Hey Mama’s grand finale in Newmarket: Hey Mama’s story has been short-lived, but the bluesy roots-rockers will be fondly remembered. The Cambridge-based band will play a final farewell show at The Stone Church in Newmarket on Friday, Jan. 21.
Soulful singer Celia Woodsmith and fiery guitarist Avi Salloway started performing together in college several years ago, forming the duo Avi and Celia. They released two CDs and toured across the nation, opening for such legends as Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was early in 2009 that the pair added drummer Jared Seabrook and bassist Paul Chase to form Hey Mama. The quartet soon released its self-titled debut and has played hundreds of live shows. They unveiled a collection of live and studio recordings called “The Dubl Handi Suite” last fall.
On the heels of that release, the Hey Mama crew is parting ways to focus on individual projects. Salloway will soon travel to Israel and Palestine to work on a peace project and study music. Woodsmith will be spending time with her ill father and pursuing a career in health education services and women’s empowerment.
Hey Mama has been on a Grand Finale tour since November, with the final concert taking place at The Stone Church. They intend to go out rocking. The show begins at 9 p.m. on Jan. 21 at The Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket, 603-292-3546. The door charge is $7.
Jim Weider returns to York: Classic telecaster and traditional blues slide guitarist Jim Weider and his band Project Percolator will bring their prodigious talents to York Harbor Inn on Friday, Jan. 21, for their annual post-New Year’s bash.
Although based in New York, Weider is a York Beach regular who travels to Maine for concerts a few times each year. His band includes fellow guitarist Mitch Stein, bassist Steve Lucas, and drummer Rodney Holmes, a former member of Santana.
Weider’s musical résumé is extensive. He served as lead guitarist of The Band for 15 years after replacing Robbie Robertson in the mid 1980s. He’s also performed with a lengthy list of other legends, including Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Bob Weir. His latest CD with Project Percolator, “Pulse,” came out in 2009. The show begins at 8 p.m. on Jan. 21 at York Harbor Inn’s Yorkshire Ballroom, 480 York St., York, Maine, 207-363-5119. Tickets are $20. (Local musician Dave Gerard will perform at the inn’s Ship’s Cellar Pub at the same time.)
(H)EAT benefit rock show in Portsmouth: The Geoff Useless Band will heat things up at The Press Room in Portsmouth on Friday, Jan. 21, to raise proceeds for the (H)EAT campaign, which provides heating and food assistance to local people in need.Useless, a local guitarist and singer who has been a member of punk bands The Queers and The Guts, released his debut solo album “Don’t Stop” late last year. His band mates include pedal steel player Zach Uncles, bassist Drew Brown, drummer Zack Sprague, and fiddle player Sarah Paltrineri. Together, they produce a sound that fuses pop-punk with alt-country and surf rock. The (H)EAT campaign (pronounced heat-eat) began around Thanksgiving and will continue through March 1. Although donations tend to drop off after the holidays, many Seacoast residents are still in need of food and heating fuel. For more information on the program, visit www.heat-eat.blogspot.com.The show begins at 9 p.m. on Jan. 21 at The Press Room, 77 Daniel St., Portsmouth, 603-431-5186. The door charge is $8.
Scene@Five goes electronic: The Founders Lobby of the Music Hall in Portsmouth will literally brim with electricity on Thursday, Jan. 20. This month’s Scene@Five event will feature an interwoven performance of electronic music, video, and light. Scene@Five a monthly series offering a social mixer with live entertainment and cocktails available at the bar, from 5 to 7 p.m.
The upcoming installment, titled “8 bits, Mods and Bends,” will present three local musical acts equipped with an array of electronic gadgets. The Attic Bits are an Epping duo that creates ambient music based on classic video games. Towers of Silence is the experimental RPM Challenge project of multi-instrumentalist Nathan Groth. A.J. Dudick is the guitarist and songwriter behind recently departed instrumental metal band Picnic Casket, now doing some solo work.
The evening will also feature visual effects from Boom for Real. The Music Hall is at 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 603-436-2400.
Ted Leo postponed: Ted Leo, the veteran indie rocker who currently fronts Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, has postponed his winter tour due to a family emergency. Leo was scheduled to appear at the Dover Brick House for a solo show on Thursday, Jan. 20, but it has been rescheduled to Thursday, April 28. All tickets will be honored on the new date and refunds will be available at the point of purchase.
women’s chorus recruiting singers: If your New Year’s resolution was to sing more, Voices from the Heart is now offering a chance to follow through. The Portsmouth-based women’s chorus has 10 openings for new singers in the season beginning Monday, Jan. 17.
Tom Rush heads to the Firehouse: New Hampshire native Tom Rush released his first album in 1962. Nearly half a century later, the folk icon still performs regularly, playing a blend of his own original tunes and timeless classics by fellow folk legends. Rush will perform two shows at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Mass., on Sunday, Jan. 9.
