Author: Michael Witthaus

Virtual tribute show promises the best of Garth

There’s an emphatic mood these days at the Palace Theatre: The show must go on.

Since the pandemic has again ended performances for live audiences, some postponed events are now being repurposed to happen virtually at the Manchester venue. One scheduled for Jan. 15 is a night of Garth Brooks hits performed by local musician Brooks Young.

Two more evenings of music are set, an All New Piano Men tribute to Elton John, Billy Joel and others Jan. 22, and the Feb. 5 Divas Through the Decades, reprising singers from Etta James to Gloria Estefan, Tina Turner and Madonna. All shows premiere on Friday night, and later are made available to stream on demand.

A singer, guitarist and songwriter, Young is no stranger to the impact that national events can have on the arts. His breakout gig, opening at Singer Park for B.B. King, was nearly canceled the day it happened: Sept. 11, 2001. But the concert had already been rescheduled from 12 days earlier, and the blues legend wasn’t going to let it slip again.

Along with his musical prowess, Young has worked as technical director for the Palace and Rex theaters for the past two years.

“It was a good fit with my background,” he said in a recent phone interview, noting that he’s currently studying for a music business degree. “I love all the people. … I feel like I haven’t worked a day since I started here; I just get up and do something that I love every day.”

One of Young’s latest projects was overseeing the installation of a new state-of-the-art video screen for the Palace stage; it will be behind him at his Brooks Plays Brooks show. He promises a high-tech performance, with a socially distanced band that includes a steel guitarist and a fiddle player.

“It’s going to be your typical Garth Brooks show with the fancy lights, the video wall, the smoke, the whole nine yards,” he said. “We’re not just going to be standing up there like deer in headlights.”

The event’s name was a natural choice, as was the artist being lauded.

“I grew up listening to him and I’m familiar with all his music. He was one of my first CDs in the ’90s. I always thought if I were to do a country show, it’s definitely going to be Garth Brooks,” Young said, noting that his grandfather was in a touring country group when he was younger.

So the longtime blues ace decided, “I’m going to try it. So I got myself a cowboy hat, and we’ll see what happens.”

One result is a new song with a country flavor called “Ask Me How I Know” that recently debuted on Spotify. Young has plans for more studio work in the spring.

“I always thought I’d play some country music, and my grandmother always asked me, ‘Hey when are you going to have a country group, because you love it,’” Young said. “She passed away last July, so I said … ‘Maybe now is a good time to do it.’”

The new tune follows a Christmas song that arrived last month, reflecting a strategy of putting out a lot of material, one track at a time.

“You can’t just release something once every two or three years,” Brooks said. “Things need to come out a couple of times a year, singles and stuff like that — that’s how the algorithms work with all the streaming services. I’ve been learning a lot and trying to adapt with these new times.”

Brooks Young Plays Garth Brooks
When: Friday, Jan 15, 7 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 96 Hanover St., Manchester (virtual event)
Tickets: $15 at palacetheatre.org (free to members)

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The good parts of a not great year, and what’s (maybe, possibly) ahead

The year 2020 began well enough, as the ball dropped on a retro-themed party at Bank of NH Stage in Concord and a barefoot Adam Ezra once again lit up Tupelo Music Hall, an annual tradition. Headliners Comedy Club offered laughter up and down the state.

The newly opened Rex Theatre in Manchester slated a wide range of shows in its upcoming calendar; the year’s first was E Street Band saxophone player Jake Clemons. Town Meeting, one of the brightest lights in the region’s Americana scene, debuted a new album at The Rex in early February.

March looked to be even better, with St. Patrick’s Day events scheduled at multiple venues throughout the month. Former Celtic Woman fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt’s appearance at Saint Anselm’s Dana Center on March 14 was among the most eagerly anticipated, but she was interrupted by a Friday the 13^th that confirmed every horror story concocted about the date — especially for live entertainment.

Tupelo CEO Scott Hayward put it succinctly from the empty stage of his venue that night.

“I boarded a plane to come home from vacation, and arrived to find my industry gone,” he said at the time.

The pandemic has consumed every aspect of life, beginning that weekend.

Through it all, however, there have been more than a few so-called Covid silver linings. Foremost among them was the rise of livestreaming. Concord native Dan Zanes launched a daily Social Isolation Song Series with his wife Claudia, a kid-centric effort. Lucas Gallo’s Local Music Quarantine Video Challenge invited musicians to record themselves at home.

There were many, many more, and the best part was hearing original songs from performers best known for playing covers in restaurants and bars. It was a gift that kept giving. When places began reopening in May, patrons were more receptive to local musicians, who were at that point the only game in town. It became a cultural renaissance, born from crisis.

Venues presenting national acts faced a bigger challenge. They responded ingeniously, with drive-in shows at Tupelo — the effort received national press — and at the Cheshire Fairgrounds in Swanzey, which kicked off its effort with rock tribute act Echoes of Floyd and offered a massive capacity of 750 cars.

Miraculously, the weather was mostly kind at these and other pop-up events throughout the region. Honking horns took the place of applause from early spring to late summer. The Music Hall booked shows into the streets of downtown Portsmouth, while Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts took over Fletcher-Murphy Park, and Manchester’s Palace Theatre ran a series of summer events at Delta Dental Stadium, including one starring the Beatles-esque Weaklings.

Plenty of restaurants added tents and used live music as a lure for business. Local promoter Paul Costley saw his bookings spike as a result. “In normal times, I usually have 60 to 80 events a week,” Costley said in September. “I was up to 135.”

Indoor venues offered socially distanced shows, with comedians like Juston McKinney leading the charge by playing multiple sets to reduced crowds. Before returning to the stage, McKinney was playing to a crowd of family members and the ether. “I never thought I would look forward to having four people in an audience so much in my life,” McKinney told the Hippo in June for a Comedy After Covid story. “I would kill for four people right now.”

With new movie releases experiencing a drought, Chunky’s Cinema & Pub welcomed Rob Steen’s comedy acts.

Economically, it can’t sustain.

“Being open is one thing and being able to stay open is another thing,” Hayward said in mid-autumn. “If we don’t have the capacity to do the shows we normally do, it doesn’t work. A good show for us is 500 people. … A big show for a small club is 60 people … but I can’t live on 60 people.”

There’s hope on the horizon. Congress included $15 billion in recently passed legislation to help independent venues, theaters and talent agencies weather the crisis, prodded by the live music industry’s Save Our Stages effort. Though most regional venues are currently closed, live shows are scheduled to resume mid-winter at some of them. A few venues are sticking with more vague reopening plans. Tupelo, for example, sent out an update at the end of November saying that challenges with lower capacity shows in 2020 and shows scheduled for 2021 “are causing all sorts of problems for the artists, patrons and venue,” and it is “all but guaranteed that we will be closed through February of 2021 at least.”

Meanwhile, is still scheduled at Portsmouth’s Music Hall on Feb. 13, along with Vapors of Morphine Feb. 19 and Livingston Taylor Feb. 20. The Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, which announced just before Christmas that it was extending its “pause” and canceling all live shows through the end of February, has comic Juston McKinney set for March 28, followed the next night by Celtic Woman Celebration.

Until then, January is Virtual Month at Manchester’s Palace Theatre, with three Thursday shows: a Carole King tribute on the 8th, local rocker Brooks Young on the 15th and Piano Men which offers classic songs from Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Elton John and others, on the 22nd. Actor and musician Jeff Daniels streams an acoustic concert on Jan. 12, with a Q&A following.

Featured photo: A teddy bear audience at Headliner’s Comedy Club helped facilitate social distancing. Courtesy photo.