Author: Michael Witthaus

The Music Roundup 26/04/02

• Organized: A listening room show with food and wine served features J3ST, a Concord-based organ trio led by Tom Robinson on the Hammond. Scott Solsky’s seven-string guitar takes on half of the bass role, with drummer Jared Steer holding down his share of the rhythm. Thus, the vintage keyboard is out front, as the group delivers jazz, soul and funk grooves for a smooth, elegant show. Thursday, April 2, at 7 p.m., Hermit Woods Winery, 72 Main St., Meredith, $18, eventbrite.com.

• Loudness: Bring headphones for the kids, or better yet leave them home as Chiburi leads a five-band show promising lots of volume. The most recent release from the Granite State post-metal band is the relentless Exquisite Corpse, Part 1, released in 2024. Rounding out the raucous lineup are Lobotomobile, Miracle Blood, Lacquerhead and Noise Sludge. Friday, April 3, at 8 p.m., Terminus Underground, 134 Haines St., Nashua, $15, newhampshireunderground.org.

• Rumbling: Feel big drops, deep grooves and pulsing rhythm at a night of electronic dance music led by Space Wizard, a Colorado-based DJ and producer known for blending old and new sound for a new kind of dubstep. Special guests Slang Dogs, also from Denver, promise an “immersive audio visual experience,” with Ainonow, She-Wolf and Swamp Wizard also performing at this Hachi event. Friday, April 3, at 8 p.m., Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester, $34, posh.vip.

• Stratophied: Many’s the musician that travels to Nashville for country music fame, but not Jax Hollow. The rough and tumble singer/guitarist left Boston for Music City with rock ’n’ roll dreams and a gritty bit of blues to boot. Rolling Stone France compared her to “an early Sheryl Crow or Melissa Etheridge,” who she opened for at the Ryman Auditorium with a “Hendrixian” solo set. Saturday, April 4, at 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $40, palacetheatre.org.

• Showtiming: Theater kids and cosplay fans will enjoy Broadway Rave, a pair of shows brimming with show tunes and dancing, along with a healthy helping of dressing up. The event promises sing-alongs to songs from favorite musicals like Wicked, Hamilton, Rent, Mamma Mia! and more. Audience members are encouraged to don the attire of a favorite character for the entertaining all-ages event. Saturday, April 4, at 4 and 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $23, ccanh.com.

Words and wine

Book club gathering in Concord

Even casual oenophiles know that chardonnay and a soft brie go together well. But what pairs with a Dan Brown novel starring The Da Vinci Code symbologist Robert Langdon that blends futuristic science and mystical lore? The answer can be learned at an upcoming book club night at Wine on Main in downtown Concord.

Wine on Main owner Emma Stetson is still working on the wine list for the event but has already chosen a couple to go with The Secret of Secrets, Brown’s 2025 release. One is French, a Mont Gravet rosé.

“Much of the book takes place in Switzerland, which doesn’t have a great deal of wine,” she said in an email. “However, France’s coastline is right over the border and they make great rosé there.”

Another is a Lapis Luna Red Blend, from Northern California. It typically includes cabernet sauvignon, merlot, malbec and barbera. “The label depicts a girl sitting on top of the world and staring at the moon,” Stetson said. “It is fitting for this thriller that tackles consciousness and human existence.”

While they sip wine, attendees will discuss Brown’s book, led by Jocelyn Winn, owner of The Writing Gallery, located further up North Main Street in Concord, across from the Statehouse. Winn is the founder of editorial services company The Eleventh Letter, and she’s also a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer. Winn and Stetson began collaborating on the events a couple of years ago. They happen more or less seasonally.

“She was an English major and now she’s a wine connoisseur, so we just kind of get together and talk about different books,” Winn said by phone recently. “For a while we did a lot of what you could call beach reads.”

Books previously covered include Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers and The Chateau, a thriller written by Jaclyn Goldis set in the vineyards and markets of Provence, France. Another was The Perfect Couple, an Elin Hilderbrand novel that was made into a Netflix series in 2024.

Reading a book ahead of time isn’t mandatory, and occasionally it’s not even necessary. Winn noted that past gatherings have focused on television shows such as The White Lotus and Downton Abbey.

Each evening includes props and other touches inspired by whatever work is being discussed, Winn noted.