Adelle’s Coffeehouse in Dover will soon launch a Thursday night entertainment series featuring live music, movies and more. The series begins on Dec. 30 at 8 p.m. with music from local artists Brian Levin and Sheena Charland. Adelle’s already plays host to Osiail Publishing’s Primal Tongue Prose Night on the first Thursday of every month. The new series will add other forms of artistic entertainment at the downtown coffee shop.
The local musical duo of Susie Burke and David Surette have a new Christmas CD coming out on Thursday, Dec. 9—just in time for their annual Christmas concert at Kittery Point Congregational Church on Friday, Dec. 10. Titled “Wonderland,” the CD features Burke’s warm voice and Surette’s nimble finger picking, along with guest accompaniment from multi-instrumentalist Kent Allyn and percussionist PJ Donahue. Recorded at Chris Magruder’s Thundering Sky studio in the couple’s hometown of South Berwick, the album includes many of the holiday songs that have featured prominently at their annual Christmas gigs.
Jazzmouth 2010 descended on Portsmouth last weekend, pulsing with creative energy. For four days, poets, spoken word artists, musicians and their fans came to town, weaving the enthusiasm and creativity into the cultural fabric of the community.
For many fans, guitarist Ed Gerhard’s annual Christmas Guitar Concert
has become as much a part of the holiday season as spiked eggnog.
It’s been about a decade since Boston-based band The Elevator Drops
played a live show together, but they’ll take the stage at The Middle
East in Cambridge on Friday, Dec. 18. The reunion will feature front
man Dave Goolkasian and his new wave pop trio in full makeup—just like
the old days.
An upcoming show at The Stone Church in Newmarket will mark a joyous
reunion for one of the area’s most celebrated jam bands.
songs for soundtracks
Hotel Alexis joins the still-rarified ranks of local bands whose songs have been licensed for TV shows.
No, the Homework Club isn’t a new John Hughes flick, it’s an
organization that’s providing some much needed help to Portsmouth
students. The Club meets after school at the middle school, and
provides students with a safe, swell learning atmosphere. Homework gets
done, XboX’s get a breather. Over the past three and a half years
Homework Club has grown , and now serves 40 percent of students at the
Middle School population. As a result, more papers adorned with higher
grades are surely being displayed proudly on refrigerators by proud
parents.
New local acoustic duo Open Window has teamed up with the United Way of
the Greater Seacoast to donate live music to non-profit agencies in
need of entertainment. The duo, comprised of John Shore of Portsmouth
and Kevin Ronkko of Dover, is offering up to three hours of live music
for fundraisers, receptions and other events for non-profits in need of
live music.
The Wolfeboro Folk series, previously presented at a variety of
restaurants and inns in the Wolfeboro area, has found a new home at
Tumbledown Farms, a historic barn transformed into a performance venue
and dining space.
Foxlove came into being for the RPM Challenge in February 2006
(www.rpmchallenge.com). In the intervening months, Elizabeth Antalek
(backing vocals with Northern and Hotel Alexis) and Chris Greiner
(Northern) have developed the songs they recorded in the rush of their
RPM split-LP, and they’ve written the material for their first album,
slated for recording within the next six months.
Bull Moose is offering music fans a chance to attend an exclusive
listening party at Transparent Audio, a state-of-the-art sound studio
in Saco, Maine. Seven fans will win admission for two to the party, as
well as a copy of “Love” on Monday, Nov. 20, prior to its scheduled
release on Nov. 21.
The nation voted on its fate for the next two years on Nov. 7, but
23-year-old Chris Cartier of Rochester has his dreams pinned to the
outcome of a different ballot box. On Dec. 4 members of the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Science will announce the final five
nominees in each category of the Grammy Awards. So far, Cartier’s album
“Harmony” has made it through a series of nomination hurdles to be
included among the 36-60 entries currently remaining in all of the
seven categories for which it’s been nominated.
Portland, Maine’s Jason Spooner has been seen around Portsmouth’s
Dolphin Striker, Press Room and Red Hook Brewery. Currently, he’s
playing at the renowned Kerrville Folk festival in Texas, as one of 32
finalists out of 800 entrants for the New Folk Competition. The
competition was started by Peter Yarrow (of Peter Paul & Mary fame)
in 1972.
As of May 1, the Barley Pub will be 100 percent nonsmoking.
Owner Scott Mason, who says hes been a bartender and second-hand
smoker for 12 years, was a proponent of recently failed legislation to
ban smoking in N.H. bars and restaurants.
Camarojuana (www.camarojuana.com) will turn Dover into Paradise
City for Karaoke lovers starting April 1, when the Seacoasts favorite
anachronism returns with their second annual, four-month-long Karaoke Kontezt.
