Author: Michael Witthaus

Cars tribute act hits Tupelo

The best thing about playing in a Cars tribute act is it never gets boring. The Boston band broke out in the late 1970s with a string of hits that ran the gamut from edgy jangle pop to swirling, ethereal rock, and no song exactly resembled another.

“The Cars had such a diverse palette of musical tastes, you listen to some of their music and sometimes wonder if it’s the same band,” Ken Marchione said recently. Panorama, the band he co-founded, will bring its pristine Cars reproduction to Tupelo Music Hall on Nov. 18, a co-bill with B-52s sound-alike Bikini Whale. “Their music will live on, and even after all these years they still sound fresh.”

That said, anyone looking to tackle The Cars’ catalog, from their eponymous debut to 1984’s Heartbeat City (the last-gasp Door to Door three years later doesn’t really count), should be more than a fan. The variety and complexity of songs like “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Hello Again” can challenge the most talented musician.

The five members of Panorama are up to the task. In fact, their stage act often improves on, or at least cleans up, the original group, as it employs prerecorded multitracking and layered vocals to emulate The Cars’ album sound.

“We want to make it note for note as perfect as we can,” Marchione said. “Because in a lot of ways they really were a studio band.”

Marchione and keyboard player Darren Muise, who are also in the J. Geils Band tribute act Whammer Jammer, came up with the idea for Panorama in 2019. The two were already Cars fans. Muise went to Berklee College of Music, where he latched onto Cars keys man Greg Hawkes, particularly liking his synthesizer work. Marchione picked up the guitar at age 6 and was smitten since “Just What I Needed” hit on WBCN and WRKO.

He marvels at guitarist Elliot Easton. “His solos … are songs within songs that can be hummed; the average listener gravitates to that,” he said. “That’s why I think he’s been so successful as a soloist and a writer because he makes these intricate arrangements for the guitar that everybody can latch on to.”

The first piece in putting the band together was singer-guitarist Darin Ames, who answered Marchione and Muise’s Craigslist ad. Drummer Gary Agresti came next, bringing additional skills as a sound man — he runs the mix at BankNH Pavilion in Gilford during the shed season. Bass player Jeff Ares came in last, replacing one who’d only played one gig.

Ares was a find. “It was fate — he knew about 25 songs when he walked through the door,” Marchione recalled, adding they did a full rehearsal with him the same day. “He just stepped in, he knows every song, he’s a great bass player, he looks the part and he loves The Cars. It was just an absolute perfect fit, and that completed the band.”

The doppelganger band opens its show with a brief Cars history video and uses career-spanning visual imagery throughout the set. They perform a couple of times a month and recently completed a well-received jaunt to Wisconsin. They’ve even received acknowledgement from the objects of their tribute. At a recent benefit concert, Ares and Ames sat in with Eliot Easton for a pair of songs.

At the show, Marchione had a chance to speak with his musical hero Easton.

“I got to ask him a bunch of questions about a lot of the solos that I’ve been playing for years now,” Marchione recalled. “He was fantastic, and a super nice guy. He knew that we had a tribute to The Cars, and he wasn’t in any way upset; he was flattered. That was a bucket list item for me.”

Panorama (The Cars tribute) w/ Bikini Whale (B-52s tribute)
When: Saturday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $30 at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Panorama. Courtesy photo.

Reunited and revitalized, deSoL hits Concord

Fans of Latin-infused rock and soul music are in for a treat when deSoL performs at Concord’s Bank of NH Stage on Nov. 11, their first area show in over a decade. Though the band officially split in 2010, they stayed friendly, doing a Concerts for the Cause benefit in Manchester in 2013 — but nothing since.

Socially distanced meetups at front man Albie Monterrosa’s New Jersey home in the waning days of pandemic lockdown, however, led to deSoL’s first new songs since their final album, Chango. Monterrosa promised in a recent interview that more are in the works, perhaps a sign that the band’s upcoming live shows won’t be the last.

“It’s more of a commitment, I guess,” he said. deSoL is now a four-piece band; Monterrosa, keyboard player Andy Letke, James Guerrero on percussion and bass player Chris Apple.

