Author: Michael Witthaus

‘American Pie’ marks 50 years with Don McLean show

As Don McLean began a phone interview in advance of a performance marking 50 years since “American Pie” debuted, Dolly Parton had just asked the Rock and Hall of Fame to withdraw her nomination. The songwriter who’d cataloged the saints of rock in his iconic song was pressed for his thoughts.

“I will take any award that is given to me; I don’t have the kind of character it would take to turn [them] down,” McLean answered with a wry chuckle, adding that early on, “a certain religious quality, fostered by Rolling Stone, made for a very good Hall of Fame … but now they’ve run out of people. How many times can Paul McCartney get in?”

When “American Pie” hit the airwaves in 1971, it caused a sensation unlike any song that came before. Scholars analyzed it and fans obsessively pored over each line for hidden meaning. McLean gave listeners plenty to sift through, but said his epic tune began like any other, with him alone in a writing room.

Near the same time, The Beatles were working their way through “Let It Be,” but he didn’t have the luxury of tossing around ideas with bandmates.

“In my situation it’s all me,” he said. “My brain, my heart, my memory and my thoughts … I know exactly what I want to do. It’s very hard for me to work with people.”

In the studio, that became a problem.

“It was rehearsed for weeks,” he said. “The boys that did the record now brag about it, but they couldn’t play it to save their ass.”

Only Paul Griffin’s rousing gospel piano was able to transform it into the song he’d heard in his head while toiling at home.

The first line he came up with was “a long, long time ago” — to describe an event barely 10 years on. The rest followed quickly.

“I had a melodic concept, then I got a rock ’n’ roll chorus, then I figured out all I had to do was speed up the slow part and write the rest of the song,” he said.

He had fun burying multiple meanings in the lyrics. It’s one of the reasons he laughs at anyone trying to divine his intent.

“The problem people encounter with this song is that it goes along seeming like it’s rational, then it will reach a metaphor or a symbol of some sort that’s two or three things at the same time,” McLean said. He may be talking about John Lennon, or Vladimir Lenin. As to the identity of the jester, king and queen, “I could have said Elvis instead of James Dean. I say he lost his thorny crown, but only Christ had a thorny crown.”

McLean’s musical achievements extend beyond creating one of the 20th century’s most lauded songs. “Vincent” is a classic, a deep cut that leapt into the charts on the strength of “American Pie.” A cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” as the ’80s dawned was also a hit.

Finally, McLean may be the only musician whose strength as a song craftsman inspired someone else to pen a hit about him. Lori Lieberman began writing “Killing Me Softly with His Song” after seeing McLean in concert.

He continues to make music, and his upcoming show will range across dozens of albums and hundreds of songs. McLean also has a new long-player coming called American Boys.

“I wrote some songs with my guitar player, and I wrote a bunch of songs by myself,” he said. “So that’s a brand-new album.”

The upcoming disc follows up 2018’s Botanical Gardens; he’ll also draw from 2009’s Addicted to Black in Laconia.

He’s aware many fans will be impatient for him to play favorites but said, “I treat every song with respect; I don’t trot it out like, ‘Oh, here’s the famous one.’ There’s no difference in my attitude toward ‘American Pie’ or something from a lesser-known record.”

“I explain stuff to people and talk about whatever occurs as I’m going along,” he said. “I have this weird ability to be able to sing a song like ‘Vincent’ and be completely immersed in it. At the same time I’m thinking about what I’m going to say next after I’m through, and then what two or three songs I’m going to play [later] in my mind at the same time … I’m giving it my undivided attention. … I’ve been doing this my whole life.”

Don McLean
When: Sunday, April 24, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia
Tickets: $40 to $99 at coloniallaconia.com

Featured photo: Don McLean. Photo Credit 2911 Media

Faith Ann Band celebrates new album

As it touches on a myriad of musical moods, from tuneful grunge to full-throttle rockers and tender ballads, there’s a clear thread running through In Bloom, the second album from the Faith Ann Band: raw, naked emotion. More precisely, it’s a crackling live wire, shooting furious sparks and sparing no one.

Two minutes of rage, the breakneck-paced “Miller Time” exemplifies this, as a would-be suitor is sneered away with a dismissive line. “I wouldn’t be you for all of the sh-t you could possibly shove in my face,” band leader Faith Ann Mandravelis sings.

Another standout, “Jungle Law” is a credo of sorts. “I ain’t no live-in house pet,” she sings, “I don’t sit pretty.” Odious corporate dronage is drubbed on songs like “Songbird” and “Reaper,” a backward glance at the singer-songwriter’s entrance into music; she quit a job as an engineer to become a math teacher.

“I saw like what day-to-day life was doing to people in an office environment,” she said in a recent phone interview.

One of her students had a band, which inspired her to start hitting the open mic scene around Manchester and Concord.

“As I was writing my songs, I found a lot of healing,” she said. “Giving myself permission to speak up was huge, after having been kind of in the shadows of my musician boyfriend and not really ever feeling like I was worthy enough.”

Buoyed by this newfound courage, Faith Ann hit the road for shows in the South and headed west to play in Arizona. The response to her music led to an epiphany.

“We can focus on not just fixing things that are broken but things that are not … that have just never been used,” she said. “Brushing those off, as a way to bring ourselves back to being inspired by life.”

Her first album was 2020’s Long Last — “Which is pretty much a statement: Finally, I’ve broken out of my shell,” she said. “I’ve stopped letting myself be contained, pushed down and ashamed for my past, and as soon as you own it, you find an acceptance of yourself.”

