Author: Michael Witthaus

Long Beach to Hampton

Badfish is back for annual show

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

Some things never change, like the annual return of Badfish to Casino Ballroom for a Fourth of July show, a tradition that began in 2007. What started near the end of the ’90s as a few URI students responding to the passing of Sublime lead singer and creative force Bradley Nowell has evolved into more than a tribute act.

They’re still performing songs from the short-lived ska-punk band, like “Santeria” and their namesake deep cut, but now a few original songs are part of their sets. Last December they put out a single called “High With You.” Badfish drummer Scott Begin expects more tracks will be released “strategically” in the coming months.

“We tried in fits and starts to do some original music over the years, and it was always a fun experiment, but nothing ever really felt like it stuck,” Begin recalled by phone recently. That changed when singer Pat Downs and Danny Torgerson, a multi-instrumentalist and Badfish’s newest member, did a few writing sessions together.

“They came up with some demos that we were really grooving on,” Begin continued. The latest is “FYPM,” a slow, steady growler of a kiss-off that’s definitely NSFW. It’s now on Badfish’s SoundCloud page. The group also performed a few of the new songs live during an appearance on the Sugar Shack podcast in January.

All the creative activity hasn’t changed their primary mission.

“We promote ourselves as Badfish – A Tribute to Sublime,” Begin said. “We certainly don’t want any confusion … people are still going to hear Sublime songs. In the future, if some of our originals gain some traction, that could be a reason to say, ‘Well, now we’re just Badfish’ and then maybe you’ll be hearing a good chunk of [those] as well as some Sublime songs — and maybe others from influences we like.”

In May, Sublime was back in the news when Bradley Nowell’s son Jakob appeared with a reunited band at Coachella. The event captivated both fans and the members of Badfish, who watched it from the green room in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, before a show. They’re now touring, with a stop at the Elevate Festival in Marshfield, Mass., scheduled for July 7.

“We were really excited to see it,” Begin said, noting Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh once sat in with Badfish, and that they even appeared with Nowell’s band Law at a few shows. “We were huddled around the TV like little kids, it was a really exciting moment. So, we’re really just excited to see that happening. I mean, it’s a huge thing.”

With Gaugh and fellow original member Eric Wilson now playing with the younger Nowell, the reunion effectively ended Sublime With Rome. Led by Rome Ramirez, it blended elements of a tribute act with new music. However, Ramirez is continuing the name using a different set of musicians, much to Nowell’s consternation.

“For there to be some other band out there performing shows without any original members and without anybody on the crew or management or performative side that even knew my dad or anybody in the scene, it’s mind-blowing to me,” he told the Boston Globe in a June 25 story. “I can’t tell you how angry it makes me.”

The re-emergence of an official Sublime didn’t put Badfish at a similar crossroads, however.

“Our approach has always been the same; we love the music of Sublime, and we want to perform it as best we can,” Begin said. “If anything, it feels like Sublime is a little bit more in the public consciousness now [and] it makes us excited that maybe more people will be turned on to Sublime that maybe had not been prior to this reunion.”

Begin and his mates are keen to hit the beach this Fourth of July weekend.

“I think I can speak for the band; this is definitely one of our favorites to play,” he said. “It feels like a real event, because it’s become a tradition. I don’t know how many times it’s been a sellout, but it certainly has several times, and it’s great to play in a historic kind of venue like the Ballroom. And it’s always a complete rager; people come out and they’re ready to party. It’s one of my favorite gigs of the whole year for sure.”

Badfish – A Tribute to Sublime
When: Saturday, July 6, 8 p.m.
Where: Casino Ballroom, 169 Ocean Blvd., Hampton Beach
Tickets: $27 at casinoballroom.com

Featured photo: Badfish. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 24/07/04

Local music news & events

• Happy Fourth: A patriotic celebration in downtown Nashua, Riverfest offers performances from four different acts: Lone Wolf James, Who.iam, Jesse Rutstein and The Whole Loaf. The charity event highlights the community and culture of the Riverfront area and is presented by Nashua Veterans Promise in partnership with Involved To Impact and Midnight Creatives Collective. Thursday, July 4, noon, Liquid Therapy, 14 Court St., Nashua, involvedtoimpact.wordpress.com.

• Southern charm: Scrappy singer-guitarist Ciara MacKenzie performs. Check out the video of her song “This Side of the Barbed Wire” to get a sense of her musical skills. Friday, July 5, 6 p.m., Backyard Brewery & Kitchen, 1211 S. Mammoth Road, Manchester. Visit cieramackenzie.net.

