Author: Michael Witthaus

All-woman showcase at Shaskeen

An upcoming Saturday afternoon of music will be an eclectic gathering of four women, each with a unique voice. Rachel Berlin echoes Ladies of the Canyon-era Joni Mitchell, Bri Bell writes and records lush folk pop as a solo artist and plays in a hardcore metal band on the side, Savoir Faire offers noir jazz with a sharp lyrical edge, and Fatma Salem’s songs are raw, spare and full of life experience.

The four will meet for the first time when each does a half-hour set at Shaskeen Pub on March 25. The common thread bringing them together is the WMNH-FM local music program Granite State of Mind. Each has appeared there recently.

“I went in search of more female performers … as a winter task for myself and the show,” host Rob Azevedo said recently.

As to why he chose these four performers, he said, “I found Savoir Faire to be symphonic almost. Fatma was refreshing, endearing, quietly captivating. Bri sounds like street love to me and her delivery is striking. Rachel was instantly next-level in her command and presence, and her voice melts into each song.”

Salem works as a mental health counselor in the same building as WMNH. Azevedo first met her in the hall there, then learned she was a musician. Her music often reflects her work.

“To have the background of life experiences adds another layer,” Salem said on her GSOM appearance. “You can track my journey through my songs.”

Berlin only recently made her first song public, but it is full of promise, and she has many more in waiting. “Wandering One Ways” has a verse/refrain structure and alternate tuning resembles Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree,” which is no accident. “I really wanted to write a song that is inspired by her,” she said in a recent phone interview. “Her ability to stay on one emotion and just really dig into it, lay it out there … I really wanted to be able to do that.”

Though both her parents are music teachers, Berlin’s journey to the stage wasn’t a given. “I’m definitely not a natural-born performer,” the 20-year old said. She’s battled stage fright since her childhood piano recital days. But after polishing up her guitar skills during the pandemic, she decided it was mind over matter and started hitting open mics.

When Lamont Smooth, a band from her hometown of Concord, invited her to sing with them at their Bank of NH Stage show last year, Berlin nervously agreed. “I couldn’t eat before I went on,” she said, “but … I turned off my feelings and just got into the music.”

Her songwriting heroes inspired Berlin to become a lyricist. “Anytime I thought I had a good line, I would write it down, and then I would try to mold all those lines into something,” she said. “Now, because I started doing it, it’s just an impulse; I can’t not do it. It feels wrong to hold it all in.”

Conversely, Bri Bell is a veteran of the Manchester scene. She started playing in 2013 at the Central Ale House open jam, an experience she remembers warmly. “

If you put yourself in a circle of other people who are creative and have similar goals, you almost feed off each other,” Bell said by phone recently. “It became like a family. We taught each other things, played together and just grew up as musicians.”

That led to playing out in local bars, but that didn’t last long for Bell. “I definitely did the grind, which a lot of my fellow musicians, peers in this area do,” she said. “Playing any show you can get … playing covers. Unfortunately, it’s something that I personally don’t like.”

These days, she plays fewer but more satisfying gigs. “I like to be in an environment where I can be heard … appreciated, if that makes sense.”

Bell released the all-acoustic Depressive Times in 2022, later fleshing out those songs and a few others into two EPs, Fall and Winter. Both were made in her home studio and came out in the past few months. She cites Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Power and Massive Attack as influences. Her friend Monica Grasso, who plays bass in the Graniteers, had an interesting response to the records.

“She told me, ‘I could never play the kind of music that you do, but I need to hear it’ — I appreciate that compliment,” Bell recalled. “It is very depressing music, but that’s my process. It’s very vulnerable. My music will make you sad, but the goal is to relate in those emotions that we’re not alone.”

Rising Star Series: Savoir Faire, Fatma Salem, Bri Bell & Rachel Berlin
When: Saturday, March 25, 4 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
More: facebook.com/rob.azevedo

Featured photo: top left: Savoir Faire, top right: Fatma Salem, bottom left: Bri Bell and bottom right: Rachel Berlin. Courtesy photos.

Family pub celebrates St. Patrick’s Day

After two years more or less on the sidelines, St. Patrick’s Day revelry returned to full flower in 2022, and the party only looks to get better with the big day landing on a Friday this year. Across New Hampshire, pub keepers are counting down. Early hours and Irish breakfasts are the rule, along with a bevy of traditional music.

