Author: Michael Witthaus

Jon Pousette-Dart Trio performing at the Rex

In the second half of the 1970s, the Pousette-Dart Band was one of Boston’s most ubiquitous acts. Songs like “Harder,” “Amnesia” and “What Can I Say” were staples on rock radio, and leader Jon Pousette-Dart’s connection with concert promoter Don Law and his Premier Talent company had them on the road constantly, appearing in concert halls, arenas and stadiums supporting some of the decade’s biggest names.

Opening for acts like James Taylor, Peter Frampton, Billy Joel and Journey got them a lot of exposure, though not every pairing worked; one harrowing 1976 night in Jersey City opening for Yes, loutish fans tossed fruit and other projectiles on the stage. Mostly, it was just fun playing in a world with few rules, where a folksy act like PDB could be a last-minute substitution for raunch rockers Black Oak Arkansas on a tour with the jazz prog Mahavishnu Orchestra.
“It was really kind of uncharted territory,” Pousette-Dart said in a recent phone interview. “It wasn’t defined and cut and dried as it is now. You would have this real cross-section of bills, and Don really threw us out on all kinds of things.”

The band broke up in 1981, reunited 10 years later for a series of shows and released a final “best of” album in 1994. As a solo artist, Pousette-Dart has released 10 records. The most recent is 2015’s Talk. When he performs in Manchester with guitarist Jim Chapdelaine and bass player Steve Roues, he’ll draw from the breadth of his career.

“I go through all of the songs that really have had legs, that people respond to,” he said. “It’s decades’ worth of material really, and I do like to throw in a few obscure covers that are kind of off the radar. I always like to find songs that I have an affinity toward … it runs the gamut from rock ’n’ roll, country, blues and folk, all kinds of influences; because that’s just the nature of who I am.”
There’s Little Feat’s “Roll Um Easy,” a Woody Guthrie song and “an old Louvin Brothers tune I picked up,” but as for the rest, Pousette-Dart is coy. “There’s a few more, but I’ll keep them in suspense.”

His trio is a time-tested unit. He’s known Roues since he was a kid — “we literally grew up and played in high school bands together,” he said. Pousette-Dart and Chapdelaine have collaborated for nearly 25 years, most of them based in Nashville, where the first PDB album was made in 1974.

The making of 1976’s Pousette-Dart Band, with Boston mime Trent Arterberry on the cover, is an interesting story that eventually led him to become a permanent resident of Music City.

Legendary label exec Al Coury signed the group to Capitol Records, then quit 10 days following a power struggle. The label’s new regime didn’t know what to do with them, so they were dispatched to work with producer Norbert Putnam in Nashville. They arrived at the same studio where Dobie Gray was just finishing up recording “Drift Away.”

“That made a big impression on me,” Pousette-Dart said. “It was the beginning of my relationship with Nashville, and through the years, I’ve made a lot of really close friends that I’m still attached to. … It’s been a very long-term dialogue and relationship for me since the ’70s.”

His most recent release harkens back to that decade. “I Remember You” was inspired by “In a Silent Way,” a song that Mahavishnu John McLaughlin played on as a member of the Miles Davis Group. It’s unlike anything Pousette-Dart has done before, inspired by his initial reaction to the Davis song.
“Certain records just stopped you in your tracks,” he said. “That was one of those.”

He brought an improvisational approach to the song’s delicate, pulsing melody, adding lyrics about being spellbound by a chance meeting, and his fear that it was fleeting. “I remember you like the first star I ever saw,” he sings. “I was so scared I would never know who you were.”

The essence of simultaneous discovery and creation lends a magical feeling to the song. “It felt like the way they came upon it and how it landed,” Pousette-Dart said, adding “usually, I tend to write things out and know where I’m going. That song was just really putting it out there.”

He continued, “I really enjoyed doing that piece … it’s nice when you find those connections to things that go back to that era [when] you first heard Hendrix, The Beatles, Muddy Waters. Certain things, you put them on, and you go, ‘Oh my God.’ You can remember exactly where you were standing when you first heard it. There are certain things in your life that are like that.”

Jon Pousette-Dart Trio
When: Thursday, Sept. 7, 6 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $29 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Jon Pousette -Dart. Courtesy photo.

Brooks Young counts his wins ahead of Thorogood tour

Most people who meet their musical idols are grateful if they get a bit of face time and an autograph, but Brooks Young aims higher. Beginning with B.B. King, whom he met as a teenager, the fiery blues guitarist has shared the stage with a still-growing list of performers that includes Bryan Adams, Los Lobos, The Wallflowers and Huey Lewis & The News.

Last year he received a personal invitation from Sammy Hagar’s management and flew out to the Midwest to play solo for stadium-sized crowds ahead of the Red Rocker’s band The Circle, a supergroup that includes Jason Bonham and Van Halen’s Michael Anthony.

“It was quite a rush … very surreal,” Young said by phone recently. “You walk out there holding a piece of wood with six strings on it and 20,000 people in front of you, what are you going to do?”

Young’s success has come from a combination of talent and tenacity.

“Keep pushing forward and the things that you love in life will come to fruition,” he said. “That’s all I care about — just stick with things.” His latest triumph is a tour with George Thorogood & the Destroyers that begins Oct. 21 in Pennsylvania and winds its way through the South, ending Nov. 10 in Mobile, Alabama.

Thorogood was also part of the Hagar run, and the two connected during the brief tour.

“We just became friendly with each other,” Young said. “It spurred George to ask me to come out on tour this fall.” The nearest show is in New York, a four-hour drive from his home town of Concord, but fans will have an opportunity to catch a full Brooks Young Band show at Penuche’s Ale House on Sept. 1.