• Dynamic duo: Classic and yacht rock share the stage as Justin Hayward and Christopher Cross perform, reprising a tour done last year. The idea of hitting the road together was Hayward’s, who told American Songwriter recently that he’s a big fan of Cross. “I know wherever I’m in the building and he starts playing ‘Sailing’ I just have to stand there and listen to it,” he said. “It’s great.” Saturday, July 6, 8 pm., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $99 and up at tupelohall.com.

• Song swap: An intimate NH Music Collective spotlight show has Ian Archibold and Ian Galipeau. The latter performs indie rock “for hopeful cynics” and is a good choice for fans of Ben Harper and Hozier; he’s based in Keene. Originally from Panama, Archibold is a singer and guitarist who released an EP, Parallel, a while back and covers Coldplay, John Mayer and The Beatles. Sunday, July 7, 6 p.m., Cantin Room at BankNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $18.75 at ccanh.com.

• Hometown hero: It’s been an excellent year for Brooks Young. The blues rock guitarist did a few more shows with his new pal George Thorogood, and he’s headlining with his band in Keene this weekend at the new-ish Colonial Showroom. When he’s not high-profiling it, Young plays a lot of solo gigs like this midweek one at a music-friendly Manchester bar and restaurant. Wednesday, July 10, 6 p.m., Derryfield Restaurant, 625 Mammoth Road, Manchester, brooksyoung.com.

Strong sheets

3S Artspace hosts paper-centric exhibition

When it comes to papyrus, there’s more to the medium than meets the eye. That’s the message behind “Paper Work,” an exhibition opening July 5 at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. The upcoming show highlights the versatility and resilience of kozo, an Asian paper made from mulberry that becomes stronger when soaked in water and dried.

Denise Manseau’s art is about transformation. Many pieces are combined works, like “Spring”, an arrangement of dyed kami-ito threads embedded on mulberry paper. Even Japanese kimonos have been made using this method, along with mulberry-lined silk jackets.

In a recent phone interview, Manseau said the pieces to be displayed in the lobby gallery of 3S Artspace came about after she moved from her inland home near Lowell to the Seacoast.

“I did a lot of purging, but there were things that were almost good,” she said. “My friend’s there helping me, and she’s like, ‘Don’t throw this out, don’t throw that away.’ I end up with all this good stuff. Then I just started tearing them up and making other things with them.”

In a statement on her website, Manseau called her artistic process “generative and divergent — I excavate possibilities from previous work as a source for new work to emerge. Drawings make their way into paintings. Prints and drawings become cut-paper assemblages and structures. Through this process, the work undergoes multiple transformations — each alteration leaves a trace of the turbulence, tranquility and beauty I encounter each day.”

Her approach recalls Joseph Cornell, who employed ephemera and found objects in his three-dimensional works, though Manseau does add new touches to her assembled creations. “But there are always these elements from past work, whether they’re prints or drawings or just pieces of paper that had color on them,” she said. “So, they’re kind of recycled in a way; I’m giving them a new life. I feel good about that.”

“Paper Work” focuses on the durability of Asian paper, something Manseau learned about after she took up the fine arts in the early 2000s. “It looks so delicate and it’s so strong,” she said. “Instead of it breaking down like our wood pulp paper, their paper just gets stronger and more robust.”

Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Manseau was a graphic designer. Her old job involved deadlines and strict rules, while working in her art studio was more open-ended. It was something that professors, teachers and friends encouraged her to embrace. Work on as many things as possible at the same time, they told her.

“That is very helpful … because it’s things in the periphery that always turn out the best in my case,” she said. “I tend to be a perfectionist and then I kind of ruin it in its perfection; it works for me. It’s always a thing on the side I’m experimenting on, and I don’t care if it gets ruined; those are always the best in the end.”

Asked if this might be a path toward a different kind of perfection, Manseau answered, “I guess, yes, because nothing can be perfect, right? Maybe that’s part of the bane of my graphic design era was that everything had to be precision, it had to go to press, it had to be a certain size, it had to line up…. I’ve been trying to go against that in the fine arts portion of my life.”

Manseau chose the woodcut image “Rye on the Rocks” to represent the upcoming exhibit. It was inspired by walks along the coastline near her home in Rye Beach and reflects the landscape influence of her work.

It’s something that can be misunderstood by those who consider landscapes “as being a pictorial representation of what you see, instead of how you experience it and how you put it together in your head,” she said. “I think that’s the hardest thing I have to explain to people. I really do consider myself a landscape painter.”

Paper Work
When: Opens Friday, July 5, 5 p.m. Continues through July 28
Where: 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth
More: 3sarts.org and denisemanseau.com

Seventh heaven

Manchester emo night celebrates a birthday

From disco nights to Taylor Swift sing-alongs, attempts to cash in on musical trends are legion. However, Live Free or Cry, a bimonthly emo-themed night at the Shaskeen Pub in Manchester, is and always has been a passion project. It’s lasted eight years, but since the pandemic ate one of them, 2024 is technically the seventh anniversary.