Running a chain of Irish pubs, Salt hill, the Tuohy family exemplifies this celebratory spirit. Every year each pub kicks off with a traditional breakfast of bangers, mash and black pudding. Musicians like Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki and Concord band Rebel Collective start the day there and make their way back to bigger venues for evening sets.

This year, fiddler Tirrell-Wysocki will perform at noon in Lebanon, then head to Bedford for a private show. He’s also at LaBelle Winery on March 16, Claremont Opera House on March 18, and Stone Church on March 19. See jordantwmusic.com.

Rebel Collective will kick things off in Lebanon at 9:30 a.m., play the Shanty at 1:30 p.m. and head to Shaskeen for 8 p.m. See https://therebelcollectivemusic.com.

Other musicians making the rounds that day are O’Hanleigh, Atlantic Crossing, JD & the Stone Masons, and Celticladda. The Salt hill Celli Band will be in Newport and Sunapee, led by Anthony Santoro, a musician who’s led the weekly Irish session in Lebanon since Josh and Joe Tuohy opened it in 2003.

“He is so good that other really good musicians want to find him and play with him,” Josh Tuohy said while sitting at the original pub’s bar. “I’m not exactly sure who Anthony has with him this year, but I know it’s only high quality, because I don’t think he would play with less.”

Salt hill’s other locations are in Newport and at the foot of Mount Sunapee, a stone’s throw from the original site of The Shanty, a pub Tuohy’s mom and dad ran from 1968 to 1991. The famous and infamous have stopped there over the years.

In the ’70s, a pre-sobriety Steven Tyler pushed a cigarette machine down a flight of stairs, resulting in a lifetime ban from Mother Tuohy. A reformed Tyler has dropped by the new Shanty many times. Two summers ago he lingered long enough to take pictures with staff and even helped wash a few dishes.

New York subway shooter Bernie Goetz enjoyed a burger and a beer there while on the run from law enforcement and staying at a nearby hotel. “We didn’t know who he was until a couple of days later when the news hit,” Josh recalled.

March 17 is often the only time of the year many people go to an Irish bar, but Salt hill is a bit different.

“There’s people that come in a few times during the year,” Josh Tuohy said. “They’re always here on St. Patrick’s Day; it’s everybody’s go-to, and I like to think they wouldn’t consider going anywhere else. We always have a little extra for them that day.”

Those extras include a $500 cash prize at each location, along with plenty of Guinness, Jameson, Smithwick’s and other assorted bar swag. “We give away so many prizes,” Josh said. “We want everyone to feel like they got something.”

Pre-pandemic there were five pubs. One in Hanover was due for a lease renewal in mid-2020, as Dartmouth College went remote and events that filled the bar got canceled. “I don’t think we could have done anything else,” Josh said. “A lot of people said, ‘I’m sorry you went out of business,’ but we really just chose not to stay there.” Another in West Lebanon shut temporarily in September 2022 citing staffing shortages, and did not reopen.

Despite those setbacks, the Tuohys aren’t looking back.

“My brother and I are burger-flippers and bartenders by trade for our whole lives, and I love what we’ve accomplished,” Josh said. “The little victories, the challenges, the difficult things — it’s never the same day twice. I don’t think I’d know how to retire…. I’m wicked lucky to say we still love when we do.”

High on his list of reasons for that feeling is every Irish pub’s green letter day.

“Everyone, wherever they go for St. Patrick’s Day, I hope they’re safe and have a great time,” Josh said. “If they come to our places, they’re going to have more live music that they can shake a stick at and the best authentic traditional Irish food around, and everyone’s going to go home with a prize — if I could do it safely, I’d have a T-shirt cannon. I expect and hope to see all of our friends and family back, and anyone who’s new and hasn’t been here, give us a try. You’re going to have a good time, I promise that.”