“I’m really excited about that,” Young said. “I’m going to be out there on the road, in a bunch of places that I don’t know, with a bunch of people I don’t know around me, and I want to leave home feeling good.” He’ll also play a few solo gigs before heading out, including one at Foster’s Tavern in Alton Bay on Sept. 15.

His Penuche’s full band set will feature material from Supply Chain Blues, a solo blues album released last October. It has a mix of originals, like the title track and “Working Man,” along with several tasty covers — Freddie King’s “Going Down,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Forty-Four,” “Ventilator Blues” from the Stones’ Exile on Main Street, and Buddy Guy’s “Five Long Years,” the musical twin of Derek & the Dominoes’ cover of “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.”

He’s working on a follow-up to the record, which garnered a burst of attention when it came out. For a while, Supply Chain Blues was No. 1 on the iTunes blues charts, sitting atop Buddy Guy. “The day I woke up and saw that, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Young said. “I pinched myself and went, ‘I’m sorry, Buddy, it won’t be very long; maybe a week or two.’”

Now 41, Young is no less giddy than when he was starting out and meeting Ben Folds in the hall of a Manchester hotel elevator was a cool moment. These days there are bigger achievements, like recording Eric Clapton’s song “Promises” with his daughter Ruth and attending Clapton’s Boston Garden show courtesy of the legendary guitarist’s management.

“I’m so thankful that after all these years this guy from New Hampshire that’s not even close to all these other folks is part of that circle,” he said. “Guitar icons like B.B. King and Robert Cray and Jimmy Vaughn and Eric Clapton, playing with them, or going out and hanging out with them, was a dream of mine since I was a kid growing up in Concord, and I decided this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to stick with it until the day it doesn’t work; it still gets better every year.”

Brooks Young Band
When: Friday, Sept. 1, 8 p.m.
Where: Penuche’s Ale House, Bicentennial Square, Concord
More: brooksyoung.com

Featured photo: Brooks Young. Courtesy photo.

NH Irish Festival an indoor/outdoor bash

According to the New England Historical Society, more than one in five of New Hampshire’s residents claim Irish ancestry. The lure of factory jobs led a wave of immigration from Ireland to Manchester in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Emerald Isle’s cultural presence has grown steadily since, particularly when it comes to music.

Thus, the upcoming New Hampshire Irish Festival won’t be a one-night affair in a single venue. Rather, it will stretch across two days in downtown Manchester, with shows at both the spacious Palace Theatre and the more intimate Rex. An outdoor stage will offer free live music prior to both shows.

Liam Spain is a musician who’s performed traditional Irish and folk music for decades with his brother Mickey. The two are close to completing a new album they’ll release next year. He also works for the Palace, and CEO Peter Ramsey asked him to pull together a list of artists for an event similar in spirit to last year’s Jazz Festival there.

Spain leaned into the task and was elated when all his first-call performers said yes. Ronan Tynan will headline two nights at the Palace, along with Screaming Orphans and Derek Warfield & the Young Wolfe Tones. At the Rex, it’s two shows from Reverie Road, a supergroup with members of Solas and Gaelic Storm, along with Belfast native Seamus Kennedy, and the Spain Brothers.

“It represents the whole gamut of Irish music,” Spain said in a recent phone interview. “There’s Ronan, a traditional tenor. Then you have the folk and ballad stuff with Seamus, the tunes with Reverie Road, and with Screaming Orphans you get the Irish pop and rock. It covers all the bases.”

Spain is also very keen on Derek Warfield’s latest project, which draws its name from the trad group he cofounded in 1965. “This new band of his has amazing musicians,” he said. “It does some of the Wolfe Tones stuff; it’s still very much folk but very melodic — there’s a lot of mixture in the music.”

Screaming Orphans are the four Diver sisters, Joan, Angela, Gràinne and Marie Thérèse, who hail from Bundoran in Ireland’s County Donegal. Along with releasing a dozen albums — their latest, Taproom, made the Billboard World Music Top 10 — they’re also known for backing Sinead O’Connor on a couple of tours. They’ve also recorded with Peter Gabriel, and sang with Joni Mitchell when she contributed to a Chieftains album.

Outdoor activities begin at 5 p.m. on Friday with Speed the Plough, followed by Pat Kelleher (appearing both days), with local favorite Marty Quirk doing the final pre-concert set. Saturday kicks off at noon with Kelleher, followed by Christine Morrison’s Academy of Celtic Dance. Husband-and-wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton and Erin Og, both Boston-based trad acts, close out the free music.

The Spain Brothers perform infrequently, now that Mickey Spain lives in North Carolina. “We do our playing and touring strategically whenever he comes up,” Liam said. Along with the festival, they’re in New York and have a couple of other regional shows.

Beyond that, in November the two will bring fans along for a nine-day trek through Ireland run by Brack Tours. It stops in Kilkenny, Galway and Dublin; they’ll play at least four shows. The trip includes a tour of the Smithwick’s brewery and stops at historical spots like Rock of Cashel, Bunratty Castle, Glengowla Mines and Athlone & Sean’s Bar, Ireland’s oldest pub.

Spain is excited about the cultural exchange happening in his hometown. “It’s going to be a great weekend of music,” he said, adding that Hanover Street will be closed for outdoor activities. “Our plan is to have the Palace bar, as well as a food truck or two. So it’s going to have a little street fair element as well.”

New Hampshire Irish Festival
When: Friday, Aug. 25, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, Aug. 26, at 6 p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., and Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $49 at palacetheatre.org
Free outdoor performances start at 5 p.m. on Friday and noon on Saturday

Featured photo: Screaming Orphans. Courtesy photo.