“We never lost the love for each other and for what we do and for our audience,” Monterrosa continued, adding that the rigors of touring caused the breakup. “We hit it for a decade strong and we missed birthday parties, funerals, weddings…. We had to reassess where our personal lives were at that moment. It was interesting to really take inventory.”

Once reunited, the Asbury Park rhythm machine began to get its groove back, while mending fences. “Being with a band for so long, things happen, things are said. When you’re older you have distance from it and there’s healing. I remember sitting around the island in my kitchen with a bottle of tequila in the middle and us just talking… really being honest with one another. It was a couple of those conversations that really started to make way for new music.”

“El Paso” is one gem in a batch of new songs. Monterrosa wrote it for his mother, while he reflected on her challenges immigrating from El Salvador in the 1970s.

“I realized I had it pretty good,” he said. “Her selflessness was a gift. [Her] struggles I really didn’t see until now…. A big part of what ‘El Paso’ is about is giving my mom honor there.”

Though it’s true when Monterrosa sings, “everybody’s got their own story to tell, mine began in El Paso,” he insists the song isn’t autobiographical.

“It’s pretty much the Latin American story, underdogs coming here try to make it,” he said. “Making it for my parents was literally what they did; they purchased a home, got us through school and out of the house. They created people that were productive in society.”

Handing the song to his bandmates provided a reminder of the rhythmic chemistry that drives deSoL. It was an acoustic song when Monterrosa wrote it, “very singer-songwriter,” he recalled. Guerrero was the first band member to feel it. “He has this ear that I really trust…. If he gets excited, I know it’s hitting a chord somewhere. Then Andy got behind the drums and started playing that groove, and it turned into something that we all were liking. When that happens, you go with it.”

Fittingly, the completed track has a groove that recalls “City of Immigrants,” Steve Earle’s ode to NYC. Another finished song, “Sally,” has a Lieber & Stoller, doo-wop feel. “We’ve got a couple more that we’re gonna release in the new year,” Monterrosa said. “It’s interesting to make music a decade or more later than the last time, and in a new way.”

That said, they’re most excited to be returning to the stage.

“That’s where we love to be, in the live realm; we love when people are together,” Monterrosa said. He likened the band at the start of each show to a jet plane sitting on the runway. “When the plane takes off, everybody’s vibing together and everybody is unified. People are dancing, people are singing back, people are with you on the ride.”

Whether they feel a little or a lot of that love isn’t critical. “Even if it’s one person, as long as somebody’s on the ride with us, I feel like we’re doing our job. We’ve been really fortunate to have that one person spark up and then the person next to him, then it becomes a chain reaction. Next thing, the whole place is really a party.”

There’s a reason their only two upcoming shows are in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts, a Nov. 10 co-headlining concert with fellow percussive pals Entrain.

“You guys really know and love your music, and you sniff out something that’s not working,” Monterrosa said. “You respond well when it’s authentic and real. I love that about New England.”

deSoL
When: Saturday, Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $30.75 and $43.75 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: deSoL. Courtesy photo.

The honey-limned soundscapes of Cowboy Junkies

Every Cowboy Junkies album delivers a fair share of emotional truths, dark reflections and melancholy, and Such Ferocious Beauty, released last June, is no exception. There are echoes of the Louvin Brothers on the spare “Hell Is Real,” with its refrain “Jesus is coming, ready or not” more a stern warning than a promise of salvation. Another stellar track, “Knives” admonishes that “hope is fear in disguise.”

What’s different about the new record is that Michael Timmins, who writes lyrics for his ethereal-voiced sister Margo to sing, tapped into the mood of his family on many songs. Tragically, it extends the tenor of their previous release Ghosts, an eight-song cycle that processed the death of their mother in 2018. Their father passed in 2020, succumbing first to dementia and finally to old age.

Drummer Peter Timmins is the third sibling in the band, but there are three others who aren’t musicians, and each was included in a decision to reveal why the songs were written. This made it both his and his family’s artistic process, Michael Timmins shared by phone recently.

