Author: Michael Witthaus

Tyler Allgood shines on soul-baring Through The Empty

Surgery and its aftermath are often challenging; for a recovering addict, the experience can be harrowing. As Tyler Allgood faced a spine operation in early 2019, he worried about whether essential pain medication would lead to relapse. For six to eight months prior to entering the hospital, this fear had him “staring at the ceiling … going crazy wondering if my life was ever going to change,” Allgood said in a recent phone interview.

“Knowing I’d have to take drugs again to go through this,” he said, “I kind of had to revisit my past and revise it.”

The answer came through his music, on songs like “Downtime” and “Who Am I Now.” The latter is a dreamy meditation about being “always off, lost in the fixtures,” while keeping vigilant. Both appear on Allgood’s soon to be released album Through The Empty, a 13-track cycle that’s both starkly honest and expertly composed.

“The writing saved me,” Allgood said. “I had to keep writing; it’s really saving my life.”

Though this is his second LP, Allgood feels the new effort is a lot like a debut.

“It’s kind of a wrap-up of all those years,” he said, noting that 2019’s The Weight of Thunder “was whipped together kind of quickly [when] a friend of mine had had an opportunity and he was an engineer. It’s still very meaningful, but on [this] record I finally bring my composing all together … and really produce the sound that I’m going for.”

Allgood, who also deals with alcoholism, “depression, PTSD and plenty of other mental issues,” said his songwriting is “ninety percent personal experience and stories.” Some can be heartbreaking — “Love In Vermont” deals with a love affair that ends in suicide.

There’s also hope. One of the record’s highlights, “No Visions of Fear,” contains the memorable line, “I’m too miserable to die.” Allgood is quoting a friend who succumbed to breast cancer.

“I don’t think he knew how powerful it was coming from him as he was dying,” he said, adding the statement was a reflection of his friend’s giving nature. “He hadn’t done all of his work helping people … that was the reason he was miserable. That he would have to leave other people behind.”

Along with strong songwriting, what distinguishes the new album most is its music: densely layered guitars, delicate keyboards, deft time changes and Allgood’s haunting vocals. He played and sang nearly every note.

Through The Empty was recorded at Loud Sun Studios with producer Ben Rogers, who also plays drums on the record. Dan Labrie, from Allgood’s old group BandBand, played slide guitar on a couple of tracks, and Eliot Pelletier contributed guitar as well.

Allgood got into music as a teenager.

“A friend of mine, Kyle Weber, was this really talented guitar player right from the get-go,” he said. “He played the talent show at our middle school, and that was where I realized that I really wanted to do that as well.”

He agrees that most listeners will detect a clear influence running through the new album.

“Jerry Garcia was hugely important finding my way through whatever it is I’m doing with music,” Allgood said. “The Grateful Dead, George Harrison’s solo stuff, all helped open my eyes to what was possible on my own, to create, to not have limits.”

When a release event happens — never a certainty these pandemic-limited times — Allgood plans to assemble a band to back him. For now, though, he plays solo and eschews looping sounds.

“I might incorporate that soon, but I tend to keep it as original as I can, I suppose,” he said.

His shows also include judiciously chosen covers of artists like The Beatles and Johnny Cash.

“I try to cater to everything, and then also mix in my original work,” he said.

Allgood expects to release the album in early March — “It’s coming as soon as possible,” he said.

He’ll play a lot of it during a livestream show hosted by Nova Arts on March 19 (novaarts.org).

Tyler Allgood
When: Thursday, Feb 25, 6 p.m.
Where: Village Trestle, 25 Main St., Goffstown
More: instagram.com/tgood_extrabetty
Allgood also appears Saturday, March 6, 6 p.m. at Village Trestle in Goffstown

Graig Murphy, Francis Birch & Mike Smith
When: Saturday, Feb. 13, 8 p.m.
Where: Strikers East, 4 Essex Dr., Raymond
Tickets: $20 at laughriotproductions.com or call 895-9501

Featured photo: Tyler Allgood. Courtesy photo.