“The people running it and the people in the bands genuinely have been in the scene for 20-plus years,” founder Aaron Shelton said by phone recently. “We’re not following bandwagons, we’re playing songs that we listened to; we watched all these bands, even toured with some of them…. It comes from a really honest and heartfelt place.”

In the early days, bands like Taking Back Sunday, Paramore or Panic! at the Disco weren’t lumped together as emo.

“We always called it The Scene, which included emo, pop punk, hardcore, metalcore, all offshoots of, I guess punk rock would be the father of it all,” Shelton said. “One of the beautiful things about it was it always felt like a place for all the people who didn’t have a home, the outcasts, quote unquote. All the punk rock kids who didn’t know where to go.”

It’s an inclusive milieu.

“The emo image is always Hot Topic, black hair and nail polish, [but] I see nu-metal kids show up and metal kids and goth kids,” Shelton said. “It’s born out of a genre where the Get Up Kids and Bane would play the same show, and everyone would be psyched about it. It really is a place for everybody.”

Shelton worried the first Shaskeen emo night in 2016 would be a one-off. It included a set from The Nintendos and a pair of Boston DJs. Six months later The 603 Emo Collective performed; it included Shelton and members of a few other area bands. When it fell apart, Shelton started Early 2000s, which became Dangerous Nights, and something of a house band.

“That’s been kind of the constant,” Shelton said. “We’ve played 80 percent of the Emo Nights at this point.”

The effort has evolved and grown. Shelton promotes emo nights in Concord, at Tandy’s, as well as Lowell and Salem, Mass. It’s become a community along the way.

“Between the bands and the audience, it’s kind of found itself,” Shelton said. “In the first years, the crowds were rarely the same. Now I see a lot of repeat people; you can almost predict the type of audience that will show up at this point.”

The celebration on June 29 will include two bands. My Chemical Chungus, a Worcester area band, will be making its LFOC debut. “They’re normally a My Chemical Romance tribute band,” Shelton said. “They recently started branching out and playing more songs. I spoke to them, and they were excited about the set that they had.”

The second act, A Blockbuster Summer, “is your all-encompassing cover band; they do ’90s, ’80s, emo, basically whatever the show calls for,” Shelton said. “They’re just a very talented group with really incredible harmonies out of two singers…. I think it’s going to be musically a very strong night.”

Asked what has surprised him most over the past seven years, Shelton had a fittingly emo response.

“I joke with my band and my fiancée that every time we do one, it’s going to be the last,” he said, “and it just sells out again and again. I think there are four other emo nights in New Hampshire because it works so well. That’s been the surprise; not that I thought it was going to phase out immediately, because it’s been a constant in my life for over two decades, but I didn’t expect it to be this successful for this long. I’m constantly surprised year after year that it just keeps working and working.”

Live Free or Cry w/ My Chemical Chungus, A Blockbuster Summer
When: Saturday, June 29, 9 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $10 at the door, 21+, facebook.com/LiveFreeorCryNH

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 24/06/27

Local music news & events

• Rocking on: A pair of area bands play their own music on an outdoor stage at Original Music Night. Stand Up Audio is the coming together of four New Hampshire musicians who were in cover acts over the years, while Diamond Edge has released a few albums. Their latest, Unbroken, has a song called “Lockdown” that’s a shout out to a bunch of local bands. Thursday, June 27, 7 p.m., Makris Lobster & Steak House, 354 Sheep Davis Road, Concord, tinyurl.com/mtdtzrvb.

• Pure pop: Beginning as pub rock progenitor, Nick Lowe has worn many musical hats over a long career. His latest single is “Went to a Party,” from his upcoming album Indoor Safari. He performs with longtime pals Los Straitjackets. Friday, June 28, 8 p.m., Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester, $49 and up at palacetheatre.org.

• Twang thang: Fresh from Boston Calling and with a new album, Ward Hayden & the Outliers play an early evening set of country music that recalls Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens. The show will hopefully happen at a newly opened performance space in Suncook Village, if the final pieces are in place; otherwise, it’s at Rob Azevedo’s barn. Saturday, June 29, 6 pm., Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Pembroke — email [email protected] for more info.

• Quite lyrical: Mixing new material and old favorites, gifted songwriter Josh Ritter performs Works In Progress and Songs You Know. The latter includes gems like “Horse No Rider” from last year’s brilliant Spectral Lines and hopefully “Me & Jiggs” from Ritter’s 2001 debut, Golden Age of Radio, which name-checked Townes Van Zandt and announced the arrival of a major talent to the world. Sunday, June 30, 7 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $50 at tupelohall.com.