“The space gets a little bit decorated for the book,” she said, “Then Emma has wine and cheese and crackers and usually some sweets. Oftentimes she will create a slideshow.”

These visual aids often include maps of viticultural regions found in the literature, which Stetson will use to explain each wine. Winn will intersperse other activities as well.

“We’ll do trivia; I’ll ask questions and give away prizes or do raffles,” she said. “Or they’ll put their name in a hat and get some type of book-themed door prize.”

The next book club night, in June, focuses on Laura Knoy’s wartime novel The Shopkeeper of Alsace and will include a Q&A with Knoy. “That’ll be the first one that Emma and I have done together that the author will be present,” Winn said, adding that attendees can also ask questions. “It’s always amazing as a reader when you can talk to the writer directly.”

Winn’s unique gallery, which opened late in 2025, continues to grow, with workshops and art exhibitions. Irene Yushin’s “Beyond Words” opens April 10. A lifelong visual artist, Yushin overcame severe dyslexia and is now a writer, working on a memoir. Her show will feature her works from “before and after finding words.”

Winn is pleased with her gallery’s success.

“I have been super fortunate and lucky,” she said. “It’s exactly what I had envisioned, and honestly, I think that’s the first time in my life I could say that about anything. How often does everything you envision actually happen, with anything — relationships, jobs, vacations? And it happened fast. It has been, in the best possible way, definitely a whirlwind.”

Book Club Night: The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
When: Thursday, April 2, 6:30-8 p.m.
Where: Wine on Main, North Main Street, Concord
Tickets: $34 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Wine on Main book club. Courtesy photo.

Not a mellow cello

Rocking up a staid stringed instrument

According to common wisdom, one way to deal with stage fright is to imagine the audience is naked. But what if they’re in the buff already? That’s what cellist Rebecca Roudman and her bandmates in Dirty Cello were thinking when they played at a nudist resort a few years back.

The Northern California quartet has toured the world with a revved-up brand of rock, blues and bluegrass that’s driven by Roudman’s cellist talents. Songs like “Dream On” by Aerosmith and AC/DC’s “Long Way to the Top” are transformed into grassified booty-shakers, and their originals are also stellar.

Luckily for the naked crowd that day, Roudman was the opposite of shy, as she worked her carbon fiber cello like Hendrix on a Strat. Nonetheless, guitarist Jason Eckl, who’s also Roudman’s husband, recalled in a recent Zoom interview with the couple that the gig was still a bit distracting.

“We’re playing our groovy music and people are dancing, which is funny,” he said. “Then all of a sudden without thinking about it I call out a very fast bluegrass song, and the dancing just kicks into high gear. The hula hoops are coming out, and Rebecca’s giggling through the whole thing.”

The gig was one of the few available during the social distancing days of the pandemic, but it put Dirty Cello on a special speed-dial list.

“We keep getting hired to go play at naked people places,” Eckl said. “But we always like to say we keep our clothes on.”

Roudman had a lifetime playing classical music in symphony orchestras when she decided to push the cello’s boundaries.

“I wanted to let my hair down, do something else,” she said. “I’d started performing with a blues band, and one day they asked me to solo and improvise on the blues. I didn’t know how, and I realized this is a skill that I wanted to learn.”

While her cello-playing stays front and center, Roudman has a powerful voice, one reason why Dirty Cello convincingly rocks songs like Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” But she never planned on being a singer, and deflected a compliment that compared her vocal style to Heart’s Ann Wilson.

“I always consider myself just a cellist but thank you very much,” she said, explaining that the band hired a singer or two, but none of them could keep up. “Jason encouraged me. He said, ‘Look, you can sing, you should sing with the band.’ I was very stubborn, but after a while I was like, ‘OK, well I guess I’ve got to do it.’ … Now I’m very comfortable.”

Beginning with the 2018 release By Request, Dirty Cello has made five albums; the latest, By the Seat of Our Pants, came out in late February. Cello-fied covers include a version of “Sympathy for the Devil” with a female Lucifer, Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine,” and “Run Through the Jungle,” a Creedence Clearwater Revival deep cut.

They balance the record out nicely with solid songs of their own. Despite its title, “Go Slow” moves along at a heady clip, while “Feelin’ Frisky in Frisco” is a nod to the band’s home base. “Further Down the Road” closes out the album. A blues rocker that also ends many of their shows, it’s a barn-burner.