Comedy showcase features Francis Birch

In standup comedy, a weekend booking represents validation. Francis Birch’s first was at Veronica Laffs in Strikers East, a Raymond bowling alley. The pop-up club closed mid-decade, when comic and entrepreneur Jay Grove opened a dedicated venue, Curlie’s Comedy Club in Rochester.

The laughs are returning to Strikers East — as is Birch, who’ll share the stage with headliner Graig Murphy on Feb. 13.

The upcoming show is presented by Laugh Riot Productions and will be hosted by its CEO, Michael Smith.

“It’s kind of cool to go back,” Birch said recently by phone. “To work there as a more polished comic who has a little bit of a reputation now.”

Birch began doing comedy in 2011, egged on by friends who said he was funny. However, his first attempt at an open mic night wasn’t a triumph.

“I did not know what I was getting myself into,” he said, ruefully noting that a friend taped his 11-minute, laugh-free set and posted it on YouTube. “Sometimes when I need to humble myself, I’ll watch that.”

Unbowed, Birch persisted, finding a home at a Monday night gathering called Punchlines, hosted by Grove at Penuche’s Ale House in Concord. While there, he worked the same five minutes repeatedly, “to just see if I could nail my timing” in front of a tough, sometimes unforgiving crowd.

One night, the antipathy in the room broke his rhythm — and led to a breakthrough.

“Some drunk guy was yelling at me,” Birch said. “I just had a conversation with him, and it really went well. Jay said to me, ‘Any time you can engage and shut down a heckler, and he comes up to shake your hand afterward, is a good thing.’”

Birch is married with three boys of his own, and he’s a stepfather to one more. The big family is a major source of material, but it was also parenthood that caused him to step away from comedy, from 2015 to 2018. The decision came after he’d received one too many videos of his son, now 8, “doing awesome stuff, and I wasn’t there,” he said. “I missed my other boys I was raising because I was in my 20s and being an idiot. Now I was missing this one growing up because I was doing comedy.”

Along with his children, Birch’s mother was a big part of his act. It was her death in 2018 that helped spur him back into the game.

“I had the itch,” he said. “I wanted to go out and tell some jokes, make fun of her a little bit. Because she helped me write those jokes.”

He did a midweek open mic, then a Saturday night guest slot at Curlie’s.

“Maybe if I got 10 minutes on a weekend that’ll be scratchy enough to satisfy,” he reasoned, but “that did nothing. It made it more itchy. Since then, I’ve been working full steam ahead, just growing my act and incorporating some of the things that happened since.”

Birch said he came back more confident, and more honest — “I started to speak to my stories, being them instead of reciting it.”

He also quit smoking and gave up drinking in the months after returning to standup; again, he was guided by his mom.

“She got pneumonia and her body wasn’t strong enough to fight it, because she had COPD,” Birch said. “[I realized that] if I don’t make changes in my life, that’s gonna be me. My kids are gonna have to watch me die.”

A fitness regimen “to make my body as strong as it can be to fight off any infection” soon began, an effort that grew into a coaching business.

“I help people create habits and become better versions of themselves,” Birch said. He believes telling jokes is not dissimilar. “When I do comedy, I feel like I’m helping people escape their reality and laugh a little bit.”

Asked if the health focus had an effect on his act, Birch replied with a laugh, “I got a lot of fat jokes I can’t use anymore! That’s something Jay taught me when we first started … don’t write jokes about your beard or being fat because you might not always have that beard, you might not always be fat.”

One subject remains, though: Birch’s beloved mother.

“I make fun of her like never before,” he said. “I’ve actually written more material about her, and I like to deliver it with a smile. Because I know that’s what she’s doing — she’s smiling. She’s my rock, my heart and soul, and she’s with me every performance.”

Graig Murphy, Francis Birch & Mike Smith
When: Saturday, Feb. 13, 8 p.m.
Where: Strikers East, 4 Essex Dr., Raymond
Tickets: $20 at laughriotproductions.com or call 895-9501

Featured photo: Francis Birch. Courtesy photo.