• Soulful strut: Funky, sassy and joyful sextet Josyln & the Sweet Compression play a free concert on the green. Singer Joslyn Hampton fronts a band that includes extra spice from sax player Trevin Little and Sam Richardson on keyboards. Standouts from their most recent album, 2023’s Bona Fide, are the empowering title cut and “Cuttin’ It Off,” a dance-ready throwdown track. Wednesday, July 3, 7 p.m., Town Common, 265 Mammoth Road, Londonderry. Visit joslynandtsc.com.

A great hang

Concord art gallery welcomes NH artists

To understand the business philosophy of Meme Exum, owner of The Glimpse Gallery in Concord, the story of how she acquired her first piece of art is instructive. At age 20 she studied political science at Georgia State, waiting tables to support herself. Her only roommate was Angelina, an angelfish from the Amazon River.

Exum had an emotional connection with the fish, who’d nibble her finger when she fed it. One day she rushed off to work worried her aquarium’s pH balance wasn’t right, and when she returned from her shift her beloved companion had passed. Heartbroken, she asked a friend, a student at Georgia State’s art school, to paint her portrait.

She paid $50 for the small painting of Angelina in a spray of river silk with tiny bubbles escaping from her mouth. The image now greets visitors to Glimpse; it’s both a logo and the source of the gallery’s name. With the bubbles, “you’re getting a glimpse of her in her native habitat,” Exum said.

What does this have to do with running an art gallery located on the alley side of a building across the street from the Statehouse? First of all, Glimpse isn’t a moneymaker. Exum breaks even on costs, and her web design company pays the bills. She charges a wall space fee sufficient to cover maintenance but doesn’t take a commission when something sells.

She mounts six exhibitions a year, relying on word of mouth to draw people in. The current show offers works from seven artists whose works range from surreal images of stair-climbing fish to watercolor horizons, colorful canvas sculptures that echo Van Gogh, and portraits of players on the NBA Champion Boston Celtics.

It opens July 9, preceded by four Friday evening receptions; the final one is June 28 at 5 p.m. It will include works from Julie Daniels, Mark Ruddy, Kevin Kintner, Rose Culver, Paul Gilmore, Cheryl Mitchell and Christina Landry-Boullion. Art prices can range from under $100 to a few thousand dollars.

“I simply am in it to get the art out,” she said, adding that she eschews social media. “That’s not the vibe, it’s more an underground following. You hear about it from other artists, you hear about it from people who truly love art. Then you come here, have a glass of wine or a non-alcoholic beverage and you simply see new art. If you don’t buy anything, you’re still supporting the artist.”

There’s another reason for her altruism, however.

After being bit by the collector bug in college, Exum got a job at an Atlanta architect’s office. There she ran a side hustle connecting her artist pals with interior designers.

“When I sold a piece from a struggling student who just graduated to an interior designer, that feeling of being the intermediary was my goal,” not money, she said. “It was a power for good.”

Her reward was being able to snag pieces she liked before they ended up on the wall of a million-dollar condo. “You know where I made bank?” she asked. “I get dibs on all the first art … I get to see all these artists and pick what I like.” In other words, she’s in business for reasons very similar to those of people who run used record stores or antique shops.

This explains the ancient Toyota pickup truck parked in front of Glimpse. “We’re never selling this, and our other car is a 10-year old station wagon,” Exum said. “Why buy a fancy car when we could have that cash available for when we see the right piece? We can buy it if we don’t have a car payment.”

Glimpse’s first exhibit in February had works from the online gallery Exum ran out of Atlanta before she and her husband moved north, along with pieces from her brother in Vermont and a few from a Bow artist. Since then she’s managed to fill the walls with mostly New Hampshire artists.

Choosing what to display doesn’t come down to her personal preferences; Exum tries to keep an open mind and find work outside of her comfort zone.

“I really look at pieces that I’m not necessarily drawn to, because we all like our own taste,” she said. “If I’m not really drawn to it let me see if I can understand it more and if that will give me a connection.”

Exum also knows there’s always more to glean.

“I am learning so much from the artists that Glimpse represents, like when they’ll mention an artist that I’ve never heard of,” she said. “It’s a very humbling place to be a gallery owner, and everyone’s telling you stuff you don’t know, but I’m just trying to absorb it as much as I can.”

First Glimpse Art Show
When: Friday, June 28, 5 p.m.
Where: The Glimpse Gallery, 4 Park St. (Patriot Building), Concord
More: theglimpsegallery.com

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!