“It wasn’t just my story; it was all our story,” he said. “With these songs and albums, there was something we’d all gone through together. We felt it was something that made sense for our audience and for us personally. That’s how we came to that decision.”

Timmins’ songwriting approach didn’t change.

“There’s always something personal…. The songs are not only supposed to work if you know what they’re about,” he said. “Hopefully, they evoke something in you that goes near what I’m trying to express.”

Anyone who’s experienced a loved one battling Alzheimer’s will feel the gut punch of “What I Lost,” which leads off the album. It’s written from the point of view of Timmins’ dad, as his memory erodes and he holds on to the shards of his past — piloting a plane over Quebec, listening to jazz in a nightclub, missing his wife.

“I woke up this morning, didn’t know who I was,” he cries, and Margo sings, “You ask me how I am / what am I supposed to say / when this is what I lost.”

It’s often said that when a parent dies, each child loses a different person. Thus, one wonders if Michael’s emotions were re-shaped in any of these songs when Margo sang his words back to him.

“That’s a good question,” he said, and began to describe how a typical song comes together. “It’s the ‘frog in boiling water’ process…. [First] I’m writing and it’s a very personal thing; it’s all about me. The next stage, I’m thinking in terms of structuring it for Margo. Then she begins to get involved with her vocals and the way she’s expressing the words. And the lines are coming back at me differently.”

The musical vibe of Michael and Peter Timmins and bass player Alan Anton is major mojo for every one of the band’s songs. Michael describes this crucible as nearly alchemic.

“That’s a whole other thing … by the time we’re finished, the songs are very much beyond where I may have thought they were going to be,” he said. “Or maybe they’re exactly the same, but I’ve kind of forgotten what my initial thoughts were; it’s become a Junkies song. I pay attention all along the way, but I’m very happy to let things be pushed in a direction that I wasn’t expecting.”

On another standout track, music came before words. “Flood” is an edgy song that scoffs at “all this useless talk of turning tides,” and sounds like drowning might feel.

“Alan sent me a very cool bass and piano line … that’s the core,” Michael said, adding he wrote atop that foundation, crafting lyrics and then fleshing it out with scraping, chaotic electric guitar. “Once I had the words, the themes, the ideas and the desperation of the characters, I realized I needed another element in there to express that musically.”

Since forming in the mid-’80s, Cowboy Junkies have recorded and toured constantly, with no hiatuses or lineup changes. When the world paused in early 2020, the group was able to experience down time. “In some ways, it turned out good,” Michael said. “We’re always playing because it’s very important for us to do that, and it’s what we’ve always done. But this was sort of this little forced break to get off the road.”

He spent his time writing and recording, finishing Such Ferocious Beauty, and when live music returned he found himself frequently going to see other artists when he wasn’t performing. “I gotta be more active about this,” he remembers thinking. “I gotta get out there and start going to shows again, because it’s just such a great feeling.”

A few days prior to this interview, he’d seen Nick Cave’s stripped-down solo show at Toronto’s Massey Hall. A fan since Cave’s angsty Birthday Party days, Michael discerns commonality in their career arcs. “He’s had quite a journey,” he said. “We’ve gone through various stages, and as we’ve grown older our outlook on the world is growing different. I hope that we have a similar sort of relationship with our audience.”

Two days later he took his daughter to see Gregory Alan Isakov, after hearing her try to work out the chords to one of Isakov’s songs in her bedroom. “Him and his band opened for us, probably back around 2011 or 2012 in Boulder, when, I think, he was just getting going,” he said. “So it translated down through the ages.

Inspired by the likes of fellow Canadians Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, Michael sees a kinship between himself and Isakov; he begins most of his songs from a singer-songwriter point of view. “Even though that’s not what I am,” he said, “it’s just me and my acoustic guitar. Then I go through the filter of Margo and the band, and they go in different directions, and that’s sort of what makes Cowboy Junkies.”

Cowboy Junkies
When: Sunday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $49 and up at etix.com

Featured photo: Cowboy Junkies. Photo by Heather Pollock.