Author: Michael Witthaus

Creamery Station returns to Manchester

The two groups sharing the Jewel Music Venue stage on June 26 go together like Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and Phish Food — Not Fade Away Band celebrates the Grateful Dead’s music, while Creamery Station brings together all the elements loved by fans of the Dead, Allman Brothers and other heroes of the jam scene.

While plenty of performing units boast about coming together organically, it’s really true of Connecticut-based Creamery Station. Dylan Kader “grew up side stage” — watching his father Jim play in The Bernadettes, a regional R&B group. But Kader was more drawn to sports as a youngster.

In his teens, guided by a “big things start small” philosophy, Kader began honing his guitar skills.

“I wanted to get good enough to play around a campfire and have my friends smile,” he said in a recent phone interview, “but as soon as I started, I fell in love with it.”

One night at a house party, Kader, his dad and a drummer friend started jamming. Soon, the living room was packed with dancing revelers.

“It felt really right,” Kader said. “We got excited and started inviting other musicians.”

The first was his dad’s Bernadettes band mate Don DeStafano, a harmonica player who’d appeared on albums by Johnny Cash and B.B. King. Then Kader’s elementary school pal Harry Cooper joined on drums.

Crucially, keyboard player Jon Truelson, a Berklee grad with music theory skills, came on board. “He’s the Garth in our band — he really pulls our harmonies together, and has an ear like I’ve never heard,” Kader said. The group later welcomed percussionist Mike Ryan, bass player Alex Wu and Bobby Pickett, who plays lap steel and violin.

“It was almost a natural occurrence how everybody started coming together like that,” Kader said.

After hundreds of shows, some EPs and the 2017 demo collection Pastures of Plenty, Creamery Station put out its first proper studio album, Walk With Me, last year. Though the pandemic forced them to cancel a planned tour, Kader was sanguine.

“We had something to release at a time when so many bands were completely out of work with nothing to do,” he said. “So at least it gave us something.”

The new record’s dozen tracks reflect a collaborative nature. Kader wrote most, with Pickett, Cooper, Ryan and Truelson all contributing — Truelson’s harmony-rich “I’d Be Pleased” is a highlight.

“We’re lucky enough we have eight musicians and all of them are phenomenal,” Kader said. “Although not all of us end up starting the songs, we all have a big piece in the writing of them.”

Another standout is Kader’s “Fernwood,” written about a stop in Big Sur while the band was on tour in California. “We go out there a lot and we love it,” he said. “We were all just sitting around the fire and wrote the song about the whole trip — it was a fun little jig.”

Producer Vic Steffens (Rory Block, Lita Ford) did a great job of recreating the band’s live sound on Walk With Me, but the group is anxious to get back in front of fans to see how the new material evolves.

“I love bouncing back and forth between musicians, but there’s still a whole element that’s missing,” Kader said. “Things go to really cool and weird places on stage; that’s what makes it so special. A lot of it is driven by the energy of the audience, where the show and the night’s going down. So it’s really cool to get time on the road … playing the songs, and really see what comes of them.”

Not Fade Away Band w/ Creamery Station
When: Saturday, June 26, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at jewel.ticketleap.com

Featured photo: Creamery Station. Courtesy photo.

Revamped, Jason Spooner Band hits Concord

The Music in the Park concert series sponsored by Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts in nearby Fletcher-Murphy Park continues on June 13 with Jason Spooner Band. The quartet rose to prominence in the mid-2000s and became a fixture on the New England festival circuit with five studio albums, most recently Chemical in 2014 and 2019’s Wide Eyed.

Dan Boyden took over on drums a few years back, but the band’s lineup remained constant otherwise, until original bass player Adam Frederick and keyboardist Warren McPherson left for family reasons in the days just prior to the pandemic. London Souls bassist Stu Mahan and Dawson Hill, a keyboard player with a perfect swampy touch, joined in early 2020.

“We had this tectonic shift … but it’s led to really good things,” Spooner said in a recent phone interview. “It was very, very nerve-wracking when it happened because it was like two pillars of the table coming off.”

The new crew made for “a re-energized band,” Spooner said. “Everyone’s equally fired up [and] rowing in the same direction; it’s amazing how far that goes. You get into a rehearsal and feel like everybody’s pumped to be there, to work on stuff and grow. Coming out of last year, we’re playing a lot more theater shows, bigger venues and cool openers.”

The fresh start included revisiting tracks initially done one to two years ago to give them an extra sheen; Spooner hopes to release them as singles. The process was refreshingly unrushed.

“This latest effort feels like it’s a little more marinated, we had time to make it … the songs feel comfortable in their own skin,” he said. “We did it in such a relaxed, unfettered way, there were just no limitations.”

One standout is the slow burner breakup song “Wanted to Say,” evoking Aja-era Steely Dan with help from horn players Phil Rodriguez and Brian Graham, who’ve toured with Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds.

“They just came in and we all wrote the lines on the spot,” Spooner said. “It was a super collaborative effort; I love the vibe they contributed.”

The new members joined organically. Boyden and Mahan are longtime friends.

“He’s kind of the alpha bass player around Portland,” Spooner said. “Stu also played and toured with Eric Krasnow, who of course is kind of royalty in the jazz, funk and jam scene, so he’s a monster.”

Finding Hill was pure serendipity.

“We were down at Sun Tiki Studios in Portland, a cool little studio with neighboring rooms where bands play simultaneously” — and the walls aren’t super-soundproofed, Spooner recalled. “We were packing up after a three-hour rehearsal, and all of a sudden we heard this other band. Dan looked at me with this stank face he’s pretty famous for and said, ‘Who the hell is that over there?’ We heard this real nice Little Feat, Dr. John playing — just, you know, a guy who had done his homework.”

Along with lineup changes, Spooner is taking a fresh approach to recording. “I’m hopefully getting a little wiser in terms of how records are made, what my best practices are, and how to do things effectively,” he said. “I’ve been known to be OCD from time to time. I’m the eldest child; I’ve always been kind of the point person on things.”

Lately, writing in the studio has replaced Spooner’s old habit of bringing the band well-formed songs, forging a fraternal bond and shared purpose.

“Skin in the game is big with bands,” he said. “A lot of the rifts happen if two guys are on one page and the other two are on another … whatever the dissonance may be, it’s never a good thing. It can lead to like bigger rifts and breakups and things like that. So now it’s feeling really good. Everybody contributes and has a role.”

Jason Spooner Band
When: Sunday, June 13, 2 p.m.
Where: Fletcher-Murphy Park, 28 Fayette St., Concord
Tickets: $12 at ccanh.com ($8 livestream available)

Featured photo: Jason Spooner Band. Courtesy photo.