Author: Michael Witthaus

Mia x Ally take viral act on tour

The curious lockdown revival of a 600-year-old folk tradition was the catalyst for an inventive pairing that has, among other things, produced a recasting of “Free Bird” for violin and bagpipes. In late 2020 a Scottish singer posted a pair of sea shanties — collective songs from the maritime trades — to TikTok. Another vocalist added a bass harmony layer, and soon more began stitching in parts.

It caught the attention of electric violinist Mia Asano, who dueted on a subsequent batch of videos. Bagpiper Ally Crowley-Duncan was also taken by “musicians adding their parts and creating this massive session-style experience with all this instrumentation.” She collaborated on a few with a mutual musician friend.

Out of this digital milieu the two became mutual fans and eventually collaborators. The world of rock music has never seen anything like Mia x Ally, but the duo’s unique approach to their instruments has won kudos from some of the genre’s best, including Metallica. It’s also amassed that most coveted of modern currencies, internet virality.

Before joining up, both were building big audiences on TikTok, Ally on her traditional bagpipes with a custom key-extending chanter (the note-producing tube at the bottom of the bag) that she helped design, and Mia with her seven-string Flying V electric violin. In a recent Zoom interview, the two discussed how they came to see their instruments in a different light.

Mia was classically trained from age 5.

“I had a deep love for classical music, but a deeper love for alternative styles,” she said. “In middle school I discovered electric violins; after that I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

The violin, she added, “is a really gate-kept instrument, and the classical community is really intense. Both Ally and I have a lot of similarities in those ways with our upbringing and our experience with our instruments, so we both have a deep love for showcasing everything they are capable of.”

Also the product of a musical household, Ally played multiple instruments growing up, taking up bagpipes at age 12 as a way to bond with her Scottish stepfather after he legally adopted her. “I’ve been able to see the saxophone, piano and flute transcend their more traditional and classical roots,” she said, “but there aren’t a lot of avenues where the bagpipes have been able to do that.”

In high school she transcribed Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train” to bagpipes and played it with a rock band she’d formed.

“The reaction kind of flipped my brain around into wanting to see the bagpipes in that light more often,” she said. “I love that style of music, always have, and it was really cool to be able to offer it to people on an instrument that I love, but in a way that they weren’t expecting.”

After an extended TikTok friendship, the two performed together for the first time in Boston, on St. Patrick’s Day. Mia was attending Berklee, and Ally had a show sponsored by Barstool Sports. “She messaged me and said, ‘Would you like to meet up and record some collaborations together?’ and of course I said yes,” Mia recalled.

Their version of “Shipping Up to Boston” was a viral smash, and they soon hit the road for a run named after the Dropkick Murphys song, their first release as a duo.

“We like to say it sold out our first tour — that’s how a lot of people found out about us, and the first time we realized how many people love us,” Mia said. An accompanying video, shot across the city at Fenway Park, City Hall and other landmarks, was “essentially a love letter to Boston.”

The current tour, which stops in Derry on Jan. 6 and includes shows in Boston and Vermont, comes in the wake of their debut, Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits. The EP includes their distinctive reimagining of the Lynyrd Skynyrd hit that’s arguably the most requested song in rock history. Both released it solo before recording it together.

“We realized there was actually an appreciation for hearing ‘Free Bird’ in that way,” Ally said. “We knew that we wanted to make it something bigger.”

Playing live, the duo is about more than classic rock covers, even playing some original songs. “Our shows have every kind of music from pop, rock and Celtic,” Mia said. “We have jazzy moments; I play a classical piece at one poin t… we throw everything in there. It’s to showcase our diversity. Music is the most important thing to us; it’s not just about the showmanship, but that’s also important. We have a lot of musical integrity.”

Featured photo: Mia x Ally. Courtesy photo.

Dawes returns to New Hampshire

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

When Dawes steps on the Music Hall stage Dec.30, it will be only their fourth appearance in the Granite State, and their first in almost five years. Taylor Goldsmith, Dawes guitarist, lead singer and main songwriter, hopes the night-before-New Year’s Eve scheduling will add to the impetus for locals to check them out.

“I’m very excited for that; I mean, obviously, it’s good to get back to anywhere we haven’t been for a while,” Goldsmith said by phone from his home in Altadena, California. “I feel like everything is kind of shut down that week, and no one ever has anything to do. So I’m kind of eager to see how that feels.”

Goldsmith is a creature of the road.

“When I’m standing still, I seem to disappear,” he wrote over a decade ago in “Time Spent in Los Angeles,” but these days that notion is tempered by new fatherhood. With his wife, This Is Us actress Mandy Moore, he has two sons; Gus, born February 2021, and Ozzie, who arrived in October of last year.

“Back in the day it was, ‘How do we stay on tour, how do we not keep a house at home?,’ and now it’s, ‘How do I make these tours as fast as possible?’” he said. “I definitely feel like an essential part of myself … only comes to life on stages [and] I’ve never had the inclination of, ‘maybe I’d like to step away from this’ — I just need to be a little more strategic. Because when I’m away from the guys, even the first hour hurts really bad.”

The change has impacted his songwriting — up to a point.

“My world is so much smaller, and that is cool; I think it’s something to be embraced rather than rejected,” he said, while noting that he’s not keen on writing an entire album about being a dad. “Even though that’s very much what I think about and deal with on a minute-to-minute basis, I definitely have to make sure that I’m thinking outside of that.”

That said, his worldview has shifted.

“When I was young … those Jackson Browne songs about heartache were all I wanted to hear,” he said. “That’s not my experience now, and it’s a little harder for me to jump into that place. Now I want to hear observations on culture, politics … the existential crisis that goes beyond romance.”

With fewer and longer songs, Dawes’ most recent album, Misadventures of Doomscroller, was a departure. Musically adventurous, it was recorded following a tour backing Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh. More than a few likened it to so-called jam bands, but for Goldsmith it really wasn’t that at all.

“We went in with an objective and more or less accomplished it,” he said, adding that it was different from past albums where plans for a certain mood — more ballads, a softer sound for instance — were waylaid. “I like that the record tells us what it is rather than the other way around, more or less. But with Misadventures, it was like, let’s go for one of those five or six songs, yet 45-minute, albums, like so many rock ’n’ roll bands that we love.”

Goldsmith shrugged off the label given to them by some critics. “There are bands that deserve the moniker but don’t have it,” like Pink Floyd and Dire Straits, he said. “I don’t see us as a jam band in the same way that I see the Grateful Dead…. I almost feel like that’s more of a cultural observation [that] has more to do with who shows up than what we’re doing on stage.”

Missing from the upcoming show will be founding member Wylie Gelber, who left the band last year to focus on his handmade guitar company, and keyboard player Lee Pardini, who announced his departure earlier this month.

“Things change, and I’m excited in a way about embracing this newer identity,” Goldsmith said.

It’s an interesting response from someone who wrote, “I hope all your favorite bands stay together” a while back.

“Well, people have said that to me before … so much for that,” he replied. “That song is more about the REMs and the Replacements, bands that truly are not playing shows … there’s heartbreak there. Dawes is on tour … I’m singing these songs, Griffin’s playing the drums. We were there on Day 1, and we’re still here. I think that is still the thing worth celebrating that that song tries to speak to.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.