If you happened to visit PureVolume.com last week, you mightve seen The Minus Scale
on the front page as a PurePick for the week. You and thousands and
thousands of other people, who clicked play to the tune of 6,000 to
8,000 times a day. A.J. Tobey says the push boosted their total plays from 15,000 to more than 60,000.(Its) been surreal, to say the least.
There are a few changes to local series for 2006. Dave Talmage is moving his Old-Time Bluegrass Jam
from the Barley Pub in Dover to The Stone Church in Newmarket. Doors
open at 7 p.m., dinner music begins at 8 p.m. The old-time jams are
still free and musicians are welcome. Daves slot at the Barley Pub
will be filled by acoustic songwriters, though room booker Chris ONeill is waiting to announce specific performers. Also in Dover, Liz Parmalee is booking singer/songwriters, many of whom we usually dont get to see solo, Mondays through Thursdays at Dover Soul.
The folks at the Thomas Eaton Recording studio, based in
Newburyport, have tipped us off to a number of notable endeavors in the
works at their facility. For starters, singer-songwriter Vance Gilbert is currently recording his fifth album. Also, Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk winners Rob Laurens (out of Somerville, Mass.) and Erik Balkey (from Philadelphia) are in the middle of new projects.
Drummer Shawn Mitchell reports that the Gray Davies are looking
to reconfigure. He and guitarist/vocalist Adam Wade are on the prowl
for a new bassist after the departure of founding member Brian Charles.
While they find the right fit, friend Brian Scanlon, who plays in Deck
Eleven, Craving and Wicked Automatic, will be filling in.
Tom Daly, proprietor of the popular Rollinsford-based album replication business, Crooked Cove, reports that Chicagoan Jerry Short has
moved back to the area to work with Daly full time. You may recognize
the name; Short has been sojourning locally for more than 20 years,
making a name for himself by his talents as a singer-songwriter and
guitarist.
This week, PJudd release their fifth album, Dan Crary comes to the Seacoast via SGS (but it will cost you a bit more) and the Music Association of New Hampshire launches.
Dylan Metrano, who over the past year has seen his band Tiger Saw blossom into an ever-evolving music collective, mentioned the other day a recent show he played in Connecticut, at which the Boston-based band Sparrows served as his back-up band.
While there are no proven theories on the subject, someone should point out the unusual coincidence between the now-famous (and oft-referenced) Pitchfork.com column touting Portsmouths indie music scene and the sudden flight of three of the areas most venerable figures (two of whom were mentioned in the article). First, it was The Hotel Alexis Sidney Alexis who, with little warning, skipped town earlier this summer for an undisclosed Western locale. Then, a month or so later, it was The Guts Nate Doyle who up and left, also for the sunnier skies and warmer winters of California. Last week Unbunnys Jarid del Deo, after coming back to Portsmouth a year and a half ago, turned tail, once again, for Seattle.
This first bit of news is delivered with a humble apology to the members of Skamasutra. Earlier this month, their keyboardist, Joe Larson, responded to this column's regular plea and sent in a long list of news about his band.
music scene gets national notice
It's unlikely we'll hear from Rolling Stone anytime soon, but the Portsmouth music scene got a modest plug a couple of weeks ago on a nationally-read music Web site.
Back in the mid-nineties, before he established the Newburyport slowcore outfit Tiger Saw, Dylan Metrano constituted one half of Hamlet Idiot, an experimental guitar duo he founded with Gregory Moss.
With a roster so diverse it literally defies categorization-one which places local prog-rock kings Dreadnaught shoulder to shoulder with Lord of the Strings' pubescent acoustic punk-the efforts of Red Fez Records might one day be looked at anthropologically, as a cross-section of the turn-of-the-century local music scene. This seems ever more likely with each new release.
Clich??d or not, the back cover photograph-with the songwriter, guitar slung over his shoulder, thumbing it along a desert highway-is the perfect image for Mike Morris' new collection, What Have I Done? The album's stripped-down acoustic songs (recorded live with guitar and vocals, and without overdubbing) are shaped around the inquisitive Morris' deliberations and meditations.
Those wishing there were more live music in Market Square will be pleased to
find out the folks at Breaking New Grounds have stepped up to the plate and have
begun presenting an informal acoustic music series. Every other Tuesday evening
between 6 and 8 p.m., free live music will be on the menu, accompanying the
usual coffees, teas and desserts. The next shows will be March 15 and March 29.
Congratulations to Ed Gerhard, master of the six-string, 12-string and slide guitar and acoustic lap steel. Henry Mancini: Pink Guitar featuring Gerhard's arrangement of "Moon River" won a Grammy on Sunday for Best Pop Instrumental Album.
As we trudge, in knit caps and snow boots, lugging gear up icy curbs and across frozen sidewalks, Dave Gerard and friends will be tying their swim trunks and strapping on sandals, enjoying their mid-winter jaunt to the soft sands and placid waters of the Caribbean.
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Wednesday, 09 February 2011 22:18