The only musician from the debut still in the band is bass player Alfredo Benavides. Concord guitarist Mike Stockbridge and drummer Alex Hershman helped make In Bloom, but someone new will take over the drum kit soon. Axile Beighley, who plays with Benavides in Manchester band Dank Sinatra, serves as a fifth member at live shows, like the release party coming up on April 16 at Strange Brew Tavern.

“Feral” is one of the words Faith Ann uses to describe her approach to music.

“I mean it as a way to staying true to the parts of ourselves that are unclaimed territory, that haven’t been cultivated,” she explained. “It’s the parts of us that are the most raw. Whatever you might say unkind about yourself, these are part of the things I do that I enjoy. I don’t need to justify them to anybody.”

As a relative newcomer to the local scene, she finds the New Hampshire music community a welcoming one. She’s paired up with many local bands, and has several shows on the horizon. She’ll support Andrew North & the Rangers at Penuche’s in Concord on May 7, and play at the Market Days event the following month. In July she and her band host a festival of her own called Level Up Get Down at Auburn Pitts. It will include Big Sandy, Chodus, Tumbletoads, The Humans Being and Dank Sinatra.

“Everyone I have played with is super-supportive, and everybody wants to see everyone succeed,” she said. “I don’t think I have ever really heard of anyone bashing on any other musician, because there’s just this understanding of how much guts it takes and how vulnerable you are to do it. People don’t always go out of their way to invite you in their little realm, but once you’re in there, everyone wants to help you out.”

Faith Ann Band
When: Saturday, April 16, 8 p.m.
Where: Strange Brew Tavern, 88 Market St., Manchester
More: thefaithannband.com

Featured photo: Faith Ann Band. Courtesy photo.

Kevin and Michael Bacon perform in Plymouth

The Bacon Brothers are a prolific band — 11 studio albums since forming in the late ’90s, a live record and a hits collection — but there’s really not a Bacon Brothers sound. Kevin Bacon, who writes most of the band’s lyrics, attributes this to their being lifetime students at the College of Musical Knowledge.

“We’ ve lived long enough to have absorbed a lot of different … styles that have continued to grow through the years,” the actor and musician said in a recent joint interview with his brother Michael, a composer. When writing, he said, “We’re thinking about the way the song could sound, as opposed to thinking of a way to fit the song into the Bacon Brothers.”

Thus, there’s a world of difference between the Opry-ready “Picker” and “British Invasion,” which sounds plucked from a 1964 episode of Shindig. Both are from 2020’s The Way We Love, a record that is musically diverse but is also a concept record about love in its many forms.

“Our concept is usually do we have enough songs that we really like to make a 10- or 11-song record,” Michael said.

“Most bands have a certain kind of consistency, but it’s just not what we do,” Kevin added.

One of the best tracks on the new disc “Corona Song,” a tribute to their parents that’s both sweet and humorous; Kevin sings about missing them, while also being grateful they aren’t around to see the pandemic’s dumber moments.

“People get awards and they’ll say, ‘I know my dad’s up there watching, and he would be so happy for me’ — but there’s got to be other times,” he said. “Nobody ever says, ‘I’m so glad my dad’s not up there watching me as I get hauled off to jail.’”

After a handful of one-off gigs over the past two years, The Bacon Brothers are at last back on the road with a tour that stops at Plymouth’s Flying Monkey on April 14. The show will span their catalog and offer a few new selections.

“We have a really nice five-song EP coming out we’re really excited about,” Michael said. “Everything’s sort of falling into place again for us, which is a great feeling.”

One of their few appearances was Sept. 11, 2021, where they performed the moving remembrance song “Unhappy Birthday” in front of New York City’s Freedom Tower.

“Kevin and I both spent more of our lives in New York than out of New York, and that was a special experience,” Michael said. Kevin wrote it at the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. “I think it’s the best 9/11 song, and it’s also eminently updatable. Because we’re always living with that.”

During lockdown, Kevin and wife Kyra Sedgwick had a novel way of maintaining harmony in their three-decade-plus marriage. They’d each retreat to separate areas of their Connecticut home, meeting around noon and again at day’s end.

“It’s a very high-class problem when you have enough rooms in your house that you can go off and be in your own space, come back together for lunch and then say goodbye until cocktail hour,” Kevin said.

Michael stays busy with his film scoring business, and he continues to provide the music for Henry Louis Gates’ series Finding Your Roots, which he’s done for 15 years — including a 2012 episode where his brother and wife learned they were distant cousins.

“It’s a dream job, I’m very lucky to have it,” he said. “It’s an incredible show.”

On the segment where Kevin and Kyra discovered their genealogical connection, the two also learned about a history of abolitionism in their family — along with an opposing fact.

“They also found out that we had a slave owner, and what was shocking to me is he was a Quaker,” Kevin said. “We’d always thought of the Quakers as leaning towards abolition [and] an understanding of the horror of slavery.”

Kevin’s busy acting career continues apace.

“I just finished up Season 3 of City on a Hill, which is on Showtime,” he said. “I think we’re going to be on in June, although I’m not exactly sure of the date. I did a film with Kyra in Rhode Island [Space Oddity] that’s hopefully coming out soon. It has a nice New England angle.”

The Bacon Brothers
When: Thursday, April 14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Flying Monkey Movie House & Performance Center, 39 S. Main St., Plymouth
Tickets: $65 and $69 at flyingmonkeynh.com

Featured photo: Michael and Kevin Bacon. Photo credit Charles Chessler.