Record release show among Area 23 events

An off-the-beaten-path Concord restaurant and taproom is doing all it can to keep original music alive in New Hampshire. Area 23 was among the first venues in the state to revive live entertainment when lockdown was lifted last spring. Owner Kirk McNeil continues in these cold months, lately offering Saturday night “swap sets” that give two local artists an opportunity to showcase their talents.

“We all have something to say about our experiences in the world; we’ve all been touched by a certain song or songs in our lives,” McNeil said recently, when asked to explain his commitment to the regional scene. “Supporting local music helps those fresh voices and experiences come into the world and reach more ears.”

Many of the acts appearing at Area 23 began at the midweek open mic, including Littleton-based Thrown to the Wolves, which will celebrate its first full-length CD with a release party on Feb. 26. The rootsy duo consists of singer-songwriter Higher Frequency — who answers to Freak while declining to reveal his birth name — and fiddler JD Nadeau.

Freak is an amalgamation of a high-country Tom Waits and the Illustrated Man. Ink covers much of his body and all of his face. The habit began as a fascination with his father’s tattoos, and eventually he became an artist. He said in a recent phone interview that he first thought of facial tattooing as a seven-year-old.

“Doing it for the first time was revelatory,” he said. “I wasn’t really comfortable with me until I started. … When I looked in my mirror after I had my first session on my face, I said, ‘Oh, there you are!’”

Musically, Freak’s moaning, growling songs are filled with images of hellhounds, fire and fury; mostly, his unbridled singing is about rejecting all of that.

“I don’t need to believe one way or another to be a good human being,” he said.

“Just love your fellow man and cherish your own soul,” sings the minister’s son on the lead track to the forthcoming Right Side of Wrong, Wrong Side of Good. “I don’t need your Heaven, and I don’t need your Hell — to be a better man, I just found myself.” 

Freak is self-taught; he picked up guitar a few years back.

“As soon as I could put three chords together I wrote my first song,” he said.

The woman he wrote it for was not as enamored of his foray into music.

“The more I wrote, the more she hated it, and the more in love with it I became,” he said.

Nadeau’s galloping fiddle adds a wealth of spice to their tunes; it’s hard to think of them without the texture he provides. When they met at an open mic in Newport Center, Vermont, a couple of years back, Freak thought he only played guitar. They did a dozen songs together that night and met up a few weeks later at Nadeau’s apartment.

“Our styles weren’t fitting,” Freak said, noting that when Nadeau mentioned his other instrument, “I was like, ‘You play fiddle? Why didn’t you bring that up before?’”

The spark thus lit, the two would play their first gig at a festival in upstate New York originally booked for another band that, in Freak’s words, “went south.” He didn’t want to give up the slot, and meeting Nadeau made it an easier choice. A line from a song in progress gave the duo an appropriate name; that was over two years ago.

In mid-2019 a friend in the Concord band The Rhythm Upstairs invited him to Area 23’s Wednesday open mic. He and Nadeau got up and played a few songs. Soon after, they were offered a gig.

“First time I met him I was not expecting his music to be what it was,” McNeil said. “But I was in no way disappointed.”

Given its interesting beginnings, his growing audience is a pleasant surprise, Freak said.

“I never expected when I picked up the guitar that I would play in a band, or that people would like my music,” he said. “It even took me a few years to be like, ‘OK, there’s not that many people lying to me.’ So I just kind of rolled with it. Everything that I’m doing now is like a bonus … because it was never expected when I started this.”

Upcoming at Area 23
Friday, Feb. 5 – Dillan Welch
Saturday, Feb. 6 – Ross Arnold and Steve Butler
Friday, Feb. 12 – Brian Munger
Saturday, Feb. 13 – Hometown Eulogy
Friday, Feb. 19 – Mikey G
Saturday, Feb. 20 – Chip and the Figments
Friday, Feb. 26 – Thrown to the Wolves
Saturday, Feb. 27 – Ken Clark and Chris Fitz
Every Wednesday – open mic
Every Saturday – jam (2-5pm)
All shows run 7 to 11 p.m. except Saturdays

Featured photo: Thrown to the Wolves. Courtesy photo.