a free concert series in Vaughan Mall created to inspire a community to find more art space—and have more fun

There’s a reason for the term “starving artist.” It’s hard to make a living wage on the arts. That’s why towns with the cheaper rents (and often rougher edges) usually attract musicians, painters, actors and other artsy types, setting off a classic cycle. The artists help the town to thrive culturally, making it a more desirable place to live and visit. Inevitably, as this desirability grows, rents rise, and artists have to move out of town for cheaper housing and art space. It’s not just the big cities like Chicago or Brooklyn that experience this kind of gentrification—as artists living here know, this is the story of Portsmouth over the last 20 years or so.

Fortunately, there are forward-thinking people in our midst who are working to stem the artistic exodus that would rob Portsmouth of its culture, making sure the arts are valued and that artists have a place to create and perform. Bespectacled bookseller Tom Holbrook is just such a man.

A member of Art-Speak and owner of RiverRun Bookstore, Holbrook says Portsmouth’s brightest future involves the most lively arts scene possible, one that will draw like-minded arts-loving people to town. “If Portsmouth becomes lame, people won’t come,” he observes simply.

“Survival of the arts and culture downtown is key to our own survival,” he says. “If the city becomes all one thing, it will lose a lot of the fun.”

RiverRun Bookstore is spearheading, along with The Wire, a free outdoor concert series every Thursday night during June Two musical acts will perform from 7 to 9 p.m. in Vaughan Mall, the wide walkway that takes pedestrians from the Worth parking lot (with the whale mural) to downtown.

The series is called ArtSpace in an effort to underscore the need for more performance space in Portsmouth and the surrounding towns. The schedule consists of at least five mostly acoustic shows, featuring some of the area’s best new and lesser known talent.

Holbrook says he hopes the concerts will energize the musicians in addition to the audience, that they will realize live performance space is out there for the taking, and that it can be in places people don’t usually think of. The city-owned stage in Vaughan Mall is a prime example. The stage is typically deserted, save for an occasional skateboarder.

“Anyone can do something like this. It takes a bit of planning, but it’s not that hard,” Holbrook says.

The series was booked by Chris Greiner, and it was his idea to hire artists not likely to be well known to local music fans. Greiner fronts the indie band Northern when he’s not working as the box office manager at The Music Hall. He also helped The Wire create the RPM Challenge, in which more than 200 area bands and musicians signed up to each write and record an album in the month of February.

“We decided, after the RPM Challenge, that we had this massive new pool (of musicians and bands) to choose from, and we were excited to tap into that group,” the Kittery resident says.

Phil Bell’s performance with self-described “former rock chick” Cara Connolly got rained out last Thursday, but it will be rescheduled. Bell’s huge voice is a marvel. He recently returned to the area after spending a few years out west, including a stint in Tuscon where he recorded an EP at the hip Wavelab Studio, home to Neko Case and Calexico, among others. Bell is grateful for the gig. It can be hard to break into the club scene when you’re the “new kid” in town.

“I’ve definitely met some friendly people here that were pretty open,” he says, “but I feel like some of the club owners want you to be worth your salt before they put on some shows.”

It’s a classic Catch 22—you need to play shows to build a crowd and be valuable to bar owners, but you can’t play in bars until you can draw a crowd.

“I was honored when they called (to book me for the series),” Bell says. “There aren’t a lot of people calling up musicians for shows. Usually it’s an opening set, or when someone doesn’t want to do a three-hour set alone. This seemed more like they wanted to give musicians a chance, that was what I felt, and the outdoor thing, that’s different.”

Greiner knows where Bell is coming from.

“It’s easy to get locked into the same people,” he says. “We all have the same friends and people we turn to. I tried to go book some nights with great contrast. I can’t imagine a show of more diverse pairing that Liz Parmalee and Human Beings Wow.”

Parmalee’s charming voice dances over her acoustic guitar work like a smoother Ani DiFranco, while instrumental compositions by Human Beings Wow lean toward the more abstract and avant garde. Together, they should generate some surprises on June 22.

Other artists lined up include Trio Encompas, a jazz combo led by Jonathan Blakeslee, featuring upright bass, drums and saxophone, and indie folk troubadour Justin Carloni on June 15. Dave Hunter of the alt-country rock band The Molenes and Michelle Moon will play on Thursday, June 29.

Kristen Miller, one of the area’s most inventive musicians, will play on Thursday, June 8, along with Amos Clapp. A cellist by trade, Miller follows her muse into unusual territory, looping cello parts over more looped cello parts to create a rich tapestry of sultry sounds. You don’t need to tell her about being a starving artist. Her father now owns an art gallery in Ogunquit, where he showcases his own watercolor paintings along with pottery from Miller’s sister, who works as a potter for a living. But many years were spent working on the periphery of the art world in an attempt to feed the family.
“My dad went to art school, but worked in the arts end of advertising,” says Miller. “He always used to say ‘You can be anything you want. Wanna be a doctor? A lawyer? Go be it.’ But when my sister and I said we wanted to be a potter and a musician he said, ‘An artist? A musician? Please, it’s such a hard life, anything but that.’”

Miller teaches music lessons to supplement her family income, and counts herself lucky to have a husband with a good job. The fact that she was reached out to isn’t lost on her, and it helps that the organizers made sure there was a little money in it also.

“To get contacted by somebody who says, ‘Hey we like your stuff!’—it’s kind of like every performer’s dream. I was pretty touched. The economic end of (being a musician) is a real pinch.”

Holbrook hopes others will see the value of this  local arts community. Being able to walk to work from his home through a culturally thriving town is exactly why he loves living here, and he understands how important it is to keep the town’s arts scene alive for everybody—not just for artists.

“It would have been great if the E-corridor had made us all millionaires,” he says, “The shipyard is always threatening to be closed. Do we want to be T-shirt tourism, or arts and culture tourism?”

In August, Holbrook will move RiverRun to the newly built space at 10 Congress St. He’ll hold onto his current location, 7 Commercial Alley, turning it into a used bookstore with space available for free for community meetings, arts projects, knitting groups and the like.

Foresight and business savvy aside, Holbrook’s motives for making the series happen are hardly mercenary. He knows what it means to follow your passion. More than a decade ago, he took a job at the original Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, Mich. At that time, it was just a successful local bookstore, a funky and unique place full of interesting books and employees.

“It was the mid ’90s when no one with an English degree could get a job. As a result I ended up working there with a bunch of people who were all going for their PhDs,” he says. “This was before it became the big-box industry with minimum wage slave labor.”

When the business took off on a national level, things changed and Holbrook knew he’d have to set out on his own if he wanted to indulge his passion for books, so he traded office work and a bigger payday for something more fulfilling.
He has the same vision for Portsmouth.

“We’re lacking a community living room. ArtSpace productions can’t fill the void, but it can be filled. It’s going to take people who have a different goal in mind than profit.”