it is used to highlight that they are trying to produce something obtained by objective methods. The second implication is that journalists who select sources to express what is really their own point of view, and then use the neutral voice to make it seem objective, are engaged in a form of deception. This damages the credibility of the craft by making it seem unprincipled, dishonest, and biased. (Dean. “The Lost Meaning of ‘Objectivity.’” American Press Institute.)
Journalism, like any art, has evolved and will continue to evolve with more and more lessons learned. I have, however, found one definition I lean closer to than any other:
Since the journalist’s responsibility is to convey fair, truthful and trustworthy information, her judgment should be influenced by the public interest rather than her personal stake in the outcome. Put another way, conflict of interest exists if the obligation to serve the public interest is threatened by the human urge to protect personal interests. (Shapiro, Bernier, Snow-Capparelli. “How Close Is Too Close?” Canadian Association of Journalists.)
By this definition, my friendships with the five original members as well as the three new additions to the band, Evan, Cyrus, and Andrew, wouldn’t have threatened my ability to complete the project while keeping the public interest in mind. Until I started dating one of them.
I know.
Hear me out though. It was during my first Jazz Fest that those feelings erupted. And anyone who has experienced Jazz Fest and, particularly, has lived here during Jazz Fest can tell you that some weird shit goes down in those two weeks every year. I could tell you the exact moment I first felt it, but it would be a waste of words. At this point, I had been working with Sexual Thunder! for a little over eight months, and my relationships and loyalty to them had grown stronger and stronger, but when you’re happy, blissful even, you don’t stop to think that your judgment could be clouded. Even though I don’t think my loyalty to my now very dear friends was inherently a problem, it was spilling back over into my personal life. Personal desires masked as professional goals masked as personal desires, if you will. If it sounds confusing, try living it.
I didn’t want to believe that my mixture of personal and professional desires when it came to Sexual Thunder! was a problem, so I chose to ignore it. I was even seeing someone else when I first starting falling for Cyrus, but I ultimately followed the thunderous path instead because I truly loved their band. I caused unnecessary hurt to the other man, something that still pains me to this day, but at the time it was all ok because I had my Thunder boys. And for the next eight months, it was good. I became even deeper entrenched in the lifestyle and inner workings of the band and I loved it. We were all one giant happy family.
I came to most rehearsals and sat on the floor.
I lived in green rooms and in front of venues with them.
I was there the first time they played Tipitina’s.
I was there the first time they headlined The Maple Leaf.
I went with them on tour twice.
I got to live the life of a working band.
I even spent three consecutive days in the studio with them and a dog named Bugz, living on coffee and weed as they recorded their not-yet-released second album.
Do you remember that line from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, “To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts”? Well, I had reached that point.
But you know the saying: all good things must come to an end. And they did. The inevitable breakup shook me to my core. It was terrible and awful and he did and said terrible and awful things to me. There, done, out of my system. There are many tough aspects to a split that we all know too well. But one of the hardest parts about this particular one was that Sexual Thunder! rolled on without me.
I don’t think I will ever forget laying in bed over Mardi Gras weekend, bloodied and bruised and unable to move from being hit by a car while riding my bike (it was a rough three weeks), scrolling through the Facebook photos of the eight of them smiling and playing and having the times of their lives, including my now ex, without me. The only people in the entire world I truly wanted to lean on and make it better were the ones that couldn’t. Of course they couldn’t. My rational half knows that. It is their business, their job to perform to the best of their abilities and they can’t do that without him, unfortunately. But when one has experienced severe emotional (and, in this case, physical) trauma, you are surviving on irrationality. Although there were many suggestions of it along the way, it wasn’t until then that I truly realized I had compromised my ability to do my job. I fell in love with a boy and when that love ended, it hurt. But I had also fallen in love with a band and in the aftermath of the breakup, the love changed form. To this day, I still have an unparalleled love for the other seven boys. But I don’t love Sexual Thunder! And that hurts even more.
Over the last five months, I have written down thoughts and ideas that question what I went through in some sort of existential, butterfly effect, maybe-this-was-all-meant-to-happen way. I even shot photos for them again. But the magic is gone. It’s just an assignment at this point. This story would never again be about just the band because I now have extremely
negative memories that are bound to the positive ones. I am unable to write truthfully about Sexual Thunder! without Dillon, Ari, Adam, Rob, George, Evan, and Andrew ending up as collateral damage. The bottom line is, the story of Sexual Thunder! is now a story about me. I became a part of my own story, creating the biggest conflict of interest possible.
It is important for me to note that since the onset of working with them, I have been introduced to a wealth of other New Orleans musicians and have been given the opportunity to work with many of them. I have become a new name in photography on the New Orleans music scene. My photographs have become better; my writings are truthful. I strive to create images and words that allow the audience to feel what I was feeling when I took the photo.
And regardless of what has happened, meeting them and creating our bond was the catalyst to being able to support myself with my art and my passion in the way that I want and I will be forever grateful for that. So in that way, turning my subjects into my friends worked out. They introduced me to their world and in turn, the world of New Orleans music. And I still have seven incredible friends to show for it. That was worth losing the story. But turning a colleague into a romance was not. I lost something so much more important than a boyfriend. I lost the joy and passion I experienced while shooting for Sexual Thunder! and I honestly don’t know if I will ever feel that again.
Two weeks ago, the boys moved out of the Thunder House. They threw an all-day party that included what has come to be known as a “Thunder Jam.” I cried in my car before going into the house that day. I cried as I left the house that night.
But it was while I was crying out in the driveway that a friend saw my anguish, sat on ground with me, and helped me to realize that I wasn’t crying because I would miss all the good memories attached to the house. I was crying because the bad ones still hurt. He then suggested that maybe it was a good thing they were leaving the house because it would mean I could finally part ways with all of it. And I believe he was right. This project is finished.
The story is finally over.
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