Though cellists like Rushan Eggleston and Ben Sollee have redefined the instrument in the recent past, Roudman didn’t look to them for cues when pivoting from classical to more raucous, rousing music. “I wanted to be completely different,” she said.

With Dirty Cello, Roudman decided to “focus more on rock and blues, and maybe throw in some bluegrass and Americana … be the Swiss Army knife of cello-playing. So when people come to our shows, they’re going to hear a whole bunch of stuff reimagined on the cello. We wanted to stand out and be unique, and it’s been working for us.”

Dirty Cello
When: Sunday, March 29, at 3 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $34 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Dirty Cello. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/03/19

• Songstress: After dueting with Shawn Colvin in the mid-1980s NYC folk boom, Lucy Kaplansky pivoted to earning a doctorate in clinical psychology and starting a private practice, but continued to sing. She added harmonies to Colvin’s debut album Steady On, backed Nanci Griffith on a couple of songs, and finally released her first solo LP, Flesh and Bone,in 1996. Thursday, March 26, 7:30 p.m., Flying Goose Brew Pub, 40 Andover Road, New London, $30, 526-6899.

• Convincing: The journey to channeling Johnny Cash began when Shawn Barker walked into auditions for the rock ’n’ roll origin musical Million Dollar Quartet with a rockabilly haircut and his eyes on the Elvis Presley role. The director had different ideas, though, and his decision pointed Barker to a new path and a multi-decade career starring in his tribute act, The Man In Black. Friday, March 27, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $25 and up, etix.com.

• Rocktivists: Now that Rage Against the Machine is off the road, bands like Evil Empire continue to carry the torch. The Connecticut act re-creates the group’s politically charged rap-metal sound, including Tom Morello’s hypnotic guitar and Zach de la Rocha’s frantic vocalizing. They’re joined by Lounge Fly, a tribute to Stone Temple Pilots, another band that sadly also won’t be touring again. Saturday, March 28, at 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $44, tupelohall.com.

Caring campers

SleepOut event helps unhoused youth

In 2015, Manchester social services organization Waypoint, then known as Child & Family Services, organized the first SleepOut event. On a snowy, subfreezing night, nearly 50 community members slept in Stanton Park to raise money and awareness of unhoused youth in the city. The effort netted over $132,000 in donations and became an annual tradition.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended the camper gathering with its 2024 Grants Pass vs. Johnson ruling that allowed municipalities to criminalize sleeping in public. As critics noted, though, homelessness can’t be arrested away, so the problem continues, as does SleepOut. Participants now sleep outside on private lawns, porches and cars.

SleepOut 2026 begins Friday, March 27, with a sale of youth artwork made during a program hosted by Positive Street Art.

“All year long, they learn about art, they create it and teach other people,” Mandy Lancaster, Waypoint’s Homeless Youth Program director, said recently. “One hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to the young people.”

Lancaster believes the art installation is a healing force for its participants.

“It also allows them access to community and a sense of belonging,” she said. This is “probably more important than [what’s] written on the goal plan. Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens through connection and safe relationships, and this is part of that.

The works, she added, are impressive.

“I’m not an artist, but I’m continuously blown away by what these young people are producing. They have worked with a bunch of different mediums, like photography, mixed media, painting on canvas and illustration. It’s really incredible.”

Lancaster said the weekly program goes beyond an arts and crafts class; critical thinking is a key component.

“What is art and how do people perceive it, just these big, wonderful, bold questions that they’re asking themselves and grappling with. They’ve taken field trips to museums. They’re so contemplative and introspective. It’s really special.”

The gallery viewing will be followed by a solidarity gathering in Bronstein Park, across from the Waypoint Youth Drop-in Center. There will be speakers talking about both being unhoused and overcoming it. “Staff might share stories on their behalf,” Megan Sampson of Waypoint wrote in an email. “It can be a difficult thing for youth [to discuss].”

During the SleepOut program in the park, there will be some soup and bread, and the artist gallery will stay open until 8 p.m. “Following that, participants will return to sleep out at their homes or other gatherings,” Sampson said. Sleepers are spread across the state, so the speaking portion of the event will also be livestreamed for those who can’t attend. Lancaster urged the community at large to attend SleepOut 2026.

