the Twilight Music Series aims to revitalize Dover’s outdoor music scene

Described by his friends as “more than just outgoing,” musician and producer Dustin Ruoff comes across as a guy who knows how to make ideas become realities. Lately, he’s been focused on setting up a music series that is something entirely new to the city of Dover. “I lived here for six years while I was in college,” Ruoff said. “Now I’m back years later and it seems like it’s regressed a little bit culturally or something. I’m not sure what’s going on, really. I think there needs to be some outdoor show that isn’t just some cover band in the amphitheater. With this series I wanted to expose the Dover people to something a little different.”

The Twilight Music Series is an outdoor concert program hosted by Tranquilities Tea Room, at the upper courtyard off Main Street. The Tea Room has hosted some musical events in the past, but they’ve mainly been confined to smaller, acoustic-style shows and a few African drum circles. The Twilight series will feature mostly ambient and electronic artists and bands, with a few acoustic and rock performances scattered throughout.

Ruoff said the series came together smoothly. “Me and Mike Palace from Horchata, we were going to do this improv, ambient set at the Stone Church, where we would only use a battery-operated power supply,” Ruoff said. “That ended up falling through, but I still wanted to get something like that going around here.”

With his heart set on an outdoor series, Ruoff struggled to find a location other than the downtown amphitheater, which he thought would be difficult to reserve. “Then this one night I was driving by the downtown and there were like 50 people in a drum circle around a fire pit, and I thought, ‘Wow, I guess Dover is pretty lenient about this stuff,’” he said. “I went in to ask at the Tea Room and the owner said whatever you want to do you can pretty much do. I asked if she wanted to host a music series and she was like, ‘Bring it on.’”

With the location established, all that remained was to book the bands. For Ruoff, who used to book shows weekly during his time at WUNH, this did not prove difficult. “I wanted to do an ambient electronic series, but there’s not many people around here that play that kind of genre,” Ruoff said. “Then I broadened it to ‘mellow,’ and that brought a lot of people out of the woodwork that play the kind of stuff that I wanted in the first place. Within a week I booked 15 bands. I used Myspace as a means of communicating to people that I already knew, and I booked four bands just on the street. I think the premise of the series really enticed people.” Indeed, for many electronic and ambient musicians in the area, the prospect of any gig is appealing.

“It’s hard to find venues around here, especially if it’s not considered mainstream or blues and rock ’n’ roll. It’s cool to find something like this series that encourages experimentation,” said Mike Deragon of The Great Invisibles, whose music employs a mix of kids’ toys, laptop sampling and electric guitar. “The scene in the Seacoast area has a ton of really talented people, but you’re hard-pressed to find a place that will give you a whole evening to do what you’d like. The Seacoast always hovers around traditional music, and it boils down to the fact that a bar can’t survive with just bringing in people who are making strange noises. Dover is a great place to work on your art, but it’s really hard to get it out there. You’ve really got to go to a big city to get support for ambient and electronic stuff.”

But other outdoor concerts in the Twilight vein have emerged in recent years. Last year, the ArtSpace outdoor concert series made its debut in Portsmouth’s Vaughan Mall, and it has returned for a second round this summer on Friday nights. Produced by RiverRun Bookstore in conjunction with The Wire, the concerts will mainly feature artists who participated in this year’s RPM Challenge. It will give listeners a chance to hear some of the Seacoast’s local talent and give performers a chance to showcase their music to an appreciative audience in an outdoor setting.

The twilight concerts will run Thursdays July 12 through August 30 from 7 to 9 p.m., rain or shine, free to all ages with a suggested donation of $5.