St. Patrick’s Day at Salt hill starting at 9 a.m.
Salt hill Pub: 2 W. Park St., Lebanon; 448-4532
Salt hill Shanty: 1407 Route 103, Newbury; 763-2667
Salt hill Newport: 58 Main St., Newport; 863-7774
Full schedule at salthillpub.com

A dozen more New Hampshire Irish pubs with St. Patrick’s Day festivities
Barley House 132 N. Main St., Concord; 228-6363
Cara Irish Pub 11 Fourth St, Dover; 343-4390
Casey Magee’s 8 Temple St., Nashua; 484-7400
Fury’s Publick House 1 Washington St., Dover; 617-3633
Holy Grail 64 Main St., Epping; 679-9559
Kathleen’s Irish Pub 90 Lake St., Bristol; 744-6336
Kelley’s Row 417 Route 108, Somersworth; 692-2200
McGarvey’s 1097 Elm St., Manchester; 627-2721
Olde Kilkenny Pub 30 Middle St., Milford; 283-6631
Peddler’s Daughter 48 Main St., Nashua; 821-7535
Shaskeen Pub 909 Elm St., Manchester; 625-0246
Wild Rover Pub 21 Kosciuszko St., Manchester; 669-7722

Featured photo: Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki. Photo Credit: Mark Myers.

John McEuen traces a musical path

Along with his musical prowess, John McEuen could give a master class in networking. Fifty years ago he asked his new friend, bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs, to work with his group The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on what became Will The Circle Be Unbroken, a record that brought together American roots music’s leading lights.

McEuen used that promise to bring the equally iconic Doc Watson on board. “I told him, ‘We’re making an album with Earl Scruggs, and I want to know if you want to be part of it,’” he recalled by phone recently. “We weren’t making an album yet — he’d just said he would record with us.”

One by one, an all-star cast of bluegrass legends joined up.

Its success led to two follow-ups, one in 1989 featuring John Prine, Rosanne Cash, John Hiatt and other country-folk stars, and a third volume in 2002, which had Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, the latter singing “Goodnight Irene” with Tom Petty.

The Willie and Tom duet came together when McEuen heard Petty recording in another studio and again chose to be bold.

“I walked in and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Petty, I’m John McEuen from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and I have one question: Have you ever wanted to sing with Willie Nelson?’ It took him off guard. He said, ‘Well, yeah, I wanna sing with Willie Nelson’ and I said, ‘We’re recording him down the hall.’ He came right then.”

There will be more stories like that when McEuen and his group The Circle Band appear March 18 at Manchester’s Rex Theatre. During the interview, he recalled getting a private serenade from Linda Ronstadt at her “When Will I Be Loved” session, capturing an early take of Gregg Allman’s “It’s Not My Cross To Bear” in a Los Angeles studio, and recording an 18-year-old Kenny Loggins in McEuen’s Laurel Canyon home, before Loggins joined Jim Messina.

A few years later, McEuen and bandmate John Hanna turned down Messina when he pitched him a tune; Hanna didn’t think it was a hit. “It’s a teeny-bopper song,” he recalled him saying. “Anybody can write, ‘Your mama don’t dance and your daddy don’t rock and roll.’ I called up Jimmy the next day and said no. He said, ‘That’s OK; Kenny and I decided to put that out together.’ Good decision, huh?”

The show commences with early hits like “Mr. Bojangles” — the Dirt Band was the first act to have a hit with that song — and winds through gems like “Voila, An American Dream” and “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream).” Along with McEuen are bassist (and Dirt Band cofounder) Les Thompson, and Nashville guitarist Danny Knicely.

The bulk of the evening is devoted to McEuen’s best-known project, a recording that so powerfully documented the many threads of American acoustic music that a copy of the 1972 triple disc could have been sent to the Library of Congress at the same time it shipped to record stores across the country.

It’s a multimedia show, much of it centered on that first Circle album.

“My brother Bill was manager of the group; he also produced the record, and he shot photographs, so behind us on a screen will be a projection of the studio sessions, with us in front, playing the music,” he said, adding, “it’s really exciting to see myself 50 years ago; it helps keep me young.”

There are occasional divergences, McEuen continued.

“We do things that aren’t reflected by what’s on the screen when we get into some other music,” he said, then began to muse. “This is a strange job; you travel all this time so you can go work for an hour and a half. Well, I try to make it … maybe two hours depending on the audience. I hear that this room is really nice and I’m looking forward to it.”

Asked what fans can expect from the evening, McEuen was expansive.

“People should come if they want to see a night of music that takes them to a pleasant space that exists from 1860 to 2018,” he said. “ I like to tell stories about what’s going on before and after the songs, and we have a good time. We play hot, fast, sweet, smooth and all that. I hope people come out to hear us.”

John McEuen & The Circle Band
When: Saturday, March 18, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $29 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: John McEuen. Courtesy photo.