“I want to fill the park,” she said. “At the end of the day it is a fundraiser, but not everyone has the financial means to do that. You can sponsor a sleeper or sign up and be a sleeper. You can bear witness to what is shared there, speak to young people, buy their art — there are many different ways to [show] support.”

These are challenging times for Waypoint and other social services organizations. “Unprecedented decisions have been made that have directly threatened funding streams and/or the ability to provide supportive services to young people experiencing homelessness,” she said. “It’s like swimming upstream with a fast-moving current.”

However, small victories buoy her spirits. “Twenty years ago when I was getting into homeless services, I really wanted to change the world; my perception has just changed so much,” she said. “I really want to co-create meaningful relationships one person at a time. That’s allowed me to stay in the work … micro joy, micro moments, just connecting.”

SleepOut 2026 Youth Art Gallery
When: Friday, March 27, at 5 p.m.
Where: Waypoint Youth Drop-in Center, 298 Hanover St., Manchester
More: Full SleepOut program begins at 6 p.m. in Bronstein Park (across the street)

Featured photo: SleepOut mural. Courtesy photo.

Rhythm kings

James Fernando Trio swings into Concord

Piano player James Fernando believes improvisational jazz is a conversation between musicians that begins before the first note is played. Parameters are established, relationships understood. It’s similar to two friends meeting for coffee — there’s no agenda, but they both know their talk will be more genial than a chat about the financial markets.

“I think improvisation is misunderstood, largely by people who aren’t really in the jazz world,” Fernando said in a recent phone interview. “They think there’s nothing to it because they’re just making it up as they go along, and that’s true, to an extent … but you know who you’re talking to.”

Chord changes, an established tempo and a song’s key are among the elements that provide a jumping-off point, he continued.

“The melody that we played before we begin the improvisation is the same, and all of these contextual elements make it so you’re not just starting from absolutely nothing,” he said. “There’s a lot of information surrounding it, and that makes your decision-making a little bit easier.”

Even so, one of Fernando’s most memorable shows was performed with musicians that he barely knew.

For years the pianist had wanted to start a dedicated jazz trio. Many of his favorite pianists had led their own trios, and the piano-bass-drums format is an enduring configuration in jazz. Though he’d performed with trios many times, he’d never built one of his own.

The chance came in late 2023, with an invitation to play at the Kennedy Center.

“I was asked on very short notice,” he said. “I think some Irish band had their head person get Covid or something like that … obviously, very unfortunate for them, but it was a nice opportunity for us.”

Though long based in Washington, D.C., Fernando had relocated to Philadelphia when he got the call. So he decided to kickstart the project with musicians from his new hometown.

“I called some strangers, really,” he said. “I even met the drummer on stage at the Kennedy Center that same evening.”

The show was a solid success.

“We got a nice recording and video of us at the Kennedy Center, which was very useful in booking more shows,” he said. “I was able to leverage those videos into more performances, and it went so well that I kept working with the same guys … and the rest is history.”

Earlier this year, the trio released Philly 3. Their first album together consists of eight Fernando compositions and a cover of Erroll Garner, one of his key influences.

“I composed with this band in mind, playing to their strengths,” he said, “We performed and rehearsed and kind of developed the music through live performances.”

The disc reflects Fernando’s desire to make music that’s both sophisticated and swinging, playful yet meticulous. He’s aiming for a sound that, as he told an interviewer a while back, “couldn’t have been written by just anyone with a jazz degree, and certainly not by an algorithm.”

On March 21, the James Fernando Trio will perform a fundraiser for Concord Community Music School. It’s his second visit — he did a set at the Bach’s Lunch series last April. The school, he said, “is a well-rounded beacon for music [that’s] very clearly open to people coming and expressing themselves and learning the ways that they’re most passionate about.”

In addition to performing, Fernando has taught classes for several years at D.C.-based Levine Music. He’s a frequent guest instructor, recently hosting a workshop at an Arizona high school, and he’s at UNC Pembroke for a similar event ahead of his stop in New Hampshire.

“So I’ve gotten the chance to see a lot of different programs and see the energy around the schools and whatnot,” he said. “And Concord Community Music School seems absolutely lovely.”

CCMS Jazz Night Fundraiser w/ James Fernando Trio
When: Saturday, March 21, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Concord Community Music School Recital Hall, 23 Wall St., Concord
Tickets: $80 and up includes reception, call 228-1196

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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