Author: Michael Witthaus

Post-Thanksgiving comedy show at Rex

Since all the crack-of-dawn flat-screen TV sales moved online, the day after Thanksgiving has become a time to recover and shake off the tryptophan, along with any memories of oversharing relatives. The way comedian Emily Ruskowski sees it, there are a lot of people among that crowd who could use an escape to some laughs.

“Black Friday is a lull, when people are home and looking for something to sort of decompress from travel or holiday stress,” the Massachusetts native, who started in standup while going to graduate school in Washington, D.C., and has worked in her home region since 2013, said by phone recently. “Comedy is a great thing to do during those times, if only to get away from your family for a few hours.”

To that end, she and three of the region’s top comics will gather at the Rex Theatre in Manchester on Nov. 24. Ruskowski, a finalist in the 2018 Boston Comedy Festival, is a natural storyteller with sharp timing. Her bits include one about “aggressive meat hipsters” working in Portland, Maine, restaurants where the farm is a little too close to the table — who needs to hear every step in the preparation of goat stew?

“They’re not wrong, their food is incredible,” she said. “They’re just very, very passionate about it.”

Sharing the stage are Dan Boulger, who won the BCF in 2006 and is a regular at places like Headliners and Laugh Boston, and Amy Tee, who likes to appear in a suit and tie and poke fun at her androgynous appearance. “You’re probably wondering what bathroom I’m going to use,” she’ll quip. “It’ll be the one with the shortest line, I guarantee you that.” Rounding out the bill is Boston’s Tim Champa.

“I could not be more excited about this lineup, it’s just A+ all-around top tier,” Ruskowski said. “It’s going to be just such an incredible show, I can’t wait.”

Ruskowski got into comedy by acclamation — enough friends told her she was funny that she decided to give it a try.

“I didn’t know what the entry point was,” she said. “Then my friend was like, ‘Oh, you go to open mics, and there’s one near my house; I’ll go with you.’ I was just hooked from that.”

The same people urging her to try standup helped Ruskowski mine the jokes in her story-based act. “My friends would say, ‘There’s a lot of punches in there’… they would help me work it out,” she said. “I’m so grateful to them for encouraging me, because doing comedy is one of the greatest joys of my life. I’m so lucky to get to do it.”

When she moved back to New England, Ruskowski broke into the regional scene in an atypical way. “My biggest comedy contacts were people who had gone to high school and college with my sister,” she said. “People were like, ‘She’s Audrey’s sister, she’s cool because Audrey is very cool.’”

Since then she’s managed to land in a number of comedy circles, appearing at the alt-leaning Shaskeen in Manchester, doing mid-level rooms like The Rex and Portsmouth’s Music Hall Lounge — she’ll be at the latter in mid-December, and opening for Gary Gulman at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre last September.

During the day, Ruskowski works as a mental health professional, helping young people. “Don’t applaud, I’m doing God’s work,” she’ll tell crowds, adding with a smirk, “at least that’s what they say, so they don’t have to pay us.”

She has one hilarious bit about taking a job satisfaction survey during the pandemic, asking for more money and receiving a fleece jacket instead. “That’s what you everyone wants to wear, right, hospital-branded attire? Like you showed up in an ER naked, and that’s what they sent you home in.”

That said, the counseling job does help the comic hone her act.

“Teenagers are a very tough audience,” she said, recalling one young girl complaining that Ruskowski didn’t really care about her — she was only there because it was her job. “I said, ‘You’re right, I am here because I’m paid, and wouldn’t it be weird if I wasn’t? If I was just a random adult who came to your school to ask personal questions, you probably shouldn’t talk to me.’”

Emily Ruskowski’s Thanksgiving Leftover Laughs w/ Dan Boulger, Amy Tee and Tim Champa
When: Friday, Nov. 24, 8 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $25 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Emily Ruskowski. Courtesy photo.

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.